I went to bed fuming last night. Blood was boiling. I never tell you when I get angry, I think I’m going to start. To be honest though, it doesn’t happen too often.
I had a few conversations with agencies & clients over the last few days that made me wonder what the hell I’m doing. Also made me wonder what the hell they are doing? I have heaps of PR friends in the city and I’m starting to wonder about those relationships. They’re in meetings coming up with all these expensive & fun campaigns for big name clients with the intent to do blogger outreach & connect with ‘top influencers’ but not putting any budget in the plan for that. Gimme a break. Do you work for free? Why should we?
This morning I logged into WordPress (blog publishing platform), like I have done every day for years and had a different feeling about it. Last night after talking with Mum and friends, I didn’t know if I’d be back to publish today. I didn’t feel like it.
Clearly, I am addicted to publishing and love writing so I’m back but I’m different.
Every morning I read Mashable on Flipboard via my ipad and this morning they published an article that touches on exactly what had my blood boiling yesterday.
How Social Media Is Changing Paid, Earned & Owned Media
Those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:
- Paid: Buying a 30-second Super Bowl spot
- Earned: Coverage on Mashable
- Owned: Your company’s website
You should read it, especially if you work in PR, media or are one of my wonderful friends at an agency who regularly ask me to share your product with my readers. I’m not singling out anyone and I love my PR friends but everyone is doing it and bloggers are being taken advantage of by doing work for pop, chips & booze. That ain’t currency.
“To some extent, everything that’s done by a media agency is paid media,” says Andrea Wolinetz, director of social media at PHD. “Whether it’s managing a Facebook Page or blogger outreach, people get paid for that work, so it always starts from a place of paid media.”
I decided yesterday that I should be more honest to my blog, to you, to myself. I have many opinions & will never run out of things to write, ever.
This Is My Life and as long as I’m living, my baby it’ll be.
xo CASIE
love this post boo!
well said. in fact, i would encourage you to say more, when you feel up to it.
Funny timing. I’ve been just finish up a post on PR and “blogger outreach”
Agree, agree, agree x1,000,000
I don’t do the same sort of things you do, but this carries over to everything lately… Web design and development and graphic design, for instance, are ones that affect me. I see a lot of “contests” to design logos etc. that are really just sleazy ways for a company to get a whole lot of free mockups and an insanely cheap or free design solution. Often here, too, the “prize” is a product, not cash, and in most cases, since you won’t win… you get NOTHING for your time. Boils my blood. Check out this site: http://www.no-spec.com/
Then there’s the whole writing for free for the sites of major companies like Huffington Post, and yadda yadda. I would never, ever. I refuse to even “RT [or like on Facebook] to win”. Whined about this almost a year ago: http://www.candicepayne.com/2010/06/15/i-dont-take-pathetic-bribes-not-even-on-twitter/
That may even have been in response to something you were promoting or at least tweeting about at the time, but anyway… “Chance of winning” doesn’t even come close to a bag of chips, and I wouldn’t RT for chips, either.
Related: another pet peeve of mine that I don’t participate in because it amounts to free advertising… http://www.candicepayne.com/2010/12/15/i-will-donate-one-dollar-to-charity-for-every-comment-on-this-post-up-to-one-dollar/
I love this. I love you. Thankyou.
Also – I came thisclose to writing a far more scathing post than this on the same topic yesterday, but aborted in the process when it got a little too dangerous. Feeling owned and owned and owned…
Remember when blogging was just fun? I miss that, and intend to bring that back into my life in a big way.
I hear ya. I’m blogging for fun. Maybe I will get a FT job or something too.
I never really comment on blogs, frankly, I should more. But I’d have to agree, and it isn’t just bloggers. Whether it’s writing (I do that), hosting (yep that too), being a personality (uh huh), choreographer (mm hmmmm), editor (yes) – we all get taken advantage of. I should be taking baths in money, but in fact, I’m swimming in free body wash (gee, thanks).
