My recent list of tips on pitching bloggers garnered a fair amount of attention and comments. One reaction that caught my attention was from Allison Blass, a public relations pro (her title is New Media Coordinator) at MWW Group. She disagreed that pitching as if you’ve read the blog is the right way to go, saying, “The one problem I had was with your suggestion that PR people should act like they read the blog on a regular basis. While this might work for some people, some bloggers can see right through this.”

I responded in the comments that ideally (our hypothetical was a time-sensitive scenario) I wouldn’t “act like” I read the blog. I would read the blog. This opened up an interesting discussion via email where I learned that Allison is a bit of a contradiction in terms. A PR pitch person by day, she is a blogger by night. Lemonade Life is a personal blog about living life with Type 1 Diabetes. And she gets pitched. And has some strong opinions about being pitched.

Never one to resist the temptation, I asked Allison to do a little Q-N-A with us. What follows is an interesting take on pitching and being pitched from a blogger who is also a pitch artist.

Give us an idea of a day in the life at MWW — how many media outlets, traditional and new, do you normally approach with a story angle?

I work in MWW’s digital media practice, DialogueMedia, which means I only deal with blogs. We have online campaigns for our clients that go beyond just blogs, of course, but as far as pitching, I only work with bloggers. I try to find as many appropriate bloggers for the story as I can. Depending on the story or client, it can be thirty blogs or it can be thirteen blogs. It takes anywhere from three to six hours to build my media lists, over multiple days, because it takes a long time to weed through all the blogs Technorati and Google Blog Search throws at you. I try to make sure I’m not wasting my time or the blogger’s time. Oftentimes I start my searches by looking for blogs that have already written about the client, to get a sense of who is favorable and who isn’t. I read at least one or two pages of blogs posts because you never know if a blog has switched focuses or has stopped writing altogether. I search for the client’s name to make sure there’s no negative press. Then I craft an email showing I understand what they write about.

Do you separate new media from old? Where do you get your contact information? (Do you use a service, if so, which one if you can share?).

Honestly, I’ve never even used a PR service. But I suppose that’s a good thing, right? I remember doing some extra research for a client using a PR service. I looked up other bloggers in my community. Most of us weren’t listed, which I think shows just how limited those services are for bloggers. I don’t plan on using it again. I get all my contact information from the blog. If there’s no email address then I just move on, which can be very, very frustrating! I swear the bane of my existence is great bloggers who don’t post their email address!

What’s your normal M.O.? (Email, call, Twitter? Do you ever BCC to knock out more than one at a time?)

I’m old-fashioned. I only use email. Once I used Twitter to see if someone would be interested in my email, but we already knew each other. I’ve never called a blogger. I think email is the most convenient method of communication. You don’t have to worry about interrupting anyone. I have never BCC’d anyone. I always use a first name because I like when PR professionals use my first name. If I can’t find a first name, I just say “hello” and introduce myself. People who start letters to me with “Dear Blogger” or “Dear Editor” just seem lazy. If you can find an email address, you can find a name. If it takes a half an hour extra to make sure you don’t get blasted on the Internet, I think it’s worth it!

My advice is to ideally read and participate in every blog you pitch. You shared with me that you don’t, yet have pretty fair success getting through to bloggers. How do you go about the approach?

I think the fact that I don’t pretend to be anything other than what I am is what has helped me. I was at BlogHer last summer, about a month after I started at MWW Group, which is my first job post-college. I was in the session about mommybloggers. A couple other PR professionals were in the session as well, and one of the mothers stood up and she said that she hated when PR professionals started their emails with, “Hey, how was Hawaii?” right before pitching them some product they didn’t even want. I think that being so new to the industry it really made an impact and molded how I view emailing bloggers. I didn’t want them to read my email and think, “Oh, she’s just doing this to get a hit.” I think I would always secretly worry that they would think I didn’t really care and was just doing this for a client.

Flipping the coin a bit, you also blog and do so about an important, yet niche topic — living with Type 1 Diabetes. How long have you been blogging at Lemonade-Life?

I started my blog in July 2005. My first blog was hosted on Blogger, but I moved over to Wordpress last summer so the current archive only has the last year of posts.

