Creative Concepts

I spent last weekend in Salt Lake City, at the Altitude Design Summit, a three-day conference for design and lifestyle bloggers. I came home with nearly 60 pages of hand-written notes (scrawled on my iPad, of course) and a list of things I need to do with my personal blog in the next few weeks and months. At the top of my list was create an editorial calendar.

The hardest part of blogging — for me, anyway — is coming up with topics to write about. I’ve been an editor at a variety of sites, and we always had some sort of calendar to track what was assigned to the writers, when it was due, and when it would be published. For obvious reasons, this made life easier, particularly when there were three or four editors and a dozen writers creating the site’s content. But for my own site — and for the other sites where I am a contributor, required to develop my own topics — I’ve never done this, and recently, I’ve been scrambling to come up with ideas, always at the last minute, it seems. (In fact, in a deeply ironic twist, I am writing this post past deadline, on the fly — clearly my editorial calendar needs some work.)

Creating an editorial calendar for The Working Closet will, I think, let me do two things: it will enable me to write and schedule posts well ahead of when I want them to be live on the site, allowing me to have a consistent body of new content, and it will enable to me add some bigger projects to the site, like photo editorials and video, things that have to be planned and executed well in advance of publication.

In other words, an editorial calendar lets me act more like a professional writer — which is precisely what I am.

I’ve organized my calendar around eight different types of posts, each of which appears on the schedule in two-week rotations. Having a carefully selected set of posts will enable me both to focus my writing and to work more successfully with sponsors and advertisers. I think it will also change the feel of my site — in a good way.

More and more bloggers are relying on an editorial calendar to focus and organize their sites, and this, in turn, makes their work more professional and better suited for partnerships with sponsors and advertisers. I’m excited about the upcoming content at The Working Closet — and I’m hopeful that planning ahead will keep me excited and end my last-minute scrambling forever.

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Photo: Susan Wagner

We are so excited to announce that we have expanded into the Netherlands.  Why the Netherlands?  And what does expansion mean?  Ok, one thing at a time so let’s first get to why we chose the Netherlands.

Nicoline Maes, Director of Business Services (and most recently Director of Business Development/Netherlands as well), moved with her family from the Netherlands to the U.S. in 2006 and in 2007 came on board to Creative Concepts.  At this time, Nicoline began working on developing our client reporting tools and then added working with David Borzo to the mix where the two became a very effective content management team.  Together David and Nicoline have managed our writer assignments and schedules as well as having developed content topics while editing drafts of blog entries, Facebook updates and more.  While Nicoline was helping to bring success to our clients she became a true believer in the power of social media as well as our other services: public relations, design and branding, events and video production.  When the opportunity came for Nicoline and her family to go back to her homeland in the Netherlands, she happily made the move and took with her the goal of expanding Creative Concepts internationally.

This week, my personal blog, The Working Closet, was named one of Babble Media’s Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2011. ABC News dubbed the list “the most influential mom bloggers in North America.” ABC adds that 32 million moms go online each month, with over half visiting blogs.

That’s a lot of influence.

So how influential are the women on Babble’s list? Very influential. “There are now 3.9 million mom blogs in North America alone, according to eMarketer.com,” ABC News reports. “Of those, about 500 have considerable power and reach, [Babble Co-founder Rufus] Griscom said. Another 4,500 take blogging seriously enough that they might fly to a blogger conference.”

That Is amazing.

The world of mom bloggers is a pretty small community; of the 100 names on Babble’s list, half are women I have met in real life over the past few years, at conferences and retreats and PR events. Another quarter are blogs I read regularly. Many of these women are my friends, people I exchange holiday cards and emails with. But they are also women I work with on panel presentations and various projects; as an editor, they are my go-to people when I need writers or spokespeople.

These are the influencers.

