by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 3, 2006
The New York Times reported yesterday that while the mainstream media (or MSM in blogger talk) has largely ignored Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner a few nights ago, the blogosphere has spread the news far and wide.
Colbert’s wry, ironic spiel at the fête is now widely recognized in the blogosphere as a brilliantly crafted attack on the White House. As he does on his nightly show “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, Colbert expertly aped the antics of the largely pro-Bush anchor staff at FOX News.
The fact that the bloggers have made this a hot topic says a number of things about the overarching culture of the blogosphere. We all know that blogs are a great tool for politicians and political junkies to get the word out about their perspectives and beliefs. In fact, one of the overwhelming perceptions that non-bloggers hold about bloggers is that we’re all a bunch of political pundits of one stripe or another.
But beyond our tendency toward political activism, bloggers also tend to grab hold of stories that the mainstream media has missed. It’s another issue that businesses need to be aware of when they’re dealing with the news cycle. Perhaps the MSM decided not to report the press conference where your company spokesperson said something unwise - but you can bet that at least one blogger was paying attention. And one blogger is really all that it takes to create public relations challenges for your business.
Now I don’t mean to harp on the negative. We Blog Business Summit types don’t like to paint an overwhelmingly frightening portrait of the blogosphere for our readers. Bloggers are largely welcoming to businesses that are willing to engage them. The point I’m trying to make here is a very old one: companies need to pay attention and respond in one form or another when the blogosphere decides to talk about something important to them.
Why? Because even though relatively few people are thoroughly blog-savvy at this point in time, the MSM most certainly is. And if the MSM ignores something the bloggers find relevant, you can bet that they’ll pick up on it later on in the news cycle once the bloggers have been buzzing about it for long enough.
The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is just one more example of this principle in action, and it’s absolutely worth paying attention to.
by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 2, 2006
Living With War is by all accounts a scratchy, muddy, unproduced protest record that was written, recorded and distributed very very quickly by Young and his band. And Young is using all the tools at his disposal to get the album into fans’ hands quickly. He started streaming the tracks on his website on Friday and his label released the record for commercial download today, long before the physical records will appear stores. He’s also been using the new Web from the blogosphere to MySpace to YouTube to get his message across and sell his record.
Not that the record is having a lot of trouble selling itself. With song titles like “Let’s Impeach the President” and “Lookin’ For a Leader,” the controversy is already so red hot that we’re expecting everything associated with this album to go like hotcakes.
Young bashes Madison Avenue pretty heavily on this record. Still, he’s obviously not unaware of the power of a good marketing plan. Young and his label are due a lot of praise not only for creating such a viral product, but for marketing it so virally
by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 2, 2006
Last week, Steve and I were playing around on AdWords and we set up a few new Google ads. Steve was telling me that the ad should appear within 10-20 minutes. But when we Googled our keywords, we got nothing, nada, zip.
Come Monday, our ad still wasn’t popping up. I was starting to be seriously worried that there was a major problem with our account at Adwords. So I got in touch with the Google Adwords people via their Internet chat offering. A very nice woman named Nadia told me that the reason our ad wasn’t popping up when we Googled our keywords was that Google hadn’t gotten around to reviewing and approving it.
Keep in mind that this was more than 5 days after the ad was first submitted. That’s hardly instant - and while Google doesn’t ever promise that they’ll instantaneously post your ad, they don’t exactly tell you how much of a lag time to expect. Since it’s the Web we’re dealing with, the assumption is that things will take place quickly.
I wonder if Google could speed up the process by conducting the approval process only until an advertiser has proven itself trustworthy. Steve’s been purchasing and posting interesting and contextually appropriate Google Ads for quite a while now - you’d think that they’d get the picture that he’s not going to post something profane or defamatory.
And if Google can’t just create a safe list, maybe they need to just hire more people to get the ads reviewed faster. 5 days is just a little long.
by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 1, 2006
I wasn’t aware until today that there is a bill before Congress - the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Efficiency Act of 2006, or COPE (aka the Barton-Rush Act) - that would greatly change the way we view the Internet. The telecommunications companies are lobbying to change the principle of network neutrality, effectively giving them control over how quickly different content providers load in Web browsers, and even allowing them to block content they deem objectionable. The idea is that providers could sell fast loading privileges to wealthy content providers like EBay, Amazon and Google while smaller sites would load more slowly.
There are a number of organizations and private citizens who don’t want that to happen. In fact, I learned of the issue when I got an e-mail from Eli Pariser at MoveOn.org telling me about the bill. The bill’s opponents argue that giving the telecom companies the power to control the way the Internet is displayed would allow them to exert undue influence over people’s decision making, purchasing and browsing habits. There are also some First Amendment-based objections to the bill.
But the telecommunications companies argue that because they own the pipes, they should be able to control what goes through them and at what speeds.
I know how I feel personally about this, but we don’t take positions on political issues here at the BBS. We are, however, free to hold debates. So dear readers, what do you think about all this?
by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 1, 2006
If you remember, I chatted with Ruben de la Torre from the LAPD for a podcast a few weeks ago. Ruben told me then that LAPD was planning to launch their blog today.
But because of the protests scheduled nationwide today, they’ve decided to hold off on launching the blog until later this week. In case you didn’t know - today is the day when immigrants and their descendants are supposed to abstain from working to demonstrate the contributions we make to the United States economy. Ruben told me that the traffic in LA was “very light” today - which is eerie for a Monday in the City of Angels.
Ruben did promise to keep us updated on the launch of the blog and their coverage of the protests, which we think will make a very compelling story. We’re looking forward to seeing the LAPD blog in all its glory.
by Teresa Valdez Klein on May 1, 2006
When we talk to potential clients that have an eye on the blogosphere, the overwhelming majority of them want to know a lot of things before they start blogging. One of the big questions that comes up is, “who is going to read this thing, anyway?”
When starting a blog, it’s very important to know your target audience. You need to have a good sense of why you’re blogging and who you’re doing it for, or you’ll come across as broadly inauthentic. I suspect that this general lack of direction is part of the problem with Southwest Airlines’ new blog, but I can’t be certain without having a look at their game plan.
Anyway - the recent report put out by BlogAds paints an interesting if not wholly scientific portrait of the blogospheres. I say “blogospheres” because this report presents some compelling evidence that not all blog readers are the same. This is something that we’ve long known to be true, but there is a tendency among researchers to clump all blog readers together - so it’s good to see the folks at BlogAds getting the story right.
The take-home lesson here is that you can’t just target your blog at the “blogosphere” in general and hope that the right kind of readers will drift your way. You can’t even say, “this blog is for our customers, employees, friends, and enemies.” It’s just too broad. You have to figure out what your company hopes to achieve by blogging. How does it fit into your efforts to reach out to your customers? Your employees?
Like Anil Dash said in his talk at our Los Angeles seminar (summary here, slides here) the next generation of blogs will have even smaller, more specific audiences. We’re going to see companies building multiple blogs for multiple constituencies - a continuation of The Long Tail phenomenon we’re already seeing.
Via The Blog Herald
