Category Archives: behindthebuzz

Sep 23

Editing Posts

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On Thursday, work held what it calls a Digitivity day, a day for employees, clients (and some press) to get them thinking about what they can do on the web and what the rest of the world is doing. I live blogged the day, with permission, and so have a pretty good record that can be sent round internally for those who missed the day. I think it was also filmed, but with different intake modes, sometimes text is better 😉

After the day I ended up editing 3 posts, for 3 different reasons.

  • A type. I made a pretty bad typo in a post about online video that completely changed what a sentence was meant to say. Pretty sure I hit the wrong word on the spell checker. Luckily Joost, as a company that obviously watches what is being said about them, caught the mistake and we corrected it.
  • I edited out some of the more annoying insults from Andrew Keen; I’m pretty sure he’s said worse on the record but I was just not comfortable with them in the post, even though they were pretty mild.
  • I removed bits of information from a presentation about the mobile space and 2 d codes about the company that was doing the presentation. This I was asked to do, after some confusion about what was public or not. I’m not a journalist, but i’m sure something in the stuff I took out was news, but it’s of less relevance to me than a general picture of the space, so this I did not argue. The comments had already being picked up by other sites so the information is out there anyway.

But the last one did lead to a pretty annoying battle in the comments about rival companies in the space, lawsuits, patent infringements and all sorts of stuff. I the end I removed 7 comments and that I’m not happy with. Obvious spam is the only stuff I usually delete. I’ve even left up astroturf comments, with an added editorial about what they are and who they are from. But in this case there were a whole bunch of legal issues being discussed combined with personal attacks between people who look like they are in the middle of a running battle across multiple sites. Some of the comments were also cross-posted to a forum where the discussion continued along with a few emails. (I wonder if the posters considered the irony of battling for patent protection whilst ignoring copyright protection?). The posts are published under a CC license, but other peoples comments aren’t.

I closed the discussion by saying I needed to understand more of the issue and I’ve taken a look at it and decided that I’m not going into it anymore (the reason I’ve been careful with company names and technologies in this post) as it can only get ugly.

Jun 05

Behind the Buzz posts

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If you’re not reading the marketing stuff on behindthebuzz.com, here’s some posts from the last few weeks you may be interested in:

Mesh talks: Building a community, teaching new markets old tricks and an interview with Richard Edelman.

Heinz have a new ‘create your own TV ad’ competition, but is it as effective an engagement tool as Volvo’s Treasure Hunt.

I’ve spent a few session over the last few days looking at how to approach bloggers. Here’s a couple of posts that show you how not to do it.

May 19

A tiring week

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I whole week without blogging – I guess the parental visit left me a little tired, although I was posting on Behind the Buzz (which has been updated to the latest B5Media template and not looking too bad at all).

Thursday afternoon, Robert Scoble invited people along to a small lunch at Katz’s deli; about 10 people turned up. One of them was Grace Piper, to whom I’d mentioned the event on Tuesday night at the Supernova pre-meet. Afterwards, I tagged along for a walk in the park and pastries at Cafe La Fortuna. Luckily I escaped before being stuck in traffic for the rest of the day ;-). Loren Feldman, of 1838Media and Podtech(or should I call him a star?) took a few video clips during the day. Paul Marino also came along, an expert in machinima. We’ve looked into using media like this at work, either sponsoring or creating. Still looking for the right opportunity and match.

On Tuesday I got talking to Sherry, a B2B PR expert. One of her clients makes body armour, which lead to a surreal conversation about which bloggers could be approached to try out the products and why tey should be offered it!

Apr 30

B5Media Growth

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A nice piece over at Chitika Blog, where Jeremy Wright, President/CEO of B5 Media talks about how the network developed and some lessons learnt. He discusses the 4 key things that could be regarded as the company mission statement:

1. Make our bloggers famous – every chance we got we wanted to promote our bloggers

2. Value community – we honestly felt (and now know) that a strong internal community can make anything happen

3. Focus on great writers and keeping them happy – do this and the rest (traffic, revenue, etc) will happen

4. Build an industry – we’ve believed from day 1 that working with other networks, other owners and building real partnerships and sharing resources was the only way to turn the hodgepodge of networks into a real industry

Meanwhile, Behind the Buzz, the blog I’m writing for B5, has ‘officially’ launched.

Mar 26

Behind the Buzz up and running

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My other blog, Behind the Buzz, has finally had its makeover and is up and running in the B5Media template. Thanks are due to Eric for his wonderful logo.

That blog will focus on marketing and advertising and the stories behind the campaigns, looking at how buzz is being generated and the resulting ‘content’ that comes along. This one is going to stay with my personal musings, technology assessments and conference reports. With appropriate cross promotion where required. Please take a look over there, but stay around here as well 😉

Feb 13

Updates on Behind the Buzz

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The other blog is ticking along so pop over if you want to read things such as:

  • BarCamp and Press releases – the misguided attempt of a PR agency to send a Press release to the organisers of the event they are publicizing.
  • CSI and Keppler – how CBS are extending their online properties but doing it efficiently by using Ning.
  • The weird world of Old Spice and how the brand has a completely different DNA in the US.
  • Guinness’s first attempt at UGC with their new advertisment.
Jan 11

Behind the Buzz – the other blog

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My other Blog, Behind the Buzz, is where I’m posting more and more of my marketing posts. It’s still not quite ready with the b5media styling, but as I’m busy posting anyway, here’s links to some of the stories on that site:

  • Superbowl Madness: Both the NFL and Doritos chips are running campaigns to make your own commercials to run during the big game. They’ve taken different approaches, with NFL asking you to pitch the story and they’ll provide the film-makers and Doritos askign you to make the video yourself.
  • Mountain Dew have an interesting TV ad driving you to a webiste to test your sharpness. But the payoff is not that good.