Run a newspaper? Who is enemy number one? Craig Newmark. Why? Craigslist. Free classified ads have taking a painful bite out of newspaper’s revenues. Now Craig has announced that he is going to launch a citizen journalism project that will mirror the "wisdom of the masses" strategy offered by Craigslist. Should newspapers worry? Nah, it will never work… Craigslist is just a fad… Everyone wants to pay for ads… [via]
John Moore asks, "Who are the ad creeps behind this ad creep? Parking Stripe Advertising are the creeps." Wonder how much Home Depot is making?
Another interesting installment of a good discussion over at Shel Israel’s Naked Conversations blog. (Note: we’re finishing up a read of Naked Conversations — the crackerjack business blogging book by Israel and Robert Scoble. Much to talk about there.) Shel has been having a conversation since the BlogOn conference about whether or not blogging integrates with other marketing tactics. Shel says ‘no’ here, and here, and here.
If blogging integrates, it does so with a company’s constituencies, not with the remainder of marketing tools. Marketing should use blogs because blogs communicate well in two directions. They don’t work well when the intent is to push out messages in one direction. They don’t work well for companies that still don’t want to listen to customers.
This does not mean that company bloggers should not collaborate and/or cooperate with marketing and PR.
Others, like Evelyn Rodriguez, Steve Rubel, Dave Taylor and Todd Watson think absolutely that marketing outreach can include blogging. The issue here is the way in which Shel is thinking of (capital I) Integrated Marketing. If, as he suggests, that integration means generating a tight set of messages and pushing that same ‘campaign’ out through various channels (a la the Lincoln Fry blog), then, sure, that’s a dubious use of a blog. Not really an attempt to generate dialogue, but simply a cheap posting tool in the hopes of creating the next ‘viral’ hoo ha.
If, instead, a blog or set of blogs is loosely joined (paging David Weinberger, you’re needed, David Weinberger) to other marketing programs, there is a huge chance for the blog to inform and shape those efforts in a more organic, powerful way. Open sourcing the marketing. Rather than getting corpspeak in my blog, what if we get blog dialogue into our marketing? I don’t think you have to go whole hog (as Tara Hunt has done) and say ‘the marketing program is to blog‘. (But if the buyout rumors are correct it seems to have worked for Riya.)
The San Antonio paper has a story covering the Blogging Enterprise conference we presented at a few weeks ago. Good snippets included from lots of the panelists, including:
Corporations that use blogs correctly have found them effective ways to communicate with customers, employees and the public, said Shel Israel, author of "Naked Conversations," a blog and a soon-to-be-published book on corporate blogging.
Once companies start blogging, they start listening to people more, they stop shoving information to customers and they start building products and services that people want, he said.
Small and midsize businesses have adopted blogging much more rapidly than large companies, said Paul Walker, co-producer of the Blogging Enterprise conference.
"It takes large companies more time to adopt these kinds of ideas and determine the benefits and sell them to the company," Walker said.
Companies that use blogs improve their ranking on Google and Yahoo search engines, and that’s appealing because consumers increasingly turn to the Internet to find products and services they need, Walker said.
"It lets them talk directly to the marketplace," Walker said.
Additional thoughts on Alex’s post yesterday about billboard advertising for blogs. Of course, putting up a billboard is going to drive some traffic to your blog. Certainly boost awareness. Just like the earlier post about TV advertising having an impact — it ‘works’, but not nearly as well as it used to, and not even close to the kind of cost and attention returns gained by more targeted online means. It’s not a question of if DallasBlogs should run a board to announce their new alternative media project to the general audience it’s designed for. (Scott’s already said that that is how he is getting the majority of his new visitors.) Also, this is an outlier example because the very nature of blogging & DIY media projects is in the bootstrapping, grassroots outreach approach. Media buys are simply contra to this type of project, not that there can’t be some integration, though that’s a whole other post.
Rather, I’m trying to hone in the most effective means of introducing new blogging projects and organically attracting the right types of readers. When the Slidell Hurricane Damage blog was in full operation during the month after the storm, it generated pretty good data about how people discover content and where readers come from. While all sorts of media outlets covered the blog (I think there were three days of CNN blog segments that mentioned the URL and talked about what we were doing), I never saw traffic and activity increase as a result. Much more powerful, actually, was when someone would post a link in a hurricane forum, reblog it on their own site, or choose to syndicate our information as part of a running round up of storm reports. I just think offline requires too much of an action step for them to remember your URL and visit when they are finally back at the machine. You’re after the one-click pitch, I think.
So, if I had to make a working list of the best blog promotion modes right now, I’d list:
The system tends to feed itself. Other bloggers link to you, raising your profile, generating more search results for you, pulling you into more conversation, suggesting new posts, which create more links, etc. It’s a constant process, one which repays close attention, sharing, and savvy. It’s a great way to help a small brand generate a more powerful reach than it ever could via a clumsy, inefficient outlet like an outdoor board.
Elizabeth Lawley captured David Weinberger’s opening remarks at the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture the other day. The part that really caught my eye was a recounting of the social aspect of these do-it-yourself media tools:
Tosses out a list of tools (wikis, weblogs, email, IM, etc), then asks what these things have in common?
- they connect people to people
- they tend to be relatively low-tech, small, bottom-up, inexpensive
- very human, suffused with human voice
Key points: using these simple, inexpensive tools, you can make real connections with the right people for your business. It’s not without some risk, and there’s a learning curve involved, naturally. But the rewards are great. Yes, there is hype, but there are also really valuable connections to make.
When he was starting Groove Networks, Ray Ozzie kept one of the top exec blogs. A natural for a leader in collaborative software, right? I’m pleased to say that Ray is following up on his mondo Web 2.0 memo from a few weeks ago by restarting his blog, this time as the CTO for Microsoft. Why does someone such a huge task devote time to blogging? Ray says:
As in the past, it’s not my intent to be pitching our products here. We’ve got plenty of mechanisms – old school and new – that work well for that sort of thing. But to the extent that I’m excited about something, or I think there might be a different angle that you might be interested in, I’ll chime in.
Mostly, though, it’s my intent to use this as a channel through which to reply and converse with you in a manner that scales.
Nice: blogging lets you have a conversation that provides both intimacy & scale.
Tech journalist Dana Blankenhorn shares some of his likes & dislikes after touring a sample of corporate blogs. For Dana, the best blogging emphasizes the day-to-day unpredictability involved in creative problem solving. He likes it when bloggers let their hair down, when the writing feels human, real, revealing. So do we. So do our readers. We know, because they, in turn, share of themselves in comments, emails, other blog posts. Real communication catalyzes real connections. Here are some of Dana’s other points:
Let’s start with what I like to see:
- Good thoughtful writing.
- Unpredictability.
- The feeling that there’s a person there.
- Availability of comments.
- An RSS feed that at least tells me what I need to know about an item before it’s truncated because they’re looking for ad revenue.
- Some reporting that involves more than a hotlink would be nice.
The WSJ released their list of must read blogs today. We mashed them up in a single feed found here (just paste it in your news reader).
The feed mashup was created using FrankenFeed (in alpha) – soon to be re-released as part of the Big in Japan: Web 2.0 Toolbox.
Our most ‘snarky’ client, D Magazine, just reported in their blog that Lisa Loeb is on the hunt for a mate. For those of you not in the ‘know’, Lise is from Dallas and attended Hockaday. So in keeping with the times she has her own reality show titled #1 Single to document her search. WTG FB for breaking this news!
