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Links Worth Reading – Sept. 27, 2009, edition

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:03:37 +0000

Here are some of the best links, blog posts and resources I’ve come across in the last week. Note: Many, but not all, of these I first published via Twitter. Please follow me there if you’re not already.

Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2009

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging (Great idea right out of marketing research 101. Creating personas is something I’ve done for this blog.)

Free Social Media Worksheets (These are good resources if your planning or executing a social media campaign of some sort.)

Media Usage Study Shows Radio, Online Media Consumption is Up (This blog post links to a news release and other resources. It’s a good, basic reference for those of us working in marketing and public relations.)

The Science of ReTweets (Want to figure out how to increase your odds of getting retweeted? This free report is a good place to start. The author, Dan Zarella, studied 40 million tweets in his analysis.)

Membership Programs for Lead Generation (Joe Pulizzi is a content marketing specialist, and he makes some good points about using membership programs for lead generation. This is a must-read for marketing and sales execs trying to understand how to better use social media and the web to boost the bottom line.)

How to Use Social Media to Market a Boring Product or Service (It’s probably not a good sign if you, as a marketer, think that what you’re marketing is boring. Nonetheless, some products and services are less engaging than others. Keith Burtis points out that you can still use social media to market those by trying back to related passions.)

Six Social Media Marketing Case Study Lessons (Looking for ideas and inspiration for social media marketing? HubSpot has six social media marketing case studies with lessons learned from each. This post is worth bookmarking.)

Let me know what you think of these links in the comments.

Does more information mean less knowledge?

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:24:37 +0000

Clive Thompson has an interesting article in the current issue of Wired that looks at why even though we live in a world awash with information, more than ever, people seem to be less knowledgeable about all sorts of important issues.

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?

You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup.

It turns out that even though there’s more information, there’s also more misinformation. The ease with which anyone can publish information makes it easier for interest groups to sow doubt about things that might otherwise be taken factually. It’s what the tobacco industry did for years to try to cast doubt on the enormous weight of scientific evidence that smoking is dangerous.

Read the story here.

Review of “Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers”

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:16:30 +0000

Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers is a short e-book about how brands can use content to establish trust with customers. The e-book is free, but unlike many free information products I’ve seen, this one is worth reading and worth printing out and sticking on your bookshelf. The author, JoePulizzi, is founder and chief content officer of Junta42, president of Z Squared Media and co-author of Get Content. Get Customers. How to use content marketing to deliver relevant, valuable, and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers. After reading this e-book, I’ve put Pulizzi’s book on my Amazon wish list.

Though Seven Content Strategies is short, it manages to provide a lot of actionable information. It starts out by explaining why brands should use content. As brands seek to establish relationships online, Pulizzi argues, providing useful content can position those brands as trustworthy sources of information for customers. By doing that, brands create trust, and trust is required before customers will buy.

“If you want consumers to think of your brand as a trusted information provider, you must begin to think like an information provider, not just a provider of goods or services,”Pulizzi writes. He says the first step is to listen to customers, find out what their needs and wants are, and then tailor information to meet those needs. The information may be in the form of custom magazines, websites,webinars, blogging, social networking content efforts and more. Pulizzi warns against the traditional approach to marketing where brands only talk about themselves and don’t address the concerns of their customers. He also suggests establishing “listening outposts” online to hear what people are saying about, and suggests several free tools to do so.

Besides the mistake of producing content that’s not relevant customers’ needs, Pulizzi outlines several other landmines businesses should be aware of as they become information providers: being unclear or making it difficult for the audience to understand what the company does, providing poor quality content (either in design, the content itself, or by failing to keep content updated), inconsistency in providing content and failing to do anything at all.

Pulizzi argues, rightly in my mind, that with cutbacks in traditional media, companies have an opportunity to step into the void and provide some of the information that people used to get from more robust media outlets. I would add that bloggers and other new players in the media ecosystem are already moving to fill in the gap, so that if companies don’t act quickly they can risk losing an opportunity to become trusted information providers.