What does it mean to say that a blogger is an “influencer?” It means that she has readers — hundreds or thousands or, in some cases, hundreds of thousands — who are listening to what she has to say and basing their own behavior on her opinions and recommendations. My personal web site is a style blog; I write about products and brands as part of my daily posting. I hear from readers and Twitter followers and Facebook fans that they take my recommendations seriously. They trust me, and they buy the products I write about. That’s influence.

How does a blogger become an influencer? Two things are key: she has to write with an authentic voice, and she has to create excellent content. The bloggers on the Babble list are doing both of those things, both in their personal writing and in any work they do with brands. In fact, that’s why brands want to work with these women — because they are willing to lend their authentic voice and incredible writing to the conversation about ideas and issues and items that they think are worthwhile.

But influencers are also picky; we’re not the mom bloggers who will create free content in exchange for samples of a product we could pick up ourselves at CVS. We’re looking for brands that are a match for our beliefs and our values and our lifestyles, because those are the brands we can speak about in an organic, trustworthy way. We are also looking for brands that will compensate us fairly for our work and our influence. We’re not in it for free stuff; we know our voice is valuable and powerful.

I’m thrilled to be included in Babble’s list; I love what I do, and I work hard at it, and it is nice to be recognized for that. It’s also nice to realize that people really are listening to what I say, even if I spend most of my time talking about shoes.

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Recently, I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, at Camp Mighty, a retreat for bloggers. My trip was sponsored by McDonald’s; they covered the cost of my registration and travel and all incidentals. In return, I served as an ambassador for the Ronald McDonald House Charities and their annual Give a Hand fundraiser.

As part of my trip, I toured the Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House, to get an inside look at how RMHC works; I also helped out with an on-site fundraiser at Camp Mighty as part of the Give a Hand campaign. Camp Mighty attendees raised $10,000 for the Ronald McDonald House Charities over the weekend, simply by having a message painted on our hands and then tweeting a photo of the message with a specific hashtag.

This was a terrific partnership, for a lot of reasons. I am always happy to talk with sponsors about picking up the cost of my travel to events like this, for obvious reasons, but I also want to feel like I am representing brands and programs that fit organically with my life and my writing. The RMHC program was a perfect fit for me, particularly this fundraiser. As a parent and a fashion blogger, a fundraising effort that benefited kids and had a strong visual component was a good match for what I’m already writing about.

My presence at Camp Mighty was also a win for McDonald’s, because it gave their fundraising effort a familiar face. The other Camp Mighty attendees were my peers, and so talking with them about the Ronald McDonald House Charities and encouraging them to take a few minutes to participate in the Give a Hand fundraiser was an easy thing for me to do. And it was much more natural than the McDonald’s PR team trying to do the same thing.

Sponsoring a blogger for a specific event — a conference or retreat, for example — is an easy way to raise your brand profile within that blogger’s community. Working with a blogger gives your brand a familiar face and voice, one that readers already trust and look to for guidance. In some ways, this is the next iteration of the celebrity spokesperson strategy, but instead of hiring a movie star or model, you’re asking a blogger to be the voice of your brand. And we know that consumers are listening to bloggers, so you can be sure your message is getting to the right people.

Photo: Susan Wagner

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Last week, I spoke at the M2Moms conference in Chicago; I spoke to a wide range of brand managers and PR people who are sincerely interested in working with bloggers to get the word out about the products and brands they promote. Over and over, they asked how to find the best bloggers. The short answer, of course, is to do your research — there is no one-size-fits-all directory of Great Bloggers.

There are a variety of Best Of lists available; Babble Media’s Top 50 Twitter Moms is a perfect example of a really useful list. Their list covers a variety of categories (Most Controversial, Most Helpful, Funniest) and points to some of the most prolific mom tweeters on the web. If you’re planning a Twitter-heavy campaign, this list would be a good place to start. A simple Google search for “best mom blogs” turns up multiple lists — all of which are a good jumping off place for tracking down that perfect blogger. (You can substitute any term for “mom” — food blogger, craft blogger, dad blogger — depending on what exactly you’re looking for.)