Have you been approached by PR folks yet? What’s your reaction to the ones who have reached out? Has anyone pitched you well?

I have been pitched a handful of time about diabetes related news. One woman has done a great job. In this day and age I think it’s important to highlight good work so I want to say she works for MS & L Digital. She emailed me with a simple introduction and explanation of her client and their website. She related it directly to something I was working on. She consistently has brief emails with an explanation about what’s new and offers me to check it out, and her tone is very cheerful. She always says thank you and she signs her emails with a “Cheers!” She seems like a nice person who appreciates and respects me, not just someone who is trying to get through a list. She definitely influenced how I do my pitches.

I only remember two bad pitches. I won’t name names – I’m not a fan of retaliation. One person pitched me on a new drug about type 2 diabetes, while I write about life with type 1 diabetes. I don’t expect most PR pros to know the differences, so I didn’t get that upset. Another person asked me to essentially imagine what it’s like to have diabetes! Cue eye roll. Instead of just complaining about stupid people, I wrote him back and explain my reactions to it. I included a couple of links to bloggers who have done those “top ways to pitch” lists. He thanked me! One blogger down, twelve thousand to go…

What if PR folks representing pharmaceutical companies, non-profits and so-on, or the end client staff members themselves, that might have information valuable to your audience — relevant information about treatments, fund-raisers, new research, etc. — wanted to comment and participate on your blog, how would you react?

Our community was built by people who are living with diabetes – either directly or have a family member with it – and they share deep, personal thoughts and fears about this disease. If someone without diabetes came to my blog and wanted to comment, I would question their motives. If someone commented on my blog under the pretense that they were legitimately a part of the community and then I found out they were paid by a pharmaceutical company and were doing this to gain my “trust,” I would be offended. It’s very fake. Diabetes is a deeply personal disease and it’s not a community you can belong to simply because you read and comment. It confuses me that a PR professional would want to participate in a community that they don’t belong to.

But even if these folks ultimately have an agenda, do not have Type 1 diabetes, but are genuinely interested in the topic because it’s what they work on or with everyday, and you’re a top diabetes blogger, don’t you think it feasible their interest is at least partially genuine?

I know PR agencies and pharmaceutical companies read my blog to learn about their customers and create better campaigns. I understand reading about things on behalf of a client that you don’t necessarily have a personal interest in. I am sure that for every rule there are a hundred exceptions. Honestly, my main concern is that despite a “genuine” interest in a community, it could still be perceived as very contrived and unwelcomed. This goes beyond intention. Asking employees to comment on blogs simply because they are associated with the industry might set them up for a huge backfire, with bloggers saying, “You don’t belong here.” Perception has everything to do with it. My hope is that people will be careful about which blogs they comment on. Maybe parenting or technology blogs are more open, but communities involving an illness or a controversial issue have a lot of trust issues to begin with. The phrase “ultimately has an agenda” raises a huge red flag for me, personally. I often hear other social media experts encouraging people to be “transparent” and “authentic.” There have been so many cases where social media strategies turn out to be less than authentic and unethical, so as a blogger, it concerns me. Participating in an online community shouldn’t be work. You should want to be here. Maybe someone will surprise me.

If you represented a pharmaceutical or even a non-profit launching a new fund-raising initiative related to diabetes research, would you pitch your blog? How would you pitch you?

Of course I would pitch me! I’m awesome! I think the best way to pitch any blogger is to show how the initiative is designed to help me and my audience. Why should I care? Also, be up front about who you are. My opening line is typically introducing my name, where I work and who I represent. Then I talk about the campaign or product and why I think it fits their blog. It’s very similar to most of the PR guidelines that are on the Internet. The only difference is that I wouldn’t say something like, “Congratulations on going to London” or “How’s life in New Jersey?” It doesn’t impress me. What impresses me is relating what you’re talking about to what I talk about.

The PR blacklist movement is in full swing. What are the most important actions PR folks like yourself can do to prevent pissing off a blogger?

