Examples of a crap blog post. My Friday rant!

Man this person has ruined my Friday. I was taking it easy sifting through my feeds until I some how came across this idiotic article. (Or just read it below).

I cannot believe that some moron would write such an irresponsible, ill-researched attach on Obama's broadband penetration plan. My comment response was so long and thought out that I thought it was worthy of a post, hence this post!

Read the article, read my comment and join in the debate if you like. even if you think I am wrong!

THE GUILTY ARTICLE:

Keen on new media: Who would be Obama's CTO?

Now comes the fine print of an Obama Presidency. Apparently, he is thinking of appointing a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in his administration, somebody who, according to BusinessWeek magazine, would be "one of Obama's most important advisors." The piece quotes a DC lawyer and telecommunications apartchik, Andrew Lipman, who sees this new CTO as the executor of Obama's Four Year Digital Plan:

"Obama sees greater broadband penetration as an enormous economic engine, much like the railroads were a century ago. That is why the CTO will play such a critical role in any recovery plan."

Universal broadband as the American railroads 2.0? I'm far from convinced. The railroads provided transportation to settle the West and to both build and link up new communities. In contrast, broadband provides a very different kind of transportation -- one that allows individuals to escape their physical communities, to create virtual loyalties, to lose their identities in the narcissistic chaos of cyberspace.

Broadband penetration throughout America will actually kill most local retail stores, it will fatally undermine local newspapers, it will destroy local television and radio stations. No, rather than the railroads, broadband is more akin to the triumph of automotive culture in the first half of the 20th century, a development which destroyed the railroads and undermined the economic and cultural viability of small town America.

So who should be America's new czar of technology? BusinessWeek suggests Google evangelist Vint Cerf, the mad father of the Internet. While one of Silicon Valley's most viral thinkers, ex Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, suggests my old friend Dr Larry Lessig:

"Overall, though, I still like the idea of Lessig in the White House....Oh, and wait until you hear what he says about how he’d retard corruption in the Capitol."

Retarding corruption in the Capitol....Talk about history repeating itself. As American CTO, the all-too-virtuous Dr Lessig, the author of a new anti Hollywood rant called Remix, is actually a personal remix of Maximilien Roberspierre, another skilled practitioner in the art of retarding corruption. And with universal broadband penetration and thus two way live video connectivity in every American home, the eagle-eyed Dr Lessig might even get to retard corruption in all of our living rooms too.

MY RESPONSE:

I find this article to be a rather surprise attack on a noble quest to maximise broadband penetration throughout America. Your points are ill researched and full of assumptions based on your own (obviously overinflated) opinion.

Some bones of contention:
"narcissistic chaos of cyberspace." What a load of nonsense. The internet is a mere reflection of reality. Just like in real life there are 'good neighbourhoods' and bad neighbourhoods' but the good and the positive potential far outweigh the bad.

"Broadband penetration will kill local shops". So where on the internet am I going to pick up my daily milk and bread? Or my petrol or my medicines, or my dry-cleaning? How does one submit their dry-cleaning online, I can't seem to fit my jacket into my CD-Rom drive?

The reality is that internet, and particularly social media, has actually given birth to ultra-niches and hyper-localism which are cheap, targeted platforms for small businesses to target their local audience, BOOSTING their profitability, not killing them. They have also boosted the influence of local media by being able to target more, smaller niches. This fact alone makes your accusations completely wild, unfounded and seriously irresponsible.

What about the small businesses that have gone online (E-Bay for example) and boosted their sales beyond their wildest dreams?

If Obama wanted to increase broadband penetration in, say, Ethiopia, we wouldn’t even having this discussion because you would be writing about his shining vision, humanitarianism and economic sense for thinking of ways to boost Africa’s standing in the world. So why the double standards when it comes to America? Should they not be competitive with the rest of the world?

If America stopped it’s broadband expansion plans today, it would immediately create a massive gaps between the haves and have-nots leaving the ‘nots’ with the impossible task of catching up with the ever evolving ‘haves’. I have seen this with my own eyes, working online in Africa most of life. It is quite simply impossible for countries, businesses and individuals to remain competitive without access to broadband and the internet.