Once you’ve found a list, take the time to actually read the blogs. This seems like such a simple directive, but it’s one that many PR people and brand managers often skip. Rather than pitching your brand or product to everyone on a list because they are on the list, pitch only those bloggers to whom your pitch will be relevant. There are lots of terrific mom blogs out there, but not all of those moms have babies; indiscriminately pitching a campaign for baby products to every mom on a particular list is a good way to convince bloggers you have no idea who they are — and, even worse, that you don’t really care.

Reading the blogs you’re planning to pitch is also important because you want to be sure the blogger’s voice and tone are a good match for your brand or product. Look for bloggers whose online persona is a good fit for whatever you are pitching. Look also for bloggers who are already writing about brands and products similar to yours; a blogger who writes frequently about the environment, for example, would be a terrific match for an ecologically safe cleaning product, but a poor match for an SUV campaign.

How can you measure a blogger’s influence? A quick way is to look at his or her Twitter profile. A blogger with a huge number of followers may very well be heavily influential on Twitter, but be wary of making a hiring decision solely on that number. A blogger who follows 200 people but is followed by 2,000 may very well be more influential than a blogger who has 25,000 followers but follows an equal number of people. In other words, a blogger who is speaking to a loyal group, even if they are on the smaller side, may do more for your brand than a blogger who is not genuinely engaging with his or her followers.

Photo via DonnyGamble.com

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Blogs, Twitter, Facebook — social media provides so many ways to reach out to consumers and clients. How do you know what format is right for your brand or business? The first step is understanding how each of these social media platforms works.

Twitter: Twitter is a microblogging platform; you have exactly 140 characters (about the length of a text message) to convey a quick bit of information. Twitter is frequently compared to a cocktail party — there are a variety of conversations all going on at once, and you drift in and out of several at a time. Twitter can be used to direct followers to blog or Facebook posts, or to offer quick snippets of information.

How to use Twitter: Your brand needs a distinct voice to be heard in the crowd. Don’t just share links to blog posts or contests; talk about more than just your brand.

Facebook: Facebook is the online coffee shop, where friends meet to catch up and find out what’s new and cool. Facebook allows you to share multiple mediums — blog posts, photos, videos, quick snippets of information — with fans, in a format that is more detailed than Twitter’s. Keep in mind, though, that your Facebook updates show up in your fan’s feed in between updates from their actual friends; like Twitter, think of this as a conversation, not a billboard.

How to use Facebook: The best Facebook feeds are those from brands who are able to personalize their business. Successful brands have a voice — and sometimes a face — behind their Facebook updates, someone who makes the brand feel like a friend, not a company.

Blogs: A blog is old school social media at its best. Blogs allow you space to talk in detail about your brand or product, to provide consumers with in-depth information or inside scoop. But keep your blog posts relatively short — no one wants to read a dissertation-length treatise on why you’re the brand leader — and make sure you’re posting consistently. You’ll never create a following if your posting schedule is something akin to “once in a blue moon.”

How to use a blog: Keep blog posts focused and tightly edited; provide readers with enough detail to keep them engaged and informed. Make sure that your posts have a voice and a point — and, ideally, some type of narrative. People love a story, because it gives them a way to relate to you — or your brand.

No matter what platform you choose, there are a few general rules to keep in mind.

Updates — no matter what their length — should be well-written and grammatically correct. It’s ok to draft a Tweet or Facebook status update in the way you would draft a blog post; just because you’re limited to 140 characters doesn’t mean you can’t carefully edit what you’re writing.

Engaging in a social media forum means being social — take time to engage with your fans, followers and commenters. And don’t stop at responding to conversation they direct at you; engage with them on their own ground as well. The cocktail party analogy is useful here — no one likes the guy who only talks about himself. The same is true for brands.

