Dear General Mills,
I am not sure I would make statements like this anymore:
Overall, the program resulted in 5 million total impressions and over 8,000 comments with no media costs. (General Mills does not buy ads on blogs, Witt said.)
1) First off, Mr. Witt (Can I call you Dimwitt? Oh, your used to it? Great.) You do buy ads on blogs. Or you employ companies that buy ads on blogs….I know because you owned a space on my blog for a mere $500 a month for a span of 3 months. You know that whole Fruit Rollups campaign? Hello, down here, measly blog you purchased on. So your either lying or ignorant of your own statements. Either way…not so flattering. Get out of your leather chair, join twitter, and realize you’re a moron. Kthanxbai.
2) Number two…Making an official statement like this is beyond me. The whole article comes off as a slap in the face to bloggers. You clearly claim that the 5 million hits from the blogs you got for sending out some $3 can of yogurt have larger circulation to many (ah hem-currently dying) newspaper circulations, but also state you had no media costs. Thanks for the wake-up call, I appreciate that. (want to tell General Mills how you feel? Go here)
Listen up you corporate pigs: If you keep talking crap about the hand that blogs for you, pretty soon bloggers are going to wise up and stop being taken advantage of. In fact, you should not just be employing PR, who by the way still send pitches like “Dear Tammy” “Dear (Fill in the name)” and “I would love for you to blog about this motorcycle” to our blog, you should be employing a professional blogger or a blogging team to school you on what your doing wrong and how to start doing it right. My consult fee starts at $75 an hour, which is cheaper than my ad costs, toss me an email. But not you General Mills. Your fee is $125 an hour because I have a feeling I am going to have to talk slower.
Bloggers, Read this article, GET A CLUE and get it fast.
Social media has not passed us. Its not something that started 10 years ago and we are snorting around for some breadcrumbs to feed our empty stomachs. Its the present and its the future. Companies are creating army’s of PR reps and focus groups to deal with US. If we don’t put together some rules on what we are doing with our blogs to work with PR and corporations, we are shooting ourselves in the virtual head.
Stop selling yourself short. You are worth something. This isn’t about disclosure, it’s about business. Your time, your space, your marketing. Bloggers need to understand how many skills they have. Companies would have to hire 10 people to have as much professional knowledge that is floating around our blog. Blogging moms own webcams, video cameras, digital cameras, websites, they create graphics from ground up, slogans, html, scripting, they belong to Ning, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon, and hang on forums with other bloggers. We created these communities of which we live in and are so influential.
WE DID.
No one called me up and said ‘hey trisha, I need you to create an entire community of bad ass bloggers that fall between 25-34 and are women (the buying power of america)“…but I did, and so have you all. Now everyone wants it. Know why? Cause it works. These links, these referrals, these reviews, and these giveaways are powerful. Companies can’t just create a forum and expect us all to show up and swoon over a jar of spaghetti sauce. But a mom can do it.
Unfortunately, right now bloggers are pretty much equivalent to a woman in an abusive relationship that keeps going back over and over again. But not for the kids…..for the freaking yogurt cups.
I think its really awesome that PR and bloggers have met…but they are not meeting in the middle….as a blogger I’m way over here on the left side being smothered-and unpaid. The PR and the corporate offices are pushing products down our throat and it just doesn’t taste that good anymore. It feels like they expect me to not only work for free, but to be happy that someone wants to give me a TV dinner to give away. If you give me that tv dinner in a hotel for 4 in the South of France, I am all ears. If I can go to Walmart and buy it for $3.50, I am insulted.
Maybe its the condescending attitude, maybe its the unappreciation, maybe its the freaking 5 MILLION hits with NO MEDIA costs that piss me off, but bloggers need to virtually unionize and set some personal standards.
Over on the MomDot forum a blogger recently posted that she was pitched by a company and offered a $25 dollar gift card to pick out an item from their site to review. The problem was that 95% of the items cost over $25. so she would be out of pocket. The kicker? They also wanted a YEAR LONG TEXT LINK on her sidebar.
Snort.
Are you done laughing yet?
Of course its not all bad. I have some amazing PR Reps. AMAZING ones. They know who they are. They offer us great opportunities, we are the first ones they contact for paying positions, and they don’t take advantage of who we are. They stick around long enough to realize we have a job, they have a job and it makes us both really happy. Actually, I really do love most of our PR.
But the companies behind the PR have to stop smoking the crack pipe.
Reward us for our loyalty and buy some ads. Send bloggers to conventions. Support the women that support YOUR company. Holy crap, we not only buy from you now, we advertise you for free.
Do you know that MomDot worked with Dyson (which happens to be a product I used and loved well before being a blogger) to create a mom panel that included an opp to test a vacuum and then receive one for free. Dyson did not pay us to do that. They did not pay us for our graphics involved (which another blogger donated to us, a skilled blogger), they didn’t pick up the hosting, they didn’t do one iota of advertising for it. We did. I really wanted to help bloggers have a chance to work with Dyson so I took it. Now when BlogHer came around I asked them for a sponsorship. Nope. Not one penny. Lesson learned for me…Gravy train has left the mashed potato mountain.
My blog is not a charity case that is interested in peddling wares to make myself feel accepted and happy that I was acknowledged . But you can guarantee if you see a giveaway on this site I have a special relationship or reason its here or its an ad space.
