Podcasting football - wshat opportunities

The second Connacht podcast is here! Rob Murphy talks with Connacht Coach Michael Bradley & captain John Fogarty about the game against Leinster and the up-coming clash with Ulster in Galway next Friday night.

He has provided a full podcast for the supporters club of his interviews with the Connacht Coach and Captain.

Podcasting is popular in football but the key here is the range of outlets that have been created.

Here are some used and suggestions for further distribution:

Club site
Local papers, radio (yes why not?) and TV sites
Email distribution
Club blog
Fan blogs
Local Pub/club/sports shop sites
iTunes etc
CD's

The list goes on... all in the name of creating communities

When you get cut off

Seth Godin has an object lesson in managing an issue.

When web sites don't work, its your organisation that is cut off from the world and not the world cut off from you. The world goes somewhere else.

This then is an issue for people who are responsible for relationships - its a PR issue.

Back to Seth:

It's easy to riff and agitate and brainstorm about the marketing message, about authenticity, about treating people the way you want to be treated... but if your building burns down, it doesn't really matter so much.

Amazon's shopping cart has been broken, off and on, for days now. I can't find a status blog for them, so it might just be me and a few colleagues, or it might be everyone in the world.

That's like every single Walmart in the country unable to open their doors because the locks are jammed. Suddenly, having good locksmiths on staff is really important.

As the bar keeps getting raised for what people expect from an online experience, the collection of things that you MUST get right keeps going up. It's expensive, but so is rent. It's part of the deal.

A million visitors every month

MAYO Communications, a Los Angeles public relations and marketing agency is celebrating its first anniversary of a prototype website that offers free publicity tips for marketing communications. www.MayoPR.com. It

MAYO evolved from a high tech public relations firm to servicing entertainment publicity clients and nonprofit organizations. MayoPR.com, which was launched a year ago this month now receives an average of 1.230 million visitors a month according the Urchin Statistics, which tracks the website.

This is an example of how one can build a presence on-line to attract people. It PR!

If its mobile its (still) news

Tech Digest has caught up with Leverwealth:

It's not news that online social networking sites are going mobile. MySpace took its first steps into mobile earlier this year in the US (with mobile operator Helio).

But talk seems to be intensifying, as the big Web 2.0 sites realise that mobile will be an important part of their future development.

Bebo plans to launch its own mobile service next year, possibly in partnership with O2.

A call for a 'press listing' of Social Spaces

Introducing Weblo, a new virtual world where the networking is more financial than social.

Members can buy and sell property and virtual domain names, as well as become the online publicity manager for a celebrity of their choice. All this based on real-world assets too, from buildings to celebs, while the domain names are the sames as ones owned out on the 'real' Web.

It is said to be doing well. But here is yet another communication channel to watch. Its all about which niche publics want to use it. In PR we now need the equivalent of a Media list to keep track of all these emerging channels for conversations.

Shropshire Star football blog

ShropshireStar.com is joining the fun with the launch of our new Shrewsbury Town fan’s blog.

This is another newspaper using blogs as a marketing tool as much as a communication and social group building offeringbr

Their Shrewsbury Town blogger is fan David Craig, who will be sharing his thoughts on the comings and goings and the ups and downs at his favourite club.

Check out his blog in their Community section and see whether the Shrews gave him a happy birthday last weekend.

Political bloggers

By Tom Burgis at the FT gives a run down of the blogs that are providing excitement in Tory Party Conference week.

Big blog boris is on the list and is a VERY human voice.

As the Conservatives seek to recast themselves as a modern party, au fait with iPods and fretting over carbon footprints, Tories have eagerly been following their leader into the blogosphere - and the blue blogs have been abuzz with gossip and vim this week from the party’s conference in Bournemouth

Your job explianing the stuff

Nielsen//NetRatings has released a survey that shows the latest internet trends and technologies are still a mystery to many UK consumers, reports e-consultancy.

This means PR people have a role to play in educating the public to help just as the Sun newspaper is doing (and very, very well).

The report shows 52% of British web users believe online and digital technologies make their life easier, but a similar percentage say they find them difficult to follow.

The least-heard-of terms include VOD (75%), Wikis (70%), and IPTV and Really Simple Syndication (both 69%), while 67% aren’t aware of Web 2.0. One in seven also know of the iPod but don’t know what one is.

While many of these technologies aren’t especially visible, the results suggest the industry could be failing to adequately educate internet users about new developments.

