RonAmok!

One of the things that corporations need to understand is the fact that New Media is different. Take bloggers for example. A blogger is someone who opens themselves up to their readers. A blogger puts a little bit of themselves into every piece that they write.

Most encourage their users to interact with them and most look forward to interacting with their readers. Bloggers are by their very nature, very approachable.

The “traditional” media, on the other hand, aren’t. Over the course of time, they have built walls around themselves, making it difficult for marketers and public relations folks to get their attention. Therefore, one of the tactics that corporations use is to blast off press releases to any Tom, Dick, or Harriet who has at least one of the following two attributes: a pulse or the ability to fog a mirror.

Compare and contrast this with a blogger who opens herself to her readers and then gets a generic Press Release. It’s probably like getting a letter from your mom that says, “Dear Ron, or current resident.” The message is cold and impersonal…something that is exactly the opposite of what the blogger has set out to do.

One of the blogs that I read regularly is The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. Chris is the author of a seminal book about the value of information in today’s digital world. Well, in one of his recent postings, Sorry PR people: you’re blocked, Chris blows a gasket with these impersonal, self-serving press releases and decides to fight back by listing the email addresses of those who he has decided to blacklist. Fascinating. Looking at the names, I see three Edelmans — a company which should know better.

There is a lesson to be learned here. If your company intends to send press releases to a blogger, please, get to know them a little bit. Read their blog, leave a few comments. Then, after you’ve spent some time getting to know them, you can send a pitch for your story. Make sure to explain why you think it is relevant and valuable to their audience. Make some sort of personal reference that you picked up from reading their blog…something…ANYTHING…that shows that you are an active participant, one that is willing to invest a little time getting to understand the way things work on this particular blog.

I’m not saying that the blogger is guaranteed to write about it, but I can guarantee that you’ll have a much better chance at getting read by the blogger, who in turn may contact you.

Tags: Chris Anderson The Long Tail PR Public Relations

After a therapeutic day of replacing some of my stuff, it was great to finally get to the event that I came out to see: Podcamp Boston2.

The number of people seems to be lower than the 1100 or 1200 people than expected. It’s hard to tell because the new convention center is HUGE.One of the best things about attending conferences is the ideas that they generate. I usually leave these events with my head spinning with all great new project ideas and experiments. Here are some thought-kernels that I left with:

From David Meerman Scott, the author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR I learned about the importance of press releases and their ability to get the the end user…not immediately, but in the Long Tail. It’s important to put links in a press release because days, weeks, or months into the future, when someone finds this document, that they have breadcrumbs back to your site. Very cool. Oh, and he used a term that I really like. “Word of Mouse.”

Mitch Joel of Six Pixels of Separation talked about one’s personal brand, although I think that it is very applicable to a corporate one. To develop your “30 second elevator” speech — Start out by saying:

“Ya know when you (fill in the problem that you solve in your business)? Well I help people by (fill in the short list of things that you or your customers do.)”

In addition he said, “Your brand isn’t what you say it is. Your brand is what Google says it is.”

I had a chance to meet some great folks. I finally met Nico — the brilliant designer who built the RonAmok! site. Nico traveled 30 hours internationally to come to PodCamp. That makes my puny transcontinental flight look like a long stride!

At lunch I had a chance to introduce myself to Paul Gillin who wrote the book, The New Influencers. After letting him know how much I enjoyed his book, he asked me about what I did. “Griddlecakes? Are you Ron from Griddlecakes Radio? I listen to your show!” This New media stuff cracks me up.

In the afternoon I caught a session by CC Chapman and Mitch Joel called “Tools of the Social Media Trade.” They described how the web is becoming channels, and that our job is to fill them with good content as well as draw information from them. One of the most interesting stats that Mitch gave regarded Facebook:

• 50 million users
• growing at 350,000 subscriptions per day
• average time is 21 minutes
• 60% come back the next day

Looking forward to an abbreviated Day 2. Going to the Pats game tomorrow after the conference with my brother. MrsB heard that I was going to the game and graciously invited us to her tailgate party. Isn’t this new media stuff is great?

Tags: Mitch Joel CC Chapman David Meerman Scott PodcampBoston Paul Gillin MrsB The Long Tail John Wall

Thanks to John Wall of The M Show and Ronin Marketeer for the photograph.

At 5:00 p.m. yesterday, my plane touched down at Logan International Airport in Boston. The flights from Orange County were great. I finished The Wisdom of Crowds and started tearing into Wikinomics. I added pages and pages of notes to my two year old notebook, the one which I use for capuring ideas.

After de-planing (don’t you love that word?) I got my Hertz Rental and proceded to drive through Game#2 World Series traffic to meet John Wall. We had a nice dinner and then stopped by Blogtoberfest located downstairs at a pub called :”The Pour.”

At about 9:30, we returned to the parking garage to reteive our cars. John’s was fine. My rental on the other hand had a shattered window. And my bag was gone. In it were:

• My company issued laptop.
• Video iPod
• iPod Touch
• Palm Pilot
• Casio Exilim camera (with great video of our landing in Boston)
• Reading glasses (I’ve had ‘em for 20 years)
• The Wisdom of Crowds
• Wikinomics
• Pens
• And my two years of notes in Social Media!

Welcome home to Boston, Ron!

Well, last night I mourned my loss. My wife helped me look at the situation relatively…the fact that some folks had just lost their entire homes to fire…and I had just lost a bag.

And as she usually is, she was right.

This morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. and drove the rental car back to Boston. During my dark drive in, I had a chance to think. For some reason I started prioritizing the things that had been stolen — and came to a fascinaing conclusion.

The computer and the camera were the highest on my list. And the reason why was even more amazing. A realization: I am a content creator. That’s what I’m driven to do. I came to PodCamp Boston to speak with people, to learn, and to bring those insights to you via this blog. Without my tools, I was dead in the water.

Another call to my wonderful wife and she encouraged me to replace those items, explaining: “Ron, that’s what you do.”

This morning I replaced my bag, picked up a new laptop, and replaced my little Casio digital camera. The other stuff I can replace over time. But my content creation stuff, well that’s a different story.

Hopefully I’ll be bringing better news from the confernece. Stay tuned!

Tags: Wisdom of Crowds New Media RonAmok Wikinomics John Wall