These are the ways you can get on my blog:
- 1) You can piss me off
- 2) You can buy editorial or ad space
- 3) You can be a mom company or blogger that I am interested in sharing cause you kick ass
- 4) We can have a mutually beneficial relationship of bartering
That’s it.
You know, come to think of it, maybe the heart problem is stress related. Blog stress related from watching all the bloggy abuse. Someone sue them if I die. Or blog about it and link your text link to “killed a blogger” for me.
Oh, and for the record General Mills …these are no follow links. Hire a blogger and figure out what that means.
~Trisha
Perfectly said and totally a lesson for new bloggers to learn…such as myself.
You have no idea how happy I am that you posted this. I DO think we’re majorly taken advantage of and honestly, I am pretty pissed off about it too. I am sick to death of getting press releases and PR emailing literally saying “blog about this”. I got one about a month ago that I decided to “feature” because I’d worked with her once before and I thought I’d help her out. When I couldn’t get it posted right away (which I never agreed to or gave a date) and the emails starting coming in from the pr rep and her assistant with the same press release over and over again (more than twice a day) as what I assume was a “reminder” I started to get pretty upset. When I wrote back and said sorry I haven’t posted yet, but I will post in the next week (moronic of me to do! why am I apologizing?) and I get an email back saying “sooner than later is always better”…let’s just I was pretty mad and very insulted. This crap happens to some degree all the time and you know I am so thankful for YOU-because of YOU telling it like it is I realize that I am worth way more than that. I meant to tell you that when you posted the Queen of Spain drama but that pissed me off so bad, I couldn’t even type-lol.
I do think we need to have a “standard” among bloggers because if we don’t this crap will keep on happening. What is wrong with us demanding respect for our time and what we’ve built? Seriously, I’m over it…I had already decided that it was time to stop being so nice all of the time and start getting comfortable with the word NO. This is just icing on the cake.
i like short permalinks…LOL
Trisha-admin wrote:
I couldn’t figure out if I missed something in the article, I kept re-reading it, but that is what I think she was referring to.
AMEN!
WELL SAID!!! I have to say that I loved getting those emails at first asking to review something small like a chap stick, but their links are permanently on my site.. which has a lot of traffic on. Cheap advertising and they are treating bloggers like we are peons. I don’t get it.
GREAT post, Trisha!!
Kim @ What’s That Smell? wrote:
well, seriously, 910 bloggers with 5 million hits? ….General Mills is sitting up at corporate laughing in their $900 suits right now calling us stupid. I guarantee it.
Ok, I see what Mel is talking about…the post permalink..
Wow – what a slap in the face.
I’ve turned down many advertisers and have told several to not contact me again. The latest was a company with $150+ products that offered me a $30 GC in exchange for a review.
This is so, so, so important. I learned hard and fast and am slowing becoming more and more assertive with my product. Thanks for this. I hope it reaches many bloggers out there. It is our job, our creative license, what we do…why they seek us out. They won’t offer to pay you unless you ask many times…so go ahead…
Can we do a blog Eulogy for you…..sponsored by General Mills? Just kidding! Love it!! I am still a newbie, but totally agree that even the companies whose products we love and buy still shit all over us.
oooh, I’ve got more…
this comment: Overall, the program resulted in 5 million total impressions and over 8,000 comments with no media costs. should piss off every blogger out there, mom or not. Boasting that bloggers are their “witch with a capital B” is not something we should take lightly. Now I’m not sure the comment wasn’t taken out of context, but regardless, it was printed that way and we should all be shaking our fists at that guy right now.
Valid points, necessary points. I’m not sure unionizing is the way to go (union dues? not when my mortgage just went up) but it’s something to be considered. There do need to be more discussions and dialog on ways for companies, PR and bloggers to meet in the middle.
I fear that for as many people who start to stand up for their time, space and brand that there are others who don’t see what the fuss is about and who will continue to do business as usual, which won’t help matters very much.
I don’t know what the answer is, but starting a discussion is at least a way to get the ball rolling.
PS- If you want bloggers to help you try to start a grassroots campaign, calling them stupid may not be the wisest way to go about it. I like you, but think there was a better way to make your point.
Ha! I’m so glad you made those links “no follow.” Maybe they’ll get smart and pay you to undo that, LOL. And yes, they do have ads on blogs. I use Logical Media and have General Mills ads on my blog quite often!
Way to get your voice out, you blogged it to the other moms around the bloggy world. How is that for advertising? Mom listen to other mom, congrats.
Hallelujah!
Seriously. How many of us are yogurt or cereal whores? I meekly raise my hand but am ashamed to admit it.
Moms are the most influential group on the planet but we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of because it is a whole new world when people are offering you free yogurt or free cereal in exchange for your time. Take on 20 of those opportunities and YOU HAVE NO TIME LEFT. And for what…$40 worth of crap you could live without.
I’m not saying the products aren’t worth talking about, it’s just that we all need to advocate for ourselves and show these brands that WE ARE worth something too.
LOL
Great rant! I hate when companies try to get free advertising, and they do it all the time!
All I can do is laugh at the no follow links comment right now. I CAN”T STOP LAUGHING!