Pulizzi then goes into his seven strategies:

Assign a conversation champion.
Make sure you really know your customers.
Conduct a content audit.
Try new things.
Stick to a schedule.
Take care of your customers.
Get help to execute your content strategy.

Pulizzi goes into detail with each one of these. He provides a 10-point checklist to ask yourself before deciding whether your company should blog or not, and a 10-point questionnaire that can be used as part of a content audit.

Even if your company is not going to engage in a full-blown content strategy, Pulizzi’s e-book is still worth a read. Some of the suggestions, such as establishing listening outposts and conducting a content audit, are steps nearly all businesses should take. If you’re one of those people trying to make money via content online, say by blogging, the e-book offers some good ideas that can be applied to that process, as well.

Pulizzi wants an email address before you can download the e-book, but so far he has respected that and I haven’t been deluged with sales come-ons, so it seems a very small price to pay. Here’s the link: Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers.

Five ways to guarantee journalists will reject or ignore your story pitch

Mark Tosczak — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:21:51 +0000

I work in public relations and marketing, but spent about a decade as a journalist — newspaper reporter, newspaper editor and freelancer. As such, I have been on the receiving end of lots of story pitches from PR people. That’s experience I now put to work on behalf of clients.

Here are five ways to pretty much guarantee that you won’t get news coverage from the media.

1. Call or email when the journalist is on deadline. Unless you’ve got a huge breaking news story – like a giant corporate merger, for example – calling a journalists when they’re on deadline is a sure way to get rejected. A couple of tips for avoiding this:

On phone calls, start by asking if the journalist has a minute or two. If he or she is on deadline, you’ll find out.
Know the deadlines of the media you’re pitching. Morning newspapers are deadline in from mid-to-late afternoon. Weekly papers usually have one day where they’re on deadline. TV broadcasters have to hit deadlines for each of their daily broadcasts. Avoid these times.

2. React slowly. When a journalist does express interest, respond fast. Reporters have real deadlines that they must meet; if you don’t help them meet those deadlines by responding in a timely way, they’ll find someone else who will. And often, once that deadline has passed, your chance for coverage may have passed, too.

3. Contact the top editor or producer. Most of the time, the top editor or producer is not who you need to pitch to. Figure out who the beat reporter, assignment editor or bureau chief is who is most likely to be the one who will actually make a decision on whether your pitch is a story for the news outlet. For small news outlets, the top editor or news director may indeed be the right person to pitch, but for most outlets, it’s not.

4. Bait and switch. Imply something is available – previously unreleased financial data, a high profile interview subject – and, once a journalist has expressed interest in the story, tell that person that something isn’t available. Most journalists can and will walk away; once they go away, so does your chance for publicity.

5. Emphasize your publicity needs over the news outlet’s news values. Whether you agree with their approach or not, most news outlets are focused on certain news values – local interest, a particular kind of news (business, lifestyle, politics, etc.), timeliness, strong personalities in their stories. Since you need the news outlet’s cooperation to get the coverage you’re seeking, know the media’s needs and look for ways to meet those needs. These news values widely from outlet to outlet, so the pitch to The New York Times should be different than the pitch to a trade journal or a local TV station.

Of course not doing these things is no guarantee that you’ll get coverage. In the United States, at least, there are fewer journalists and more PR people than ever before, which means even with a well-crafted, on-target pitch, it’s still tough to get a response from busy news people. But I can guarantee you that avoiding these five bad practices will put you a step ahead of many publicists.

What are your top do’s and don’ts when pitching stories? Please share in the comments.