Trapanigate just shows how much people need to pay attention. Blacklisting only helps the blacklister, but what you can do to help is listen. You are asking this blogger or reporter to help you, so give them the courtesy and respect to help them. Listen to them. If they tell you something, don’t ignore them or make excuses. Give them a story that matters to them, explain your thinking so even if it doesn’t fit, they know you made an effort, give them resources and last but not least, get their name right.

———-

Allison is obviously a rising star, if not superhero, and happens to work for Tom Biro, who might be a superhero. MWW’s blog is at http://www.openthedialogue.com.

IMAGE: “Me and my boyfriend” by Allison Blass on Flickr. Used with permission.

NOTE: This is a joint piece, co-authored by John Cass and Jason Falls. It is cross-posted on PR Communications and SocialMediaExplorer.com.

The blogosphere has been abuzz this week here and in other places about Gina Trapani’s PR Spammers wiki and the blacklisting of public relations professionals and firms. As the discussions have progressed, we have seen the issue of media database companies and their research practices come into question.

Trapani’s personal email address was listed in Cision, a large, subscription-based data service that provides contact information, editorial subject matters, editorial calendars and even preferred pitching techniques on hundreds of thousands of media members to subscribers, mostly PR folks. Trapani doesn’t mind being pitched at her Lifehacker.com address and the wiki is for those who reached out to her personal account.

Where did Cision get the email? Why was there not information indicating the appropriate way to reach Gina?

Heidi Sullivan of Cision spoke with Jason on Tuesday. The answers, candid and forthcoming, are such:

“Having her personal email listed was our mistake,” Sullivan said. “Our practices are to always contact the journalist first. If we’re able to verify the information from a public source, we do. Unfortunately, a research editor didn’t read through the information about which to use to pitch her properly. We found it and fixed it. We also had a huge team meeting to address that and make sure our researchers are very cautious on what they’re utilizing. We had the wrong email address listed. If we have an error in our database, we strive to correct it immediately.”

Sullivan went on to also offer that Cision lists over 900,000 contacts and has a little over 50 people charged with updating them. Things will slip through the cracks. They made the mistake and are owning up to it. They’ve claim to have gone further and contacted Trapani to inform her of the mistake and have given her Lifehacker’s entire listing to review. Good for them. For the record, Trapani says she contacted Cision first. (Italics added after initial publication.)

This lone issue aside, we surmise that the evolving environment of traditional vs. new media and the lack of ethics and standards within the general field of media (thanks to the introduction of the unrestrained genre of blogs and other social media content providers) presents an opportunity. The media database firms have an opportunity now to assess the marketplace, the environment and perhaps take proactive steps to improve their service to clients, the client’s service to media members and also their ultimate end clients.

We have ideas on why mistakes like Cision’s Trapani oversight happened, where the disconnect lies and what we can do to make the media databases, public relations and, yes, even bloggers/journalists better.

What We Think Happens

Media databases (like Cision, Burrell’s Luce, Gebbie Press, Vocus and Marketwire) are paid a fee to provide clients with as much information about media members as possible. From contact information to staff listings and editorial calendars, you should be able to login, research and know who and how to pitch a certain outlet by using the service. While ultimately the responsibility lies with the PR professional to do the research and pitch appropriately, the information provided by the media database can affect the effectiveness of the pitch.

Because traditional media outlets are conditioned that in order to be a legitimate media outlet you subject yourselves to public relations outreach – you have an audience, people outside your publication want to reach that audience through advertising or potentially free methods like PR – the media databases gather contact information under the assumption the outlet understands contact will occur. While the approach varies, few actually ask permission to list the contact information in the database, only reach out to confirm contact information is accurate.

Unfortunately, when there’s a lot of work to do, corners get cut. Pull the email address off the website. It’s accurate – the outlet put it there. Done. But there is no effort to ensure it is the right email address to use and for what purpose. This has probably happened at all the media research firms on multiple occasions.

Where The Disconnect Lies

The scenario above is likely considered every day business by media database firms because the traditional media have become used to dealing with mass outreach. PR folks sometimes have to reach thousands of media members at once. Blanket emails are the most efficient way to do that. The old media have become complicit in the underlying problem. While they are just as annoyed as new media, they don’t know how to react. When one came along who understood the culture of the web and the dynamics of community participation – Wired magainze’s Chris Anderson – the environment, and thus the rules began to change.

