[From PR With Love] A Mom Blogging Fairy Tale — Part 1
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. Her name was Bloggerbelle and she had a beautiful child. She wanted to provide her child with all the things the kingdom had to offer. One day, she looked in her magic mirror and a misty face appeared and said…
“Bloggerbelle, Bloggerbelle, what do you see?
What kind of blogger do you want to be?
Is your focus on money, or is it for friends?
Is it for an income that increases, not ends?
Someday do you want to run a conference?
Do you want a job and corporate success?
To get where you need, you must have a plan
You need to be your own biggest fan!
Their story isn’t yours, why would it be?
Your success will be yours if you listen to me.
You can have it all, that much is true
But not all at once, step one’s up to you!
Bloggerbelle was shocked at first because the mirror said she could have it all and then because it said she could not have it all at once. She wasn’t sure exactly what the mirror meant, so she called her friend from a neighboring kingdom, the dark and stormy kingdom of PR, where the people were both feared and hated by people from her kingdom. She asked scullery maid Sarah, “Praytell, what does it mean?”
Sarah responded, “Bloggerbelle, if you aren’t clear as to what you want, how can PR know how to make you happy? If you want to work with us and don’t say that on your blog, we won’t know. While the kingdom of PR is vast we do not have any mind readers in our ranks.”
“So,” Bloggerbelle asked, “what does PR think when they offer me compensation and I tell them compensation is not enough because I want to offer a giveaway in addition to my compensation?”
Sarah replied, “Oh, that happens a lot. It is very confusing for PR people because when we offer compensation and are told it’s not good enough, we don’t understand why. If the readers won’t engage with the citizen of the kingdom of Blog without a contest being involved, we in the dark and stormy kingdom of PR feel fear. Is this really a high-quality audience or is this blog’s audience freebie-seekers who would not buy the product, but will take it because they love to enter contests or would take it for the cost of their time entering the campaign and never spread the word once they get the product?”
Bloggerbelle was shocked and offended that Sarah would accuse her of having a bad audience, and told her so. But after talking and letting Sarah explain, Bloggerbelle understood Sarah only said the PR company was scared, not that they were accusing a citizen of the kingdom of Blog of anything negative. Bloggerbelle understood the difference between being worried and accusing someone of something.
Bloggerbelle then asked Sarah, “Who should I follow in the blogosphere to get where I want to be?”
Sarah answered, “It depends. If you are looking to eventually get a job in the dark and stormy kingdom of PR, you need to have your own opinions, not speak the truth of others. If you want a compensated blog that gets cash for posts, you need to find bloggers that have those blogs and do what they do. Build community the way they do, and have a consistent and clear pricing policy. You must have reasons for why you charge what you do in order to show the dark and stormy kingdom of PR why your value is what it is. While all blogs have value when it comes to compensation it’s about what we can tell the client. Telling us you should be paid X amount for a post, but not telling us about your traffic, who those people are, and how you calculated that number does not let us know the answer to the question.”
“We cannot give you compensation based on your assertion that you are a blogger and all bloggers deserve to get paid,” said Sarah. “You can argue it and be angry all day long, but it is what it is. If it eventually changes, then it will be what it will be, but today and probably tomorrow and maybe next week, success comes from working with available possibilities, not ignoring them and wishing things were different.”
Bloggerbelle was not pleased with the answer, but it made sense. She had to be her own princess and not hitch her star to someone else’s wagon in order to shine in a dark sky. She had to be the best Bloggerbelle she could be, not a carbon copy of another princess. She loved scones and although there were already plenty of bloggie citizens living in the town of Foodie in the kingdom of Blog, she realized she wanted to live there too and she would make room for herself in that town. And she would shine brightly and be full of love as she worked toward her goal of becoming a great blogger.
The End.
Come back tomorrow for Part II.
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I wanted a little clarification since some commenters, twitters and responding bloggers seem to assume this is a continuation of an old conversation.
Are you saying that PR people have offered bloggers money for writing about a product, and bloggers have come back asking for money AND a free product to give away to their readers?
I actually do get the argument about wondering whether or not the audience is a good fit if a giveaway is the only way to make the post work/tie in.
Great post, and so cleverly written! I see myself in Bloggerbelle, and I hear your message loud & clear. :)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle
Reminds me of a poem from Benjamin Hoff’s book, The Tao of Pooh, which uses Winne the Pooh and friends to explain the concepts of Taoism.
“How can you get very far, if you don’t know who you are?
How can you be what you ought, if you don’t know what you’ve got?”
There’s more, but it’s been decades since I last read that book and that’s all I recall.
Knowing what you offer PR (readers, photography or design skills, consulting, brand ambassadorship, etc.) and being able to explain such is important.
Kim – I love and live by The Tao Of Pooh – so much to learn from it
Umm… I think the problem is not that PR people are offering compensation and bloggers are demanding contests, too (I have never heard of this happening)… They are offering contests and bloggers are wanting compensation.
yup
I asked for compensation yesterday. We shall see if I get a rply :D
I’m curious if these are two different and separate problems – and if we, as bloggers, just don’t hear about the one that Sarah is talking about here.
I see where you are coming from. To be clear, I am not using a hypothetical situation to illustrate a point. This happens probably one out of ten offers. I think the emails we receive may not be what bloggers say they want publicly. Or, and this is more likely, the bloggers that want this are not speaking out publicly but trying to get “their piece of the pie” they feel everyone else is getting. I don’t know because there is rarely an explanation of why they want both, only that it is a requirement.
Perfect!
I enjoyed reading this! It was cute and straight to the point.
Sounds pretty straight forward to me.
looking forward to Part 2!
Cute. A fun way to tell it as it is. Thanks Sarah.
Really? Because I couldn’t understand any of it.
huh?
On this I agree (it’s one of my regular sayings): “It is what it is.”