Open The Dialogue

Apologies to Steven Wright, the source of the quote I used for the title.

I've talked often about John Frost and his passion for Disney and how that's a great example of someone who has built a following just talking about something he loves. Not only that, he's a great brand ambassador for Disney because of that.

It's that passion that's on display as he expresses his love for the "It's a Small World" ride and his displeasure over what's being done to it in the name of reinvention. Read his whole piece here.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's not much that hasn't already been said about the findings from Pew on how young people are getting their news not so much directly from the source but from friends - through the filters of email, social networks and other tools. But with a few days perspective and the appearance of other stories that offer additional insights into similar stories a fuller picture can be painted of the latest water-line we've reached in the evolution of news and community.

Take for instance the increased focus on creating "appealing content" by journalists in the recent PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey. Add to that the 73 percent that now say they turn to blogs as part of their research efforts. Even if it is just to "measure sentiment" that's a significant number of writers that new touch base with social media outlets in order to get a sense of what's being said on a topic as they're writing their own stories. And add to that the fact that more journalists are being tasked with re-purpose their stuff for online and you get a feeling that, even if the corporations they work for aren't quite sure of where they need to go, the men and women in the trenches know exactly what they need to survive as both employees and media brands.

One group of writers that won't be working harder are movie critics, an industry that continues to be decimated by cutbacks as movie conversations shift to blogs and fan sites. While there is a bit of a case to be made that the loss of professional critics will hurt smaller movies that need critical praise to survive, I don't think the serious film community is exactly going to be hurt. Plenty of niche sites exist that appeal to this crowd and the better films still make it to mainstream sites.

I wonder, though, if that situation could have been avoided if the professional critics that looked down on fan enthusiasm had instead gotten in the conversation more and engaged with online writers. If they had spent some time building relationships and gotten to know people would that have led to more links back to their reviews, leading to more links back to the sites in general and so on. I don't know if that would have been successful but it certainly would have done a lot to avoid the "critics are out of touch in their ivory towers" attitude that has become pervasive over the course of the last number of years.

You still have surveys showing print publications are more trusted than online sources, though honestly the data isn't sliced and diced enough in this MediaVest survey to show how opinions might vary by age group.

One way some major media companies are attempting to do that is by partnering with niche publishers, most often with advertising or content networks. But these aren't conversational tactics, their branding efforts. That's better than nothing but it's also limiting in some regards because there's still no opportunity for interaction with the people behind the brands.

The Internet is changing how we pull content into our days and how we interact with that content. From the way we research obscure trivia to finding and donating to political campaigns to what we get for our concert ticket money our expectations of content availability to how we think journalists will find information.

There's value in creating your own experience, though there's also some in having an experience defined by so-called experts. But people are, because communications are no longer limited by geography or even niche interest, finding the experts most relevant to them and latching on tightly. And that shift is only going to increase as new technologies develop.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because I like to extrapolate (it's my second favorite thing to do after insinuating) from one vertical to another, this AdAge story on what women want out of the Internet certainly got my interest. It's certainly filled with some interesting information on current trends of female behavior online and how traditional behaviors might be shifting or changing, all presented via graphics that, if they were static and not interactive, would not be out of place in People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly.

Aside from that, this sort of story could be written on just about any given demographic any given week. That's how fast things are changing. That's why blogs and the industry watchers and players who pound them out are so valuable to marketers. If you're going to try to reach people where they are, then it makes sense to know where that is, no?

The audience, now more than ever, is a constantly moving target. If one tool stops meeting their needs they'll move on. And the early adopters are never going to sit still long enough for you to get a bead on them.

So while trade mags like AdAge and others serve a great role in terms of providing context and in-depth reporting, for insights on consumer trends I'll take blogs any day of the week. That's especially true since those blogs are often written by people who are trying to dissect and analyze the data for themselves, making their perspective all the more relevant to the reader that's trying to do the same thing.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week a report was released showing the extent to which reporters and traditional journalists felt their field was being impacted by bloggers, citizen journalists and other new media creators.

According to the survey that formed the report, 74 percent of journalists say new media outlets have "very" or "somewhat" effect on the speed of the reporting they do. So we can conclude from that, it seems, that journalists are feeling the eyeballs being trained on them and are speeding up their processes in order to make sure they get the story first.

But only 43 percent (and I say "only" lightly since that's a pretty good-sized chunk of respondents) say that new media has had similar levels of impact on the quality of news coverage. 56 percent say little to no impact on quality has been felt.

The story ends with the author of the study saying journalists are at the very least turning to blogs for context and new ideas or angles for their own coverage, a topic I opined on before, bemoaning the fact that while they may get ideas and information on blogs, they rarely link out to or otherwise credit the bloggers.

Whatever impact journalists might feel blogs and new media in general is having, the tea leaves are aligning in such a way that it's impossible to not see the tidal wave rolling around the bend.

(Mixed metaphor skillz: I haz dem)

Consider that political blogger James Pindell is leaving the Boston Globe for ThePoliticker, a new national network of such blogs. At the site a series of state-specific blogs will be brought together to form national coverage of the political arena.

Or that The New York Times of all papers is now openly soliciting for user-submitted photos of polling places during the primaries.

Or that magazine publishers are increasing the number of online features like social networking, games, and videos they roll out each year that not only make the sites more sticky but also allow for some creation of content by the visitor.

