As you may know, I have been down in New Orleans for the last few days for an event we held last Thursday and also to attend this year’s New Orleans JazzFest which just wrapped up yesterday. While on the festival fairgrounds on Saturday, I took the opportunity to seek out the “Media Relations Tent” to perhaps see what was going on there and which of my old friends I might meet again. Instead, I came away with a simple story, some lessons, and some practical advice I would like to share with you.

I was fortunate enough to have a few minutes to speak with Matthew Goldman, the Press & Advertising Director for New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and ask him what, if anything they were doing to deal with Bloggers as citizen journalists. I was very clear that I was not asking this because I was hoping to get some special privileges, but because I wanted to get an understanding of their view on “how to handle bloggers“. His simple answer, “Nothing. We already have to turn down too many photojournalists and others who want access as it is.”

I understand his perspective. Which of the attendees would not want special access privileges to one of the biggest music festivals in the country. I can imagine there would be lots of people trying to take advantage of their ability to publish to their Blog in order to get ‘on the inside’. This is seemingly a constant battle for media relations people. It is certainly a known problem with traditional events such as shareholders meetings and conferences. There is always too much to be done and too little time so we must choose where to spend our scarce resources. With everything going on post-Katrina, it was hard enough to deal with all of the ‘real’ influentials out there with platforms like the Times and the Post - Bloggers are simply not the highest priority when you need to worry about where your favorite volunteers are now living.

Mr. Goldman said they had received hundreds of requests from Bloggers who wanted to get special access. Since he was busy taking care of his responsibilities for the day, I did not get a response as to what they did with those inquiries our of respect for his time. I did, however, ask him if they had even considered doing something special for Bloggers to make them feel more welcome or to improve their experience at JazzFest. His answer was simply “No.” While he was very cordial and responsive and respectful to me given how busy he was, you could tell that Bloggers did not really matter to him. It seemed he did not give Bloggers a second thought, except perhaps to be annoyed by how often they kept contacting him.

Still, it is my perspective that this was a golden opportunity lost on their part, and a lesson for all communications professionals who handle events on behalf of your clients.

The fact that hundreds of Bloggers contact you about an event is a big clue that you should do something about it - to come up with a publicly stated policy on the matter other than a traditional press policy. Any time an organization gets more than a handful of requests for conversation about a given topic, it is worthy of attention. When the requesters have a platform to speak to others about you and your handling of that request, even more so - regardless of their potentially limited impact. From my perspective, it is simply a matter of respect. How much you respect that person can vastly influence the amount of respect and tolerance they give you, your event and your organization.

I suggested to Mr. Goldman that they could have perhaps just done something a little extra, to make the Bloggers feel like they belonged, that they had some value and deserved that respect. While he was well within his rights to be dismissive given the situation, I think this is something that needs to be corrected in the future. Blogger Relations should be as much of a required communications channel as a press release or press conference. Either invite the Bloggers into the tent to hold the conversations alongside traditional journalists and really dig deep into the story or handle them differently using separate but equal methods.

Jazzfest could have had a BloggerFest each weekend. This town knows how to party - I am sure it would not have been that hard to setup. As we know from personal experience, all it takes is a location and an invitation - the Bloggers would have ended up practically organizing themselves from there. The feeling of inclusion and value that would be derived from belonging to a special community would be invaluable for the Bloggers and for the event coordinators in terms of the positive experiences that would be had and the petty little problems that would be solved by access to information. This could also have been accomplished with a simple extension of what they were already offering traditional journalists in terms of power outlets, desks and Internet access. They could have even gotten a few donated/sponsored terminals so that Bloggers could do some live blogging from the event and upload photos for their friends to be remote voyeurs on the event via Flickr. It is all about word of mouth and they could have gotten numerous additional positive mentions, which would bring in even more people next year and ensure that many others would come back again.

You don’t need to give them full access to backstage areas and all those other reporter perks. But to give them a special badge that would allow them to bring their high end digital cameras legitimately into the festival would be a huge step in the right direction. As part of the Blogger pass, they could have required each registered photographer and/or Blogger to use a Creative Commons license and/or allow the JazzFest Foundation to repurpose their photographs and articles for promoting next year’s festival. This alone would be one reason to embrace Bloggers - the extra content they create and the permission to reuse it by forming a relationship with them.

I can personally assure you that this sense of ‘inclusion in something special’ makes a huge impact on the quality of the experience. My friends and I were fortunate enough to have passes to the W Hotels hospitality tent and on more then one occasion someone remarked to me how being able to stop into the tent to sit down, grab a FREE beer and use clean restrooms made the day so much better. So much so that he lead off our recent phone call this afternoon by thanking me for getting everyone passes (we stayed at the W French Quarter this trip).

People are already saying good things and bad things about you - the fact that they are doing it in the Blogosphere may not matter to you at all since you are too busy to manage what you already must do, but that does not diminish the need to do something. The point is that this is an opportunity that could potentially become a problem when it need not be. I have not had time to go through all the JazzFest posts as they keep pouring in, but I suspect they will be pretty positive all around - who wants to talk badly about New Orleans these days anyway? So given the situation, I understand Mr. Goldman’s decision to ignore the Bloggers - I just wish he could have seized upon the opportunity to turn some of the happy Bloggers/Customers into RAVING FANS by doing a little something extra for them.

To the question of “How to handle Bloggers?” I respond simply “With respect.” They may not have the reach of a Washington Post reporter, but they do have the potential to make an impact on someone who does. So next time you are planning an event or a project, take a few moments and come up with a strategy for handling Bloggers in a way that respects them as people who publish - regardless of their reach. You need not give away the farm to them, but at least figure out a way to embrace them as someone who cares enough about what you do to invest time into telling others about it.

Queue out to Aretha Franklin “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me…”

We gathered quite a few stories and several personal experiences that have provided some real insights into what is going on down there and what may be needed to rebuild not just the houses, but the community.

Categories: Blogging, User Generated Content, Events, Media Relations, Blogger Relations