April 25, 2006
You Tube for Marketing
I will admit I'm am becoming addicted to YouTube. Unbelievable what can be found there for both entertainment and education (type in guitar lessons). YouTube users upload 35,000 and view 30 million clips a day according to this Newsweek article.
It is interesting to watch how companies are starting to use the this channel as a marketing tool. Companies such as Nike, Warner Bros., MTV2 and Dimension Films have seeded the site with commercial clips as noted in a recent article from USAToday:
In a world teeming with cynical consumers and ad-skipping devices such as TiVo, YouTube's edge is that its users actively seek out content. When word-of-mouth built about Nike's gritty Ronaldinho clip, consumers e-mailed the video to friends and embedded it in their profiles on social networking sites. It has been viewed more than 3 million times.The price for Nike? Not much. The sneaker maker shot a digital video, then uploaded it for free.
If you want to learn more - Marianne Richmond of the Resonance Partnership Blog has a great post that provides all you need to know about YouTube and its emerging popularity.
Posted by kpoor at 03:12 PM | Comments (2)
February 13, 2006
Public Transparency
I've just finished reading Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel and am left with a thought regarding one of the book's major themes - transparency. PR professionals are often accused (several places in the book) of getting in the way of transparency by spinning the truth or too tightly controlling corporate messaging. And while I agree that this is sometimes the case, I think that on a day-to-day basis PR is about helping companies become more transparent rather than less.
We are constantly trying to help companies communicate more effectively and fluidly with key audiences because, in many ways, it does not come naturally to them. We help and encourage them to communicate more transparently with customers, employees and investors. And while many view blogs as a way to reduce or eliminate the need for PR, there is a large role for communication professionals to play in consulting and educating companies on how best to incorporate blogging, wikis, podcasts and other mediums into their communications mix.
Posted by kpoor at 04:36 PM | Comments (1)
February 07, 2006
Web 2.0 Companies
An interesting look at Web 2.0 companies and their logos. As these companies rise and fall, it would be cool if this canvas took the weighted shape of a tag cloud.
Posted by kpoor at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2006
Web Retrospective
Yahoo has created a cool Flash piece that highlights the "top 100 moments" online in the last 10 years. Not only is the visual interface cool, the piece will bring back fond Web memories such as:
- The Dancing Baby (watch if you dare)
- Pointcast - I remember signing up for this the day it was launched
- Babel Fish
- DotComGuy
It also provided some new trivia that I was unfamiliar with, such as Jerry Garcia's death being the first news piece ever on Yahoo!News.
Posted by kpoor at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Paul Holmes Blog
Paul Holmes, author of the The Holmes Report, a weekly electronic newsletter for the public relations industry, has started a blog. Good stuff.
Posted by kpoor at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
Nice List of Blog Resources
Lee Odden at Online Marketing Blog has posted a useful and thorough list of resources for online marketing.
Resources are focused on SEO, RSS, blog marketing, search marketing and more. If you are looking for a starting point to learn more about these areas, this is the place. Warning - I spent an hour with this list and I consider myself up on the subject matter.
Posted by kpoor at 09:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 12, 2005
Yahoo Adds Blogs to News Site
As reported on Forbes.com, Yahoo has decided to add blogs to the news section of its Web site. I think this is huge. Yahoo putting blog coverage along side the coverage of tradition media outlets and journalists is a giant step forward in validating the news content created by bloggers and bringing it to the mainstream. I'm sure this will fuel the argument about most bloggers not being "real" journalists - but I look at it more from an access point of view. Readers of a particular news story will have access to more content, more points of view and more levels of coverage from which to shape their opinion. This is a good thing. As Yahoo's General Manager put it "Yahoo wants to fuse professional journalism with so-called citizen journalism to provide a fuller spectrum of content to its members".
I first saw this story at Beyond PR.
Posted by kpoor at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 05, 2005
Top 10 Web Mistakes
Thought this was worth pointing out as I am still often amazed at the number of Web sites that incorporate poor, aggravating design and functionality elements. Usability pro Jakob Nielsen has listed the Top 10 Web Mistakes of 2005. If you are responsible for Web development at any level, these are great points to remember. Functionality is king.
First saw this list at Adverblog.
