There are countless blog posts online about how out of touch PR people are with trying to reach influential bloggers/social media types. From mass-emailed blind press releases to not understanding how social media really works.

I finally have a story that is the opposite.

Many of you have heard of, or even read the story about Tassimo’s campaign in Canada in my book, (great post about it from Erin Bury here) and how they spread the word about the coffee maker by giving machines to influencers instead of a TV campaign.

It was pure genius on many levels, and so much of it had to do with Duri Al Ajrami, the Director of Social Marketing – Senior Partner at OgilvyOne Canada.  It was his ability to connect with me and many others that made us even open to the thought of this campaign. He emailed us after doing his research, met with us and understood how it all works, being the beloved go-between for their client and us crazy social media/blogger entitlement types

Fast forward to a month or two ago: I have been approached hundreds of times since by PR/Communication folks to try out their stuff and in return I can give them free exposure. For the most part I don’t even blink. It’s like they just went from blindly faxing reporters to blindly emailing bloggers. Then Duri drops me an email and explains that Magnum Ice Cream is launching in Canada and they want me on board, I’d hope it was because of my rugged good looks and boyish charm, but mainly because I have a platform.

He said all the right things: I only had to tweet/blog if I wanted to, only talk about it when/if I wanted to. He knew I wasn’t going to post a blog on UnMarketing as a “sponsored” post to say how yummy their ice cream is. His main concern was that I did anything that I was comfortable with and my audience would be too. We high-fived, they shipped me a case of ice cream in dry ice, I ate most of it in a 2-day binge, reflected on what went wrong that made me eat a case of ice cream in 48 hours and then decided to record this video (I haven’t even gotten to the awesomest part yet, keep reading):

I thought it was a fun way to talk about it! I even titled it “Magnum’s False Advertising”, which I’m sure made the client throw-up a little. I talked about how the box said the flavour was “Double Chocolate” even though there are actually four layers of chocolate, and I demanded it be changed to “Quad Chocolate”. Duri loved it, I enjoyed making it because I was my smart-ass self, and my friends liked it. They didn’t even mind that a lot of people who watched it wouldn’t be able to enter the contest since it’s only open to Canadians. Perfect. All good, everyone’s happy, let’s go home and eat ice cream?

Think again.

Duri just showed up at my house (he emailed first, relax) and said “I have a gift for you!” And handed me this:

Are. You. Kidding. Me?!?!

If you didn’t catch it, look at it again.

They loved the video so much, they “whipped up” four custom boxes of the ice cream with my new flavour description. And these aren’t stickers slapped on, it’s four real boxes, with the ice cream bars inside.

I literally lost it in the driveway, ran upstairs and am typing this right now.

Just because you’re in an agency, doesn’t mean you can’t be awesome.

PR doesn’t have to stand for Press Release. It can still mean Public Relations.

When you do awesome things, it makes people want to share the awesome.

It wouldn’t matter how much they paid me, I wouldn’t use this blog to promote ice cream.

And now I just did. Because of the awesome.

Well played Duri and Magnum, well played indeed.

Has anyone outreach/agency really blown your mind? Share it in the comments.

+UPDATE+ Duri mentioned in the comment below “To be fair to all … The idea of the box was a team effort lead by the the AWESOME Mark Forward and Jamie George (two amazing Ogilvy folks) who planned this and blessed by our amazing clients Gina Kiroff and Joyce Kim who always drove us to think out of the box. I just delivered Thank you all for your great words … we’re still learning”

Another great PR/Business lesson: Give credit where it’s due.

“Your comment is awaiting moderation”

“Your comment is awaiting approval”

“You need to register first”

Congratulations, you’ve just halted the conversation on your post.

For the most part, moderation is used to stop spam from appearing not necessarily to censor comments, but you’re hurting the voice of the very people that can be your biggest evangelists.

There are many issues with this:

1. When a commenter sees those five words and has to wait for approval, it will stop them from spreading the post until it has been approved
2. 99% of the time the commenter doesn’t get a notification that the comment has been approved, and so never spreads the original post at all.
3. The flow of comments is dictated by the blog owners ability to approve comments in a timely fashion.
4. As soon as a commenter sees that their original comment is awaiting moderation, they will hesitate to comment on anyone else’s comment in the thread.
5. The commenter doesn’t know if it’s awaiting approval for being a non-spam comment, or that the blog owner is only allowing positive comments.

If the spam issue is your main reason for moderating blog comments, there are a few quick fixes.

1. Install the Askimet plugin. This well-known, and free for personal use tool is amazing for filtering out spam comments. I average 100+ comments per post, and have only ever had to delete one spam comment that made it past Askimet’s filter.
2. Use a comment management system like Disqus. That’s the system I use here. It allows threaded comments, meaning I or others can reply in-line to a comment and it makes it linked as a conversation, including emailing the original commenter that someone has replied, so they can return and continue the engagement. It also emails me every time someone comments, and I can reply on my Blackberry in the email, and it will post it as a comment. Not to mention if a spam comment slips through (or a troll) I just reply to the email with “delete” and it’s gone instantly.