Or that this election cycle is featuring an incredible amount of new-media/old-media partnerships as each outlet looks to tap the other's audience.

In an interview with New York Times "Bits" blogger Saul Hansell, he makes the case that blogging is not so very different from traditional journalism, at least not in the tools themselves. It's the person wielding the tools and how they're used that make some blogs - or even individual posts on a blog - what they are. Hansell acknowledges that the journalism world has changed to some extent because of the ubiquity of online publishing tools but that the worth of the outlet is determined more by the content than it is by the platform that content is published through.

Former Newsweek CEO Rick Smith, on the other hand, isn't thrilled with how so many people with such easy access to publishing tools has devalued the news his magazine and others traffic in. Smith says that so much of the media people are now consuming is made up of opinion and not facts that the reporting is losing importance to readers - and the advertisers who want to be attached to breaking news.

I find more agreement with Hansell's comments then I do with anything else. It's always the content and the intent of the writer that trumps everything else. If someone puts out good stuff - be it audio, video or text - it will gain an audience and be taken seriously. If the content they're producing is found to provide better context, be more relevant or in some other way more deeply and meaningfully connect with the audience then it will win the battle for eyeballs.

Instead of complaining over the injustice of consumer-generated content taking readers away from the reporting an established outlet does, it would be better for those editors to look at what they might not be providing to the audience and seek to address that shortcoming. Change. Adapt. Improve.

But still let your readers and other experts participate in the conversation. Allow comments on story and look to see who's linking to you. Despite all the resources a newspaper or magazine might have (at least those resources that have survived the most recent round of budget cuts) there's still going to be someone out there with a different take on any given story. They might live in the neighborhood you're covering and know what their Alderman has just said on an issue. They might work in the industry and know that X was a direct result of W.

Traditional media no longer exists in a vacuum. They have to compete harder than ever for readers and advertisers. But there's too much "Well we're better" being proclaimed and not enough "Well we're better" being practiced. The determination of your quality - whether it be media, consumer-packaged goods or anything else - comes from the number of people who shell out their money for what it is you're producing.

(Afterward: I had this all written when I saw this pop-up - "How to get a job in journalism." Lots of good stuff in there for the aspirational.)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nielsen has launched a blog devoted to discussions of advertising in and around the Super Bowl. The Road to the Big Game blog is reported to be one of a handful launched by the measurement firm around major events, with another one coming soon that will be devoted to the Academy Awards broadcast.

The MediaPost story says the blog is supposed to be an outlet for more informal communications from the Nielsen team, allowing them to sort of think out loud and the posts to date more or less prove that out. It's also a great example of a corporate blog that really embraces multimedia, with lots of YouTube videos and pictures, as well as linking out to other resources, with lots of pointers to Wikipedia pages and such.

Makes much more sense to START a blog about advertising just before the Super Bowl than to SHUT ONE DOWN just before the game, doesn't it?

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow. Steve Safran is more or less leaving Lost Remote. LR, of course, has an all-star caliber team that Steve was a part of but it will be a bit strange not having his name in some way showing up on the site regularly. LR was one of the first blogs I subscribed to when I first started getting into that and so I feel like an era has ended in some manner.

Good luck to Steve and to the rest of the LR team.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some interesting stats from research done by Ipsos into the media habits of upper-level executives and those in the upper economic classes. The study showed that C-level executives are heavy blog readers and podcast listeners, with nearly a third reading a blog at least once a month. More than that, the usage of blogs and podcasts by those executives is increasing at a clip faster than the general public.

If corporate executives want to stay on the cutting edge of their industry - whatever it is - they need to up that usage even more dramatically. More than that it's the responsibility of those below him or her in the corporation to be showing their executives what they need to be reading daily or weekly and then doing something with that information. There need to be people guiding him or her one way or the other.

That means, of course, that the people below the C-level are reading and listening themselves. So that might be the first hurdle to clear before things go any further up the org chart.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was checking out the newly launched WeSmirch leaderboard and was taken aback by the lack of blogs - assuming a "self-published website with a single author" definition - among the top cited sources for celebrity gossip news.

Then I realized that this was not anywhere near what the creator of the leaderboard intended to create and so went about my day, realizing there was nothing at all odd about this.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Chicago Tribune's first blogger, Eric Zorn, is reflecting back on his first post four years ago and asking for feedback on going forward. I've been reading Zorn's blog since its inception and am always fascinated on how he uses the blog platform to its hilt. Not only does he put up great original content but also uses it to provide expanded related and supporting material to the columns he writes for the Tribune proper.

Really in a good number of the things I've done I've used Zorn's blog as a guidepost. It was the fact that I enjoyed it so much that prompted me to make my first foray into blogging, so you all can blame him for the fact that Chris Thilk is now moderately Internet famous. He mixes personal anecdotes with local news items with national topics and manages, by taking strong positions himself, to provoke strong reactions in his readers. For that I respect him greatly. I don't care if I offend you, I'm just happy people are engaging in the debate.

Zorn's blog has changed a bit over the last four years but still, I think, provides a great example of what the addition of a blog can bring to the Web site of a newspaper or any other media outlet. It's a strong connection with readers that goes beyond the print edition. Here's hoping, by me at least, that Zorn keeps going strong and continues to spearhead the Tribune's new media activities.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm lifting the title quote from David Armano's Twitter feed. He posted that in response to Steve Rubel's whole-hearted agreement with a Guardian article saying that blogging was just like so totally over. Allow me to enumerate my problems with said article.

