The insensitive tweet, which wasn’t the only one of the day, has trigged a rightful cascade of contempt that could stain the company. At the same time, the fallout from the tweet shows how social media is changing the nature of crisis communications.

The company at the center of the storm is Celeb Boutique, a U.K. outfit that sells celebrity-inspired fashion online. Its nightmare began when its Twitter account published this:

The tweet, which remained up for more than an hour, went viral via the Huffington Post and others. News and fashion sites began reviling Celeb Boutiques as did, needless to say, other Twitter users:

Incredibly, Celeb Boutiques exacerbated the situation by explaining that “Our PR is NOT US based and had not checked the reason for the trend” and then followed up its half-hearted apology with:

The company has now removed the light-hearted “fabulous friday” tweet and its Twitter account appears to have fallen into a stunned silence after issuing a longer four-part apology.

The incident has proved remarkable not only for the depth of the Celeb Boutique’s idiocy but for the virulent and mob-like response it has invoked. As of Friday afternoon, Twitter is alight with thousands of people calling the company vile names and demanding that it pay money to a victim’s fund.

A similar drama is unfolding around a Twitter account associated with the National Rifle Association which published: ”Good morning, shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend plans?” The NRA claims that the tweet, which has since been removed, was published by an individual who was not yet aware of the events in Colorado. Even though the NRA tweet appears to have been a case of bad timing more than anything else, it has still generated a wave of angry responses.

In the bigger picture, today’s tweets demonstrate two things. The first is simply a reminder that the media and public are hyper-attuned to appearances of callousness at a time of tragedy. Recall the photos of President Bush flying over Hurricane Katrina. The issue was not that the President didn’t care — it was that he appeared not to care. The situation was much the same with today’s tweeters who were almost certainly ignorant or unlucky rather than callous and bad. The insults raining down on them represent an urge to vent over the senselessness of the Colorado shootings as much as they do anger at the NRA or Celeb Boutique.

While public anger at a time of tragedy is not new, the speed at which it is expressed is new. Social media means not just that a company like Celeb Boutique can damage its brand more quickly and broadly than ever before, but that it has far less time to undo that damage. In the past, a company could detect a bad news story early on and work with professionals to spin the story. In the case of Celeb Boutique, its chance to fix the damage has already come and gone.

• See also: The Colorado shooting and the crowdsourced future of news

(Image by RTimages via Shutterstock)

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The service now has around 60 million users, and there are even rumors that parent company Mind Candy is considering an IPO. Great news. What record company wouldn’t want a little piece of that?

But what really caught my eye was a piece of strange phrasing that came up in the story, which was pointed out to me by a Twitter friend:

Moshi Monsters is now played by one in every 1.4 children in the UK.

Wow, that’s popular, I thought. Then . . .

Wait, what? When did you last meet 1.4 kids?

I can’t be the only one who gets driven crazy by nonsense statistics like this. They get trotted out all the time in press releases, conversations with executives, conference speeches and (of course) the increasingly ubiquitous infographics. Those stats are part and parcel of the game, and usually journalists take the effort to decode them or debunk them as necessary.

But this one was among the silliest I have seen for a while, simply because it used such a strange measure to try to make its point. I can only presume the intention was to say that 70 percent of British kids have a Moshi Monsters account (journalist Emma Barnett tells me it was an “odd stat” that “kept being given”). In fact, it’s really a way of dressing up the number of accounts in new clothing. There are about 12 million children in the U.K., and Moshi Monsters is meant to be for kids only, so presumably it’s a new way to say “we have more than 8 million accounts in Britain.”

It’s possible there was some other rationale, of course, but whatever the intention it’s surprising how often this stuff makes it out into the wild. No wonder there’s a national campaign against poor numeracy taking place. And there’s a little irony in the fact that Moshi Monsters is meant to be educational.

In fairness, Mind Candy founder Michael Acton Smith accepted the lunacy when it was pointed out, admitting that the statistic was “ridiculous.”