There are some valid reasons to moderate comments, such as very sensitive topic-based sites (especially religion, politics, parents against Justin Bieber) and also large corporate blogs that have certain topics that bring out the “special” folks of the world.

But for the most part I see moderation being done on the very blogs that need comments: the ones that don’t have many at all. Especially when you’re starting out, let the conversation flow. Create community and engagement. The comments on my posts are 10X better than my original post. Why would I want to stifle that?

And don’t even get me started on captcha’s……

Speaking of comments, add yours below (Wouldn’t it be awesome if I then pointed to my comment section that was moderated?)

What do you think? Does it turn you off when a blog moderates your comment? Have you had issues that have lead to moderating your blog?

Busy at SXSWi, not blogging

Forgive me bloggers, for I have sinned. It’s been 6 weeks since my last post and I feel guilty about it.

Wait, no I don’t.

The topic of “blogging frequency” has always been something that gets bantered about. The quest for the magical equation of “how often” one should blog has never been answered perfectly. Which is the way it should be. There is no magic number. Daily, weekly, monthly, blogging is not dependent on how frequent, but more on how impactful.

Let me make this clear before going forward, I’m addressing blogs where you want more readers. If it’s something that’s a diary for you, a way for self-expression and not related to wanting to increase readership, this isn’t for you. Blog on!

I’m a huge believer of blogging with passion, whenever that strikes. I rather blog once every two weeks and really care about the topic, than put out a post every other day with some of it filler, because I’ve been told it’s “better for search engines” and “familiarity creates trust”. Making people blog out of a set frequency instead of out of passion for a point is a load of bull-jobbies, and here’s why:

1. Frequent futility can decrease readership. When I read someone like Jay Baer, I know every post is going to be a grand slam. Every one. If he started to write one everyday just to stay in front of me and “mailed a few in” his impact would be less. I would stop jumping to read them. Seriously, when I get an email saying he’s written a new blog post, I read it. Immediately. Shouldn’t that be the same reaction for readers of your blog? Not “I’ll get to it” not “that might be a good post I’ll read soon” but “I HAVE TO READ THIS NOW!”

2. Obligation doesn’t drive passion. I don’t know about you, but when I feel I “have to” do something, I don’t, or I mumble some obscenities then get it done. That’s the issue. Writing “something” is not better than nothing. I didn’t start my own business to hate doing it. It’s the passion and my own take on a subject that brings readers, and even more importantly sometimes, gets those readers to tell others about it. You don’t tweet something that is “meh” for the most part, you tweet awesomeness.

3. You’re hurting the reputation of your most loyal readers. (Ok, so it may not be so extreme, but a blogging course taught me to write compelling bullet points. Taa+Daa!). If you’re a loyal reader of someones blog, to the point of fanboy/girl level (meaning you say “ZOMG!! He/she wrote something!! SQUEEE!!”) and you tweet out a post from them that’s more filler than anything, just based on the fact that it’s “anything” and one of your followers clicks to read it, you’ve hurt your rep. It’s like crying wolf. The more you call something “EPIC” when it truly is not, the less people will click through something you recommend. Plus, when a new person reads your “obligation” post, that’s their only impression of you. Every post needs to be the one you want people to be introduced to you.

4. Search engines like relevance. Now, I’m no SEO expert, but as far as I know, one of the main things Google uses to rank relevancy is how many other relevant sites are linking to your post. People don’t highlight and backlink to things that are “ok” they link to great stuff. Write content that make people say “yes!” or even “no!”. Passion attracts passion.

5. Life happens, it’s only a freaking blog people. One of the reasons I haven’t blogged in 6 weeks is life happens. At the end of the day blogs, Twitter, Facebook are just sites. Sometimes the world is more important than the digital one we live in.

This isn’t meant to put pressure on you that every post has to be “epic”, but it kinda does. It’s a representation of your business and opinion, shouldn’t it be the best you’ve got at that moment?

I know the more I blog the more it generates readers, reputation and business. With the UnMarketing book coming out, I know I need to blog more. But it’s the quality of posts that generates that along with quantity. That’s the goal, blog as frequently as you can that generates quality. For some, that’s daily, others weekly and for people like me, it’s when life lets you. And I’m ok with that.

What say you? Comment below!

Interuptive pop-ups are so 1998. Why do you think all browsers block the old-style ones by default? Because no one likes them being thrown in your face!

Yes, they serve a purpose, and yes they can actually help build a following if used correctly, but seriously people, setting it to go off within 3 seconds of arriving is equal to the used car salesmen pouncing the second you pull on the lot.

Want to use it correctly? Have it go as an exit pop-up and word it in a way that makes sense (i.e. “If you enjoyed what you just read, sign-up for our updates, where more awesomesauce is sure to come!”)

**UPDATE** One of the owners of Twitter Watchdog has informed me that they are no longer using that pop-up on the site, and believe in engaging with their audience. Good on ya guys. Feel free to go forth and check them out yourself.