1) The writer says the latest Technorati SotB report "undoubtedly" contains some fascinating growth numbers. The use of that word makes me think he saw some news about that report but didn't actually, you know, read it.
2) He says blogging is a "minority sport." Unlike the tens of millions that contribute their personal thoughts and anecdotes to national TV and newspaper outlets.
3) Yes, blog growth isn't happening at quite the clip it has in the past. That's a fair point, especially compared to the number of TV stations that are created everyday.

And to anyone and everyone who does or might be tempted to agree with the point of this article: I look forward to your shutting down your blog since apparently there's no future there. The rest of us believe that blogging has power simply because we can do it. We can broadcast our thougths into the world. The good ones will catch on, the bad ones will be ignored or shot down and eventually die. (cough "code of conduct" /cough)

While Rubel does say there's a "bigger story here than just blogs" I still have fundamental problems with the story's premise - that the lack of growth signals a lack of power. I've often said that web publishing - and especially RSS distribution - means I get to put everyone I read on equal footing. The power a particular blog has is primarily only the power I've assigned it as a reader.

So regardless of how much blogs are growing or who says what about what that growth rate means our lives I believe there's still significant power there in terms of thought leadership and letting the community brainstorm on good ideas and best practices. But what do I know. I'm just a blogger.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest thing to catch the attention of the online audience, in case you haven't already heard, is Twitter. It's hard to describe Twitter except to say that it's basically a chat room for people to tell their friends and contacts what they're doing at the moment. Very cool, right? It is.

Unfortunately some people have mistaken Twitter for the end-all-be-all of social media instead of just another tool, and a limited one at that. People have begun declaring that their Twitter feeds are more interesting than their blogs, or that they're going to switch full-time to Twittering instead of blogging. In my estimation this is a signal of not being all that interested in an actual conversation and being more interested in acting as a news bureau.

See Twitter has several characteristics that limit its usefulness as a social media conduit. First of all, each entry only allows for 140 characters. Not exactly space that lends itself to analysis of any sort. Second, it converts long URLs you might want to pass on to TinyURLs to accommodate that character limit. That means while people might be passing on your links, you won't be able to see how they're being tracked through Technorati or anything. So if you're a blogger tracking your URL or a company looking to see how the conversation about them is progressing.

Anyone who's looking to replace their blogs with their Twitter feeds seems to me like they're easily distracted by shiny objects and I neither want to be blogging nor driving next to people like that. Twitter is a cool thing and I'm having a kick engaging in the conversation with the people there. But I'd have to post something like 78 updates there in order to convey what I have in this single post doing it two sentences at a time. It's just a tool, just like blogging is just a tool. It's the thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the people using those tools that have made them powerful - not the tools themselves. Newspapers could use blogging software but the content still comes from newspapers. It's when people outside the mainstream use blogging software that the power is embraced.

Twitter should be a conversation tool, one among many. Don't confuse shiny and slick for all-powerful.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading blogs is a lot like listening to the radio, I've found. If someone doesn't put their picture on their site I wind up constructing an image of them in my mind. Sometimes that winds up being close and sometimes not.

That's why it's interesting what Joe Thornley has been doing on ProPR. At a series of meetups he's been taking pictures of people holding up their name so that we can, quite literally, put a face with a name. And each picture is a link back to that person's blog. He's also posting all those pics to his Flickr account. This is exactly what social media is supposed to be about, the exposure of new voices to an audience and the graphic representation of those voices just makes it all that much better.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The WSJ has a curious item today about retailers in the fashion space covering their trade on blogs in a way to drum up interest. Quoted is Bob Cox, who heads up the Media Bloggers Association, a group I'm a member of. Cox calls these sites "clogs," or corporate blogs, which is an unfortunate moniker, although it's true in some (if not many) cases. Unfortunately, I think that Cox misses the mark by giving that negative connotation, as pretty much any blog, whether for a non-for-profit or a township, has a "marketing or public relations mission." In fact, I'd make the serious argument that the MBA's own blog on the site does exactly that. My personal blog isn't a "clog" by this definition, but that doesn't make it "better" than one that might be put together by an executive at a company.

I think Cox would be better served by discussing whether or not the blogs that were written were done so for a purpose that serves the community it intends to reach. Sure, Neiman Marcus is intending to "sell" product by getting people to read its blog on fashion, but it does two other things. One, it gives some access to Ken Downing, the company's fashion director, and shows his commentaries on product that the store isn't necessarily selling, and can show the perspective of why the store holds the products it does. Second, it puts the retailer in the odd position, that journalist Vanessa O'Connell wisely points out, to be "in the awkward position of reviewing their own suppliers." Her following words are absolutely spot on, about how the blogs are there to "boost sales rather than offer impartial critique," but if the blogs are completely annoying and don't appear to have any serious creedence to them, they will be weeded out by the communities they are trying to embrace (or at least be embraced by). All you do by saying "oh, those are corporate blogs" is continue to drive yet another wedge of "us and them" that so plagued bloggers when the whole "bloggers vs. journalists" thing was the only thing that people were talking about every day. Sure, you don't like certain corporate blogs? I don't have a problem with that, and it's the reason why it isn't something I'm cranking out for every single client I represent. But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it, and a valuable one at that.