Finally, if you’re going to use social media to reach clients and customers, make a commitment to do it right. Designate or hire someone to manage your blog and update your Twitter and Facebook feeds. In order to create a significant online presence, you need someone who can be online for a significant amount of time each day.

Engaging with consumers via social media requires a commitment of time and resources, but the return is amazing: you will create a community of fans who are loyal to and enthusiastic about your brand. And that’s absolutely worth the effort.

Photo via Twitter.

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We all know that social media is the way to connect with customers, but as a business or a brand, how do you know who to turn to for help? Everyone seems to be a social media “expert” these days, but not all experts are created equal. There is an art to using social media successfully, particularly to promote a brand, but having a Twitter account does not make someone an expert. Here’s how to vet your expert or agency and get the best possible help with your social media outreach.

Be wary of any social media “expert” who isn’t already using social media, and using it well. Your consultant or agency should be able to speak, from experience, about all of the outlets that he or she is recommending your business engage with — as well as being able to recommend outlets you hadn’t thought of (after all, this person is the expert). They should also be able to explain, in simple, understandable terms, how to use these platforms, and how to choose the ones that will be of most use to you and your customers.

Ask for details on how they will use social media to grow your brand. The agency or consultant should be able to articulate goals and timelines — 500 Facebook fans in the next 30 days, for example, or 10 Foursquare check-ins per day at your brick-and-mortar location, or three blog posts per week featuring your brand or product — as well as offering strategies for achieving those goals.

Have your expert submit writing samples. Social media relies heavily on the written word; if your consultant will be updating your brand’s blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed for you, be sure that their writing is up to your standards. You are looking for interesting, relevant, grammatically correct content. If the consultant or agency has a Facebook page or Twitter feed that they can share with you (either her personal accounts or another client’s), look those over carefully; feel free as well to ask for sample posts relevant to your brand.

Keep an eye on the conversation. Hiring a consultant to manage social media outreach for your brand doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. Follow your brand on Facebook and Twitter; read your business’s blog. If you see something that’s not working, let the consultant know and if you see something you really like, let them know that, too. But remember: they may be the social media experts, but you’re the brand expert. Together you can create a voice for your brand and a community for your business.

Looking for examples of businesses and brands that are succeeding at social media? Some of my favorite Facebook pages are listed below including a few clients of Creative Concepts; these brands have a clear voice and an excellent sense of community, and always offer well-written, engaging status updates.

Hayden-Harnett

Road ID

Matchbook Magazine

Cherokee USA

Bigelow Tea

Ecover

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I make my living as a freelance writer and editor; in those roles, I do a substantial amount of work with brands. As a fashion blogger, most of this work consists of product reviews and giveaways, and in some way, all of this work is compensated. Because, of course, this is how I make my living.

The question of compensation for bloggers has been a hot topic for the past couple of years. In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission revised their guidelines for endorsements and testimonials to call for greater transparency in product reviews, particularly on the part of bloggers and celebrity spokespeople. In other words, a blogger reviewing a product is now required to reveal if — and how — she is being compensated.

There are typically two ways in which bloggers are compensated for writing about products: either we are paid a fee, as part of a campaign or sponsored post, or we are provided with product samples, for a one-off review. Sponsored content is clearly advertorial — you are paying a blogger to create content around your brand or product, rather than asking for a review of that product, and you are compensating her for the content she creates. A review, on the other hand, is just that: an honest assessment of a product or service. Reviews should be entirely editorial — they should be the honest opinion of the blogger.

Giveaways are a third — and slightly trickier — category. A really good giveaway should have an editorial component; the blogger should be able to speak about why she likes this product and wants to share it with her readers. But a giveaway can be a lot of work for a blogger, and its success relies on her influence. For this reason, more and more bloggers are asking for compensation for giveaways.