Readers flock to newspapers

Wired News reportes that:

The average number of monthly visitors to U.S. newspaper websites rose by nearly a third in the first half of 2006, a study released on Wednesday said, though print readership at some larger papers fell…

The average number of unique visitors to online newspaper sites in the first half was more than 55.5 million a month, the study said. That compares with 42.2 million a year earlier….

The Washington Post’s website increased its audience reach among readers aged 25 to 34 by more than 60 percent…

The number of page views at newspaper sites rose by about 52 percent in the first half…

Of course, it is content online that is making waves.

So its silly for newspapers to put barriers to entry as in Belgium.

As a practitioner, of course, you need to be sure that any story run by a publications will be available in print AND online.

But we all know that don't we?

Kevin Anderson is reporting on the AOL meeting.

His current contribution is great and reports on contributions from:

• Tom Bureau, CNET Networks UK
• Adriana Cronin-Lukas, Big Blog Company
• Lloyd Shepherd, Yahoo!

From which I took these thoughts, which I like:

This is not about technology but a developing culture. This about creating content and distributing it like never before. The one trend driving this on all sorts of fronts. The consumer is no more. The monolithic is no more. People are contributing. Does this technology allow people to do what they could not do before?

In the early days, lots of people see the internete as another channel. TV, print, radio and internet are just seen as another distribution channel. But the internet is a sea for the other channels. It is creating leaks from these other channels. We all swim in the same pool. The internet is not a one way channel.

The internet is a network. Users are rerouting around the gatekeepers.

It's important to think about who you serve. There is only a small sliver of groups who will contribute, but they are very important. Try to focus on the top third of level of passion/expertise and numbers. Do not try to reach the 'true freaks' but with 'avid contributors' with a very deep way.

Transforming a newspaper into a multimedia house

Kevin Anderson reports on the way Ulrik Haagerup has transformed his traditional newspapers.

This was the second time in a year that I've heard Ulrik speak, and it's a real treat. I first heard him talk at an IFRA convergence workshop last summer. His ideas are compelling, but his new media leadership is some of the best in the world. He clearly communicates a plan of action for media organisations but he also has a management framework that helps organisations help staff through the change.

They now have a multimedia newsroom. They don't have newspaper reporters or radio reporters. They have reporters. They create story for all media, but not all stories are created for all media. He broke it down this way as media and their strengths:
TV- feelings
Radio- here and now
Web- searchable and depth
Mobile- everywhere
Traffic paper- find time
Weekly- to everyone
Daily- stops time

We are seeing this in the changes at the FT and Daily Telegraph. The item makes interesting reading.

Blogging ROI

Kent Newsome Makes some excellent point in the debate about blogging ROI. I like this comment:

This never ending effort to treat blogging as some new age business plan continues to read to me like someone furiously trying to stuff a round peg into a square hole. But sometimes you take the conversation where and as you find it, so let's take a look.

Publicis to take majority stake in Freud

By FT reporters Tim Burt in New York and Gary Silverman in London

Published: June 17 2005 03:00 | Last updated: June 17 2005 03:00

Publicis, the French marketing services group, is to take majority control of Freud Communications of the UK in a deal valuing the privately-owned public relations business at about €70m-€80m ($85m-$97m).

Video in Social space needs contextual relationship

Forrester Research has just released a comprehensive study examining online video consumption and the effectiveness of online video advertising. For those of us trying to figure out how online video advertising will work, this is a very valuable report (see BeetTV for more info)

Senior Analyst Brian Haven speaks with Beet.TV from his Cambridge, Massachusetts office. His take on the nascent online video advertising space is both optimistic and harsh. He writes that video ads seen on clips as "pre-roll" don't yet resonate with consumers: they don't notice the ads, don't interact with them and are fairly negative about ads that interfere with their viewing enjoyment. He says that 82 percent of consumers say that ads within a video clip are "annoying."

Easiest creation of a television channel in history

Ian Douglass at the Telegraph wants to point you towards a few things. The first is the easiest creation of a television channel in history. Terry Teachout, drama critic at the Wall St Journal, was dismayed at the lack of arts coverage on television so he scoured YouTube.com for things he liked and linked to them from his blog. The result, he argues, is a new arts-based on-demand channel (he calls it ArtsTube) that includes film of Picasso at work, Elvis Presley performing Blue Suede Shoes and Willhelm Furtwängler conducting Die Meistersinger in a hall full of swastika banners.

Instant publication of press releases - anybody?

David Meerman has an interesting post about Yesterday in the 'press release' distribution business.

He sums up with some advice that I add below.