@eversion @bobbiejohnson @emmabarnett Good point!What a ridiculous stat. I will read press releases more carefully in future

— Michael Acton Smith (@acton) March 5, 2012

Still.

What other terrible statistics have gotten traction when they should never have seen the light of day?

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On rare occasion, you can find one shop that does all of these tasks and does them all well. More likely, as new forms of communications and marketing crop up with the development of new technologies, you have to go to a newly formed shop that is well-versed and immersed in the new ways.

So what happens when you start your foray into social media marketing by outsourcing to a new agency? You face a number of challenges, not the least of which is some tension from your existing agencies who may insist they know everything there is to know about social media while simultaneously scrambling to get up to speed.

Bringing in a new agency can be fraught with pitfalls, but the most common seems to be the creation of “silos.” Your other agencies — or even in-house marketing and communications departments — can cut out the new guys from key conversations or withhold critical information so your social media marketing team can’t properly integrate their work into your outreach efforts.

What you want to see happen is:

• Communication. Open discussions from the moment the new agency is introduced to establish that nobody is in competition but are all working toward a common goal.
• Cooperation. Willingly and frequently sharing information and assimilating the new agency as an integral part of your communications team.
• Collaboration. Bringing the new agency into projects from the start, not as an afterthought.

But with dispersed teams often vying for as much of your business pie as they can slice off, how do you foster an atmosphere of cooperation instead of competition?

If You’re Hiring the Team

If you’re the one hiring the new team to bring into the mix, there are some steps you can take to ensure that all your teams work together:

• Be open. If you are hiring others to carry out your communications work, everything starts with you. So from the start, make sure you are open with all your teams as to your expectations, particularly as to how you expect them to work together.
• Be clear. Clearly define roles, communicate who is responsible for what tasks, and outline your expectations to everyone separately and then together so everyone is playing by the same rule book.
• Be inclusive. If you are leaving someone out of the critical initial strategic conversations, you set a tone and pattern for others to do the same.
• Don’t create new silos. Including new teams at all stages of your planning and execution processes could mean discovering new opportunities and enhancing existing tactics.
• Don’t take sides. You may end up taking an almost parental role if your agencies begin finger pointing, but nip that in the bud immediately and always do what is best for your company as a whole, not what satisfies one agency or team versus another.
• Ask for something from everyone. If you want to see some creative from the advertising team, you should include your PR and social media marketing teams in the mix. Integrated marketing is not a new concept, but you need to put that into practice every day.
• Re-examine your workflow. Have touch points over time (maybe monthly and quarterly) to make sure that your new social media marketing team is becoming an integral part of the process. Have open and honest conversations and get critical feedback to make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Measure and leverage results. Don’t look for ways to prove or disprove that one type of marketing is better than another. It isn’t about pitting PR against advertising against social media marketing. It is about finding what works and building upon successes.

If You’re Part of a Team

The flip side of hiring an agency is being part of a team or agency that is being hired to assimilate into an existing group to provide social media marketing services. Here are a few things you should consider as you enter into the new relationship:

• Be aware. Understand the dynamics of different business interests. Each agency has their own bottom line on their minds but all the teams should be working toward a common goal: Helping the client to succeed.
• Be available. Establish and maintain open lines of communications so other teams or agencies can’t accuse you of being unavailable or unwilling to participate in planning sessions or other key events in the creative and execution process.
• Extend a hand. As new kid on the block, look for ways where you can help other teams or agencies get a win. Offer to help where you see others needing additional support. Prove yourself to be the asset that you know you can be by making the first overtures to participate.
• Play nice in the sandbox. Your goal should not be to win additional business by taking work from another agency. If you win new business from the client, it should be on the merits of your work, not because you stepped on toes, threw sand in faces and undermined others. You’ll lose in the long run.
• Look for collaborative opportunities. Maybe the other agencies aren’t bringing you into the fold as readily as you’d hoped. Don’t be discouraged but instead look for ways to bring them into the social media marketing realm in meaningful ways. Prove that everyone can win when working together.
• Give kudos. Regardless of how other teams are reacting to you, be the first to say something positive about others. Compliment their work, celebrate their wins. You know what they say about honey versus vinegar. But be sincere. You’re all part of the same team even if you might reside at a different company.
• Keep good records. Even while keeping a positive attitude and being professional, you shouldn’t be Pollyanna about everything. Keep careful records of work rendered, goals achieved, lessons learned and communications and interactions with other teams. It’s both good business practice and also protection in case there is ever a conflict.

