There’s a wealth of good advice available on how to run a blogger relations program — see Guy Kawasaki, Michael Arrington, Lee Odden, Emergence Media (PDF), Brian Solis (PDF), Shift Communications (PDF), Rohit Bhargava (PDF) and Vocus (PDF) to start with — so, I’m wondering why would public relations firm Good Relations send me an e-mail like this –

From: PR-Agent-Name (pr-agent-name@gri.co.in)
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:25 PM
Subject: Entrepreneur-Name unveils his second entrepreneurial venture Startup-Name.com
To: PR-Agent-Name (pr-agent-name@gri.co.in)

Greetings:

Please find below press release on Startup-Name.com, a second entrepreneurial venture of Entrepreneur-Name. It will be great if you can review the website and write your personal experience.

Should you be interested in interacting with Entrepreneur-Name, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you

Regards,

PR-Agent-Name

Account Manager
Good Relations (India) Pvt Ltd

I typically receive 2-3 pitches for startups every week, but they are usually from someone in the startup team itself, and very different from the pitch above.

The person making the pitch either follows me at Twitter, or reads my blog, or knows me through a friend, so there’s already a connection. Often, we end up chatting (on Twitter, IM, mail or phone), and some of these pitches have even led to friendships.

If I totally love the person, or the pitch, or the startup, I write a totally over-the-top I-really-love-it check-it-out-now review, because what’s the point of writing a review for someone/ something you don’t totally love?

So, here is the question I’m asking myself: why do startups themselves ‘get’ how to pitch bloggers, but PR agencies who represent startups do not?

I think startups ‘get’ how to pitch to bloggers because they are often bloggers themselves and understand that there’s bigger value in building a relationship with an influential blogger than getting one indifferent review out of them.

Most public relations firms, on the other hand, probably think of blogger relations as ’sending 1000 e-mails to a database of bloggers’.

But really? Why would someone be stupid enough, or lazy enough, not to Google “blogger relations tips” before sending out a mail that is destined to result in a “PR sucks” post instead of the intended review?

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If you found it difficult to believe my assertion that social media outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India, let me present a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian SMO company BuzzPundit.

Imagine a sprawling corporate campus on the outskirts of a large Indian metro (take your pick from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Pune). Imagine 10000 twenty-something Indians sitting in front of their computer screens. If you must, think of a call center. Except that these twenty-somethings are not making call after call to customers in the US; they are reading articles, posts and comments and tagging them, or responding to them.

Welcome to BuzzPundit. You are at the corporate campus of one of India’s many social media outsourcing (SMO) companies.

If you visit BuzzPundit’s website, you’ll find that BuzzPundit claims to provide end-to-end social media solutions to Fortune 500 clients. In fact, it often does. It has an impressive client roster of Indian multinationals who now have an international footprint and want to engage with a global audience via social media. BuzzPundit provide the entire gamut of social media solutions to such clients, including online reputation monitoring, development of social media strategy and deployment of social media tools.

However, only less than 10% of BuzzPundit’s 10000 strong workforce works (directly or indirectly) with Indian clients. 90% of BuzzPundit’s workforce works on international client accounts.

BuzzPundit has sales offices in the US and Europe and its international clients are a mix of Fortune 500 corporates and social media agencies who work for them.

BuzzPundit rarely provides an end-to-end social media solution to such clients. Such clients have basically out-sourced two social media processes (SMPs) to BuzzPundit —

- Social media monitoring, which basically involves reading and tagging thousands of articles and posts on a daily basis and presenting the results in pre-decided formats.

- Business-to-consumer or B2C community management, which basically involves reading and responding to thousands of customer posts, comments and complaints on a daily basis.

But enough background now; let us go back to BuzzPundit’s corporate campus and see for ourselves what a typical day at work looks like for its 10000 employees.

Neha has been working with BuzzPundit for the last two years. When she joined BuzzPundit fresh after graduation, she was put through a rigorous six week orientation program and given an understanding of concepts like social media, conversations, buzz, reputation and sentiment. She was also trained and tested on the speed and accuracy of her reading comprehension.

She was then assigned to the Nokia account — BuzzPundit handles Nokia’s global English language social media outsourcing account — and put through another six week orientation program on Nokia’s and its competitors’ products, the business drivers in the mobile phone industry and the meaning of reputation in Nokia’s specific context.