For the nonse, this is OK but I just wonder what the business model is for the future.

Yesterday, talking to Peter Wilson, we pondered on how easy it would be for a distribution agency/publishing house to render 'press releases' ready for page and ready for print by using XPRL. Of course it is dead easy, would cut out a load of journalist's time and, from reliable sources, would be an instant pass straight through the system.

The whole business is designed to make it easy.

David's points are as follows:


The important things to consider before you send a release through any service are:
1. What reach does the service have into the ways that buyers search for news such as Google News, Yahoo News, vertical portals and online news sites?
2. What reach does the service have into the media that you want to target?
3. What value added social media tools such as tagging via Technorati, DIGG, and del.icio.us does the service provide?

Compare the various services and the pricing levels and choose accordingly. "We've always sent releases through XYZ wire" is not a good reason to continue to use that service.

Viewing Smoke and Mirrors from back stage

Is it enough for us to simply ‘accept’ that practitioners do not get involved in formative and evaluative research (a sort of ‘research-phobia’) because of lack of time and its prohibitive costs? Asks Toni Muzi Falconi.

For researches and academics, these are only outright excuses as low and even no-cost evaluation methods are widely available. Instead they cite practitioner lack of interest, commitment and knowledge, as the real underlying reason….Of course this is not sufficient for anyone interested in governed change! As change happens anyway, whether we like it or not, we should try to at least govern that change which mostly affects the dynamics of our profession!

And this is where Jim Macnamara – the highly reputed senior Australian professional, academic and researcher- is in the final stages of refining an articulated and stimulating paper, for the moment entitled ‘the fork in the road’......

This is both a 'must read' and an insight into where smoke and mirrors are viewed from back stage.

Blog but don't Libel

Net neutrality - its important

Dear Colin. Can you add this to the agenda for urgent action on the Internet front:

In the New York Times of September 27 Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocates “Net neutrality,” or limiting Internet service providers’ control over information.

[thanx to Gerrit Visser for the heads up]

Q. Is your view that the anti-Net neutrality infrastructure actually threatens political democracy? Does it go beyond just the technical structure of the Internet?

A. Net neutrality is one of those principles, social principles, certainly now much more than a technical principle, which is very fundamental. When you break it, then it really depends how far you let things go. But certainly I think that the neutrality of the Net is a medium essential for democracy, yes — if there is democracy and the way people inform themselves is to go onto the Web.

Q. So there are political consequences. Are there are also economic consequences? If so, what are they?

A. I think the people who talk about dismantling — threatening — Net neutrality don’t appreciate how important it has been for us to have an independent market for productivity and for applications on the Internet.

(..)

Q. Do you have a view about the behavior of the telephone companies in this debate? Is this simply traditional monopolist behavior, or is it more subtle? Have you talked to them to understand their motivations?

A. I have tried, when I’ve had the opportunity to find out, to understand their motivations, but I can’t speak for them. So all I can do is guess. But my guess is that it’s not that this is a nefarious planned plot to take over the Internet by a bunch of people who hate it. What I imagine is that it is simply the culture of companies, which have been using a particular business model for a very long time. So I think there is a clash of corporate cultures.

Watch Bebo watch Bebo

Heather Hopkins alerts us to Bebo which is catching up to eBay as the most searched for brand in the UK.

Since May, the term "bebo" has ranked #2 in the share of UK internet searches after "ebay", and Bebo's rapid rise is narrowing the gap. The market share of UK internet searches for "bebo" has increased more than three fold in the past six months and 17.6% in the past three months.


So everyone must head over there to see why this is such an interesting communication channel and Social Network.

An interview in the Sunday Times last Sunday said that Bebo head Michael Birch seemed prepared to wait before earning much money from the service:

Birch, 36, is almost dismissive of the need for Bebo to generate revenues at this stage. For the next two or three years, his priority is to establish the firm as one of the global leaders in social networking. The big challenge is in America, where Bebo is currently a distant third behind MySpace and Facebook, a college-based site.

“At the moment there’s a race for traffic,” says Birch. “Implementing a successful business model does not necessarily help in that goal. There are so many avenues that social networking can go down.”

So Friday’s revelation that Bebo is planning a mobile service isn’t about revenue? Pete Cashmore notes:

…it seems that Bebo Mobile is a step closer - mobile phone group O2 is in talks with the company, although discussions are still at the early stages. There were rumors earlier this week that Bebo plans to extend the site via SMS, rather than the WAP-based services that other social networks are pursuing.