Posted by Tom Biro at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well FeedBurner is pretty much a one-stop shop now, aren't they? Not only can you manage you RSS feeds through them and track the stats for that feed but the team has just unveiled the official release of site statistics as well. If you're already using FeedFlare for your site or feed (the little things that say "digg this!" or other such phrases with exclamation points) you just need to check a box in your feed management dashboard and you're all setup.

I think this is a great tool. It consolidates for a number of publishers all of their site stats into one place instead of having to manage multiple services. You can now get one comprehensive picture of how many people are viewing your content no matter how they consume it, something that personally I've been wanting for quite a while.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Like Eric Kintz I think it will be interesting to watch as more companies that compete directly with each other open their own blogs and use them as a means of targeting those competitors and controlling the information flow. That's kind of an area that gets ignored when people are corporate blogging. Sure, blogs are great ways to speak directly to stakeholders and consumers, but how are they really utilized to position a company in its marketplace?

A lot of this is going to depend on how much influence the marketing department has on the blog's content. If they're the ones writing it or approving the content then the conversation could move from one of impassioned people sharing their viewpoints to one that becomes simply a battle of copypoints - and we have enough of that in the form of paid advertising and press releases.

Personally, I think this polite yet blunt. Think about watching the British Parlimentary debates on C-SPAN (don't try to say you've never done this). One member gets up and goes through his or her bit and then someone from the opposition gets up and says, "My honorable colleague..." and then proceeds to call him or her the equivalent of a raving lunatic. Get gritty. Fight for position. Back up your point of view with facts (not spin) and then dive into the fight. That makes for both good reading and shows that you as a company are passionate about what you do and how good you feel you are.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Goodness, what fun it is to get out from in front of the computer screen occasionally and remind yourself that it's real people writing some of your favorite blogs. Clay Parker Jones, David Armano, and Gabby, a colleague of David's at Digitas and I got together at a downtown Chicago Intelligensia to talk blog and such. It would have been an enjoyable morning as it was but it turned out to be even more so with the arrival of Kelly Komp.

Kelly, you see, works for a small design firm named Tandemodus here in Chicago and has not yet begun a blog of his own. He had heard about the meetup via what he described as a series of clicked links it would impossible to recreate or describe. His presence was more than welcome because, as I'm sure all of you know, the thing bloggers love to talk about the most is how they started blogging and what kind of experiences they've had. So we all shared with each other and Kelly how we all came to dive into the online world, what worked for us, what didn't and other such war stories. We probably overloaded him with information and suggestions but also hopefully gave him some things to think about. I'd look for a blog from tandemodus soon and sure it will make my daily reading list.

We all decided this should be a regular thing and hopefully will get more and more people to turn out as the word spreads. Clay has setup a page dedicated to the Chicago Coffee Meetup that he'll be posting updated dates and times to as well as a Flickr Group where we can be embarrassed by how we look in the morning.

In the meantime you can check out the write-ups of this morning's get together complete with pictures from both Clay and David.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hot on the heels of Jon Miller was out at AOL and had been replaced by Randy Falco comes this report from TechCrunch that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL.

I'm not going to speculate on this since Tom and I both work(ed) for Jason at Weblogs, Inc, but if this is true, then wow. Just wow. You can read Jason's thoughts on Miller's leaving the company here.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's an absolutely fascinating meme spreading around the series of tubes devoted to PR and marketing exploring why blogging matters. Eric Kintz at The Marketing Excellence Blog has put up a post that collects the thoughts of some of the brightest guys in the field right now as they explain what lessons, questions and thoughts they pull from the experience of blogging. That's been reposted by David Armano, Joe Thornley and Will Waugh. Allow me to add my own thoughts.

When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life one of my goals was to write a column for The Chicago Tribune. I grew up with the Trib, it was a constant presence in my house as well as my grandparents' house. Going to buy the Sunday issue was a post-church tradition. As I realized that writing was something I enjoyed and was relatively good at writing for the Tribune became the goal. I realized after a while that, despite some attempts at breaking into journalism this just wasn't going to happen. Life went on. Occasionally I'd write something that looked like the type of thing I wanted to have published but that was largely for myself and never saw distribution beyond a floppy disk I saved it to.

But then blogging took off. And I tried it out, though I was a relatively late (mid-2004) adopter. And I was hooked.

Blogging gave me a voice. It gave people like me a voice. Part of me couldn't believe it. I had a voice. I could talk about what I wanted, what movies I was watching, what irritated me about Illinois politics and any thing else that flitted through my mind. The end result was not, let's just say, any good. It wasn't until I found a focus and figured out what exactly I was trying to say that I felt like I was doing good work. Not surprisingly that coincided with my blog finding some success. As I found my way and continued to blog I made contacts that have been extraordinarily valuable to me both personally and professionally, not the least of which is Tom Biro here at MWW Group. Blogging has undoubtedly made me a better writer and has been valuable to my life in a way little outside of my family has achieved.

While this is a personal story the same pattern has been and can be followed by both individuals and corporations alike. Try it. Experiment. See what works and what doesn't. Find something within yourself, either as an individual or as a company, that's passionate about doing it. As my friend Mack Collier says, blogging can allow you a place to hone your skills, distill your thoughts and generally connect you to a world that has some outstanding citizens who are constantly pushing themselves - and therefore you - to think in new and exciting ways. That's been the biggest thing I've gotten out of not only blogging myself but of reading what others are doing. I've been provoked to think outside of any previous comfort zones, something that's sometimes uncomfortable and unnatural but at least it's happening, and it's happening in a place where others can add their thoughts to mine.