I strongly suggest, going forward, that you research your subject matter properly and know what you are talking about when you start shooting your mouth off, making you look like a complete idiot. Unless, of course, you believe America should go back to horse carts because all infrastructural advancements are evil and will destroy everything local. In that case you shouldn’t be writing on the internet anyway.

(Might I also suggest that you actually publish your name alongside your posts so I know which lazy, over presumptuous writer I am speaking to).

The Lunatic Fringe Model and the Shifting Influence of Web 2.0

There is a shift happening out there. It’s happening quicker than you think, it’s happening right now and it’s happening to your audience.

The shift I am referring to, is the way in which the general public consume their media. The traditional model (figure 1 below) is a centralised model where all content consumed by audiences is controlled by a small minority and a few platforms i.e. radio, TV, newspapers, magazine and the old style web (1.0). This also meant that they controlled the direction of influence which is represented by the arrows below.

Click here to enlarge

Figure 2 is the content model after the advent of Web 2.0 that I have called the ‘Lunatic Fringe Model', mainly to grab attention but also to draw to the fact that content movement now sits on the fringes of the model, within your audience, being passed from one friend to another and bypassing the traditional media that you are spending so much money on.

"62% of the content consumed by people born after 1980 is created by someone they know"

This also turns the ‘influence arrows’ around placing it squarely on the shoulders of the consumers as they decide where, how and from whom they get their information. In fact Shel Holtz, a respected new media practitioner, states that 62% of the content consumed by people born after 1980 is created by someone they know [and therefore not necessarily where you are currently focussing your efforts], for example, reading friend's profiles on Facebook or reading a blog of someone they met online.

Click to enlarge

So what’s changing because of this then?

· Advertising is heading for an identity crisis. Because the user now controls the influence more than ever and they don’t want to see adverts, pain and simple!

· Online reputation management is a must.

· Ultra-niches, means that your audience is split up into much smaller groups so you need to figure out different ways to reach them.

· There is an over supply of information online, therefore your brand needs to know how to cut through the noise.

· Journalists now spend a lot of time in this space picking up stories so they need to be approached in this space as well.

· Remember that the influence has shifted to the consumer so tread lightly. Don’t force your brand on your consumers, don’t lie, be aggressive, dictate or patronise. If you do, they will tear you to pieces online.

How does this affect your business?

There are going to be companies out there that ignore this shifting paradigm and don’t believe that their business will be affected, partly because of ignorance and partly because of fear of the unknown, but as more evidence surfaces, the argument becomes stronger to focus on this changing realm. Don’t be this company, don’t be caught with your pants down.

Here are some of the things you can do to engage this new audience:

· Start with a bit of buzz monitoring, we use Radian 6 and see what and how much is being spoken about your brand online.

· Seriously think about starting a blog to add to your website. This can become the launch platform for your online reputation management.

· Start using Social Media Press Releases immediately. You’re sending out press releases at the moment anyway so why not upgrade them and send them through the same, and many more, channels naturally increasing the reach of your press release.

· Definitely speak to a specialist in the industry before trying your hand at it as there are many unwritten rules you need to know about.

Don’t underestimate a freebie when marketing online

I run an ongoing viral email campaign for a fish restaurant in South Africa. I love marketing at this level, it is the basics of service marketing, where it all began.

The first thing I told the owner, my client, is that we need to give something away to get a bit of viral going and to grow the database. From there we can launch all sorts of advertising campaigns at a substantial targeted list. Of course, being an entrepreneur, he would have nothing to do with giving something away for free and I would have probably been disappointed if he did! So we launched a campaign focusing on the fact that is it under new management and all about his pedigree in the fish restaurant industry. The response was gentle to say the least and viral referrals were non-existent.

I got to the point where I gave him a choice: I felt that we were putting a lot of effort into an online campaign that wasn’t producing results so he either gave me some specials, on my terms, to work with or we just forgot the whole thing. My bluntness either frightened or angered him into action and I got a 2 for 1 sushi deal to market to our audience. Within two weeks, 2 for 1 Wednesdays was the busiest day at the restaurant (from being the quietest) and viral activity was large, especially after we started a group on Facebook to promote it. Best part is that the profitability of the evening is still quite high as people spend more on other courses and drinks. He’s so happy that we are now starting more specials with substantial give-aways. And needless to say that the contact database has grown significantly with targeted subscribers.