For almost a year, Neha worked as part of a 500 member Nokia team in BuzzPundit’s social media monitoring department. Almost 7000 of BuzzPundit’s 10000+ employees work in this department.

Every morning, Neha would log into her computer and BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler would have 100+ articles and posts ready for her. Every entry would pre-classified with source, product, location, spokesperson and other pre-defined tags. Neha’s work involved reading the entry and answering 50+ multiple-choice questions related to the entry’s context and sentiment, such as –

What is the overall sentiment of the entry w.r.t Nokia? Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is strongly negative and 5 is strongly positive.

What, if any, customer complaints are discussed in the entry? Choose one or more from the drop-down menu.

What is the overall sentiment of the entry w.r.t Nokia’s handling of customer complaints? Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is strongly negative and 5 is strongly positive.

After a year, as Neha’s understanding of Nokia’s mobile phone business and the nature of online conversations matured, she was transferred to BuzzPundit’s business-to-consumer (B2C) community management department as a community manager. Almost 1000 of BuzzPundit’s 10000+ employees work in this department.

Now, when Neha logs into her computer, BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler has 100+ posts, comments and forum entries ready for her, culled from the 25+ blogs, forums and groups about Nokia that are assigned to Neha. After a year of being a part of these communities, Neha has learned the nuances of each one of them. Every day, she responds to hundreds of customer comments and complaints about Nokia’s products, and, if the conversation turns particularly nasty, escalates it to her supervisor Ram.

Neha has been told that she will be promoted to a supervisor position in BuzzPundit’s business-to-consumer (B2C) community management department next year. As a supervisor, she’ll handle a team of 10+ community managers who work on the Nokia account. She’ll have overall responsibility for the 250+ blogs, forums and groups about Nokia that are being handled by her team members. She’ll monitor the tone and content of her team members’ interactions in these communities and step in herself every time a conversation turns particularly nasty.

After two years of working as a supervisor, Neha hopes to be promoted to the position of the account manager in charge of Nokia’s community management program. She’ll have 20+ supervisors and 200+ community managers reporting into her. Some of the supervisors will be in charge of communities focused on Nokia and others will be in charge of distributed conversations about Nokia and its products. Overall, Neha’s team will participate in 20000+ conversations about Nokia and its products on a daily basis.

Some day, Neha hopes to become a social media analyst at BuzzPundit. Aditi, who is BuzzPundit’s social media analyst in charge of the Nokia account, has 5+ years of experience in the mobile industry after doing her MBA. She works with Nokia, and its advertising and public relations agencies, to design and direct their social media monitoring and community management programs. After understanding Nokia’s strategic and tactical campaign-level or product-level social media objectives, she works with the two Nokia account managers at BuzzPundit (one each for social media monitoring and community management) and the technology and delivery department at BuzzPundit to design and upgrade the tagging system and the social media dashboard for Nokia.

The technology and delivery department at BuzzPundit has 500+ software engineers. It is responsible for developing and upgrading BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler, tagging system and customizable client dashboards. It also works with BuzzPundit’s 100-strong social media solutions team to do the coding for the proprietary social networks, social applications and other social media campaigns developed for BuzzPundit’s local clients.

BuzzPundit is now planning to open three more campuses in India, apart from campuses in China and Mexico to handle Chinese and Spanish social media outsourcing accounts for its present clients.

Now that you can visualize the business BuzzPundit is in, the business of social media outsourcing, let me ask you the same question again —

The global BPO industry is expected to grow to $230 bn by 2012 with $50 bn of it coming to India only (Nasscom-Everest study).

How much of that $230 bn will be social media outsourcing? How much of that $50 bn will be social media outsourcing?

Do you agree with me that social media outsourcing will be the next big business opportunity for India?