There's a graphic in the print edition of this article from the Chi Trib's Steve Johnson that says, according to Pew, only 8% of Americans have a blog. While that statistic might be used by some to show that blogs are not yet mainstream, I have a question for them: What percentage of the American people have a newspaper or magazine column?

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Go read this post by Frank Gruber at TechCrunch and see what it says about social media. At a recent Tech Cocktail here in Chicago, there were folks who run sites that allow the community to review restaurants, write about their home improvement experiences, come together with other fitness enthusiasts, share online video and so much more. It's like a microcosm of what's going on online with citizen journalism, social networking and the other tools and phenomena that we deal with every day.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Josh Hallett has an interesting bit of thinking-out-loud up regarding the relationship between journalist and hyper-local or hyper-niche citizen blogger. He points out that, because he is not a full-time journalist, he has neither the time nor the resources to always do all the digging and reporting that a story might require and so often does the best he can and then tries to hand the issue off to the community to fill in the blanks. That, if for no other reason, is why there will always be a place in the media world for professionals.

But those professionals will need to know where to turn to fill in their own knowledge gaps as well. That's because the citizenry, the ones who live in the communities or who have a niche interest, are going to be powerful within that niche. Mainstream media outlets simply don't have the resources to get as minutely specific as blogging allows for. So not only is Josh smart for knowing what he doesn't know and reaching out for input, so to should reporters learn to know what they don't know and search for those who do. The reality is that professional journalists have the tools to do some jobs better than bloggers and I don't see that changing soon. But niche bloggers have the time and the passion to cover topics or angles that big news organizations just can't because the return on investment is too low or even non-existent.

I'm increasingly of the opinion, though, that within a generation it won't be the publication that matters so much to people as it will be the filters they choose to put in place or receive their news and other content through. Google News, Technorati and other such services/sites are becoming the new "source." It won't matter to someone in the Tampa area whether the news they receive comes from the Tampa Tribune or a local-issues blogger like Hallett. They will be interested in news on "Tampa," subscribe to the aggregators that can bring that news to them and then assign value to the content as they go.

People's time is important - and scarce. Whoever can provide the most value in that time will win the battle for their attention. As we become more and more used to picking and choosing what we read the outlets that provide that value will dominate the discussion but I think we need to look for a time when media brands are secondary to the quality of the content they produce.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By now, a bunch of you have probably read my item from Friday about Seattle-area law firm Marler Clark, which I was heavily critical of for how they were going about "blogging" on various things such as salmonella, E. coli, and other health concerns. At the center of the issue was the repeated use of articles from various publications, without much input or thought leadership from the firm, which obviously knows what it is doing in the legal field, based on its regular involvement in food-borne illness lawsuits.

On Saturday morning, I received an email from Bill Marler regarding the entry I had posted. With his permission, I'm publishing a bit of what he had to say - which I'm happy to say is pretty positive.

Tom – got your email and I share most of your concerns. I think we have been a bit lazy on how we “blog” on the “bug” sites and we will correct that going forward and edit backwards. When I started the blog sites it was really an effort to get in one place information/articles on a particular bug and I think that it has been helpful for a lot of folks. I do agree we need to be better at editing and I appreciate you pointing it out.

Since that first email, we've corresponded quite a bit on this topic, and it looks like it took a bit of a nudge here from me, but that Marler Clark is looking to do right when it comes to the firm's blogs, and they definitely understand what my concerns were, not only from the copyright perspective, but from a blogging perspective as a whole. Keep your eyes peeled for more on this, as I think there will be some more to this story, especially with continued concerns about other fresh vegetables coming out in the last day or so.

After doing something one way for a number of years, I'm not expecting this to turn out "perfect" in just a day or two, but I think that the overall gist of what works - and doesn't - in blogging has definitely gotten into Bill Marler's thought process here. And, if all works out well for them, they're definitely in a unique position here. While other firms that might be considering getting into this same space might have to go out and purchase keywords in search engines such as Google or Ask.com, Marler Clark is already going to come up first for terms such as "e. coli lawyer." Sure, another firm comes up fourth for that term - at least for me - but Marler Clark takes the first three slots.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd say the story is just beginning here. Keep your eyes peeled here or over at Marler's blog to see how things evolve. Welcoming your comments, questions, thoughts, or observations, as always!

Posted by Tom Biro at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a pretty easy way to split the cast of characters in the "PR 2.0" landscape when it comes to blogs - those who believe that most, if not all, should have one; and those that are much more strategic. While there are plenty of arguments on both sides, and the latter group might even *want* to have a blog in some way, shape, or form for "everyone," it's not always the best move. Recently, I had a casual IM conversation with someone about how various sides behind the whole fresh spinach issue with E. Coli bacteria should or should not blog, and how that'd work. We were both in decent agreement on how we though it'd pan out, and if the spinach makers would be served any good by having a blog or something along those lines in the wake of this crisis. But that's not so much what i want to point out today.