Lessons Learnt

I always knew this but I’m glad I got the opportunity to prove it in practice: In the online space, the consumer holds the influence and you need to approach them with something that they are interested in and they are always interested in freebies and good specials. It also shows that people really like to pass on useful information to their friends and family as the viral activity went through the roof as soon as there was a good special to talk about.

Tips on running an effective email freebie campaign:

• Use a good email system. It’s just not going to work without one. Here are 15 reasons why you should use a good email service
• Make it easy to share by using share buttons to all the usual web 2.0 viral services. This will help aid the viral process.
• Make the terms and conditions of the competition simple or else the back lash could be more detrimental than the special. Don’t dangle a big juicy carrot in front of your audience and then all they get is a bean sprout, this will make you seem like a greedy capitalist.
• The special must be valuable to you audience. 10% off is just not going to cut it unless it’s a car!
• Don’t even flirt with anti-spam laws and best practices; few things damage a brand online more.

10 of the Most Important Web 2.0 Activities for Promoting Your Online Presence

It astounds me time and time again! Companies of all shapes and sizes spend thousands of pounds building the most beautiful website but doing nothing to promote it so it kind of sits around looking pretty but doing nothing, like a girl being stood up on prom night.
With the web 2.0/social media revolution on the internet in full swing, it is now more important than ever to concentrate on your promotional as well as building a beautiful website. I remember the good old days of ‘web 1.0’ when all I had to do to promote a client website was create a email list and make sure they perform pretty well on search engines. These days, there are thousands of web 2.0 type services out there that help promote your website and in turn do recommendations to your audience. This means that your audience is more fragmented than ever (creating ultra-niches) meaning that more than ever you need to promote your web presence to reach your audience. Chance are your competitors are doing this already.

If you’re still not convinced, have a look at the promotional diagram of this blog (click on it to see a bigger version) to see how much effort is put into promotion as compared to the site development:

Where to start promoting
If you’re not entirely sure what you are doing in the social media space, then it’s time to call in the experts as it can be a mine field of disasters if not done properly. That being said, here are 10 things you should be thinking about or researching:

• Search engine optimisation: Get up the rankings on Google!
• Social Media Press Release (which can help with search engine optimisation) if done correctly.
• Social network marketing: How’s your company’s presence on Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. Your audience are there and can be reached with little cost.
• Social bookmarking bar: Make it really easy for your readers to recommend your presence to millions of likeminded readers.
• RSS Feeds: Once you have your content in RSS feeds, there are many things you can do with it, essentially using your valuable (in consumer’s eyes) content to promote your online presence.
• Widgets: A great way to go viral and you can use the content from your RSS feed to dynamically populate the widget.
• Email subscription option: If your website doesn’t have this, it’s time to pull out the ol’ drawing board.
• A Blog: Position your company as thought leaders by writing a regularly updated blog about the space you operate in.
• Active blogging: Keep an eye on blogs talking about your industry and comment on them when relevant.
• Sitemap: Get a XML sitemap on your site to make it easy for Google to index your site and push it up the rankings.

Anyone want my Job? Seriously!

 

Some of you may have heard that I am moving onto bigger and better things (the details of which I will reveal at a later stage) but in the mean time, the guys I am currently working for need to replace me.

Basically it is a central London based PR firm and I have been working as the new media manager here trying to get the department to greater heights.

So you would need to know social media and web 2.0 inside out and have good strategies on how to implement this technology to help clients out with their online marketing campaigns. You’ll also need to know the basics such email campaigns, SEO, PPC and website building.

I have also just got the directors to agree to employ another person below this position so that would be your first task as manager and you can find your own slav.. I mean associate, to work under you!

Would also be good if you had a bit of skill on the design/HTML/PDF etc side of things. And of course, you’ll also be UK based (or can get here in a few days) and be eligible to work in the UK.

So if you’re a social media jack of all trades, drop me a line on Twitter 

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