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Here’s a quick background and description of my Twitter Direct Message Retweet Bug Meme —

@twilightfairy & @shweta have been having fun with my Twitter direct message retweet bug. (link)

Basically, if you send me a direct message on Twitter, it gets re-tweeted as my own message because of a Twitter bug. (link)

I have requested Twitter to fix it, but they haven’t come around to it yet. Guess they have bigger problems to fix. (link)

While Twitter finds time to fix my direct message retweet bug, let’s have a little fun with it. (link)

If you want your message to be retweeted to my 450+ Twitter followers, send it to me as a direct message. (link)

What fun! To have even more fun with my direct retweet meme, ask your followers to send a direct message to me. (link)

Here are the conversations that my Twitter Direct Message Retweet Bug Meme has generated so far –

@Gauravonomics, I heard the messages sent directly to you shows up in your twitter feed …Ask twitter ppl to get it fixed (from @Shweta)

@Gauravonomics sure its a twitter bug and not some twitterfeed. how n why with your account only i wonder otherwise (from @prsn)

@Gauravonomics who me?! … dont fake the identity behind the retweets.. u are the man! (from @twilightfairy)

@Gauravonomics It looks like your twitter/twitterfeed bug is impl on my post [Setting up a Pvt Twitter Channel http://tinyurl.com/3badmw ] (from @thej)

@Gauravonomics how do we know you are not reposting the direct messages as tweets? (from @Anant)

@Gauravonomics WTF happened to privacy? (from @vulturo)

@Gauravonomics That’s freaky (not mention a major privacy concern). What’s Twitter saying about it? (from @cgranier)

@Gauravonomics ur re-tweet has now become a free classified (from @twilightfairy)

@Gauravonomics you are the chanmod, to borrow from IRC (from @aamanlamba)

@shweta @twilightfairy You naughty women! Thanks for giving me the Twitter direct message retweet bug meme idea. (link)

@prsn @anant No, my friends, I’m not re-posting your direct messages. It is actually a (very irritating) Twitter bug. (link)

@cgranier @vulturo Yes, the Twitter direct message retweet bug is a serious privacy concern. Twitter hasn’t yet responded. (link)

So, the Twitter direct message retweet bug meme is basically me trying to wring some fun out of an irritating situation. (link)

@Thej No, the Twitter direct message retweet bug is not a Twitterfeed hack. See, there is no half hour time delay. (link)

@Thej @Prsn You give me too much credit, my friends. I wish I could hack Twitter like you think I can. (link)

Here are the people who have participated in my Twitter Direct Message Retweet Bug Meme by sending me a direct messages that they want to be re-tweeted –

[Brajeshwar] Foo Bar - Lorem ipsum dolor sit met. Testing the Twitter bug. (link)

[robinwauters] Come to Plugg, the European Web 2.0 Conference - http://plugg.eu (link)

[Brajeshwar] hey @Brajeshwar Why are you hijacking my twitter relay bug? (link)

[twilightfairy] u are all invited to my sea facing house and I shall cook world class Ravioli for you. 29th Feb. be there. (link)

[Brajeshwar] Gaurav. This is real fun. I think Twitter treats you as their special twitterer. (link)

[cgranier] Testing Gaurav’s Twitter Soap Box! Follow me @cgranier if you’re into Social Networks and Digital Media! Thanks Gaurav! (link)

[mayankdhingra] from @gaurav’s followers import web-enthusiasts,bloggers,social-networkers, entrepreneurs… follow @mayankdhingra… Thanks (link)

[mayankdhingra] Was I a bit late? got li’l response.all web-enthusiasts,bloggers,social-networkers,entrepreneurs in d house follow @mayankdhingra (link)

To be updated as more direct messages come in…

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Winning a car is now as easy as 1-2-3.

Step 1. Visit the Xeta Shootout Contest and watch the Indica V2 Xeta television commercial.

Step 2. Create your own Xeta TVC in the form of a video or a storyboard.

Step 3. Upload your entry on the contest website.

The best entry will win an Indica V2 Xeta.

You can also watch the entries submitted by others and comment on them, participate in a slogan contest on the message board, or tell your friends about the contest.

If you are wondering why I’m promoting The Xeta Shootout Contest on my blog, this is what I do in my Indica Brand Manager avatar, when I’m not blogging about being the next marketing guru.

So, if you are an Indian citizen and know how to wield a camera, shoot and upload your own Xeta TVC. Even otherwise, do visit the contest website and e-mail me your feedback on the design/ features. And, yes, do feel free to blog about the contest. I have made a bet with a colleague that I’ll get at least ten posts out of this plug, and if I win, I’ll e-mail me your feedback on the design/ features. And, yes, do feel free to blog about the contest. I have made a bet with a colleague that I’ll get at least ten posts out of this plug, and if I win, I’ll buy you a beer at Twitter.