No matter which side of the fence you sit, it is up to everyone at the top to set positive examples to everyone else on each team. Don’t approach inter-agency relationships from a position of scarcity but instead employ an attitude of abundance. There is enough work to go around for everyone who does good work. And the more you all work well together and better serve the client, the more work they’ll gladly outsource to build on that success.

How are you working social media marketing teams into your process?

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In the study, bloggers cautioned PR professionals that traditional outreach methods would not be effective with them; they were adamant that a smart, well-researched approach would work best. The study goes on to say that “most bloggers tend to write about subjects they are passionate about. And most of the time, the product (blog) is wholly owned by them. Therefore, their blog and the subject matter are extremely personal endeavors.”

I haven’t seen a more recent study of a similar type to show what has changed, but as someone who engages both in blogger outreach with my company and blogging, I feel that the landscape has fundamentally shifted.

I’ve noticed a significant decrease, year over year, in how responsive bloggers are — or more accurately, are not — even to individualized, customized and thoughtful outreach. In 2007, response rates were between 20-25 percent positive (the percentage of bloggers who published information provided to them or responding to our outreach). Toward the end of 2009, I began to see a marked drop-off of in acknowledgments from bloggers, much less actual published responses to email outreach. In my company’s experience, we’ve found the response rate to decrease to less than 10 percent, even less than five percent in some cases. This poor response rate is even despite the fact that our relationships with individual bloggers have strengthened over the years.

The decrease in blogger outreach effectiveness can be attributed to a myriad of factors including

1. The recent FTC rulings on marketing firms and blogs
2. A glut of PR requests to bloggers, so most no longer get opened
3. The realization by many bloggers that they now hold an increasing degree of power and influence in terms of information distribution, so they are becoming more selective
4. The fact that many bloggers are still not businesspeople, and don’t even look to PR as a source of fodder for their blogs
5. A continued misunderstanding about blogging culture and what bloggers need or want by marketers
6. There’s a misconception that all bloggers want to be approached by PR reps or to receive press releases, so firms keep throwing stuff out there to see what sticks
7. The fact that not everyone who blogs is open to blogging about things other than their own lives or work, especially products they don’t actually use.

Putting On My Blogger Hat

As a professional blogger as well as a personal blogger, I find myself drowning in pitches from PR firms. On the personal side, I find that unless they use the correct email to pitch me and keep the pitches very short, to the point, and on target with my blog topics, I pretty much ignore the emails. I simply don’t have the bandwidth. Plus, my personal blogs aren’t really commercial endeavors.

On the professional side, I look for a prominent mention of the blog they’re pitching me for (such as WebWorkerDaily); exactly what they are pitching (a new application to help web workers do something better, for example); and how familiar they are with what I write. There is nothing more effective in pitches to me than one with a highly targeted phrase like “I noticed your blog post about RSS feeds last week and wanted to let you know about my client’s new app that would really benefit web workers by helping manage their feeds.” Bingo!

I can’t say that I read every email pitched to me — it is just not humanly possible. I can say that the PR people who politely but regularly nudge me several times to gauge my interest in their pitch have gotten a lot farther with me than the ones who threw a pitch at me like spaghetti to a wall. Kindness and consideration along with persistence wins the ink. Getting annoyed that I haven’t responded, or that I’ve had to switch a demo call at the last minute isn’t going to win any brownie points. We’re all just people trying to make a living, and we all have a life.

The other thing I find incredibly effective in terms of pitching me on behalf of a client is not only the thoughtfully targeted pitch but regular pitches that can provide me with ideas for new blog posts. I look forward to those emails and count the PR people who help to make my professional blogging life just a little bit easier as important contacts. That’s the power of relationships. You care, I care, we work together, everyone wins.