Fast Company blog implements “Digg for story pitches”

Mark Tosczak — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:56:29 +0000

Yesterday I tweeted about Fast Company’s Buzz blog launching a service that allows people to vote story pitches up or down, similar to the way blog posts, stories and other items are voted up or down on Digg. This morning the launch was announced officially. Buzz blogger Francisco Dao wrote (in part):

Since Fast Company Buzz looks for companies that are breaking new ground and changing the game, I believe it’s only right that FC Buzz also looks to break new ground. The pitch portal taps into true social media by letting everyone vote and pitch on what should be covered. All the pitches and votes are open to see, so just posting a story idea will get you exposure.

Traditionally pitching has been a one-on-one thing between the PR person doing the pitching and the journalist making the decision about whether to pursue the story. This changes the game.

First, it raises the bar for pitches. Put together a bad, off-target pitch for Fast Company Buzz and lots of other people will see it, so you don’t want to do anything that’s embarrassing. We’ve seen some bloggers publish some of the more embarrassingly bad pitches they receive, but now all the pitches to Buzz will be visible.

Second, I also wonder if it won’t lead to people trying to game the system. (Francisco, want to weigh in here? Are there systems in place to prevent gaming?)

What do you think? Will other media outlets or blogs start using a system like this to evaluate the interest readers have in different story pitches?

4 tips on online branding from Julia Allison

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:30:15 +0000

Wired magazine’s cover story this month is about Julia Allison, an Internet celebrity who is famous for, well, umm … being famous, at least online. And one of the bedrock truths in our modern, media-saturated economy is that fame has a dollar value.

Source: NonSociety.com, Julia photos (http://juliaallisonphotos.tumblr.com/)

So, if you’re seeking fame, you might be able to learn a thing or two from Julia, right?

But perhaps you don’t care to read all about how she first got exposure in Gawker by going to a Nick Denton Halloween party dressed as a “condom fairy.” No problem. I have read the article, and have extracted all the parts that are relevant to those of us who (1) don’t live in New York City and/or (2) are not a “hot woman with an exhibitionist streak.”

1. Crash parties. Go to the channels where you have the least competition. With email, blogs and Tweets online, there’s lots and lots of competition. In person, there’s a lot less.

2. Think of yourself as a subject in a magazine profile (for example, in Wired). Everything you post online should add to your character. And keep it coming – Julia says it’s like adding wood to a fire to keep it burning. Needless to say, multiple channels (blog, Twitter, You Tube, etc.) are helpful here. Marketers call this branding.

3. Cultivate your fans. Interact with them online, answer their emails, respond to their comments on your blog, leave comments on their blogs.

4. Extend your brand to others. Once you’ve established Brand You, recruit others – Brand You Juniors – and help them build their brand by linking to them, advising them and providing them some of your legitimacy. Multiple platforms (i.e. people) will strengthen and expand your brand.

By the way, in case you think this all too snarky or tongue in cheek, I should mention that Julia has launched her own Web portal and has signed a deal with Bravo to develop her own reality TV show. Really.

And if you do want to read the whole Wired story, click here.

Got some more tips on branding online? Please share them in the comments.

Sponsor: Branding your name or company requires hard work, using custom promotional items can do nothing but help to build that brand — cheap promotional items.

Is email the new blogging?

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:00:53 +0000

Is email the new blogging?

I’m serious. For all the hype about email being dead, the vast majority of people online are still using email, using it as much or more than ever, and will continue to use it. Which brings me to my question: Is email the new blogging?

Three examples

When Jason Calacanis announced he was dropping his blog and instead starting an email list, many people just took it as yet another publicity stunt by the entrepreneur and online showman. But I think Jason’s move to an email list might be symptomatic of a renewed focus on the power of email. So far, his emails have been substantive and interesting, and worth reading.
Power blogger Darren Rowse, publisher of ProBlogger.com (which I highly recommend), relaunched his email newsletter recently. He’s not giving up his blog, but the newsletter (which I also recommend) has additional content in it beyond the blog.
Peter Shankman started his “Help a Reporter Out” emails on Facebook, migrated it to its own web site and seems to be swiftly turning it into a business, all in just a few months. The email is designed to connect reporters to sources. Both reporters and sources (or, in my case, the public relations pros who represent potential sources) can sign up and receive the email for free. And I think HARO could turn into a real competitor to ProfNet’s paid service, which does pretty much the same thing. This week HARO crossed the 15,000-member mark.