Now new media, like bloggers, are standing up and saying, “We don’t want to be approached this way. It’s noisy, ineffective and inefficient.” Bloggers are technically raising the bar for old school media members by telling public relations professionals and media database companies that the old way of doing business is the old way of doing business.

The PR blacklists have been the communications method of choice for this new journalist. Fair or not, public relations professionals are taking note. We think the media database companies need to as well and begin to provide better information, perhaps even segment information better to provide their clients with more effective outreach recommendations for media, both new and old.

Now Let’s Solve The Problem

Talk seldom solves problems. But it leads to action that does. Here are our suggestions on what can be done.

Media database companies need to:

• Develop an industry protocol as to the method by which they gather media contact data.
• Develop a tracking history of how media contact information has been gathered. This may only comprise of adding an additional field that describes the method of gathering (e.g. – Journalist updated information, permission granted from outreach to journalist, etc.)
• Check the facts and ask the permission of journalists and bloggers to use their contact data, or document publicly available website where contact procedure is available from the journalist or blogger. Provide a link to the journalist’s or bloggers preferred method of contact.
• Set up a data updates hotline, telephone number or email address for each company, for the updating of information from bloggers and journalists.
• Start a industry education process called “the community taskforce to stop bad pitches,” the community taskforce will educate database users on the limits of databases, and steps to avoid mishaps, and educate journalists & bloggers on the steps they can take on their own websites to publicize how they can educate people on the preferred method of contacting them.

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson of the “For Immediate Release,” podcast have agreed to host a community live podcast on this topic with members of the media database industry, PR professionals and media people invited. In the meantime, what other suggestions might we make to the database companies to facilitate better information gathering? Since the responsibility to pitch appropriately is on the shoulders of the PR professional, what can the database companies do to help educate them as to how to effectively use the data? Is it even their responsibility to do so? What roles can PRSA and IABC play in this equation?

The comments are yours.

I’m a PR guy by trade and, in light of recent developments in the PR-bashing arena, am suggesting a list of blacklisted bloggers. These folks are performing the largely unfair, wholly unprofessional, shortsighted and, frankly, ignorant practice of outing public relations professionals who don’t pitch them well. Here’s my suggested starter list. You’ll notice it’s a list comprised of people who consider themselves bloggers, but are also considered journalists or blog for websites large enough to make an argument for said title.

• Gina Trapani, Lifehacker
• Chris Anderson, Wired
• Matt Haughey, MetaFilter (honorary member)

I’m not saying public relations professionals don’t need a wake up call on the stayed and stale practices of copy-paste pitching. I’m not saying there aren’t unethical hacks out there who should shape up or ship out.

I am saying that a journalist (or a blogger for that matter) who publicly humiliates someone just trying to do their job – even poorly – or goes a step further by declaring that person’s employer on a permanent banned list is performing the adult (though not mature) equivalent of Chris Hargensen ordering up buckets of pigs blood to be dumped on Carrie White at prom.

Geoff Livingston is a friend and fellow public relations pro who seems to agree with me.

My biggest beef is this: Public relations professionals most often serve a valuable purpose for media members, including bloggers. They provide access and useful information about their clients or companies. Without them most stories that entertain and enrich the public through traditional media and many on blogs would go untold. The others would have half-assed information.

For Gina, Chris and Matt (almost) to say, “One person … Jane Smith, the 23-year-old newbie who doesn’t know any better but I’m publicly and forever humilitating because I’m an almighty and powerful journalist/blogger person, bwahahahahahah! … from a firm sent me a pitch that didn’t catch my attention, therefore your company is forever considered a spammer and won’t make the consideration set,” is unfair to the individual, the company, its clients, its future clients and, most importantly, their own audiences.

My suggestion is that by declaring these media members or bloggers unfit for pitching, they are the ones who will ultimately pay the price as they cut their audiences off from the world of valuable information public relations professionals provide them.

