@LasseManthei Thanks for the lovely dinner with you, Lasse, Jo, and Daniel. It was a stellar night of great food, great wine, vodka and rum. 12 hrs ago
It’s going to take place on August 31. Here’s a description:
What is BlogDay?
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors. With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.
I’m going to look for blogs from Ireland, Iran, Israel, Ghana, and the Philippines. We’ll see.
Sometimes you think and think and think of a name for something and you come up with something seemingly perfect. It describes what you do/offer. But little do you know.
I’m on the YoungPRPros Yahoo forum and someone asked how to get the contact information for Jenny McCarthy. The answer came back: Who Represents. Great name.
Until you see the URL.
Their logo covers up the problem. Sort of.
But they can’t get away from www.whorepresents.com
Let’s take a moment to talk about some people who have never heard of Twitter, aren’t on Facebook, and were really, genuinely impressed by their introduction to Skype.I’m talking about my book club, a gathering of eight women in their mid 30’s-early 40’s.
I’m sure the scenario is familiar: everyone reads the same book, gets together to eat, drink, and discuss.Yeah, I know the accusations that these groups are just excuses for moms to get together and drink wine – and I’m not denying them.Let’s just say our particular book group manages to drink AND have really good conversations about the book, too.Seriously.
Anyway, it was my turn to pick a book and I had in mind Jon Clinch’s Finn: A Novel.I went to Amazon.com and noticed a link to the author’s blog.As blogs go, his is not spectacular, but it was engaging, kept relatively up to date, and had a friendly feel.I read it and noticed that he had made an in-person visit to a book group.Intrigued about the possibilities, I looked deeper.Long story short, most of Jon’s visits to book groups are by phone, not in person.I ended up contacting his publisher, Random House, to schedule a phone call from Jon Clinch to my book group.
Before I ever spoke to Jon, I thought his book, Finn: A Novel, a re-imagining of the life of Huck Finn’s father, was an incredible book: spare, but moving, and compelling, in a way that I hadn’t seen in quite a while in contemporary fiction.Add to that impression an engaging, funny, heartfelt conversation that my bookgroup had with the author via Skype early in August, and I have now become the dream word-of-mouth marketer.
Honestly: Can there BE better word-of-mouth-marketing than actually getting to chat with a charming, interesting guy whose book you just read?As a result of that call, all of us have talked up the book and our conversation with Jon Clinch many, many times over the past few weeks.
After talking with him, I know for sure that Jon does these talks because he really wants to hear what people think of his book.He said he wrote five books before this, and all were rejected by publishers.It really came across in the conversation that getting the book published, and getting to talk with people about what they thought of it, is something that brings him a great deal of pride and satisfaction.That being said, it is certainly true that Jon must hope his efforts will lead to the sale of more books – a perfectly justifiable goal.But how effective is the word-of-mouth of me and my 7 friends telling everyone we know to read the book – literally, in face-to-face conversations, phone calls, or individualized emails?
From a marketing standpoint, Jon and Random House would generate more sales if “Jon Clinch” and “Finn” were talked about much, much, (really, can I emphasize this: MUCH) more online than they are now.
But, I have to say, I am so glad that I got the chance to have a real, engaging, sincere, hour-long conversation with Mr. Clinch rather than Googling his name and reading who he was Twittering, finding out who he is friends with on Facebook, etc., or even just reading a compendium of interviews he gave.It was a real social interaction, not “Join the Jon Clinch Facebook Group!” or “Follow me on Twitter!”
Aside from my professional analyses of this experience, I have to finish with an important personal point, a true recommendation from me to you, based on a fantastic experience I had:First, read Jon’s book, FINN.Second, if you are a social media maven - unlike me, to be perfectly honest -tell your 25, or 100, or 1000, or however many friends you have online to read it, too.
And, if you hurry, you can probably even still schedule a phone call.Unless it’s too late and he has managed to get on Oprah – which will be awesome for him, but may make it a little bit harder for you to schedule your call.
I’ve been thinking about this flogging thing again.
By flogging I mean blogs that are intentionally created to appear to be innocent/detached from an agenda yet push an agenda (often with key insights) for commercial purposes.
WalMarting Across Amercian was a flog. It was wrong. It wasn’t advertising - it was PR.
I also think they’re inevitable. Many people in marketing, advertising, and PR won’t care about transparency and authenticity. They’ll care about sales, and branding, and stopping that piece of legislation.
Here in DC you’ll have coalitions pop up all the time. “Citizens for This”, “Americans for That”. They’ll place ads in major newspapers ( the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USAToday). But you can’t contact these groups. You’ll see a P.O. Box, an “info@AmericansForThat.org” and if there’s a phone number, you get voice mail.
They’re usually corporate sponsored and often have ties to business groups and their K Street lobbying firms.
On the advertising end, I think top people at agencies and on the client side have the same viewpoint. Do what needs to get done and don’t screw it up. Best flogging practices will come about and PRESTO! They’ll be all over the place.
I don’t think we in social media have enough power and influence to stop it. Period. I’m writing an article for ZDNet that says essentially that. When it’s published (likely this week) I’ll point to it.
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