Alternative Ways of Engaging Bloggers

Because of the decrease in effectiveness of blogger outreach carried out in the manner of traditional media outreach, there needs to be alternative ways to engage bloggers to help produce valuable and educational content for our clients; build greater awareness of client brands; and have a measurable impact in the blogosphere. Some of these tactics include:

1. Blog panels. Select bloggers who are knowledgeable in a given area to provide guidance on a company or organization’s blog editorial calendar that can be syndicated on their own blogs in a coordinated fashion. This is a more credible and effective tactic when the participation is a voluntary and non-compensated position; however, there must be a mutual exchange of value and all value exchange must be disclosed.
2. Blogger pools. Select bloggers who can be guest authors of a company or organization’s blog by identifying a pool of qualified, expert and diverse bloggers who can contribute content – with or without compensation – for the exposure. Again, if compensation is involved, it must be disclosed.
3. Blog sponsorship. Identify key blogs and bloggers reaching the “right” audience and offering to pay them to sponsor content that meets particular guidelines. For the bloggers who are in the business of blogging, this can be a more attractive relationship, and both parties must make sure a paid sponsorship is properly and prominently labeled as such.

As the blogging landscape continues to change, it is important for us to engage bloggers in the conversations about best practices in blogger outreach and continue to build more meaningful relationships with bloggers similar to the way we’ve cultivated relationships with the media but realizing the differences. If I feel we have a strong base of blogger relationships in a given industry or area, I may recommend blogger outreach to a client in the future. However, building a targeted blogger list from scratch without relationships solidly in place is proving to be a less effective and more expensive endeavor than it was three years ago.

Do you engage in blogger outreach? Or are you a blogger being approached by marketing types? What are your thoughts on the topic of blogger outreach as an online marketing tactic?

No company can function effectively when confronted with clients who operate from a place of fear — which is often at the root of most difficult clients you encounter. You can’t do your job well or be recognized for a job well done when your client contact is inadvertently — or deliberately — standing in your way.

Here are six common “bad client” archetypes that can impede your success. After the definition of each client type, I’ve listed some possible tactics you can use to tame those wild beasts in your client roster.

1. Micro Manager

Description: This person wants to control every aspect of your work. It may feel like they don’t trust what you do or that you can never do your job to their satisfaction, but their obsessive compulsiveness is often driven by fear. They believe that if you make a mistake, it is their neck on the line. So they go through painstaking editing processes, which often delay progress and rack up unexpected expenditures on your part.

Tactics: Understand that the micro manager is operating from a place of fear. Instead of riding their fear wave, have a heart-to-heart and find out what you can do to help them feel more comfortable with your work. Also, express how you weren’t prepared for so many revisions on every aspect of your work and how much it is costing you. Could they train you on how to deliver the work in a way that better suits their needs? In the future, put a clause in your contracts that stipulates the number of revisions included in the deal (say, up to three) with a trigger to charge hourly for each additional round.

2. Panicker

Description: For the Panicker, everything is an emergency. There’s always a fire to put out somewhere, real or imagined. Something is always about to go wrong, and chances are it is all your fault. The Panicker who will suck you into their panic mode if you’re not careful, setting a work tone that can be extremely disconcerting.

Tactics: Panic is also a manifestation of fear. Why is this person so afraid? Maybe there are machinations behind the scenes at their job that you’re not privy to that have set them into panic mode. Your job is to help alleviate their fears. Ask them flat out what can you do to make their job easier, better. What can you empower them with to help them prove to their higher ups that they — and you – are doing a good job. Work with them to bring the panic level down to a minimum so you can all get your work done without raising anybody’s blood pressure.

3. Puppet

Description: The Puppet is not in a power position. Somebody else is pulling the puppet strings, but they have been put out there as your client contact whether they – or you – like it or not. They may be the fall guy for someone else, and if they fall, they’ll inadvertently take you with them. They most likely are inexperienced and may not even understand what you are doing for their company, creating a stream of misunderstandings.