Posted by kpoor at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2005
FedEx misses opportunity
FedEx recently showed the exact wrong way to deal with a customer evangelist. A guy named Jose furnished his entire home with furniture he made from FedEx packaging material (amazing the strange things people set their mind to and accomplish) and started blogging about his creation (see pictures).
It would seem that a brilliant marketing idea was dropped right into FedEx's lap - one that the company would embrace and build upon. But all FedEx did was serve Jose with a cease and desist letter (pdf) stating Jose was in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Instead of capitalizing on the opportunity, FedEx created a PR dilemma as they have now become a media target.
Posted by kpoor at 02:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 08, 2005
Time names favorite blogs
If you want to know which blogs Time magazine considers to be the best - click here.
Posted by kpoor at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2005
Blog growth
Dave Sifry at Technorati posts on the growth of the blogosphere. Several nice graphs and statistics here. Highlights include:
* The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
* A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily
* About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year
* About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly
Posted by kpoor at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2005
Forbes: Blogs that matter
Forbes has published a nice list of blogs that matter on the Best of the Web pages on their Web site.
Some of the categories:
Marketing blogs
Media blogs
Career blogs
Art blogs
Medical blogs
I first discovered this list at the whatsnextblog.
Posted by kpoor at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2005
Top 10 Downloads
Not a normal topic for this blog but I thought it was interesting to read CNET's list of top 10 downloads of the last 10 years. Personally, I've downloaded 9 of them, several numerous times. I've yet to Skype but I'm sure my time is coming.
Posted by kpoor at 03:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
Media Relations Perspective on RSS
Linda Zimmer at ZNetLady has a nice post on how media relations professionals should be thinking about RSS. As we go through the process at Dix & Eaton of getting our clients to think RSS, it is good to have resources such as this to help with our own thinking.
I also like the idea of a very specific look at how certain disciplines with in PR can take advantage of RSS.
First found this post here.
Posted by kpoor at 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
Ketchum observation
Upon reading Ketchum's press release about the company's new 'Personalized Media' service, I immediately went to their site to find how they are using the tools they will be advising clients how to use (blogs, RSS, podcasts ets.)
No blogs - no RSS feed.
Posted by kpoor at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 03, 2005
EPIC
I came across EPIC, a 10-minute flash movie while reading NevOn. It is set in 2015 (there is an earlier version set in 2014), and recounts how the publishing of information moved from the few to the many. EPIC is a fascinating piece, created by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It provides a cool, brief history of the Web to date and moves into what happens between now and 2015, when all information is retrieved based on personal choice.
It's especially interesting from a PR standpoint as it lays out how media will be delivered. As I choose to get more and more of my information online using the subscription nature of RSS, EPIC made me think of how technologies such as blogs, RSS, Google and others will evolve. Not sure if this vision of the future is on target, but it's definitely thought provoking.
Enough praise. Click here to view.
Posted by kpoor at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2005
Journalists Using Blogs To Gather Information
An interesting summary from the recent PR Newswire Forum on Blogs. The main takeaway:
Journalists are using Web logs more and more for information gathering, and corporate PR professionals should use blogs to get their message to key audiences.
To me this means that journalists are using RSS more and more to gather information. Another reason companies need to ensure that web content is RSS friendly. If customers and journalists can't find information about you the way they want to, you will become irrelevant to them.
Posted by kpoor at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Snapshot of Growth and Activity
Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, posted some information from the company's links count page that provides a great snapshot of a day in the blogosphere. The numbers below are for May 15th:
* 308,583 sites created 818,711 new blog entries
* 1,317,811 outlinks were created to 160,444 other sites
* 103,264 sites (33% of those with new entries) created outlinks.
* 5,905 sites (2% of those with new entries) had both inlinks and outlinks.
* 318,221 syndication feeds had new entries.
* 6% of the 5,442,608 recently active feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.
* 3% of the 10,084,314 feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.
The weekend also saw Technorati join BlogPulse and PubSub with 10,000,000 feeds monitored club. From a PR standpoint, these numbers show just how important it is for companies to be at least listening to the growing conversation taking place online.
There is a good chance that at least one if not many of the 818,711 new entries on May 15th mentioned your company.
Posted by kpoor at 07:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