What if a company Lifehacker routinely covered or highlighted in their posts were represented by a firm on her banned list? Oh, wait. Ogilvy, one of the most respected PR firms in the world, is on there. LG Electronics is their client. Guess Gina won’t be using info from LG anymore.

What if Steve Jobs hired Ogilvy one day? Would Gina backtrack and accept emails from them? If she’s not a moron, yes. Hope she knows how to re-white list people and if she does, that she’ll publicly admit reinstating PR firms into good graces.

For the record, I know firms like Ogilvy, Shift Communications and Future-Works, all on the banned list, are very committed to best practices in blogger outreach. But because of the short-sighted cruelty of the triumvirate above, if they hold true to their word, are forever banned from doing their jobs, and without the opportunity to make amends or draw retribution. Even if PR firms followed my unrealistic notion of blacklisting journalists, their clients would suffer, so it’s not an option.

I’ve had the good fortune to sit on both sides of the aisle in the media/blogger vs. PR pitch person relationship. I’ve even been a real, full-fledged journalist, not just a blogger, and at a large media operation. In the noisy world that is PR pitches, it’s easy to get frustrated, especially with the bad ones. But starting a public embarassment wiki is below the belt and unneccessary. It’s the kind of thing that feasibly could negatively effect people’s careers or a company’s ability to earn business.

And, as it turns out, Gina Trapani’s personal email address is listed in Cision’s media database, meaning she and/or Lifehacker have volunteered to put her on outreach lists. It doesn’t excuse bad pitching, but she kinda asked for it and now wants to humiliate those she gave permission to. Sad. (NOTE: Graph added after initial publishing.)

NOTE ON PREVIOUS GRAPH: As we’ve reported in a subsequent post, Cision admitted making the mistake of adding the incorrect email address for Ms. Trapani. As such, the previous comment from me was based on incorrect information. I still think humiliating PR firms and folks is bad form, but she didn’t do it with the insinuated contradiction.

Does PR have a long way to go? Yes. Do many public relations professionals need to learn that reaching out in the digital world demands relevance, personalization and relationship-building? Yes. (I would argue reaching out in the traditional world demands that, too, by the way.)

But is it cool for journalists or bloggers to publicly humiliate those with pitches that are bad, hastily done or perhaps even just ones the journalists don’t like? Hell no.

On Media Pitching

The immediate predecessor to this blog was one called The Straight Pitch. The original premise was for journalists and bloggers everywhere to fill out a simple form explaining how they liked to be pitched. Several outstanding media members participated. I gave up on the premise after recording over 2,000 custom asks of media members and bloggers to tell the world how they like to be pitched and notching a success rate of less than one percent. While I didn’t approach Chris, Gina or Matt in that array of 2,000 approaches, journalists aren’t really interested in helping with the problem. The recent attacks on PR firms and folks by the three amigos above is further evidence of that.

I’ve also written some pointers on how to appropriately approach bloggers, including a case study for everyone to comment on, here.

IMAGE: Gina Trapani by Will Pate on Flickr.

• PR Roundtable Discussion: Outing Bad PR [via Zemanta]
• The Growing Backlash Against PR Spam, And The Rationale For MicroPR [via Zemanta]
• Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations [via Zemanta]

Every time someone brings up the term “social advertising” the anal retentive word smith in me starts picking it apart. Social advertising doesn’t accurately describe banners or images that appear based on what the site knows about you. An ad for Seth Godin’s latest book showing up on my Amazon.com login screen because the site knows I dig marketing stuff is contextual or what I would term false-intuitive advertising. (False because no matter how much database you have on my brain, you don’t have my brain which at that moment might be on a Terry Pratchett kick.)

And, no matter what Mark Zuckerberg says, what Facebook tries with friend-spy isn’t social advertising. At its worst, it’s privacy invasion. At best, it’s tattle-telling.

Further, an advertisement that is so compelling, so unique and so engaging you would tell your friend about it over lunch (”Dude! Did you see the new GoPhone Meat Loaf ad with his teenage son lip syncing and head bopping? Glad I wasn’t eating when I did. It’s like an invitation to vomit.”) isn’t social advertisement, either. It’s word of mouth marketing.