On Monday morning, I caught this item from the Wall Street Journal that the Baltimore Sun picked up, mentioning how Marler Clark, a Seattle-area law firm, had been using its "E. coli blog" - and I use the term in quotes because "blog" has to be used loosely here - to get the word out about this latest crisis in the fresh spinach market. The firm had apparently been able to attract people to using its services through the Web, and the "blog" was a major part of that, given its focus on E.coli. The article's writer, Heather Won Tesoriero, says that "the firm posted messages" on the blog, but if you spend any amount of time reading said blog, which you can find here, you'll notice that little, if any effort, was put into writing an actual "blog" by this firm, and all they were doing is merely cutting and pasting articles from sources such as the Associated Press, Columbus Dispatch, San Diego Union-Tribune, and others. This isn't to say that they never do, but the bulk of what is written wasn't ever penned by a member of that firm.

Of the last ten entries on the "blog" as of Monday, the only content that appears to actually have been generated by said firm, or its writer, "E. coli Attorney," is the following text, on this entry from September 30.

We were pleased that Michael Heilman, Ms Kaminske's counsel, has asked Marler Clark to assist in prosecuting this case. Mike is a great lawyer and advocate for his clients.

Astounding.

Continue reading "How not to blog - or - copyright law for a law firm" »

Posted by Tom Biro at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

Last week I made a decision regarding my personal blog, Movie Marketing Madness. While Blogger had been good to me since the blog's inception in early 2005, I started to feel the time was right for a change. Through a variety of projects I had been playing around with WordPress and was really digging the functionality it provided. I had also been sitting on the moviemarketingmadness.com domain for a while, but had pretty much just been redirecting it to the blogspot-hosted URL.

So I finally installed WordPress, imported all the old posts over to the new URL and set about the next phase in the life of a blog that's been very good to me, both personally and professionally. But, because I didn't want to lose over year's worth of incoming links, I left the blogspot blog alone. Even so, I saw my traffic drop like a rock. But you know what? I actually consider that a good thing.

See, for the last couple months I'd been getting a lot of visitors running Google Images searches for a couple of movie posters in particular. For some reason I wasn't really thrilled with that. It was like I didn't consider them “real” hits since they weren't there for my content but for an image I had happened to upload. As soon as I switched over to WordPress I saw those referrals disappear. Now my daily traffic is about a third to a quarter what it had been, but I like the quality of those hits much more than I did the quantity I was getting before.

Bloggers, it seems to me, seem to have one of two mindsets. Either they strive for their sites to have the biggest possible exposure and achieve the widest reach they can or they want to be taken very seriously by a core group. I'm very much the latter. I want my blog to read by the type of people who are interested in that particular niche of the world. That might sound kind of elitist, like I require some “cool” test in order to join my club, but it's not. In fact it's the exact opposite. I want MMM to be successful and to reach a large number of people. But I want them to come there to read me as opposed to just coming there to because Google says I have a picture they're interested in.

So the move to WordPress has been a good one, both for the hosted functionality it gives me as well as for the reboot it gave to my traffic numbers. I can more clearly see who's visiting and how they got there. That information will help me build a better site for both me and my readers, which is what blogging is all about.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Winer seems to be okay with PayPerPost (I'm still not linking to it). I still stand by my original comments.

Presumably, I can catch grief on this by the fact that I work in public relations, but at the same time, a good portion of what I do at my job here at MWW Group is to make clients and our staff realize that a higher level of transparency is absolutely integral to doing business in a new media world. Sure, Dave feels this is "cleaner" because of past experience, and I think a lot of us have been in similar situations with traditional media outlets, but that doesn't mean that PayPerPost is a good thing. Comparing someone's use of a company tagline or "phrase" from an ad in a piece of editorial to someone coming out and effectively writing a commercial for a company's product or service are two different things, irrelevant of how "transparent" that might seem.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If some of the blogs you're looking for are suspiciously quiet this morning, then you might be dealing with a bit of BlogOrlando fun and excitement. Chris and I weren't able to attend this event down in Florida that Josh Hallett is coordinating along with a host of other awesome folks, but we're expecting to be able to pay attention to what's up via the event's blog along with a host of others through the attendees of the event. Head on down there and check it out, if you can!

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of what's out there in terms of consumer-generated content does, I agree, fit in with the stereotype forwarded by Robert Samuelson of being "exhibitionist" in nature. But like all such statements, it doesn't apply to all members of a community. He conveniently ignores all the good journalism being done and valuable input being contributed by bloggers and others in favor of yet another story about how everyone thinks their life is just so interesting it has to be shared.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: These articles are all about scaring people away from taking blogs seriously. They're motivated by a sense of self-preservation by mainstream journalists who see themselves being marginalized as people find voices that previously had no outlet due to the laws of limited production facilities. And these stories sound more and more desperate each time a new one comes out.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Armano has an absolutely fantastic graphic up that lays out the daily schedule of someone who might not be an average blogger but which definitely spoke to me.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I always like to sit back and watch big stories play out over a period of time. It helps with perspective, both in my own thoughts as well as gauging what other people are saying, not to mention letting all the facts and backstory come in.

The latest story that's been cycling through my Bloglines feeds is that of Dell's entry into the blogosphere. So many people commented on it it bordered on earth shaking. You'd think that God Himself had started a blog. After all, both He and Dell have been silent for many years. Both basically told their stakeholders how to communicate with them (prayer and customer service calls respectively) and told people if that didn't help refer to the instruction manuel for further help.

