13 Sep 2006
Last weekend, I realized that the way I had been using feeds (RSS) had become unworkable. When I first got into feeds a few years ago, I thought the best way to organize them was by topic. Since I have very wide-ranging interests, I ended up with a sprawling collection comprised of more than 25 topic-based folders (science, media, environment, etc.) — some of which contained 30 or more feeds. The result? I rarely checked my feeds. What was meant to save me time ended up creating drastic information overload. The nasty side effect of this was that I wasn't keeping up with online conversations as well as I like. To me, online conversations are very important. They're the lifeblood of my networking, R&D, and marketing. They're also important to my personal life. So I took the drastic step of reorganizing my feeds by task, switching to a new feed…
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29 Aug 2006
Awe the lines are starting to blur and I like it. Using public relations is a critical tactic in generating awareness for many businesses, and online businesses should be no different. The irony is traditional PR tactics (media relations, ed cal tracking, by-lined articles, speaking opportunities) to drive awareness in the main stream media (MSM), are as foreign to an online business as RSS feeds and blogs are to a majority of offline businesses. Steven Van Yoder’s recent post titled “Why Online Businesses Should Embrace PR” provides excellent insights to using PR to drive traffic. To quote Steven, “They read newspapers, magazines and listen to the radio. To reach your market niche comprehensively, you need to explore ways to reach your prospects beyond the Internet. It will help you drive traffic to your web site.” We agree. Our experience has been that offline MSM coverage drives a tremendous amount of traffic…
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23 Aug 2006
Every blogger has faced the pressure of what to blog about. We work with our clients to create online reputation management systems to get them plugged into listening to the conversation first so they will know: What are people talking about? and How they can add a relevant voice to the conversation? We’ve posted recently about strategic blog commenting strategies and how to enter the online conversation. What I want to discuss are two techniques on how you can be the online BUZZ STARTER that everyone else is commenting and creating trackbacks on. Having completely transitioned to online communications and social media, I brought along some tried and true PR tactics that can be applied to capturing the online conversations. As a matter of fact a few basic block and tackle PR tactics are some of the most powerful ways to be the BUZZ STARTER. #1. Editorial Calendar Tracking As much as those of…
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22 Aug 2006
Online video continues to grow at a shocking rate as illustrated in the latest comScore Media Metrix analysis of consumer activity at top online properties for July. For the first time Youtube.com was ranked in the comScore Media Metrix top 50 with 16 million visitors last month. Traffic to MySpace Videos doubled last month, and Yahoo Video was up 28% compared to June. As the popularity of online video grows, you can expect truckloads of advertising dollars to come rolling in. Online video is arguably the most compelling medium for advertisers and as always the challenge will be targeting the right audience and alignment with appropriate content. Advertisers will also be challenged with thinking of crafty new ways incorporate product placement and promotional campaigns into user generated content. As high speed broadband becomes more standard and the quantity/quality of content improves, the line between my TV box and computer monitor will definitely…
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