Marketing Roadmaps

Blogging

Browster Promo, HP Auction, Presidential Potshot

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From blog pal Elisa Camahort (Worker Bees), news of a Valentine’s Day contest from her client Browster. Originally conceived of as a local contest for a V-Day dinner at a chic San Francisco restaurant, the company realized that dinner at a restaurant eliminated anyone not in the Bay Area. So it added three iPods as prizes. Well done! Check it out!

Three days left in the HP Charity Auction to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Lots of people are checking it out, but the bidding is slow. Please take a look — if someone you know is in the market for an HP Photosmart printer, you might be able to get it at a good price, and help out a deserving charity. Plus you get a neat signed WireImage photo of a celebrity that you can keep or give as a gift or re-auction for that matter. Some of the celebs: Aaron Eckhart, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, William H. Macy, Al Gore and Terrence Howard.

Finally, tip of the hat to BL Ochman for the Dick Cheney Quail Hunt game. Nuff said.

Microsoft LiveMeeting: The Art of Follow-Through

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Just a quick note about a Microsoft LiveMeeting you might want to check out.

WHAT: The Art of Follow-Through: How to make sure that every team executes successfully

WHO: Laurence Haughton, author of It’s Not What You Say…  It’s What You Do – How Following Through at Every Level Can Make or Break Your Company and co-author of It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small…  It’s the FAST that Eat the Slow

WHEN: February 28, 9am PST

The best laid plans usually fall apart in the execution.

Haughton’s latest book and this seminar are about avoiding the pitfalls of poor execution. With his pragmatic advice and specific suggestions, you can actually achieve the results, even if you aren’t Clark Kent.

Check it out — cause, hey, M$ is paying 🙂

More information and registration info

Journalism & PR Student Blogs

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Jay Rosen (PressThink) announced an expansion to his blog yesterday: the Blue Plate Special. Written primarily by students in his blogging 101 class, the new feature will start later this month. He writes:

"Our intent in the debut is to execute well upon a basic form in journalism: the snapshot, or state-of-the-art report. The first one will be about blogging at American newspapers. Newspapers are definitely past the “let’s start some blogs” stage, but what stage are they at? Where’s the action, traction, and satisfaction in the growing world of newspaper blogs? NYU students and I, joined by a few special guests, pros and amateurs, will try to find out."

For me, this new blog will be an interesting counterpoint to Robert French’s (infOpinions) student PR blogs and the way French uses his own blog to teach his PR and media classes at Auburn University.

These NYU and Auburn students, on either side of the "media relations" coin, have some meaty issues on their plate, and I’m looking forward to their perpectives on the "BIG" questions that consume so many of our blogging hours.

Questions like:

What is the responsibility of a blogger to fact check? Is it different if the blogger is also a professional journalist? Just exactly what defines "professional" — getting paid? quality of writing? affiliations, whether paid or pro bono? Not always the same thing.

What is the role of PR in the new media mix? How is it evolving as the media themselves are changing… from pen and ink to bits and bytes? Is it? How should companies, and their PR people, engage with bloggers?

It’s nice to hear new voices, from people just beginning their professional journeys. Hopefully, in watching, and helping, them learn, we’ll learn a few things ourselves.

Tags: Media, Blogs, Blogging, PR, Public Relations, Journalism

Watching/Not Watching/Wondering

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Watching

Rocketboom. Today’s was particularly funny, especially Broke Mac Mountain

Wikipedia.  Dr. Myra and the congressional staffers (and Marty Meehan is my rep to boot), and all the other recent transgressions. Don’t these people get it? You cannot screw around with a shared, global resource like Wikipedia. You will get caught. And outed. Apply your no doubt significant skills in some other fashion.

Not watching

The G- D—y Super Bowl commercial. Incest isn’t funny. And that is all I can think about when I remember last year’s commercial:  the G- D—y bimbo shaking her boobs and butt saying the inevitable. It is just yucky. No links. No more discussion. If the commercial comes on while I am (sort of) watching the game, I’m going to take my bathroom break. Seems appropriate somehow.  Added: Tip of the hat to Media Orchard for a link to the putative schedule. Now I know when I can safely pee and not miss some play that my husband wants to "discuss." Yawn.

Wondering?

Okay, I cannot be the only person on the planet who finds the latest Gawker media venture a wee bit disturbing. Am I? Just about every blog I read it on today (lots) reported it matter-of-factly or with relish. I’m just thinking, eeww.

Tags: Advertising, Blogging

Roadmaps Round-up: a bit of everything

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Tonight my three seven-week old Scottie puppies have decided to WAKE UP at 9 pm. I would post pictures but they won’t pose 🙁  Maybe tomorrow.

Lot of interesting stuff this week. I’ll start with Robert Scoble’s post about bloggers clearly posting their contact details. While I draw the line at birthdate (TMI), I agree that site owners should publish contact information, whether blog, LiveJournal or  Web site. If you are worried about spam, there are enough email services (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc) that you don’t have to expose your main email address.

I ran into this problem a lot in the last week as I started fan outreach for the HP Charity Auction. I have very specific rules about how this outreach is done: individually, and only to fansites or blogs that have recently been updated. We want to be sure that hearing about the auction truly is of interest to the site owner and readers. We also NEVER post directly to forums or bulletin boards. Which makes finding a valid email address or contact link really important. For the most part, this is pretty easy. But in some cases, I have to walk away from a site that probably would really like to know that a certain star’s photo is part of the auction because I just can’t find an email address. And that’s a shame.

The lesson for marketers? Make sure your prospects can easily find an email address on your site or blog. It’s probably the most important thing on your site.

Moving on. Fred Wilson on Web. 2.0 is an oxymoron.  Fred, as he so often does, has it dead to rights.  Calling “it” Web 2.0 implies something static (and something that can be hyped, yuck). The reality is, this “stuff” is constantly evolving. Labels just don’t work. Let’s move on.

Speaking of labels, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the latest “a-list” dust-up. You wanna know more – read Media Orchard, Naked Conversations and Beyond Madison Avenue. I am personally pretty much done with the topic. Not on it. Don’t care.

In the practical tips category, both Blog Business World and ProBlogger talked about Andy Wibbels’ blog editorial calendar. I haven’t used this particular tool, but I am a strong believer in an editorial calendar for business blogs, and most particularly group blogs. You have an objective for the effort, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it. An editorial calendar ensures that the important topics are covered. Not as big a deal with an individual blog but I find that I follow something like a calendar anyway. In any given week, at least one post is a round-up (like this one), one is original content and the third (on a good week) is a toss-up between the two. Or I post a picture of the dogs or the kid 🙂

If you don’t already read Jay Rosen’s PressThink, you should check out this post Guest Writer Andrew Postman: Introduction to the 20th Anniversary Edition of Amusing Ourselves to Death by His Dad, Neil Postman. There is an absolutely wonderful “easter egg” in Jay’s post. (Hint: click on Andrew Postman’s name – it’s not a link to his bio). And no cheating – I’m not going to put the link here – you have to go to the original. It’s that good. And not just for the “easter egg” – read the whole thing. It will make you think.

Speaking of thinking, a blog I am enjoying (and I don’t even remember where I got the first link to it) Dave Rogers’ Groundhog Day. One recent post: Competing Messages: Getting Your Cluetrain™ Ticket Punched. He concludes the post:

“As always, I’m an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking”

Yup. That’s a philosophy I can get behind 🙂

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Marketing, Web Marketing, Sundance