Tactics: If you can’t get to the Puppet Master, then empower the Puppet. They may not even know how their ignorance is undermining your ability to get things done, much less communicate what you’ve accomplished to their boss. Offer to train this person — on your dime — to provide them with enough knowledge so they can play a more productive role as client contact.

4. DIY-er

Description: The DIY-er knows everything, and thinks they can do it all themselves. But somehow you’ve been hired to do what they perceive to be their job. Or perhaps they’ve been charged with cutting corners so they’d rather do some of the work that should be assigned to you in order to save a buck in the short term. Then they proceed to muck things up which could potentially set you up for failure from the start. This person may have backed themselves into a corner by saying they know more than they do, or biting off more than they can chew.

Tactics: There may be a lot of ego involved here — sensitive ego that, in a pinch, will point fingers of blame at you if anything starts to go wrong. It is up to you to make this person look good while not diminishing your own role in a job well done. Give them kudos often — both directly to them and to their team members or boss. Help them shine within their own organization as an important member of your client relationship. Once they view you as an ally and not the enemy, you can actually shift the situation so you can do the work well and everybody wins.

5. Bean Counter

Description: Bean Counters want numbers. They may stand in the way of progress and innovation if they feel they don’t have the numbers they need. Remember that the Bean Counter might have to report to someone else so they feel they need numbers to justify their every move. You’re just caught in the middle of their insecurities.

Tactics: They want numbers? Give them numbers. It may serve you well to do the extra research to find comparable statistics, to develop spreadsheets that calculate growth, to make a few charts to help assuage the fears of the Bean Counter. Yes, this will take you some time to compile the data, so make sure to build that into future contracts. But if it is numbers they want, go the extra mile to get them numbers.

6. Silo-er

Description: Beware the Silo-er. They are the most challenging of bad client types because they are wily creatures. They strategically set themselves up as the conduit by which all of the communications between you and the decision-makers flow. They do this so that if there are successes on a project, they can claim them for themselves. If there are failures, you will be the first one they blame.

Tactics: Without direct and open lines of communications with all the key players on your client’s team, you may become silo’d before you even know what has happened. It is up to you to open up or re-open up those communications channels before it’s too late. Offer to travel to the client’s office — on your dime — to meet with the whole team so you can re-establish key connections. Start requesting that other team members join meetings or calls so that you aren’t at the mercy of a single person. If no amount of overtures on your part work to break down the silo walls, try the last ditch effort of copying other team members on key email correspondence so they are somehow in the loop. Carefully document everything you do and all conversations just in case you’re set up to take the fall at any point.

Every client relationship can be peppered with moments of misunderstandings and disappointments — like any relationship. But without a strategy in place that can help you bring harmony to your client relations, your revenue stream could be negatively impacted by one or more of these bad client types. Ultimately, it is your responsibility to identify and address problems head on because when push comes to shove, you may end up being the one that is most dispensable.

What are some of the bad client types you’ve encountered, and how have you dealt with them?

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Pressitt says the site’s focus is on providing journalists and bloggers with a primary research tool for stories. PR types can upload releases into the system that should then be available to these journalists and bloggers.

My very first experience with the site wasn’t great. When I first went to sign up (as a PR person) I was faced with these restrictions on the registration page:

“I confirm that the content I am about to publish is not related to adult explicit, alcohol, activism, extremism, petition, prescription or other drugs, religious, ringtones, tobacco or vitamins related themes.”

As a social media consultant with a variety of clients, projects and events to publicize, I was immediately put off by the limitations, namely because the two things I wanted to create social media releases for were a wine branding company (alcohol) and a philanthropic campaign (activism, petition).

Undeterred, I filled out the rest of the registration so I could at least check out the tool’s features. Pressitt is entirely free, compared to the existing social media release tool PitchEngine which I wrote about previously. Here is an example release I created on the PressIt site.