Before you approach a blogger with a pitch, consider what it is you are offering, and what you are expecting in return. Remember that you are asking the blogger not only for her time and effort but for her influence — you are asking her to share your brand or product with her community, through her blog, Twitter, Facebook and whatever other online communities she participates in. In return for both the body of work she creates and her online reach, she deserves fair compensation. While there is no set standard for what’s fair, asking a blogger to promote your brand for free is never fair. Obviously.

I make a nice living freelancing, and I get to test out some really cool products.

Photo by epSos.de on Flickr.

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I wake up every morning to an email in-box full of PR pitches. A good PR pitch can be the first step in a wonderful working relationship between a brand and a blogger, but a bad PR pitch is a waste of time — yours and mine. Here are three simple mistakes to avoid when pitching bloggers.

Strike one: addressing pitches to the blog, not the blogger. Nothing tells me you don’t know who I am quite as clearly as a pitch addressed “Dear Working Closet.” An even worse version of this is the pitch that comes addressed “Dear Mommy Blogger.” If you really want to work with a specific blogger, do your homework and find out what his or her name is. Bloggers who are interested in partnering with brands make that information easily available, typically on the website you are pitching.

Strike two: typos and grammatical errors in your pitch. Bloggers are writers, and we are careful about how we use language. Do us the same favor by proofreading your pitches. By the same token, keep pitches focused — bloggers don’t want to read a five page document about your company, we just need to know what exactly you’re offering to send us or asking us to work with you on. Think about it this way: you wouldn’t want a blogger to write about your brand or product in a post riddled with misspellings and overwhelmed with irrelevant information. Set the standard with well-written, carefully edited pitches.

Strike three: pitching the wrong kind of blog. A majority of the pitches I get are for things that are not a fit for my site — kids’ toothbrushes and sex toys and books about nursing, for a blog that focuses very specifically on fashion and personal style. I find these pitches frustrating because it is always clear to me that the PR person has pulled my name from a list somewhere and has not actually looked at my site. Before you pitch a blogger, get a feel for his or her work, and consider how your brand fits into that niche. Pitching me solely because I’m on a list of influential mom bloggers doesn’t do anything to help your brand — or mine.

Photo by mwlguide on Flickr.

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Story of my life:  Oh I’ll just go on Facebook for five minutes.  An hour later: still there.  I’m frequently distracted from my homework as I creep on my friends’ pictures and profiles, and sometimes connect with old friends and family I haven’t seen with a while.  Not to mention the fact that I’m constantly lured back to Facebook by the group my AP Language and Composition class has created with our teacher for class discussion, changes in assignments and posting homework.  It’s safe to say that, as a teenager, Facebook is the largest mode of communication.  Practically everyone I know has a Facebook profile, and if they don’t, they’re out of the loop.

While I mostly use Facebook for social purposes, I’ll occasionally connect to a brand or like a page.  Because I don’t like unnecessary clutter on my newsfeed, I really only connect to the brands that I know and love outside of Facebook.   For example, Gossip Girl, and America’s Next Top Model are examples of two brands that I’ve connected to.  I am a religious Gossip Girl watcher.  No matter what is going on, even if I haven’t finished my homework, I will watch the show, and the fact that their Facebook page is so active makes it even better!!!!  For the nights when I am busy, and can’t watch the show, GG posts a link where you can watch the episode for free!  Constant updates and pictures prior to episodes make me excited to watch (not that I wasn’t already!).  Honestly, I don’t actually visit the pages of any brands on Facebook.  If an update shows up on my newsfeed, then I’ll look, but if it doesn’t, then there are probably zero chances that I’ll go look at what the brand is doing on their page.  The brands that are relatively inactive on Facebook are ones that I will probably disconnect from later on, since the connection hasn’t been worth it.

Image via Gossip Girl Facebook Page

But trust me, the brands that invest time in promoting themselves on Facebook (where probably a large majority of teenagers spend their time), win in the end.  They’re the brands I’ll stick to and support even more, just like Gossip Girl!!