Oh, it’s online? Then it’s word of mouse marketing.

But still, people are trying. MediaForge has a fairly neat development they claim puts conversation in conversational media. It’s a display ad (a banner or box advertisement) that on roll-over becomes an interactive widget. The example shown here is one for Skullcandy headphones and related accessories. It’s pretty cool and fairly useful. You can even clickety-click and the widget is on your desktop so you can track deals, always have the search function handy, etc. Other uses include tabs for the widget that contain video players, interactive games and so on. In addition to pulling the widget onto your desktop, you can also place it on the profile pages of your social networks.

Pardon the interruption for a moment, but would someone please tell me why advertisers think anyone is going to muddy up their Facebook or MySpace profile with a flippin’ advertisement for them? Are you giving me money for me hocking your wares? No. So stop acting like this is a selling point. If I’m a brand enthusaist of yours, I’ll put your logo, or product shot, tastefully done, on my page, but that’s it. Give me a badge to wear that makes me proud, not a flashing neon light that says, “I’m a big dope who LOVES this crap so much I’m gonna try and hock it to my friends.”

Sorry. Get carried away sometimes. (And yes, I know I just embedded one in my blog, thus defeating my argument. No one said I was always smart. But I’m the only one with the password!)

MediaForge claims this nifty little gadget adds a social dimension to banner ads. It doesn’t. But it could.

First, let’s define social. According to Dictionary.com, the top definition is, “pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.” The other definitions all say essentially the same thing.

Where is the friendly companionship or relations in MediaForge’s nifty widget ad banner clickety thing? I can send it to my friends? Then I’m social, not the ad. That’s word-of-mouth (or mouse). So what would make this little number truly social? If the pop-up either is or contains a tab for a live chat with a customer service rep or even other consumers logged into that companies chat rooms, then the ad is social.

But there’s still the interruption mechanism that drives it. I don’t have to roll over the ad. I don’t have to even notice it. In fact, because I’m a savvy web user, I probably wouldn’t if I happened on a page containing one. So there are social elements happening within this little micro site the ad brought me to, but the ad still has to get me there and isn’t social.

Can an advertisement be, at it’s base level, truly social? Maybe one day.

Imagine logging on to your favorite blog. Its server knows your IP address and reads your cookie. Based on public data it has gathered, it displays a banner advertisement that is a chat window with a picture of a laptop computer, let’s say it’s a Mac. The prompt, both text and voice then says and types, “Hello Jason. Welcome back to ReadWriteWeb. We noticed from your Twitter feed you’re shopping for a new laptop. We know you’re a PC guy, but we think you would love the experience of owning a Mac. Can we answer any questions for you?”

And, being an ad for Mac, the damn thing would spit out a plane ticket to Guyana and serve you the Kool Aid right there in the comfort of your own home.

(I’m kidding. I love Macs. I just like to kid. Please stop trying to burn down my house. I have the license plate numbers of all the Volkswagens in town.)

Until the technology and/or the staffing is available for highly interactive, highly personal experiences within an advertisement, they won’t be social. But just in case I’m wrong, please pass this blog post on to your friends.

Thanks to Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog for the inspiration for this post.

If there’s one social media tool, or more appropriately, one technological advancement which enhances social media I am beholden to above all others, it’s RSS. Really Simple Syndication redefined web surfing for me. I’m convinced it can do the same for the rest of the world, whenever they come around to it. I’m even happy to spread the joy.

Using RSS and an RSS reader, however, can become overwhelming. There are lots of websites, blogs, news feeds and the like I want to monitor. My role as a social media strategist for brands through my agency demands I stay on top of the advertising and marketing world, as well as the categories in which my brands compete. My role as a blogger is part journalist, so I feel like I should be up to speed on lots of different topics. And then there’s the content I monitor because I just want to. Last week, after nearly six months of hoarding feeds, I looked up and had 379 subscriptions. It’s not Scoble-esque, but way too much.

I’ve offered up thoughts before on how to manage your feed reading time but what do you do when you’ve over-indulged on subscriptions? Here’s how I cut 379 subscriptions down to under 200, only 85 of them personal and blog-related, and have made my RSS experience more efficient.

