How to run a decent blogger event

This morning, an interview with me went up on Darika's blog, about how PRs treat bloggers. I talk about how bloggers want to be approached by PR companies, and the mistakes that are made (on both sides). But I don't think the issues stop there.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the best PR run blogger event I've ever been to. Run by Nik Thakkar and the guys at JCPR, I was pretty stunned. And drunkenly told them this about a billion times. I'm not going to lie to you, free bubbles does help at events. But the Motorola Milestone event could not have been more brilliant. Why? Because JCPR and Motorola thought about the bloggers they wanted to approach and the event made sense for us.

There was only about ten lifestyle bloggers at the event. We were invited to Home House (hello new favourite swanky club) and met Kathryn Ferguson to talk about the new Motorola phone. After a bit of a chat, some bubbles and a bit of giggling, we got to go and play with our new phone. I had no idea we were getting a shiny new phone, my thoughts on the event were already pretty positive before I realised this. And honestly, I didn't expect anything to replace my beloved iPhone. Heh. That'll teach me to be precious. It's fabulous. The camera rocks (hi auto focus!) it's speedy, the little bing bong message I get when someone DMs me is handy. There's lots of stuff I haven't even played with yet, but I love this phone. I haven't used my iPhone since.


Enough gushing, back to the event. Off we went on a little jaunt into Marylebone to take snaps, slightly tipsy, chatting away. Enjoying ourselves. Talking to people we'd only chatted to on Twitter, catching up with the lovely PRs (how I've not met Nik until now I don't know), having discussions with the client without fifty people trying to do the same.

We go back, share our findings, eat tasty canapes and talk. Actually talk. About the phone, about blogging, about how the phone can help with what we do every single day. And as you can probably tell, I had a great time. But the event was still all about the product. And a bit about silliness.

When bloggers moan about shit events, it's because no one thinks about what we'd really like. Give them a rubbish freebie, some cheap wine and they'll be happy, right? No. Throw fifty bloggers in a room and ignore most of them because you're talking to the ones you deem to be the most influential? No. Give them an hour long Power Point presentation without so much as a cup of tea? Not if you want us to leave or pass out.


There's this notion that bloggers just want free stuff. And I won't lie. Free stuff is awesome. Everyone likes free stuff. Stop being indignant and pretending you don't. But the best events I've been to (Homes4Media are very high up on this list) don't focus around that. I'll pick up a goodie bag on my way out for two reasons: The event was either so good I know there will be awesome things inside that I'll want to write about, or the event was so shit I feel like I need something to make the last two hours of my life not an entire waste.

And of course, there's the food. Please, if your event is a couple of hours long, FEED US. Most blogger events are (rightly) in the evening. If we're at your event, we've probably arrived from work and skipped dinner. If you're not going to feed us, we'll leave. To get food. And we won't listen to your really really long talk because we'll be busy chewing off our own arms.

But the most important thing? The reason you're inviting us. If it's to bump up your numbers, we can tell (because your event is in three hours and the invite talks like we're high up on your list of priorities). If it's because you've told your client they 'really should reach out to bloggers', we'll be able to tell when the client ignores us all night to talk to the Real Journalists. If you run a blogger event, make sure you want bloggers there. Make sure the venue has signal so we can tweet, talk to us, let us ask questions. Don't shove us in a corner. If you do that, we'll retreat, we'll prop up the free bar and talk amongst ourselves. And all we're doing then is costing your client money.

I don't think this stuff is that complicated, but the difference between a good blogger event and a bad one is shocking. I shouldn't be shocked that I'm at a good event. I've actually never been to a bad blogger event run be JCPR/Edelman/Spook so kudos to them. And I'm being slightly unfair about PR events. Most of the time, they just rest in the middle. Nothing very good, nothing very bad. But nothing memorable either. But the majority aren't good. And they should be. Because everyone wins if people go to an awesome event.

I run events for the Qype community, so I know it's like to be on the other side of this. I'm not just bitching for the sake of it. Blogger events are so important to me. Because they stop us living our insular little lives online and get us communicating. As much as I love working online, talking in the real world is more important than sending an email. Making communities work offline is important to me. Building a rapport with something at a good event will always be more important to me than a perfectly targetted email. Call me idealistic, but I'd really really like it if at some point down the line both were happening.

Thanks so much to Motorola for my snazzy Milestone phone (yes, all of these photos were taken that night), and for being lovely hosts. And thanks to Nik and the JCPR team for organising such a wonderful event.