Presenting at the PRCAI conference in Bangalore June 16th 2009
Well ppl it was a very exciting tuesday afternoon that started with picking up Kiruba Shankar at his guest house and showing him garuda Mall about four times from different streets before reaching the Venue at The Enegry and resource Institue (TERI) in Domulur.
I was impressed with the way Shane Jacob from The PRactice went about organizing this. the hall was simply super and everyone who attended really deserved to be there. What followed was a highly interactive session with me getting a lot of questions. I just loved every minute of it!
I tend to be very straight with everyone I meet and this meet was no different and I expected some very tough questions.
When addressing the PR professionals in the crowd, I made a statement saying ” Do not approach a blogger without a blog”
My reasoning for this was that you have to have sufficient credentials to network with people on their preferred platform. For example, you do need a facebook ID in order to interact with a person on facebook and the same for twitter, linkedin or any other platform. It takes a blogger to realize and appreciate the effort put by other bloggers. Hell! on an average it takes bloggers a minimum of two hours to write one creative post! not to mention the mental fatigue afterwards LOL! I would never expect a company to approach me without a blog, I know that they would never understand the effort , commitment and creativity required for a blog to be successful. I am not saying that every PR professional should have a blog, all I say is that, if you want to interact with the blogging community and reap its benefits YOU or YOUR COMPANY should be a blogger!
Myself and Kiruba Shankar at PRCAI Bangalore
I also mentioned that “Never pay a blogger to write favorable posts on his blog”
This also prompted a huge discussion as to why it was unethical to pay bloggers to write favourable posts for their company/product/service. You must be kidding me!! LOL! The idea is that every blogger is a brand and it takes a lot of effort to get visibility on blogs. Once a reputation is built , it can be destroyed faster and it will be done by none other than your competitors. If your competitor gets a wind of you paying a blogger cash to write a favorable or neutral post, you will soon recieve an anonymous comment(mostly put by your competitor) that this post is paid and no one should regard this. How many companies or bloggers are willing to take up that risk? Is this business model scalable? I dont think so!
Along the same discussion I was asked ” Is it fine to pay an all expenses paid trip for a blogger to visit some premises and write about it”
Lets assume that the company is not trying to change the judgement of the blogger. I say hell yeah! awesome and enjoy yourself blogger!!!! The company can make it known to everyone on their blog and explain that they would like to know how the blogging community feels about their product and they feel it is best to understand it in their environment. But lets not send a blogger on a free trip when your product is in his locality LOL! that will send your competitors on your heels again. if you feel a blogger will learn more about your solutions from London, then send him there or its as good as paying him!
And of course the age old question that will soon rewrite the Ramayana five times over! Why should we blog?
Damn I love fellow IndiBlogger Karthik’s answer to that .. Why Not? he asked ..
There were several other questions but my whole point is that we have reached a stage where we need to understand what is scalable and what should work on a long term strategy and what should never hurt bloggers. IndiBlogger.in’s responsibility and current leader as the largest blogger network means that we will have to do our best for everything that the Blogging community in India stands for.
I loved everyone at the conference and I hope I can provide more straight answers for everyone. I mean, why would anyone make the same mistakes when there are things that have already been learnt and I will continue to provide information that can be used as a foundation to catapult you and your company to newer heights in this age of New Media!
You can see the presentation slideshare.net
Thank you once again.
Hi, thanks for this and the other posts.
We’re just starting out with our blog yehhailife.wordpress.com, and are also setting up the usual suspects (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc) and couldn’t agree with you more about 1. how much time and effort it takes, 2. that now adays, in order to be in touch with the peeps, one should be signed up with all those outlets, and 3. someone who doesn’t make an effort to take advantage of these free publicity/marketing strategies, certainly doesn’t seem to be updated with today’s times.
All the best.
-Nadja
some useful pointers there… but i disagree with your observations on paid blogging, it is not only viable but also very useful. Your concerns are valid that a competitor can ruin a bloggers credibility, but then no blogger would write blatant lies… it is like sponsoring a post topic, not the content… my 2 cents
YehHaiLife: Thank you for your comments and I do wish you all the success in the world for yehhailife.wordpress.com (It is a very good start, clean layout etc). If there is anything that we can do to help, do let us know
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Kinshuk Sunil : Hey there my friend! good to hear from you. The only thing I had in mind when I said that, was the scalability of that model. Wouldnt you agree that it is better for bloggers to come to you rather than hunting for each of them and convincing them to write? Also on another note, i was wondering how you would view a blog’s reputation if you felt some of his posts have been paid for? Would this work on a long time strategy? Lets say you write 5 paid posts a month, your blog would contain 60 paid posts a year ..
All I say is that paying a blogger per post may not be scalable. What we need to find is something that will seamlessly integrate with existing practices and also something that interested companies can openly adopt as a process and a system ..
i still disagree
pay-per-post is a very successful blogging model… you have a valid concern… the solution is that the topic of the post should be paid, not the blogger’s words… if this stays true it wudnt matter if there are 60 paid posts or 100, till the time the reader is sure that the blogger is stating his own opinion, and can trust him.
Kinshuk Sunil: LOL! I see what you mean.. We should talk about this sometime .. It makes for good conversation
. You still in Delhi?
yup.. still in delhi. where else wud i go
i promise to give a presentation on pay-per-post model in the next delhi indiblogger meet.. *nice-guy-pose* in the meanwhile.. i shall also try to experience pay-per-post blogging… incidentally, some one i knew reviewed an app for double digit dollars.. he got paid for reviewing that app, not what his reviwe said 
Just like the time you wore a firefox T to a Microsoft meet? LOL! Kinshuk Sunil .. Always the rebel I guess
Hi Anoop, This is good information.
I’d like to share my thoughts on blogging and non-profits.
Some of the nonprofits totally underestimate the power of blogging. They have a website and Facebook page. But, blogging is not popular with a majority of nonprofits. Blogging connects the individual voice of the blogger/nonprofit with a reader at a personal level and this outreach should be tapped by non-profits.
Thank you for this post,
Adarsh.
Hi Adarsh, well said! blogging I believe is the most cost effective means for an non profit community to put their thoughts and give more visibility for people in need. It takes a lot of effort but the content in their blog will be mainly about their activities and successes.. so its time well spent ..