Correction: Spammenters*
Shame, shame, shame. I realize Social Media is the new black in the art of PR, but how irritating is this? Tammy Erickson, our in-house workforce guru, published a post today on women’s progress in the workplace on her Harvard Business School discussion leader blog. Her first comment was from Ms. Kimberly Rosenberg who lavishes her with praise then notso deftly segues into how she is using Microsoft Office Live for Small Business (no hyperlinks intended) to increase her productivity.
I sleuthed around online on Ms. Rosenberg, and it appears she has left virtually the same comment on at least 4 other blogs in the past few weeks. Ewwww.
http://www.blissfullydomestic.com/2008/04/an-organized-ho.html
http://experts.internetbasedmoms.com/aurelia/finding-balance-as-a-wahm
http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2008/04/24/why-arent-there-more-rich-women-entrepreneurs/
Microsoft Office Live for Small Business product management– what are you thinking? So blatant an attempt to hawk your wares? Buy an ad. There are right ways and wrong ways to engage the blogosphere. Please start feeding any number of the excellent social media blogs that will instruct you on how to do this right. If Ms. Rosenberg works for a PR agency, send her to social media school. Or send her to start doing some homework here (Chris Brogan) and here (Brian Solis).
The smoking gun:
*Update: Thanks to Lara Kretler, the best term to describe this practice is “spammenting.”
We had exactly the same experience, at first we were happy that microsoft left a comment at http://www.thextweb.org and our new business magazine for female internet heroes, http://www.thenextwomen.com then we replied and nothing came about. we looked at linkedin etc. and now we feel a little bit strange about it. Microsoft want more women involved, we want to help them to reach these women and now they don’t reply…..
I did think it was odd she left such detailed sales-type comments on my site http://www.entrepreMusings.com. I allowed them because as Larak mentioned above she seemed to be trying to participate in the conversation. I don’t think they are going to be that effective in attracting women entrepreneurs to work with them that way, but it is certainly one way to get the word out. I think Microsoft will have to do much more than leave comments on blogs to get people (or in this case women entrepreneurs) to get involved. Now, if they offered me free PR help/hours and visible cross promotion help, then I would definitely get involved! 🙂
I think Ms.Rosenberg is not alone. I was looking at this post http://silkcharm.blogspot.com/2008/03/women-in-business-behind-veil.html where Tanya Middleton was trying to be “helpful”.
@Paul. I tried emailing Ms. Rosenberg. The link (mailto) on her signature links to– guess where? The Office Live Small Business web site. Try it. I looked her up on LinkedIn and found it could possibly be someone at DBB NY, but could not confirm it was the same person. Let’s hope she has a vanity alert set. Maybe she’ll leave me a comment? At some point, you can’t blame this woman, it’s kind of like teenage driving, yes? I fault Microsoft for permitting this online behavior.
It comes at an ironic time for Microsoft as they’ve been all over the web lately proselytizing how they “get 2.0.” See Bill Gates this week on how “adoption of social networking-type applications within companies would drive the next generation of business software and growth.” http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200805141324DOWJONESDJONLINE000791_FORTUNE5.htm Of course he’s talking about SharePoint and not OLSM, but in this case, Microsoft’s brand is tarnished with the same brush.
It’s very common for certain Social Media guys to reTweet the same message with a link over and over.
Did you send Kimberly an email?
You’re right, that is pretty blatantly a commercial. You can tell she’s at least trying to read and participate in an authentic way, but she’s just not quite getting it. At least she admits that she works with Microsoft (proof that she’s at their PR agency – we always say we work “with” clients not for them when pitching). It would be far worse without that in the closing!
Thanks for posting this, I’ll definitely be sharing this with other PR folks as we all try to improve our craft. And by the way, “Social media is the new black in the art of PR” is the best line EVER. When I first read it, I thought it said “Social media is the new black art in PR” and I suppose one could make that case, too.
Wow! That’s just poopy, really. I mean, if the blog post was maybe about software that moms used to get back more of their day or something, but yikes. Not exactly what we mean when we say “engage in the conversation.”