Here’s how Pressitt stacks up as a Social Media Release (SMR) tool:

1. Ease of use. Pressitt has a very straightforward fill-in-the-blanks format. The link to create a release is prominent and obvious. Once you start one, you have the ability to choose which brand to attach to the release to.
2. Content prompting. Pressitt offers basic fields for your release headline, overview, and core facts. It does not accommodate for the main body text, but instead prompts you to build your release with overview, core facts, as well as quotes and links. Unfortunately, Pressit doesn’t prompt you to develop a Twitter-friendly blurb for your release so you can easily tweet a link to it.
3. Multimedia Integration. One of the critical aspect of SMRs is the integration of multimedia into a release. Pressit lets you upload videos and images, as well as document files (.doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .pdf and a maxiumum filesize of 8MB). While uploading my release to Pressitt, I ran into a technical glitch that I couldn’t get past. First, it would not let me upload .jpg files because it was expecting .jpeg files.  The site specified it could accommodate these files: jpeg, gif, bmp, png and a maximum file size of 4MB. I changed the .jpg to .jpeg and tried again. Pressitt gave me an error message saying .jpeg files were not allowed. So I converted the images in PhotoShop to .bmp. The site then gave me an error message saying .bmp files were not allowed. I gave up, so my test release doesn’t have any extra images.
4. Social Media Options. The second critical aspect of SMRs is social media integration. I was impressed with the extensive array of 16 or so social media posting options on Pressitt, including some that are probably more popular in the UK, such as Bebo and Propeller. Pressitt doesn’t seem to have its own URL shortener. It is also a little confusing to have Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin buttons at the top of page, but instead of being able to share the content using these services, these are meant to be links to the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts for the person sending the release.
5. Enterprise-level features. At this time, Pressitt doesn’t offer more enterprise-level features, or embedded social media newsrooms. While major companies might be using Pressitt, it is more likely for the ease of use and the fact there are fewer SMR tool options overseas than because of robust enterprise solutions.
6. Reach. It is a little too early to see if Pressitt will expand beyond being a UK- or Euro-centric tool. That isn’t a bad thing, but it just might not have the marketing muscle to make a big impact in the States.

The Verdict

If you are looking for a fast, easy solution without a lot of bells and whistles, Pressitt could work well for you. Me? I like the idea of using all the social media release resources available, particularly when I want a more global reach. I’m still disappointed, however, that some of my company’s clients will never be able to use Pressitt because of the site’s legal limitations.

Which SMR tool do you use and what do you like about it?

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The book begins by providing background on the importance of managing your company’s reputation online and the potential consequences if you don’t. It follows with practical instruction on using tools like social media and search engine optimization as ways to be proactive about managing your online reputation in order to achieve your business goals. The final section is about online monitoring of your reputation and managing an online reputation crisis.

The big emphasis in “Radically Transparent” is on being proactive in reputation management. The book’s practical recommendations center around creating a positive reputation through the use of tools like social media and blogs, instead of waiting to respond to critics in a crisis where you would always be playing catch-up. The philosophy is that actively building and monitoring your reputation can actually prevent a crisis from happening.

Some of the book’s sections (such as “The Power Of Blogs”) may be somewhat basic for WebWorkerDaily readers, but in total “Radically Transparent” is a very practical and comprehensive textbook on the topic of online reputation management. It won’t go over the heads of those who are inexperienced in the online marketing, but at the same time I believe even the most experienced online marketer will come away from “Radically Transparent” having picked up a few new tips and techniques.

If you work in marketing, this book would be a good recommendation for clients reluctant to implement online reputation management. For freelancers or small business owners, reading this book (and then sticking it on your bookshelf for references) will give you a great background in reputation and crisis management.

Although the book uses the stories of the online reputation problems of several large companies like Dell and JetBlue as examples, the lessons it contains aren’t limited to large companies — the authors translate the such experiences to apply them to the management of an individual’s reputation. Personal reputation management (or personal branding) is especially important to freelance web workers. Their online reputation is usually just as important as their off-line reputation.

In a way, the core message of the book is a slightly down one because it takes a somewhat fatalistic approach to the inherent negativity of the Internet. The core philosophy underlying the need for proactive reputation management is the assumption that it is “inevitable” that all of us will have our reputation attacked at some point. Unfortunately many of us can attest to the truth of that statement.