There were two posts from the PR blog cul-de-sac that went beyond pointing out the initial shortcomings of Dell's blog. The most constructive was, unsurprisingly, from Shel Holtz. He actually recommended taking a deep breath and not chiding Dell over what was, essentially, an opening night performance. He references a couple of A-lister type bloggers who demanded that Dell fit into their vision of what a blog from the company should look like. Holtz even highlights Dell's policy on approving and posting blog comments. The policy is, in short, to approve anything that's on-topic, delete the stuff that's overly inflammatory and send specific problems or issues to customer service instead of dealing with it on the blog. That's a sound policy. The blog is not the place to deal with everyone's problems with their laptops. It's inefficient and not setup for that purpose so trying to do so would only lead to problems. Besides, blog comments are - to my mind at least - places to comment. They are not places to recount past corporate misjudgements and ask for clarification. If that's what you're looking for, seek out the media relations person and get them on the record.

The idea that Dell - or any other company - is going to hit the ground running with a blog that immediately meets all the expectations of people who have been blogging for years and learning as they go along is ludicrous. For all those who critized the first couple posts on the Dell blog, I'd like you to go back to the first couple posts you put up and see how much ground you really have to stand on. I'm actually embarressed to do that and so avoid at all costs telling people they're not doing it right from the start.

BusinessWeek does a nice job of detailing both the Dell blog and corporate blogging in general. MediaPost also passes on numbers saying over three quarters of companies with corporate blogs are satisfied with them. The main advantages are increased web traffic and media mentions, both of which are good things in case you were wondering.

Starting a corporate blog can be scary for a lot of companies. The backlash against Dell's efforts pretty much show that a lot of that fear is justified. Despite that the positives that can be had from establishing a presence do outweigh the bad. Blogging is a learning experience. Yes, you can draw on the lessons of others, but it still takes time to find an identity, a voice and a true mission for the blog. Work at, and be open about the process and it will likely work out in the end.

Oh, I forgot my other favorite blog post about Dell. It's from J-Pepp.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We all heard that this past Monday was supposed to be the debut of Rocketboom 2.0 with new (if temporary) host Joanne Colan. Well Monday came and went, with the Rocketboom site being alternatively down or sporting a message saying the first show was going to be slightly delayed. OK, no problem. Things happen. We'll wait.

Tuesday then came and, when I first saw the Quicktime box pop up I was hopeful. Finally we'd be able to see if Colan could hold her own and continue the brand name in her own manner. Except all that we saw was someone in a catcher's mask careening past the desk. Hmm. This was accompianed by a message from co-producer Andrew Baron that he never realized just how much Amanda Congdon did to help the show get done and up for the viewing public. Self-actualization is so messy, isn't it.

Finally yesterday Joanne Colan made her debut with a piece that contained mostly her and her accent walking around New York, attempting to trade items in much the same fashion as the One Red Paperclip guy. It was amusing in and of itself but I found myself being more disappointed than not with the show. That was not the fault of Colan, who exudes a self-confidence that, I think, is missing from so many other vloggers. No, my problems actually were in the lack of change in the show. I wished they had done something different with the set. The map-on-the-wall background is so very much associated with the former occupant of that chair it was almost distracting. I found myself wishing Baron and the others had spent some time rethinking the show from the ground up.

Then again sometimes I'm just cranky so that might explain part of why I had problems with it. Colan looks great and that accent is undeniable. And it makes sense to provide some brand continuity, but there's a reason Sammy Hagar didn't sing many of the David Lee Roth songs when he was with Van Halen. Each person in front of the camera or at the front of a band deserves to be able to set their own identity. Unfortunately with their desire to keep the look of Rocketboom they forget that the feel of Rocketboom would be completely different.

J-Pepp takes the Rocketboom saga - and a few other recent stories relating to vlogging - and wonders whether the medium is going mainstream. Driving right past his uncomfortable use of the word "manhandle", Jeremy's got a point. The most recent (by which I mean within the last six hours) story is the hiring of Irina Slutsky and Eddie Codel by Podtech, the company Robert Scoble just joined.

So does this mean that vlogging now has the potential to be big business? Could be. Maybe not. Things are moving so fast that the success they're achieving might not last long as people's attention spans move on to the next big thing. The good news is that the people doing this kind of thing are innovators and are incredibly bright, so the odds are good they'll adapt. I think the point to remember is that it's not actually important how "big" the business is and focus more on how well you're serving the market you're trying to and how easily you're making yourself findable to people who haven't yet found you. Therein lies success.

As an interesting sidenote, Tom "Two Screens" Biro told me he first learned of the signing of Slutsky and Codel by viewing the Flickr photo of Slutsky signing her contract. How's that for an unlikely source.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, a co-worker of mine pinged me with a link to this column by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek about companies pulling a pay for play ... err, write ... in the blogosphere. While the first reaction that this type of article / item typically creates is one of complete and utter shock on the faces of those who believe our world is altruistic, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.

The Bad News

Let's start with the ugliness. Blogs, while they play check-and-balance for each other, don't necessarily have the internal controls that the "big media" we're all used to getting our daily dirt from have. When that kind of situation exists (not that any big mediafolk haven't written tit-for-tat in reality), you're bound to have some apples leaning towards the "bad" variety as far as journalism goes. But herein lies the argument of "is blogging journalism?" To which the response is, as it should be, "it all depends." Some bloggers may be journalists, some blogs may contain journalism, some journalists may partake in non-journalism on blogs, and whatever other combinations you can come up with, but you can't take everything you see on any blog as truth, just as we've learned that not everything we see in our newspapers or on the television as complete and utter fact. It's that some of our other media have a much higher "success" rate when it comes to reality.

