PeppercomBlog

Balloon Boy: Not the First, Not the Last

Posted by Matt Purdue 

 A strange craft is seen floating over the skies of the United States. Immediately, the authorities and the news media mobilize. An entire nation is riveted by live reports of the ship soaring through the lower atmosphere. Millions of people are caught up in the excitement. 

The craft lands in a quiet field, and the police and media descend, falling over each other to uncover if what’s inside is a nightmare. 

But, in the end, we’re all fooled. This real-life drama has very little to do with reality. It’s all a fraud. 

Is Social Media a Function of Social Media?

Posted by Milos Sugovic

Peppercom recently conducted a social media audit to uncover the “white space” areas of opportunity for a client. In the process, we collected data on over 1,200 mentions or social media “hits” for industry competitors, measuring their share of voice vis-à-vis various messaging categories and sentiments. After examining data on Twitter and blogs primarily, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Ning, LinkedIn, Delicious, and MySpace, we decided to do a quick experiment and answer the following question: For each competitor, does a strong presence in one social media channel translate, correlate, or spill-over into a strong presence in another social media channel? The answer was “yes.” 

To answer the question we looked at blog and Twitter activity for three competitors. We graphed the number of Twitter and blog “hits” over the timeframe analyzed, and generated the following three graphs. Do you see any relationships? 

Citizen “Journalists”?

Posted by Matt Purdue

Real journalists are headed to the blogosphere in droves, and this trend bears watching--and celebrating--by all of us. 

Just the other day, I heard that Kerry Peckner, formerly of Retirement Income Reporter, has begun blogging professionally. He’s the third print journo I’ve noticed in the past two month who has gone out into the digital world on his/her own. As a former ink-stained wretch from the land of print newspapers, I have to give these folks a tremendous amount of credit. They’re a little late, but they’ve finally realized that print media is going the way of the dodo bird. (Of course, as I write this, Kerry’s site won’t load. The digital realm is not without its set of challenges.)

God knows we need more “professional” bloggers. With apologies to all the legit bloggers out there, the blogosphere remains more like a flea market of information than a healthy exchange of real ideas. In fact, we may be about to reach the absolute bottom of the blog bargain bin with the release of the new film, Julie & Julia. From the syrup-addled mind of Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, Bewitched), this bit of treacle tells the true story of a “lowly cubicle worker,” Julie Powell, who spent a year making all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook and blogging about it. It “changed her life,” the trailer intones. Holy crossover, Batman: an excruciating blog has been turned into a saccharine Hollywood onslaught.

Caveat blogger: Posting on others' blogs can be dangerous to your health

Posted by Milos Sugovic 

Blogging is a popularity contest and those that adhere to reciprocity norms get people to pay attention. Say something interesting along the way and you may rouse curiosity and encourage click-through. So, PR firms advise their clients to actively participate in online discussions. It’s a no brainer. 

But the “evidence” till now has been anecdotal and experiential. Do higher levels of content production and proactive engagement really translate into higher readership?  

Turns out for the most part that’s true, and here’s the empirical evidence: A study by Gaudeul et al. (2009) examines the relationships among bloggers to identify the statistically significant variables that determine blog readership. If you look under the hood, you’ll find the following nuts and bolts of their research: 

• A one percent increase in the number of entries per day is associated with a 0.6 percent increase in number of readers. 
  
• A one percent increase in the number of comments received is associated with a 0.8 percent increase in number of readers 
  
• Membership in online communities has a very small effect on readership, while “seniority” - the age of the blog - is associated positively with the number of readers. 
  
• The most surprising finding is that posting comments on other blogs is negatively related with the number of readers, all else equal. 
  

The first three findings support the blogosphere rules of engagement. But what does the last bullet mean? Will posting on other blogs reduce your readership? Is the failure to reciprocate “sanctioned” with higher popularity? This seems to defy intuition.

The Blog of War

Posted by Matt Purdue

Amid all the joy over President Obama’s inauguration this week, we see the power of Web 2.0 to impact (i.e. damage) a company’s reputation. The LA Times reports that a group parents who sent their children to an inauguration youth conference in D.C. are fuming. They claim the tour organizer dropped the ball, and plunked their precious offspring into a disorganized, sleep-deprived maelstrom. Now they’re threatening to sue. 

As if this weren’t already every corporate communicator’s nightmare, the parents have launched a blog to share venom about the tour operator and his allegedly slipshod practices. It’s no surprise that the parents are using the blog to eviscerate the company. Fortunately, the tour operator seems to be handling the situation relatively well. He was forthcoming with the LA Times, and vowed to do right by the families that he upset. 

Still, the flames on the blog continue to roil. So I wonder, is there any possible mitigation strategy a PR professional can use when angry consumers just so obviously need to vent? The blogging parents are threatening to sue, so does it even make sense for a corporate communicator to even try to intervene at this point? Anything they say can and will be used against them. 

But, as a parent, I wonder what message this type of approach sends to kids. If you have a problem, take it public, vent your spleen, accuse your counterparty of all kind of malfeasance and threaten their livelihood. If anyone posts opposing viewpoints, call them “creeps” and delete their comments. Is that what we should be teaching on the web?

Demonstration of Power

Posted by Milos Sugovic

If you doubt the influence of blogs on sales, you’re welcome to stop now. Here’s why:

A couple of weeks ago, Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor, frequent blogger, and one of the most influential economists in the world expressed his dissatisfaction with the sales success of a new economics book. Authored by Nariman Behravesh, the book is titled Spin-Free Economics, and has “A No-Nonsense, Non-Partisan Guide to Today’s Global Economic Debates” subtitle. 

In an effort to propel it into Christmas shopping lists, Professor Mankiw recommended the book to social science newbies. Apparently, it lives up to the challenge of remaining bias-free, a claim to fame for many biased economists.

When the blog was written, the book was ranked at number 41,218 based on Amazon sales rankings. Fifteen hours later, it was ranked at 998. How this exactly happened is up for debate as networking is organic and difficult to trace, especially with regards to generating interest (willingness to pay), and then action (consumption). But as Greg notes, it’s “a nice demonstration of the power of the blogosphere.” 

Blogging for a Cause…or Just Because?

Posted by Matt Purdue

It pains me to write this. It really does. A good friend of mine is involved in the b5media Great Blog Off today. b5media is the company behind more than 300 blogs. Beginning at 12:01 a.m. June 20, b5’s bloggers will be challenged with posting one piece of fresh news per hour for 24 hours to raise awareness of and money for a pair of charities: Accion International and the Actors Fund. It’s not entirely clear how b5 intends to raise cash for these organizations (they’ve posted some mousetype on a web page asking for donations of $1 per post or $10 to sponsor a post). That’s troublesome enough, but not the real point.

I’m all for creative ways to raise ducats for charity, and hate to nitpick a company that’s supporting good causes. But what bothers me is that this effort turns blogging and bloggers into commodities. The point of b5’s campaign seems to be to fill its blogs for a day with a backhoe, to find “news” or generate “opinions” wherever and whenever they can to hit that goal of one post per hour. In an era when many bloggers are fighting so ferociously for a seat at the mainstream media table, it doesn’t help their argument to see a large publisher use blogging as simply a means to an end—no matter how magnanimous the intentions.

In the short run, this may not be a big deal. If the guy who runs the Ugly Betty blog is desperate at 3:58 p.m. because he’s only got two minutes to hit his one-blog-per-hour target, he can throw together a post about America Ferrera’s eyebrows. I somehow doubt that Western Civilization will collapse because of it. But, in the end, is this what blogging should really be about?