Interview with Steve Rubel

Steve Rubel is one of the better known and respected bloggers on public relations and social media. Two of Steve's recent posts include Centers of Gravity in the social media universe and It's Not About the Traffic!  I am a regular reader of his blog, MicroPersuasion, and he has been one of my models and guides through blogging and the blogosphere. I was delighted when he agreed to an interview with me as part of his social media tour last week. Drew B did a nice job with Steve’s bona fides in the prologue to his interview, so I won't repeat them here. And now, as part of the Social Media Tour, welcome to this synopsis of our discussion last Thursday.

I want to focus our discussion on the use of blogs and other forms of social media. Many readers of On Social Marketing and Social Change come from the public (government) and nonprofit (NGOs) sectors where the use of blogs and other forms of social media are being cautiously studied - if they're on the radar screen at all. They are also social marketers: professionals in a variety of fields who use marketing to improve public health and social welfare. So we started out talking about what types of challenges could be addressed with social media by organizations tackling these types of issues.

Steve’s first point was that blogs need to be centered around a passion, such as a social or political issue. Reaching policy makers, the traditional press, or the people who influence them is where blogs can be especially relevant and effective. Whatever is being discussed in the traditional media is almost certainly being blogged about as well. Identifying where these ‘buckets of conversation’ are in the blogosphere, and joining in with them, can be a way to begin connecting with these passions, issues and influencers and bringing your agency’s POV to the subject.

He also noted that blogging works better on a national or international scale than in individual communities. That said, a very active, on-line community that might exist in a place like Silicon Valley could offer great opportunities for a more local focus. His suggestion is to 'find the watering holes' for ideas and their expression and exchange and develop your social media strategy from there. For example, we talked about advocating for changes in what is offered in the school lunch program at the national level as something that would substantially benefit from a blogging effort, but a blog developed to support a community effort might be much less influential (Editor’s Note: I invite readers to provide us with some evidence to the contrary).

We then shifted to some of the specific barriers or constraints to government agencies and NGOs adopting the corporate blogging model. Steve does not claim to be an expert on the rules and regulations that shape the communications policies and practices of government agencies (though he was quick to point out how many politicians blog: US Senators and Representatives). NGOs, he thought, should enter the blogging world especially when they are working on specific issues in their advocacy role. A thread through much of this conversation was how passions ignite actions and can be identified, nurtured and empowered (my words, not Steve’s) through thoughtful and respectful blogging.

For him, blogs ‘are all about transparency and a human voice.’ I asked him ‘when not to blog.’  He quickly jumped on ‘character blogs’ as the opposite end of the continuum from transparent and human. Having a ‘Smokey the Bear’ or ‘The Crash Dummies’ blog would be as inauthentic a choice one could make for a blogging voice. He did allow that ‘maybe for kids,’ a Santa Claus blog could work, but in general, not a place where he really wanted to go. He also does not consider setting up a blog as a good choice for crisis communications or crisis management unless an implementation plan for the site has been prepared well ahead of time. He does not favor creating a blog ‘on the run’ during a crisis, though he did make an exception for ones that are developed specifically in response to blog attacks.

What should blogs for social marketing efforts aspire to be?  Steve gave two suggestions:

• Be an aggregator of links, sources and other information about your issues or passion.
• Gather people who are in the same boat and share your POV and enlist them to blog on your behalf (your agency staff don’t have to be the public bloggers).

Steve also suggested that you look at HealthCareVox where his interview on blogging in the health care sector touched on other ideas (patient advocacy and support). For agencies where the review and approval processes might be particularly burdensome, he noted that podcasts offer another social media option where the message content can be better managed [Editor's Note: AHRQ, SAMHSA, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Kaiser Family Foundation.]

So Steve, given that our audience maybe is thinking that someday they might try out a blog as soon as they see someone else do it first, what would be your advice for those getting started?

Steve Rubel’s Start-Up Steps for Blogging

1. Use blog search engines such as Technorati and Google Blog Search among others to identify where your topic or issue is being talked about and some of the influential voices. Think broadly about this search (for example, don’t just search for ‘school lunch,’ also use terms like ‘education,’ food service,’ ‘nutrition and children,’ etc).
2. Use a RSS reader and subscribe to feeds (with an aggregator) from some of these blogs and read them for a few weeks to become familiar with their POV, active participants and style.
3. Based on this ‘b-sphere scan,’ develop a strategy aimed at engaging bloggers of similar interests in your passion (priority audience).
4. Leave comments on postings that are relevant to the conversation you want to have and where you and your organization are identified – no screen names if you want to develop mutual trust.
5. Set up your own blog (or bring in a consultant or agency to help you. The technology is the easiest part).
6. Invite experts to come and post on the topic or issue.

What should we look for to measure the success of a blog?

While traffic may be a relevant metric, it should not drive the strategy and content of the blog. A core purpose for many blogs is to influence the influencers and decision-makers, so measurement that captures this type of information would be important. Use site statistical and analytical/ mapping packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat to identify repeat visitors, click-through patterns, sources of referrals, search terms that are used to find your blog, and the number of email and RSS subscriber. [Editor’s Note: The number of comments and TrackBacks to specific posts as well as other links to the site can also be helpful.]

Thanks to Steve for his insights and great spirit during (and preparing for) our interview. Props to the other bloggers on the Social Media Tour trail who provided some more perspectives on the potential of blogging and other forms of social media in other industries.  Links to each of the other interviews are available at MicroPersuasion.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Media Advocacy, Social Marketing, Social Media, Steve Rubel, MicroPersuasion