So, we're faced with a loophole of sorts on the 'net, one with about 40 million sites that may or may not be on the take. Are they all on the take? Nope. Are some. Sure. What's most important is the title that Fine's item came with, that he (or his editor) added - "Polluting the Blogosphere." Which is where we get to move to the good part.

The Good News

As the title says, what was going on in this particular case is "pollution." Sure, pollution has been known to cause larger problems than just some trash on the corner, but it's not "annihiliation" by any means. The reason these business models exist is because people have seen that blog postings - especially permanent ones - have a much better long-term effect than advertising probably does, even effective text ads, at being a part of overall conversation and getting influentials to pay attention. Is this going to potentially have a negative effect on what bloggers are thinking when they read blogs where people are overly glowing of a product or service? Probably. What we should be worrying more about, probably, are the *negative* blog postings that people could potentially create to do a similar thing. Don't think a company would be slick enough to trash a competitor, because negative comments wouldn't necessarily appear as blatant?

Let's consider that the power-in-numbers situation is more than in effect here. Bloggers who appear to be on the take regularly won't be taken seriously in the long haul by "serious" bloggers and blog readers. Disclosing that you were paid to write about something (which is completely different from saying you were reached out to by the company that thought you might be interested in the product / service) purely makes it look like a textual advertisement written by the blogger in question. People *not* disclosing what they are doing are obviously "free" to do so (that whole capitalism thing and all), but it doesn't mean we will believe everything they say. The value here is more of the mention of the product / service, not necessarily what the review says. Think of what you read on most blogs as how you should consider Wikipedia - a good starting point, not necessarily THE definitive answer-giver.

Most of the bigger blogging groups / companies / teams have decent policies against such things happening, and just making sure your writers - many of whom may have never had a professional writing gig in their lives - know what the "rules" are, ethically and internally, is what makes the difference. On any given day, I'm not one to think that TechCrunch's Mike Arrington or Marshall Kirkpatrick are "on the take" and are being paid to blog about things because they've earned my trust, just as my local newspaper has. Can I say the same thing about some random blog that just appeared on the scene and is randomly writing about some restaurant chain, glowingly, here and there? Probably not, because I don't know much about who's behind it.

This is probably more of a search engine issue than it is anything else as far as ethics goes, which also leads back to the "pollution" concept. A commenter, "Jim Durbin," in the BW item seems to agree, saying that "These companies are paying for link traffic..."

In my eyes, three important things are in play here. The companies involved in this pay-for-write situation are described as "Advertisers," without the quotes, by Fine, and presumably Ted Murphy's PayPerPost.com. When the money quote in an article is "it's up to [bloggers] to be their own morality police," that tells me that everyone involved probably knows that what's going on is wrong. Or at least shady. Most importantly - this isn't just that cash is actually changing hands for people to write "about" a product or service, it's much more specific, seemingly looking for positive only (or close) or you don't get paid. If all of a sudden 50 blogs are going "You've got to do XYZ with ABC" and there's no apparent rhyme or reason for it, someone *will* start looking for answers.

This is a tough situation for public relations professionals, especially those in the "2.0" world, to be forced to contend with. A popular, and for the most part, effective, way of doing things is to reach out to a number of blog writers that you believe to have some interest or relevance regarding a product or service a client offers, and let those in the marketplace sample or have access to said product or service. Should this be considered close to the same situation? It all depends. Some bloggers who consider themselves close to the world of journalism would decline any offering of this type, but others would welcome the opportunity, similar to how those participating in a focus group or test kitchen might have access to a product, service, or activity months before others have, and they are giving their feedback in a closed situation. Here, companies are spinning the wheel, and allowing those individuals to have their say - or say nothing - on their blogs and in their circles of influence. I would argue that this will more closely reach a point of consignment, such as what much of the tech industry does with review journalists, with key members of the blogosphere. This is absolutely happening today, especially in the tech space, but there is a good chance it will widen as the need for different types of feedback or an interest in getting "buzz" out there in a timely and effective manner grows.

At the end of the day, Murphy's "per post" payola situation is one of a number of similar concepts that have been floating around the blogosphere for some time now. Whether or not they have made any headway is probably more subjective than anything. If they measure success by 1,000 more visitors to an advertiser's site, then fine. If they define success by actual sales or conversions, then that's another. In either case, we know that spam works, and we all hate that, right? This is the scheme of the moment, and while it might "pollute" some of our spaces, it's not going to be responsible for the downfall of a good thing.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, David Perlmutter writes about how he has been adding blogs to his stable of sources for information with a political twist, and is asking how these sites will "play in future campaigns and elections." Of course, we got a first glimpse at how blogs and other online media such as forums (still the leader, if you start sourcing where most popular blogs get their information from) have an impact on the political process, but what I think is the more important question, going forward, is how the evolution of blogs and new media tools in the last few years since the 2004 presidential election will herald even more changes in the process.

For those who have been on the scene before that election season, we've been privy to everything from seeing those blogs have much lessened traffic numbers after the election (probably just like any other media) to hearing about how government entities wanted to regulate speech on the Internet as donations. Most of those things are old hat now, so what's going to be exciting is to see what comes next. Will some new tool show up that will make us all wake up - again - or will we be privy to such an amassing of online commentary that it will all become cluttered?

[via reverseswim on del.icio.us]

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)