Category archive: Blogging

Monday, April 17, 2006

Exbrayat: An author's (posthumous) blog

The grandfather of my fiancé (and EA advisory board member), Antoine Clarke, was a famous French writer known simply as Exbrayat. He invented the genre of the humorous detective novel and wrote more than 100 books (plus several plays and films), on which his first name, Charles, never appeared. You can read more about him here, at the Exbrayat blog that Antoine and I set up yesterday.

We hope the blog will be something very special for Exbrayat’s fans. We will be adding more never before published family photographs, podcasts, and other goodies for fans as time permits. For Antoine’s mother, who has always been very publicity shy and has refused all interview requests, it’s a genuine case of blogging and social media as DIY PR - actually conversing with the public, bypassing the traditional media owned by others in order to speak directly with the people who really count, on a platform owned by the family. The network that nobody owns is a million times more valuable and useful to the family than any other.

May 5th would have been Exbrayat’s 100th birthday, and we’ll all be heading to France soon for the various Exbrayat centenary celebrations in that country. Antoine and I will be taking photos there for the blog, as well as noting the family’s observations on the events in France. And yes, we’ll be doing it in English. 

Blog advice for marketers

David Weinberger writes for AdAge:

The opportunity is not for marketers to pick off the chickens one by one but for marketers to unlearn what they have spent so long teaching themselves. The blogosphere is a vibrant human conversation. If marketers can learn to enter that conversation as humans first, talking honestly about what they care about, identifying themselves and exposing themselves, then they will be welcome in the blogosphere. But, of course, that means they cannot enter it as marketers.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

CipherTrust: Don't trust them

How not to respond to criticism online, written with the ‘help’ of CipherTrust.

Social media as advertising replacement/supplement

The Center for Media Research has some interesting figures on ad spend on blogs, podcasts, and RSS. Audience fragmentation and demographic fervor are two big drivers for advertisers who are exploring these new areas.

What the research doesn’t address is how many companies are looking beyond the traditional ad placement model and at using social media as a way to reach key audiences without actually advertising. Providing valuable information and services to potential customers and existing customers can be much more effective than merely flashing an ad in front of their faces. (An exception to this, of course, is search engine marketing, where searchers are actively self-identifying themselves as looking for your products and services. The search engine results they receive constitute that valuable information.)

To that end, I see that British tabloid The Sun is now offering RSS feeds of their site content. Are you going to wait for even the white van man to turn into a subscription fiend - podcasts on his iPod, RSS feeds in his Bloglines account - before you start looking into these engaging forms of marketing? (Hint: Many of the white van men already are using social media.)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Brand hatred = brand love

Nishad at oneangrycustomer writes:

[M]any FMCG brands are in a constant battle, even against supermarket brands, because they have gone out to appeal to the widest demographic possible and rarely to a tightly knit core group who could be true evangelists for the brand and the company.

Thanks in large part to my blogging, I have developed a personal brand. There are people who hate that brand (that is to say, they hate me). They disagree with what I say, how I say it, and why I say it. I can say without hesitation that I wear the hatred of such people as a badge of honour. When I look at the ones who love me, I know I’ve cultivated the right crowds.

How about you and your company?