I hope one day this all changes, but until then, keep doin’ you lady.
Thanks babe <3
* you should totes comment more often. Makes it fun!
Bloggers want to be paid cash to pimp product/service, not given a freebie. Don’t want freebies get rid of klout score. What’s the purpose of klout score for freebies.
I guess we get what we put into things… if you blog about your life, you get followers and reaction.
If you blog about food places, you probably get invited to restaurants.
If you blog to cast a wide net of general stuff or you blog specifically about openings, launches and special event invites, that’s what you’ll keep getting.
For bloggers to make money it means joining the publishing world and selling advertising on your site or refusing to do things for free if your goal is to make money with your blog.
No one is signing cheques for something they can get for free. I know this isn’t the popular opinion on this site, but it’s reality. Million dollar companies are million dollar companies cause they only pay for what they have to, buy off those they can and get as much for free as possible. Gotta play them at their own game and if you win, you make a living, if you lose, you find another job.
It’s a good post because it’s good insight for readers as to the reality of the mega-blogger, that it’s not easy money especially with such a large amount of people thinking they can do the same thing. Creating a business plan and having a specific plan on how to make money is important.
Creative service people in dozens of industries from web design to social media to graphic design to most especially writers have people that want to exploit them and work for free. That’s the industry. It’s what sucks about it. The old metrics of buying advertising will look at page views and followers and not influence. The web numbers, even for someone who is big in the scene, they still think are nothing compared to what advertising/pr/marketing people see with magazines or TV.
Hey Casie,
I read your blog almost religiously, I love your positive outlook on everything because I’ve kind of always been a pessimist but I’m trying desperately to change (I swear). I guess the problem when blogging comes into play is that it’s this gray area in the media world that is still evolving and there’s really no business rule book when it comes down to how each blogger plays and how each company perceives their function. That’s what confuses PR people. When it comes to PR bloggers are treated like journalists and journalists cannot accept money for their articles by the companies that are pitching to them (I’ve heard that at a certain national publication they can’t even keep the products that are sent to them if they are valued over $50). So your best bet is to just sell advertising which is equally frustrating because in general people are under the assumption that advertising is dead. It’s a total complete cl*sterf*ck! Although to be fair half the time PR companies don’t even really want to pay their own employees and survive on the labour of interns and extremely cheap employees, so don’t take it too personally and if you are doing freelance PR look out everything you are offered is to meet other important industry people… It’s a terrible cycle which to be honest is probably why I am so bitter and looking into changing my path and just doing law school or something completely outside of media in general!
🙂
🙂
As someone who works in advertising, if I ever utter the words “blogger outreach,” I quickly follow that up with, “and we will pay them and ask them to be transparent with their readers about our negotiated deal.”
That said, as I’m not in PR, I generally haven’t done a whole lot of blogger outreach. I do always recommend that the social media PR agency handle all blogger research and outreach but sometimes you have a client who doesn’t have an agency willing to handle that.
So, this is why I’m about to ask the following, because I feel like there isn’t any kind of standardization or average out there: How much should a blogger charge and/or how much should an agency paid for say, 1 blog post on, for example, a product review (assuming, it will not be a full out campaign with said blogger)?
I can tell my clients that, on average (and it does all depend on category/competition/etc), that you’d pay $x amount of dollars for a CPC ad, or $x amount for a FB app, but I have no numbers, no figures, to give for blogger outreach. I’m curious.
I totally agree with you. I’m frustrating & challenging. We are making the rules up as we go.
I dunno, I got some chips & a free flight. Can’t take that to the bank though!
While I empathize, the truth is, as soon as someone younger (and cuter) comes along who they can exploit you’ll be old news. Milk it while you can.
Awesome Post, Casie standing up for what you believe in, is that definitely powerful.
And what you are voicing is legitimate because once these PR peeps really embrace this space and the hard work people in the digital world put in than they will “get it”
Thank you for being awesome and true to yourself
Love from New Zealand
John