It’s all the rage on Tech.Memeorandum today. Sphere.com. Pretty good. I wrote more about it early in the day at Social Software. Having used it some more and listened to star-maker Mike Arrington interview the founders – I feel even better about it at the end of the afternoon. You might want to check it out too, and if you have an hour you might want to listen to the podcast linked to over there on Social Software.
Video promotion online
Joan Stewart at the Publicity Hound blog wrote today about a mother/child yoga DVD that needs help with online marketing. The DVD producer ends her request for advice with the following:
“But in order to do that, we need to be out there! I’ve sent press releases, done a local news guest segment, gotten reviews, created an interactive website, have product placed in a few specialty stores, done expos, etc.
“But I need that Big Thing. What am I missing? What’s one huge thing that might put us on the map? Please help, Hounds.â€
I watched the DVD trailer, and it is pretty neat. So I posted the following comment on Joan’s blog. Anyone have any thoughts on the question or this advice?
Not to rain on the parade, but some people contend that the new social media emerging (like blogs) is not at all about the Big Thing – but rather the aggregate result of lots of small things. That said, this vid has a great trailer! You might consider putting it on YouTube, engaging some yoga and mama bloggers in conversation (see, for example http://technorati.com/blogs/motherhood ) and offering them the short code snippet that will allow your video to be shown on their site. Trying to get bloggers to cover your product can be difficult, but the bottom line is reading their blogs before hand and really engaging with them. Beyond that, I’ve bookmarked the best resources I’ve found for pitching bloggers for coverage at http://del.icio.us/marshallkirkpatrick/pitchingbloggers
Good luck!
One thing I didn’t think to write at the time is that I would make sure to set up search feeds for references to the video and make sure to respond to any coverage. I would not set up search feeds for terms like “mother and baby Yoga” because making a commercial pitch any time anything related is blogged about would be in poor taste.
On writing good titles
This Yahoo News search result for immigration boycott, on the right hand side of the results page where blogs appear, reminds me that I have to write better titles. Especially when I’m writing about something other than just tech – if I want to take advantage of good placement in places where there is news/blog integration, chances are every other blog post there is liable to begin its headlines with a subject-level phrase. I would love to see people interested in today’s events find my blog through a search for that and take interest in how RSS can be used in their field of interest.
As more and more mainstream media/news sites cut deals with Technorati to include search results on their pages – the headline and first few words of it even become more important for bringing readers beyond that link. Related: See NYTimes, This boring headline is written for Google. I’m talking about something different, though. Perhaps SEO works this way as well, but I’m talking about the human eye being able to see the distinct nature of a truncated excerpt.
I see now that I also misspelled the word strike. Great.
Update: I just changed it and will now go ping manually and see if Yahoo News indexes the new title.
Using RSS to display breaking Immigration-strike survey news automatically
Subscribe to this feed
The above box is an example of how you can use search, RSS and the application FeedDigest.com to create an automatically updating newswire on your web site about anything timely or interesting.
I’m struggling with my CSS for layout right now, but plenty of other people have those skills. There are many different ways that something like this can be made to look. I added the FeedBurner feed and subscription button myself. The important thing is that the box above is the RSS feed for a Google News search for “immigration AND survey AND strike OR boycott.” It will update automatically throughout the day. I wish the demonstrations the best of luck and hope that US attitudes about immigrants change quickly for the better. It would behoove white people to remember how we behaved when our ancestors first came to this place and get our act together.
Tags: immigration
More examples of big internal corporate blogs
I like to keep track of good examples of Web 2.0 tools being adopted by anyone and everyone. When the corporate world offers a new example, I imagine that probably gives the tools all the more credence. Sally Falkow has a write up on two good examples: French pharmaceutical company Ipsen is using blogging as a reputation management and competitive intelligence tool and financial giants Ernst & Young are using what they call “pages” and internal teams working on clients and projects use the system to collaborate and share knowledge. Both of these examples leverage the heck out of RSS, I’m sure.
Falkow’s write up has some more details and says that the Blogsite platform, which she uses on her blog and I write with as well for one of my clients, would be a good solution in both of these circumstances. I agree wholeheartedly, the Blogsite platform is very good in many ways.
Watching the Alpha-Geeks: Tim O’Reilly gives a great talk
Tim O’Reilly’s talk at eTech this March just got posted on ITConversations. Called “Watching the Alpha-Geeks,” (link is to more info and download) it’s a great 30 minute overview of the trends underlying the bleeding edge of new tech. Very cool, very listenable. A great way to catch up or brush up on some of the most exciting things going on in the space. The world really is changing and this talk does a great job of explaining the upsides and some reasons to be concerned. O’Reilly is fantastic, as are many of the speakers in the ITConversations podcast series.
If you’re in the mood for podcasts, the most recent edition of the Gillmor Gang is not to be missed if you’re interested in new media vs. old and the changing advertising landscape. Amanda Cogden from RocketBoom, Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine/About.com/NYTimes and Richard Edelman, head of the PR firm that represents Walmart and is smart enough to employ Steve Rubel, are all the guests. And it’s only 30 minutes long! So if you are put off by the usual hour length of one of the best podcasts online – this could be your big chance to check it out. Very forward-looking stuff in this one.
Tags with selected links elsewhere: Podcasts, advertising, Web2.0, change
How to rapidly join online conversations about anything
Let’s say you want to promote something cool (please don’t use this method to promote something obnoxious, ok?) and you want to get to the center of attention and do it fast. Here’s a method that should work frighteningly well.
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