Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

More PR, Marketing and Blogging links/references

by

Ok, gentle readers, I do have a more substantive post on the way about the ongoing debates at Bob Bly’s weblog about direct marketing versus weblogs, and the similarly polemicized blogging versus journalism debate that is happening in various forums (for more check out Dan Gillmor and PressThink/Jay Rosen. They both have good posts that link to all the other conversations about the topic, more than I want to list here.)

For those of you that know me or have read some of my other stuff, you’ll know that I don’t consider it an either/or discussion at all. As Doc Searls points out in a response to the Bob Bly thread linked above, either/or is a false choice. The answer is AND.

Marketing is about conversations AND purchases. Bloggers AND the traditional media both have a role to place in the mediascape.

So preview of my post  … coming soon … It is going to cover what the AND means for marketers, and one way of considering how we should develop marketing strategy with AND in mind.

In the meantime, though, I have a few links that I didn’t want to miss posting so here goes.

A nice article on MarketingProfs about corporate blogging. This is a nice simple intro to use for colleagues, clients or bosses that don’t get what this blogging thing is all about. 

Hottest Branding Trends by Nick Wreden at FusionBrand. In particular, see number 5: Blogs, wikis and RSS

Ten Tips for Better Blogging from the folks at InsideBlogging.

Nice post from VC Jeff Nolan, Shaping a Message Through Blogs. Covers many of the same PR and blogging topics that have captured my interest. In fact he comments that:

there’s a fixation with blogs versus the media. The media business is just that, it’s a business that is going to have to evolve in order to compete effectively in the future with electronic media. It’s not an ideology and it’s not going away..

A couple of posts from Jim Logan’s JSLogan – Making the Most of Your Business blog: Here’s a Great Example of Integrating a Blog into Your Web Presence and If used, blogs should integrate into your web strategy. In one of the posts, he talks about a thread at the CorporateBloggingBlog on which I had also commented. I agree with him, CorporateBlogging is a very thought provoking blog, and well worth a visit.

That clears up the blog links that I had saved from the past few days. Probably just in time for a whole bunch more to surface. But next up is the post about marketing strategy.

PR and Marketing links, somewhat random but mostly related

by

There is a lot of conversation going on this week on the topic of blogging, PR and ROI. Here are some posts that I liked today.

Ross Mayfield on Feeding a Crisis, commenting on the Steve Rubel post I mentioned earlier.

From Communication Revolutions, two posts: Blog ROI and Blogs and Corporate Marketing. The Blogs and Corporate Marketing post links to a post from "Chief Blogging Officer" Christopher Locke.

A book about RSS that I learned about from T. L. Pakii Pierce’s How to Blog for Fun and Profit blog. The book is called: Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS. Links: Pierce’s review of the book The website for the book

Finally, completely unrelated to marketing, but important for the future of our country and the education of our children,  an item from Assorted Stuff: Getting by on the Cheap. Read it and think about where our tax dollars REALLY should be spent.

Update: More on blogs and crisis comms from Renee Blodgett at Down the Avenue.

PR and blogs in a crisis

by

Nice post by Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion:  "Blog Crisis Communications Planning 101"

Contains links to a summary of a Blog Business Summit preso on crisis comms as well as five tips for how companies should work with bloggers/use blogging in a crisis that emerges FROM the blogosphere.

I pretty much agree with all his advice, however, would add the following:

First, I think his suggestions are applicable in any crisis regardless of whether it originates in the blogosphere or not. One of the main goals in any crisis comms effort is to get the public on your side. Blogs are becoming one of the most efficient ways to speak DIRECTLY to the audience. Assuming the company speaks in an honest voice, it may be able to get more done through blogs than the mainstream media. A recent example that comes to mind is Bigha, the makers of laser pointers (read more in this post). Of course if it doesn’t speak truthfully, bloggers WILL make it worse than the mainstream media ever could.

Second, I think all of his tips for speaking in a crisis will work better for you if you are ALREADY BLOGGING in some fashion. It all comes down to trust, and if your firm is already out there in some fashion, the blogosphere will already know you. As a result, they will be more likely to trust you in a crisis. In the short time I have been blogging I have noticed this on more than one occasion.

A notable example of how blogs help company rep is Robert Scoble and the other 1300 Microsoft bloggers who have probably done more to repair Microsoft’s rep than any traditional corp comms effort (like butterflies in Central Park …).

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a corporate blog. You could simply have a support or product management blog that is active and respected by your audience. If you ever need to activate the crisis blog Rubel recommends, your audience will be referred to it from people in your firm they already know and trust, transferring that trust to the folks dealing with the crisis.

Just don’t blow it by being dishonest.

Update: More links to Blog Business Summit info from Jennifer Rice at Brand Mantra, including to another summary of the session I referenced above. They are going to post all the presentations on their site, and I intend to go through quite a few of them. You also can find the link to the Summit site in my Marketing links.

More on blogging and PR

by

Interesting post over at the Blog Business Summit site about the reach of blogs versus "traditional" PR as measured by Google results. I believe companies need to supplement their PR efforts with both:

  1. efforts aimed at bloggers/citizen journalists and
  2. corporate blogs of some type.

See my two posts on 18 January for more of my thoughts on the topic:  one two

UPDATE 25 Jan:  I haven’t read everything on this site yet but a good source for info and ideas about the intersection of blogging and public relations is the Global PR Blog Week 1.0 site. 

People everywhere just wanna be free

by

Thank you Tim Stahmer over at Assorted Stuff for posting this item linking to a Washington Post article that pointed out a thematic resemblance between W’s inauguration speech and a 60s song from The Rascals. Note: when you follow the link in Tim’s Post to the original article, you need to be a registered user of Wa Post (free).

UPDATE: 6/3/07 Comments and trackbacks closed due to spam.