Interested in reading “Radically Transparent” for yourself? Chapter 1 is available for download as a PDF from the Radically Transparent web site.

Have you read “Radically Transparent”? Are you proactive about your reputation online?

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In order to stay on top of new Web apps and get a deeper understanding of how some of them work without having to subscribe to them all and use them all over time (which would be an overwhelming undertaking), I’ve been scheduling back-to-back demos with tech companies who are touting their cool Web apps and want me to blog about them here.

Here’s a list of things to consider before you conduct your demo. (And please share this with your PR people).

1. Know my style. Read a few of my blog posts to get a sense of my review style. I tend to detail my personal experiences as a Web worker and how I think a particular app might work for me or people like me. I am opinionated. My style is not really techie. I’m more interested in the practical nuts and bolts. (For those with PR firms, they should be doing this research for you). ed: You should know the blog you’re pitching. WebWorkerDaily focuses on products that the average web worker can purchase for themselves or for their smaller businesses. We don’t tend to focus on enterprise software, social networking applications (unless they’re specially focused on professional networking) or games.

2. Know my OS. I’m a Mac user. I talk about this in many of my blog posts. I love the Mac. So if your app doesn’t work on a Mac or doesn’t work well with Macs, please think twice before pitching me. There are other talented bloggers here who are PC users and you can tell by reading their posts.

3. Target your pitch. So while I’m on the topic of pitching, you are far more likely to win friends and influence bloggers if you send your pitch to the main email address (tips@webworkerdaily.com) and maybe a personalized pitch to one of the bloggers who you feel might really like your app. But blanketing your pitch to all the bloggers on a blog is just bad form. It makes our jobs more difficult if several of us are pursuing the same story at the same time and figure it out only after we’ve put in time we can’t afford to waste.

4. Use a scheduling app. Even if you have a PR firm scheduling your calls, turn them onto one of the handy Web apps available to coordinate the complex schedules of several people. I prefer the quick and easy Doodle myself. But trying to do the scheduling by email and voice mail really is inefficient.

5. Identify yourself. I hate to break it to you, but with all the emails flying back and forth to schedule the call and all the calls I’m on each day, I don’t necessarily know who you are or what you do for the company. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with several CEOs of new tech companies, but they often jump into the conversation without even an introduction. So when we connect on the phone, please tell me who you are, and let me do the same.

6. Go straight to the demo. When we’re on the phone, please start the demo first. I review Web apps. I don’t write about tech companies. Sure I mention the tech company responsible for the app in my post and occasionally quote someone from the company, but in general, I just want to know how your app works. Information about your company, your philosophy, your methodology, and your market research can come out during the demo or if I ask. Otherwise, let the app do the talking.

7. Kill the slides. I don’t need to see PowerPoint slides explaining your company or product. And I definitely don’t need to read along with you as you read your PowerPoint slides out loud. I need to see the app in action. I need to see it now.

8. Keep it brief. Hit only the highlights for a few minutes as you demo. If I like what I see, believe me when I say I will ask you questions. Lots of questions. Even if I see things I don’t like, I will ask you questions. I need you to show me what your app does. If you have to provide a lot of detail, I may get the impression that your app just isn’t smart or intuitive or that you don’t think I’m smart or intuitive enough. Either way, you’re killing me with your rambling.

9. Be open. Some of my favorite demos and most enjoyable reviews were with companies whose CEO or other rep was open to my feedback and critiques. Hey, I’m very opinionated and when something doesn’t work, I call it like it is. I’ve had some company reps make changes based on my feedback. Others have offered to make changes based on the feedback of commenters on my posts. That kind of responsiveness (versus defensiveness) wins you lots and lots of brownie points in my book.

10. Keep in touch. I don’t want to be spammed – but I do want you to ask me if you can put me on your email list (I have a special email address just for that purpose so do not just add my email willy nilly). I’d love to hear about new developments with your app. I’d love to know that the feature you said was “coming soon” that I blogged about previously has actually launched. And I’d really love a scoop on that!

