Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Bloggers aren’t journalists

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Robert Scoble posted late yesterday that "Great journalists call" in reference to the fact that some reporters actually called to confirm the rumour that he was leaving Microsoft while other bloggers simply went with the story as it unfurled its way through the blogosphere, without calling.

Journalists can be bloggers. Dan Gillmor. The folks at BusinessWeek. There’s no shortage of examples. And some bloggers are journalists, subscribing to  a code of ethics that demands balanced reporting, objectivity or at least fairness, verification of the facts, and, dare I say it,  Truth. I’ll leave you all to find your own examples here — anything I do will leave someone’s favorite out, and then everyone will focus on that rather than my point.

Just having a blog does not make someone a journalist. Even if they happen to break the news. 

And before the citizen journalist advocates get up in arms,  I *do* think citizens can be journalists. But not simply because they want to be or say they are. A citizen journalist has to do the same job we expect from a reporter from the daily paper. Fair and balanced reporting. Check the facts. Check your spelling or get a copy editor to do it for you.

Break the news right, you can call yourself a journalist. Spread a rumour? That’s gossip. Nothing wrong with doing that on your blog if you want to. It is your blog.

But reporting a rumour is not telling the story. Let’s not confuse the two.

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It’s all in the name…

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Brangelina really should have consulted somebody on the name for their newborn daughter. Bad enough that they used the masculine form Nouvel, versus the feminine Nouvelle, but the blogosphere has coined a nickname for poor Shiloh-Nouvel Jolie-Pitt —  Shovel.

It would be awful if it weren’t so funny, n’est-ce pas?

(from CityRag, via Fashiontribes)

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Bits and bobs

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Just a few bits and bobs to end the weekend.

Of course there’s the BIG BLOGOSPHERE NEWS: Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to join start-up Podtech. Too many commenters to link here — find them on technorati, and read his own comments at Scobleizer (multiple posts). Not at all surprising that he’d want to try his hand at a start-up venture — take the risk, build something new. He has been a big part of the growth of the live web (yeah, I’m going with Doc’s terminology, works for me) and he deserves his chance at the pot of gold. Good luck, Robert. Enjoy the new challenge. Enjoy being closer to your son. Enjoy being back in a tech center NOT dominated by Microsoft.

The press release. I’m firmly with John Wagner on this one, as I’ve said more than once. It isn’t about the form. folks. Do whatever you want to the form to deliver it to your audience. They want tags and del.icio.us links. Go for it. But, the focus needs to be on content. Crappy content in a new form does NOT equal a good press release. So I wish Todd Defren and Tom Foremski and whomever else well in their mission to develop "the" new release. I expect they’ll get lots of links and search engine juice as a result. In fact, I’m giving them some here. Bully for them. Good that they have the time. For my part, I don’t . I have client work to do, and no time to devote to "fixing" something that isn’t that broken.

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My penultimate Syndicate post… finally

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Well, I never thought I would be so busy that it would take nearly a month to finish up my reporting on Syndicate, but so it goes.

Before I get to the final sessions, and my chats with the "bad boys of PR," I want to remember to share one observation. At and after the conference, there was a some gnashing and wailing that not more marketing and PR people attended this conference, even though the content was extremely germane to their practice areas. The reason is simple: they don’t see the value. Why? First, the conference sounds techy – syndicate, RSS, all sorts of terms that make marketing folk blanche. Second, it is expensive against the perceived value. Finally, and most important,white men may not dance, but they sure do blog and podcast. With a few exceptions, the speaker list was a list of insiders, and mostly white guys. It’s a club. No one wants to go to a club meeting when they are going to be the outsider sitting alone during the coffee break.

I may sound like a broken record, but this is why I am such a fan of BlogHer, and the truly participatory community that it has engendered. See you there!

Back to Syndicate. At this late date, a synopsis of the two final sessions seems somewhat redundant. So in reverse order, let me tackle first Doc Searls and then the PR session, and simply give you some impressions.

This was the first time I saw Doc Searls speak, and I definitely see why he is in such demand. He gives a good show. He spoke about the differences between the static web and the live web — which by the way are far more evocative for me than the terms 1.0 and 2.0. One of his concepts that I really liked was the "rolling snowball" — "if it’s a good idea, it can’t just be yours." The value chain is replaced by the value constellation. Attention has been replaced by Intention. It’s not advertising, it’s people searching for info. He also talked a bit about the gesture stuff, which is still a bit unclear to me. But that’s okay. Then he ended with a bunch of claims, just to get people thinking. Here are the ones I was able to capture.

A free market is not ‘your choice of site’

The consumer is a relic of the industrial economy

The Net is not a place where ‘consumers’ ‘access’ ‘content’ — it is about production

Branding is for cattle. Respect is for human beings

Everything and everybody is becoming unbundled (mentioned Terry Heaton as a leader on this thought)

TV as we know it is already dead (1 in 3 teens can’t name the leading networks, FCC moving TV off branded channels by 09)

Clear Channel killed commercial radio. Listeners are resurrecting it.

Hi-def will be cheap and standard by the end of the year

Email marketing is creepy. So is SEO. (My opinion: especially SEO)

Livest part of the live web is cell phones.

Everybody is already an influencer. We’re all getting networked.

Closed formats are doomed. (Ed comment: Amen) Majority of desktops and laptops in 5 years willbe LINUX (lively conversation here)

Radio is going to be fine as long as they put them in cars

On branding: it’s not brand, it’s reputation

Next post: The PR Boys at Syndicate.

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Help Wanted: Part-time PR/Marketing Assistant

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I’m looking for a part-time marketing/PR assistant. About 20 hours per week.

Some of the things you will be doing:

  • helping me with admin
  • writing for the bi-monthly Marketing Roadmaps newsletter
  • researching media lists, including entering info into our database
  • researching editorial calendars
  • working on client projects, TBD (this is the fun and mysterious part)

This position would be ideal for a PR/marketing student looking for a summer job or a junior-level freelancer looking for a long-term project. No health insurance benefits, but a great working environment (if you like dogs). Definite possibility that you could do some of your work from home but at least in the beginning, you’d have to come to world headquarters in Hudson, MA. 

Students, fair warning:  you’ll get involved in all aspects of the business so you’ll learn a lot. But if you are looking for a trophy internship for your resume, this isn’t it.

If you are interested, drop me an email to my gmail account, sgetgood@gmail.com, with your resume. Tell me why you think it would be fun to work with me and with our clients (hint: check the about page on the blog and the website www.getgood.com). Please, no trolls.

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