The Podcaster - Blogosphere

The other day I posted about how some bloggers are reacting by blocking e-mail pitches from some PR agencies.

I mentioned Todd Defren who had found his agency had fallen foul of a blogger blocking them along with many other agencies big and small. A sort of one strike and you are out rule. Ouch!

Todd left a comment on my post that I have not responded to yet. Sorry Tom. I will. In it Tom mentioned that one reason he felt the blocking was unfair was that the 'do not pitch/private' e-mail address of the blogger was in fact published as the contact address by a directory listing service. In this post by Kami Huyse she confirms the point Todd made and adds some additional thoughts of her own about the subject and how it can be resolved satisfactorily for all sides.

One of the challenges in PR terms as I mentioned in my earlier post is volume versus customisation and targeting of messages. A client tends to expect to see results based upon a volume metric. I know I did when I was a Marketing Director in industry. It just did not feel right to be targeting less than what we could. All other communication is measured by a mix of 'reach and volume' and response volumes. Will clients pay for agencies to invest the time and resources to check every blogger before contacting them? Does the campaign deadlines allow the time? Equally is it fair to expect bloggers to receive generic and largely untargeted press releases?

I don't think there is an easy answer except for PR agencies to keep trying their best to target what they can and push back on clients when either time or client expectations do not match what needs to be done.

Blogosphere | Kami Huyse | PR 2.0 | Todd Defren | z

5/14/2008 10:38:28 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Rentokil - a lesson to management - listen to the blogosphere

The reason for the share price melt down at Rentokil was covered in the Times Online today by Patrick Hosking.

If only the senior management team understood how to use the blogosphere to do a 'health check' on company brand reputation and customer satisfaction much of this could have been avoided...

This is a copy of the e-mail I sent to the journalist...

Patrick,

Pity the management did not have their service department or marketing team monitoring the blogosphere or they would have known immediately what was happening.

As you say….

Rentokil’s failure to understand what was going on appears to be a serious indictment of its systems. It casts doubt on the quality of both its management information arrangements and its reporting lines.

How long does it take senior management to type its own company name into Google Alerts and see customer woes? How long does it take to contact a few of the disgruntled customers and get their stories first hand? How long does it take senior management to ask the City Link operations team for an explanation?

No need to pay expensive marketing agencies to survey customers months after the fact. Read the full facts – praises and brickbats – from the ‘front line’ customers…

To see where it was all going wrong they could have read these examples….read and weep as the very processes the management team set up to ‘improve service’ undermine it!