Back in June we launched the Yam of the Week, a special Yammer award meant to acknowledge great input and encourage MS&L community interaction. We kept an eye on every single Yam that traveled through the network. We witnessed silly yams, strategic yams, poetic yams, tech savvy yams, intellectually stimulating yams, witty yams and [insert interesting adjective here] yams.

And now, for Live Digital Month, we’d like to recognize a Yam of the Year. Selected from among our Yam of the Week winners, the Yam of the Year goes to Joe Carberry for his Yam that was not only thought-provoking, but also encouraged even more yams from other MS&Lers.

“OK region, I am back from my NY orientation (it was quite interesting), and looking forward to starting more ongoing dialogue about our state — our issues, opportunities and how the current environment affects us and the rest of the network. Please use this tool/space to share ideas about where we are/should be headed… QUESTION #1: how do you think the current state budget woes affect our current or potential clients in the short and longer term?”

Congratulations to Joe on the award! We look forward to seeing more Yams in 2010, so we challenge you to use it in ways it hasn’t been used before—from strategy development and brainstorms to fun internal giveaways. Keep on Yamming!

- The Ann Arbor Team

Today’s Expert Tips focus on new media relations — understanding blogs and bloggers in order to make placements for our clients. These insights are based on a training deck I’ve used across the network to help pitch teams maximize their efforts in the blogosphere. You can download and review the full deck by clicking here.

First thing’s first: understanding new media

New Media exists across a spectrum, from professional to amateur and from specific subject matter to miscellaneous. Where a given blog sits on this spectrum can determine whether or not your client’s offering is a good fit.

It’s also important to realize that many blogs are not written by professional journalists, so many best practices of traditional media relations translate differently in the blogosphere. Non-journalist bloggers do not have a news hole to fill. These bloggers do not have a journalist’s instincts to develop a story or an editor giving them assignments. Instead, they tend to respond more to experiential, immediate and reactive pitches than to news story pitches.

Building a smart list
There may be a blog for everything, but 100 of them? Probably not. A good way to go about blogger outreach is to build a list that includes multiple categories and angles. You can leverage the Multiloguer for your research.  As you search for new blogs to include, be sure to examine for anti-PR bias or previous negative PR experiences which can impact the tone of correspondence with, and coverage from, these outlets.

Writing a good pitch
Once you find appropriate targets, cater the pitch and think like the blogger; let your storyteller instincts come into play. Good pitching often involves a team approach, which will let your entire account team leverage media relationships. Here are a few other tips to craft a great, blogger-friendly pitch:

• Use Transparency and brevity. Make sure your call to action and relevant URL appear within the first three sentences.
• Kill your adjectives. Use ordinary language instead of “marketing speak.” Use press releases and other materials as follow up, not content for the initial pitch.
• Be authentic. Don’t claim to be an extensive reader of the blog if you’re not.
• Provide full contact info so you have opportunities to sustain the relationship.
• Limit your follow-ups. If a blogger doesn’t respond and you’re reached out twice, they’re more than likely not interested. Of course, check their blog and Twitter channel to find out if they’re on vacation or something else is impacting their response, but don’t inundate with e-mails or calls.

Find out more by downloading the presentation. Of course, you can also reach out to me with any questions or client needs.

- Charlie Kondek, Director of New Media Relations in Ann Arbor

2009 has been a banner year for all things digital here at MS&L Canada.

We’ve made huge inroads into the world of Mum Bloggers, have spear-headed P&G’s efforts to connect with key beauty and fashion bloggers and have changed the definition of OTC to Over The Computer with some great work on behalf of Aleve for Bayer Inc.

Where we took the greatest strides was the integration of digital, social media, mobile marketing, WOM and Public Relations.

On Monday June 1, 2009 MS&L helped Rogers Wireless launch the first Android mobile phones – HTC Magic and HTC Dream – to the Canadian market.

Working with Joshua Jackson, Canadian born Hollywood and TV star, we executed a 5 day launch program that drove the conversation online, created WOM on the street and generated outstanding national PR coverage.

How did we do that you ask? Simple.

First, we created excitement within the digital space by seeding information about Joshua Jackson’s upcoming visit to Toronto, via targeted blogger outreach. Consumers were directed to a special landing page created by our Ann Arbor office that teased details for the Monday launch activities.

With anticipation building, we unveiled the full-site on the Monday with an interactive site that allowed consumers to track Joshua Jackson’s movements on the site and through the use of Google Latitude.

To find and meet Joshua, consumers were given clues to where Joshua was headed. At each stop, 5 in total, we had hundreds of fans waiting to meet Joshua and see the latest in mobile technology from Rogers Wireless.

Fans from across the country, of Joshua and of the Android phones, were able to interact with Joshua and find out more about the phone through our site and through a specially created Twitter account.

Some of the interactions were incredible, including a great piece that made it into one of our national newspapers:

Everyone who came out to see Joshua was provided a coded Android key FOB that could be redeemed at Rogers retail outlets for a plethora of prizes, including free Android smart phones and one grand prize of a vacation for two valued at $2,500.

Following Joshua’s street escapades, we held a traditional press conference where key print, broadcast and online media (including bloggers) were invited to hear more about this exciting launch for Rogers. Here’s a video from the event:

The client was thrilled with our ability to deliver on the both the traditional PR elements and on the digital / social media elements.