Why email?

Are people are beginning to see some value in email as an online publishing tool that blogs can’t provide.

For example, with email you have a way of counting and contacting your readers — you have their email addresses.

With email, you only have to worry about getting people to sign up and stay subscribed. No search engine optimization, no linking strategies, minimal design. Sure, you have to think about getting past spam filters, but if people want to receive your email usually that’s not a big problem.

With email you don’t have to moderate comments or “create community.” Though you can create community. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the vlog Wine Library TV, cultivates an army of 80,000 “Vayniacs” in large part by spending 12 hours a day on email. (I can’t find this online, but it’s in the August issue of Wired magazine, on page 112, as a sidebar to the cover story on Julia Allison, which I’ll be blogging about later this week.)

With email, when people opt-in to read it, they’re giving you permission to communicate to them about what you want to — to sell yourself, your products, your services, your ideas. Is that more powerful than the often-passive readership on a blog? I don’t know.

Blogs aren’t dying, but …

This doesn’t mean blogs are dying. But I have a feeling we’re going to see more and more email newsletters, from bloggers and others, and a renewed emphasis on turning email into a really produtive content channel. Although you can subscribe to my blog via email (the little form is there on the right-hand side of the page), I’m not about to start an email newsletter. For now, at least, a blog works for me. But I bet we’re going to see more people launching email newsletters.

What do you think? Are we going to see more of these email publishing ventures? Are there other examples of this I’ve missed? Or am I making too much out of a handful of isolated anecdotes? Tell me what you think in the comments.

What is social media?

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:25:08 +0000

Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it? We’re all talking about social media. We’re all doing social media. Social media is supposed to be the next big thing. But what is it?

Marta Z. Kagan has a pretty much the best explanation I’ve seen:

What The F**K is Social Media?

view presentation (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing web2.0 socialmedia)

(via Scott Monty)

You should attend ConvergeSouth 2008

Mark Tosczak — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:23:35 +0000

Do you live in North Carolina? In the South? Anywhere? Are you interested in things like blogs, online video and podcasting? Do you want to see ‘net celebs such as Robert Scoble, Anil Dash and Chris Rabb up close and personal?

Then you should register for ConvergeSouth. I’ve gone the last two years (at least, maybe more), and it’s always been well worth it. I get new ideas, I get to make new friends and catch up with old friends. There’s interesting conversation, even music and a barbecue!

It’s Oct. 17-18 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Go here to register. C’mon, do it now. You know you want to. (Oh, did I mention? It’s free!)

19 tips from (almost) 10 years of blogging

Jason Calacanis retires from blogging

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:28:10 +0000

Jason Calacanis, an Internet entrepreneur, says he is retiring from blogging. Simultaneously, he has launched a limited subscriber newsletter. You might want to join it, if it’s not too late. Click here.

In his email to that list yesterday, Calacanis explained why he is retiring from blogging.

It became clear to me last night after my email to y’all.

One hundred of you responded with amazing suggestions to my email last night. After that I realized that blogging is not longer the medium for me–email is. 100 amazing suggestions in 12 hours from a pool of around 500 email subscribers. That’s 20% response rate with really considered words and no drama.

This is really interesting (and it’s not April 1, so I assume this isn’t some kind of hoax or prank, though you never know). Calacanis was co-founder of Weblogsinc.com, one of the first big commercial blog networks. It was sold to AOL in October 2005 for a reported $25 million or so. So Calacanis is someone who really knows blogging and has been doing it for a long time.

You can still a lot of his online movements, of course. In addition to the email newsletter, there’s his Twitter stream, his photos on Flickr, and more in the right sidebar of his blog.

Update: Scoble says Calacanis is playing us. Could be right.

Is email the new blogging?