The first (and primary) thing on the list to ask was concerning blogger outreach.  The recent trend has been that we’ll find a blogger we want to reach out to, read and comment on their posts, send an introductory email (which is generally well received), but then when we send a pitch for a story we think would be spot on for them to write about, we get nothing.  We explained this to Jon and he explained some deceptively simple reasons why a blogger would want to write about something sent to them.

• It has a personal value to the blogger
• It’s something interesting or exclusive
• It’s something valuable or interesting to the readers of the person’s blog

Obviously, we wouldn’t send them something if we didn’t think it retained some sort of value for the blogger or their readership.  But Jon raised some more specific scenarios about why a valuable pitch might not have value to a blogger.  If the pitch is on a topic that the blogger has already written about, even if we are giving them new, engaging information, they might not want to blog about the same topic twice.  The information and topic of a pitch has to be new to them, and not just supplemental.

Another aspect of this value of information to a blogger has to do with the level of blogger.  If we’re pitching to a high level, recognized blogger working for a magazine, professional website, etc., offering contact with one of the doctors we work with isn’t going to do the trick.  If they’re a professional health/pharma blogger, they most likely already have access to medical professionals and information that would be considered exclusive to the average blogger.  For mid level bloggers, this might have value, but for high level ones we have to offer something more.

The next thing we asked Jon is how we can find contact information for those blogs that have no contact information.  He told us to play around with the Google Social Graph and APIs in the works for it.  This basically pulls any publicly available related to the site and searches for owners and authors.  He helped us out by running it on The Frisky, and it generated a few leads.

Our last bit of discussion was on the type of content we might post once our own social media campaign launched.  As expected, the content will depend on our audience (health/pharma-minded consumers, clients, PR people).  In general, when we start out the things we post mustbe interesting or useful to individuals themselves before they will pass it on or re-post it.  Even if it’s probably useful to the people they would re-post it to, they generally won’t repost it unless it’s useful to them first.   Information must be interesting or useful, just like the blogger pitches; I think I’m seeing a theme here.  Also, any news that is health care/pharma related that would be interesting to non-pharma people is also a big plus.  On a side not as far as the audience of the social media oriented pharma world, there are 158,907 users on Twitter who registered themselves under the tag ‘pharma.‘  I’d say for starters, that’s a pretty good audience to aim for.

Below is the Slide Share slide show of 140 different uses for Twitter in the health care industry.  Many of these uses could be things we offer to provide clients  in the near future.  We actually already provide one: monitoring.

Enjoy

This was basically a webinar on a ‘virtual’ press room, or a page where press releases and content the public can be posted and easily accessed.  Almost like a type of blog, content is updated frequently.  The webinar focused on using video in this press room page scenario.

Web video can be extremely useful when it comes to internal and external communication.  For the external, it can be used to post announcements, testimonials, press releases, etc.  Videos can be made embeddable for almost any page (giving users the ability to easily re post and share), and posted to social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and places for mobile video use.  Because any video can be embedded on any page, search engine optimization can be used on select pages to drive additional traffic to the video for more exposure.  The outside social video platforms (YouTube, blogs) allow for comments, ratings, video replies and other ways for people to become further engaged.

Intel has had tremendous success using video in their virtual press room.  Intel’s Ken Kaplan described how Intel started with an internal blog and then moved to an external one. (It seems internal blogs are all the rage these days among successful companies like Intel and Pfizer.  And CSI of course;)  Kaplan said that the internal blog helped people with communication, and by making the staff thinking about incorporating vidoes and pictures into posts to more clearly express their messages.  Sometimes, a video of someone talking about something will do a far better job of getting the message across than text.

To begin initiating video in a virtual press room, start using videos to enhance the message of current issues or announcements.  Incorporating B-rolls into your video endeavors by making them embeddable instead of just the raw video files. (This kind of shareability with b-rolls could be extremely useful for us)  Making them embeddable and online allows for creation, distribution, and an online archive to be built.  This same shareability and accessibility is what gives some videos the potential to be viral.  Videos that go viral typically have a humorous, entertaining quality, but the first step is always enabling people to share the content.  In ANY videos, viral or simply information, audio is key.  Video quality can be slightly less and people will still watch as long as the audio is clear.

If you’re curious on what exactly viral videos are, and how they can be explosive in online branding, take a look at the Viral Video Chart.  Some of these videos get millions of views with very little cost outside the cost it took to make the video. (aka no TV placement costs)

For more info on embeddable videos, live stream videos, etc., check out FeedRoom. One of the speakers at the Webinar was Matt DeLoca of FeedRoom, so most of the ebmeddable and sharable features he discussed are advantages that they offer.

Please comments with any thoughts and questuions on how we might be able to use video in our own work!

See the full study here

The introduction discusses how more and more companies are using social media, and the correlations of engagement to profit-

“There is little left to debate about whether or not one should participate in social media — virtually all companies, big and small, have acknowledged social media’s presence, and firms who do not have a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account now find themselves in the scarce minority.”

A surprising conclusion:  While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”

The first part of their 3-teir approach was dubbed …

THE HORROR. 
This of course is referring to the horror of really, really bad pitching both in their target and their content.  Off target pitches = no good.  Pitches are better sent to fewer people than to people whom the pitches don’t apply.  Automated pitches are also no good because they’re impersonal and can be easily identified as an automated message most of the time.  The same rule applies for automated, generic Twitter DMs.  Also keep in mind that email may not be a contact’s prefered method of contact, which brings us to the second teir of the webinar:

SOCIAL MEDIA
Reaching out to a blogger is different than reaching out to a journalist.  Good first steps are to become a reader and active commenter of the blogger’s blog, contribute to the comment conversation, and have a general knowledge of who they are and the things they write about.  If you reference something they wrote about in a pitch, they’ll feel less like their being pitched at.  When you do pitch, don’t just send them a press release.  Also as a note, bloggers need more lead time- 2 weeks is ideal- than journalists.  For many bloggers, they write when they feel like it, and aren’t on any kind of inflexible deadline.  Don’t forget to follow your contact on Twitter and any other social networks their on, and keep in mind that a social media new release may also sometimes be more appropriate.

But for the good ol’ pitch, the 3rd part,

THE 3 PARAGRAPH PITCH
The first paragraph of the pitch should have a link to the press release, something funny or interesting to catch their attention, and your angle.  “Hey, thought this looked similar to the things you post on yourWhatever Blog.”  Make it relevant to them.
Second paragraph should follow up with why the thing your sending matters to them.  This is where you can reference information about them or their blog to showcase that you are a true, inteligent reader, and not a PR spambot.
Third paragraph should contain the call to action, whether it be them writing a blog in response to news or what have you, and timeline for when this will be done. 
The Follow Up means saving a little bit of information to follow up with a few days later. “Oh, I found more information on that thing I sent you.  Have you written anything/posted/_____.”  Make the follow up supplimental and meaningful, and not just a check-up to see if they’re posting what you gave them.

On a last note, the telenar mentioned the 4-Prong-POWER PITCH as a wrap up, more or less.

1. The hook
2. Research and read
3. Make the call/ E-email
4. Provide access to information and resources

Read a particularly interesting healthcare article?  Really enjoy the salmon at the last team meeting?  Write a post and start a conversation!