Going forward our ability to shape the conversation from both sides will help create a point of differentiation for MS&L and help make us the preferred choice across the Globe.

- Paul Keable, Senior Vice President, Toronto

Mommy blogging has been a growing industry since its inception in the early 2000s. It’s given ordinary people opportunities to showcase their opinions on everything from new products to technology and consumer trends. And it has given rise to entire advertising networks, national and regional conferences, and, more recently, some interesting conversations about legality and integrity.

An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, “Blogging moms wooed by food firms,” explores recent blogger events, raising some questions about the authenticity of blogger “coverage” online. The article also highlights the new FTC regulations for blog posts, as well as the Blog With Integrity pledge, which a group of mommy bloggers created this year.

We’re confident Mommy bloggers will continue to be a force online and in the purchasing power landscape, but, as a result of these new regulations and opinions, we will see the mommy blogosphere change shape in the coming year.

2009 was a very successful year for Atlanta’s digital / social media practice. Not only did we use social media and digital to create new opportunities with existing clients, we  landed new accounts seeking primarily social media services.

Account work spanned from establishing and managing Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for consumer and corporate practice clients including McDonalds, Coca-Cola, PGI (phone conferencing) and Carter’s clothing company to developing integrated marketing and communications strategies.

Currently in development is a holiday-themed Facebook application for The Home Depot. If you are interested in testing your DIY-Q, go to facebook.com/homedepot on 11/23 to test your DIY knowledge and to learn about Home Depot’s variety of holiday gift cards. The application, built by Ann Arbor, is evergreen and can be reused to support The Home Depot’s gift card marketing promotions throughout 2010.

We expanded our blogger relations services by challenging ourselves to use blogger relations as a way drive conversion (website traffic, sales and email registrations, etc). The Atlanta office designed a new process for performing blogger relations that incorporated a client’s SEO keywords, developed metrics to assess bloggers performance for driving conversion and designed messaging strategies that drove engagement. Its proven to be a powerful model for Atlanta clients to increase SEO keyword rank, promote link density and traffic and ultimately drive conversion.

On the web development side we’ve built several micro-sites, an online community and expanded the complexity of our web development projects. Recently we won the redesign of CIBAVISION.com, a global web site for one of the largest contact lens companies in the world. CIBAVISION.com global project incorporates and sets the standards for 32 local market country web sites in 2010. One intended outcome of this project is for MS&L to become the preferred agency to build future Web sites for the CIBA VISION corporation.  We are also in final consideration to build the General Mills employee candidate portal in 2010. This is another complex website integrating to General Mill’s SAP system to deliver unique content for employee candidates as well as build a mobile web portal.

We focused heavily on office training in 2009 with the launch of the Digital Passport. The Digital Passport lunch and learns are designed to generate conversation among the staff on a variety of digital topics. To enter the session each attendee is required to bring either a fact, case study, article, etc. associated with that month’s topic and share what they learned with the team. The discussions have been rich and expanded our team’s ability to think strategically about digital programs and topics.

We’ve hosted special training events with guest speakers / digital experts to expose our staff to a variety of digital categories. Guest speakers presented topics such as SEO/Search Marketing training, inside the Obama mobile campaign strategy and using social media as a management consulting platform for B2B clients.

Atlanta designed three new committees this year, giving junior and senior staff an opportunity to lead in digital strategy and research. The first committee is the Digital Council. The Digital Council is a group of SAE, SAS, and VPs that meet semi-monthly to learn and discuss digital topics. Our goal is to increase each person’s knowledge and ability to sell social media services to clients. We watch product demonstrations from technology partners like Brickfish, Meteor Solutions and Radian 6 and talk about how the integration of technology can elevate the measurable outcomes of our digital programs. We break down team silos by discussing specific client issues and needs with a cross-functional team.

The second committee is the Channel Manager program. Channel managers are volunteers who ‘own’ a seleted social media channel. As a channel manager their job is to learn as much as they can about popular social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, etc. We have 10 channel managers who are responsible for educating the rest of the office on the latest trends, case studies and effective uses of these channels. The channel manager role gives junior and senior staff an opportunity to lead a social media practice and become the knowledge expert in the office.

The third committee is the Social Media Offer committee. This group defines new ways to package our social media offerings to clients and design new social media offers. New offers will roll out in 2010.

We’ve been active members of the community serving as guest speakers / presenters at several events in 2009. We led sessions for Atlanta’s Digital PR Camp, delivered social media 101 training sessions to PRSA chapters throughout the southeast and hosted Webster Lewin at a mobile MS&L breakfast scramble with over 70 people in attendance.  We are members of the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, where we invite clients to attend meetings with us to deepen our knowledge about all things digital, as well as attend various social media clubs in town.

Our team officially expanded this fall welcoming Josh Neckes, Megan McKean and Nichole Mrasek (in 2010) as dedicated digital resources to Atlanta clients and to support new business opportunities. Let’s just say that Melanie is more than pleased with these additions! Whew…

The Atlanta office continues to support, promote and push for creative social media and digital programs. We see 2010 as big opportunity to expand our social media clientele with existing and new accounts.

We welcome your questions and feedback about our digital efforts in 2009 and look forward to hearing what you are planning for in 2010!

Melanie Babcock, SVP, Digital Strategy & Services in Atlanta