1. Reassess Every Feed – While looking at some of my Google Reader Trends helped me delete several stale and seldom read feeds, I really did this in an unconventional, but thorough way. I made a migration of all my non-client or work-related feeds to a different feed reader. I was using Google Reader as my primary consumption point, and still recommend it to clients and newcomers to the RSS experience. But I moved anything personal or blog-life related to Netvibes. In doing so, I opened up each feed in Google Reader and asked the following questions:
   1. Glancing at the headlines, are these posts I’m really interested in or find useful?
   2. Are these topics covered on other blogs by more experienced or credible authors?
   3. In the time I’ve subscribed, have I been drawn to stop and read something or click through and comment?

   If my answers were yes, no, yes, I copied and pasted the feed to Netvibes. The only exceptions were 2-3 close friends I don’t want to get caught not having read. I was very careful and conservative in the approach. When in doubt, the feed got cut. If that blog becomes more relevant, I’ll find it again.

2. Use Different Readers For Personal vs. Professional Reading – This approach is smart for a couple of reasons. First, you can separately manage two categories of feeds much easier than one big one. Second, you can avoid the temptation and trap of personal feed reading at work, making you more productive and efficient where it counts.When I migrated to Netvibes, I only did so for feeds I consider personal or Social Media Explorer-related. While certainly this blog is a compliment and related to my work, I do much of my blogging from home and would continue reading the feeds whether I continue to have a job or not. My Google Reader still has about 100 feeds or so I keep track of for clients or so I can stay abreast of what is happening in their industry.
3. Where Possible, Combine And Filter Feeds Using Yahoo Pipes and AideRSS – I’m presently in the process of doing this with those 100 or so work feeds, so I’ll have to report back on nuts and bolts of it all. However, I’ve done sufficient research and discussed at length with RSS Zen Master Marshall Kirkpatrick, so I’m confident in the process.When you have multiple feeds from one category (Like alcohol, wine and spirits blogs I subscribe to for Beam Global Spirits and Wine.) but you really only want to find the relevant, popular and widely-read posts, AideRSS allows you to process feeds through its PostRank filtering. Then you can subscribe to the most popular posts, rather than all of them. By first driving all those alcohol, wine and spirits blogs through Yahoo Pipes, I can mash any number of feeds into one, filter that one through AideRSS and get the most popular blog posts from 30 blogs in one feed, leaving the lesser-read posts behind.This philosophy also makes it easier to keep up with those annoying, 20-30 post per day blogs. Running sites like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and others (no offense guys, you just crank out a lot of stuff to keep up with) through filtration, you weed out the good from the eh. And we could all use a little less eh, right? (And yes, Gabe, I subscribe to Techmeme, which filters a lot of that stuff out for me. Just don’t want to miss too much.)

So what functionality will I miss in Google Reader? Shared items are offered in a feed of their own which can be used on your blog as relevant additonal content. My “What I’m Reading” section (scroll down, far right sidebar) is my Google Reader shared items. I’ve not found a way to subscsribe to my public activity feed in Netvibes (suggestion for the NV team!) but del.icio.us tags are more powerful and can be used similarly, eliminating the need for shared items beyond bringing the attentions of your Google Reader friends to certain posts.

I also normally used Google Reader’s search functionality to proffer my list of “Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting” I normally tag on to each post. I figure if similar posts relevant to what I’m writing aren’t found in my subscriptions, why recommend them. Well, I can search all posts in Netvibes as well, but two newer features I’ve begun using more on my blog are the Sphere related content plugin you see at the end of the post and Zemanta’s contextual analysis and recommendation tool. As Zemanta gets better, it will go out and find those related posts with a higher degree of frequency than the two-month-old tool currently offers.

Beyond that, the only adjustment will be the aesthetics. While Netvibes is prettier to look at, I enjoy the flexibility of Google Reader in showing all feeds together, by folder or by feed.

The key to the success of this is to only add subscripitons that will meet the questions posed in step No. 2 above perfectly. If I fail there, I guess I’ll have to migrate somewhere else. (Bloglines people can refrain from bugging me about it. You’re next.)