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The Economics of Free

In an earlier post, I wrote about the ‘economics of free’ —

Free content -> Attention -> Free product -> Lock-in -> Paid bundled services -> $$$

The ‘Free content -> Free product -> Paid bundled services’ model is an extreme example of a trend we have been seeing for a while now — marketers bundling services with basically undifferentiated products in order to build a differentiation.

Free Content Can Convert Brands Into Cultural Currency

Take Nike as an example.

In spite of all the technology that supposedly goes inside a typical sports shoe, if you take away the logos, it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a Nike, a Reebok and an Adidas (or Puma or New Balance or…) shoe. So, Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have instead focused on differentiating themselves by converting their brands into cultural currency. We have started talking about marketers becoming publishers and using free content to grab attention only now, but Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have been doing it for decades. What’s more, it has worked out brilliantly for the sports shoe industry — even non-athletic types like yours truly have four pair of sports shoes — one for jogging, one for trekking, one for cross-training and one for tennis.

From Free Content to Customer Created Content

In spite of all its brilliance, the ‘free content as cultural currency’ approach also has a limitation — it stops converting into sales when you are not the only one using it. As a marketer, I’m in love with what Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have done, but since I’m almost equally in love with all three, as a consumer, I end up buying a pair of shoes based on design/ price/ discount and not the logo on it. As a matter of fact, none of my four pair of sports shoes are from Nike — my tennis shoe is from Wilson, my cross-training shoe is from Adidas and my running and trekking shoes are from Reebok.

Therefore, marketers today don’t only need to create content that converts their brand into cultural currency, marketers also need to help their customers create their own content, and their own cultural currency, based on their interactions with the brand.

I think Nike has done this brilliantly, first with NikeID - which allowed customers to custom-design their Nike shoes - and now with Nike+.

How Nike Helps Customers Create Cultural Currency With Nike+

The Nike+ package consists of a pair of specially designed Nike+ running shoes, an iPod nano, and a Nike + iPod sport kit to connect the two. The kit consists of a sensor that fits into a built-in pocket beneath the insole of your left shoe and a receiver that fits into the iPod nano dock connector. The sensor uses a sensitive accelerometer to measure your activity, then wirelessly transfers this data to the receiver.

As you run, iPod tells you your time, distance, pace, and calories burned via voice feedback that adjusts music volume as it plays. In addition to progress reports, iPod also congratulates you when you’ve reached a personal best — your fastest pace, longest distance and time, or most calories burned. You can also choose a PowerSong that helps you run stronger and listen to it every time you need a boost.

This in itself is incredible, but Nike+ also lets you save your running data at nikeplus.com, so that you can set goals and track progress. What’s more, you can challenge friends and strangers to compete with you by sharing your running data with them. The Nike+ website also includes other web 2.0 features like user forums where you can meet and challenge other runners, ask questions, and give feedback; a challenge gallery where you can view all user created challenges; and a distance club where you can view everyone’s running milestones.

And, if you want to show off your running stats on your blog, you can even do that by using the third party Nike+ iPod Stats Wordpress Plugin.

So, Nike+ not only removes the tedium of running by introducing interactivity, it also changes a solitary activity into a community activity by allowing you to become a part of an online community of runners.

I really like how Grant McCracken sums up the impact of Nike+ –

One way to understand this innovation is to look at the private and public value it creates. The private value is that I exercise more. The public value is that I now “belong” to and participate with collectivities that would otherwise not much interest me. This is a kind of mechanized networking of the kind we see more and more of.

Did Nike accomplish something that is good for the brand. Well, in my own experience, it just went from being another sports supplier to an enabler that has changed the way I think about exercise and the way I participate in it. More than that, Nike has found a way to amplify my accomplishments… and then broadcast them.

Creating Cultural Currency Through a Fifth Pair of Sports Shoes

After I finish writing this post, I’m heading over to the Nike store at Phoenix Mill to check out Nike+. Maybe, Nike+ is what Nike needed to make me buy one of their shoes. Maybe, Nike+ is what I need to start running again.

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