I’m pretty sure that a lot of what I’ve said above goes for many bloggers out there. We’re crazy busy, on perpetual deadlines, and are fully immersed in a sea of Web apps. In this case, less is more. Be thoughtful. Be selective. Be brief. I’ll love you for it!

This post was greatly inspired by Jason Calacanis’ recent post to his email list about how to demo your startup, as reposted on TechCrunch. While some tips are similar to Jason’s, they are all things that I have personally experienced which just proves that he nailed it.

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Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date.

The “blog” first started on Friday, and it contained some valuable information, empathy, and hope for the future. Apple is really going against its usual order of business by saying

…we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later (emphasis added).

It seems that this whole mess has helped Apple realize that they can’t keep their customers in the dark when something this crazy is happening.

A week after Apple realized that 1% of MobileMe members couldn’t access their email, Apple engineers (working 24-7) solved the problem but do report that some of the mail has been lost completely.

We particularly regret to report the loss in the affected accounts of approximately 10% of the messages received between July 16 and July 18.

So, if you sent mail to someone on those days, you might want to resend it.

Apple also admits that the problem they faced with the MobileMe launch was Twitter syndrome (my words not theirs). They couldn’t handle the extra traffic that came to their servers that day and they needed to fix their scalability.

The day we launched MobileMe, we had a lot more traffic to our servers than we anticipated, with the result that access to the web versions of the MobileMe applications — Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk — was temporarily unavailable. We’ve since added server capacity and tuned our software to scale better — i.e. behave more gracefully when traffic spikes.

The team has also fixed 70 general bugs that affected syncing, the web apps, and the general speed of the web apps for MobileMe.

Supposedly, the mystery Apple blogger will post again this weekend, but we will see, won’t we? The post does sound like it is a real person writing it, and not some cold, disconnected, dispassionate intern who doesn’t really know what he is talking about. I am guessing it is some higher level public relations officer who is tasked with this assignment.

The blog is not entirely a blog, even though it does have an RSS feed. There is no place to add comments or ask questions. You can go to the support pages, but that is more of an FAQ than a place to discuss your frustrations. This is not too out of character for a corporate blog, though. Most of the various Google blogs don’t allow readers to leave comments, but they do show trackbacks, so you can see who is saying what about the blog post. I do think that Apple’s customers could really benefit from this blog, especially when things are going poorly.

For example, when I was waiting to download the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade legitimately, I really wanted to know why it was not available in the iTunes Store even though the website and iTunes said that it was available. A quick note on a blog like this would have calmed me down. That was not nearly as big a deal as the rest of the problems that day, but I think Apple could have saved some of its good name by communicating earlier.

We do have to be happy that Apple is finally saying something about the problems they have experienced. It is frustrating that it took them two full weeks to actually say something definitive about MobileMe’s “rocky road.” But, as I quoted above, it is not their style to say anything if there is a possibility that it might change. Well, here’s to hoping.

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Zuckerwar, an airline pilot by trade (and a relentless NewTeeVee comment spammer, not that I recommend that), picked up a book on Extensible Markup Language (XML) a couple months ago. He had come across Entriq’s RSS-TV specification for video device makers and thought he could do something similar “to create an independent feed directory for Internet television.” He calls it RSS Live TV.

RSS Live TV users access video by opening the site’s XML file in any browser with a built-in feed reader. After navigating a simplistic directory, your selected video auto-plays on a white background in your browser page. Zuckerwar hasn’t done much in the way of design, but in many cases that’s preferable to all the navigational nonsense you have to deal with en route to viewing video where it’s hosted. RSS Live TV channels include CNN, C-SPAN, ABC News, AccuWeather, CNBC and many more, including some UGC sites. Most are live, and some are on demand. All are free.

I asked Zuckerwar if he could make an integrated interface for flipping through channels rather than requiring users to return to the hierarchical list in order to change feeds. He said that might be difficult given different sites use different players, but he’d give it a try.

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