Archive for category Marketing
Complete the Journalist Survey – RSS vs PR Wires
For my current work at an interactive agency and throughout my communications agency work I have been counseling public relations teams on the use of press release wire services to enhance outreach directly towards target audiences. Recently I have been asked as to the value of these wires versus a company’s RSS feeds.
Somewhat towards this end, several nice reports have come out recently on the influence of bloggers and company social media. Brodeur, Arketi and Bulldog Reporter/TEK Group.
However, I would love to see some direct feedback from the media (traditional and non-traditional journalists) as to their preferences in how they receive company news. I put together this survey rather than waiting for my agency, or another to ask some straight forward questions. Read the rest of this entry »
What do you think of Ragan Communications?
A communications industry publisher who certainly “gets” social media and the impacts of the online world upon public relations is Ragan Communications. My Ragan is a great social network for communications professionals and something I wish the PRSA had created. Ragan.com is a solid site and the companion set of email newsletters are well formatted, nicely targeted and always seem to have good articles. I have found the Communication + Technology Insider to be a great idea generator and in general one of the better forward thinking publications.
All of these publications show how a trade publisher once solidly in the print world can adapt to the online marketplace. They certainly continue to sell and distribute print version of their newsletters. It seems though that the high quality free content drives more people towards their conferences, workshops research, training and other expert deliverables.
So, what do you think of the Ragan “world”?
Easter Seals Autism Widget
As widgets become easier and easier to create they are being used for everything imaginable. What is a widget? A widget is a short bit of code someone provides so that you can place special functionality on your Web site. This is nothing new. However, the popularity of blogging and social networks has led to an explosion of widgets. Just as web page builders, Blogger and MySpace have removed the requirement for anyknowledge of HTML, widgets make it easy to add features without any programming knowledge.
Help me reach my goal!
e-Newsletters vs. Blogs
Debbie Weil brings up some great points on why companies should consider transferring a newsletter into a blog format. She brings up several points including:
- HTML email newsletter layout takes more time than posting to a blog.
- Email is passive. The blog encourages comments and responses
- Blogs support email and RSS feeds – the option is left to the reader.
In addition I have found:
- Email newsletters are increasingly be deleted without being read. Readers of RSS feeds are can opt-in to read items at their leisure without filling up their email accounts.
- Email newsletters are prone to be getting caught in spam filters. RSS feeds from a blog do not get caught in these filters.
- Blogs offer a built in archive, categories and other functions that can require customizations in newsletter software.
- There are many resources to help you promote a blog. Newsletters are much more reliant on word-of-mouth.
- Blogs eliminate the hassles of email distribution and any associated costs.
- Blogs provide a home for you to attract additional readers to an always available archive.
- Blogs encourage more frequent short postings than the less frequent e-newsletter.
Fundraising via Mobile Phones – Skip the Whole Donor Model
Over at work, we are routinely asked to provide a stategy where a non-profit can recive donations via SMS. This is cerainly easily and rapidly impemented via the existing technology. The roadblock is that the carriers end up pulling away 30% – 45% of the donation. This instanly makes this channel a non-vaiable option for every group we have reviewed thiis outlet.
Amnesty International appears to have taken another appraoch. They are partnering with a Working Assests to provide co-branded service — Amnesty Wireless. Amnesty International then recives 10% of charges without addtional overhead. This is certainly a more creative model. It will be interesting to see how many people actually sign up for the service powered by the Nationwide Sprint PCS Network.
In any case, this is probably the start of a trend in this saturated commodity market for cell phone services to enable affinity programs similar to those we find with credit cards.
