Alliance Blog Reviews

In the absence of an official statement, your stakeholders will fill the void with rumor and speculation. I’ve preached that enough times, you’d think that even Tiger Woods would have heard about it. Apparently not: Which is leading to this: With rumors like that, you’d think that Woods would be grabbing the nearest TV camera and setting the record straight. Now, you might argue that Woods deserves his privacy–just like any other individual. The problem is, Tiger Woods is not just a person, he’s a $1 billion brand . Yes, a brand. Look, I’m not denying his right to privacy, but if he wants to continue being the face of Nike, Buick, Accenture, and such, he needs to come forward pretty soon and put the gossipers in their place. Assuming that he can. Who knows why Woods is keeping quiet. He does naturally appear to be less extravagant than most sports stars–more reserved–but he still needs to explain how he managed to drive into tree without any apparent mitigating circumstances. He owes his fans, the media, and his sponsors an explanation. Yes, he does! They invested their time, their money, their emotional commitment to Woods. He sold them a brand and now he’s not living up to it. Just like any other “product” its customers deserve to know why it’s not “working” the way it has for the past decade or more. Cold? Sure! And Woods can continue to hold onto his privacy if he so chooses–as Bobby Brown would say, that’s his “perogative!” But, at some point he needs to decide what’s more important, Tiger Woods the person, or Tiger Woods the brand. Because Tiger Woods the brand is in a lot of trouble at this point.

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Tiger Woods Crashing a $1 Billion Reputation With His Silence?

While there is always some information to discuss about how the news will be consumed via the free model online or through a myriad of paywalls another area of the news industry is changing just as rapidly. News reporting is still the domain (for the most part) of the professional journalist but the amateur news reporter is becoming more and more desired. YouTube recognizes this and is offering a service to help get the amateurs and the pros connected. The New York Times reports YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers. The new feature, (formally introduced) on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners. “We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics . How it works is that when a visitor goes to a one of the subscribing sites they will have the ability to upload a video to YouTube that will be flagged for review by the sites editors and powers that be. Pretty straightforward and direct. We like that. It seems like a good way to manage or even create a process that didn’t exist before or, if it was in place, was hacked together thus inefficient. With news agencies needing to cut back on staff and not being able to be in all places at all times any way this can create a new model that will be a supplement or complement to the existing news environment. Always thinking about where the next dollar is Google explains that the service is not just for the news set. YouTube also envisions uses beyond the day’s news. The site suggested in a blog post that businesses could use the tool to solicit endorsements and that politicians could “ask for user-generated political commercials.” Nice move in my opinion. Any organization that can provide some form or shape to the ‘wild west’ of user generated content will be helping everyone in the long run. What usually happens is that when you create something that actually helps people then the revenue will follow. Right, Twitter?

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YouTube Helps YouReport

Nowadays, the business world has become too much competitive. Killer marketing or advertising campaign is the only way to beat your opponent. The main question is that while there are so many advertising methodologies available over the Internet such as article marketing, e-mail marketing, social media marketing, AdSense marketing. Then why one should go for viral marketing? Viral marketing is one of the vital ways of marketing where the author of the product doesn’t need to have the great concern for the development of marketing and the users of the product help in marketing. Facebook, Hotmail and You Tube have a lot of users and the users accelerate the marketing process. When a number of people use those services then more people knows about those services and the users invite other people to use those services. The numbers of users are increased exponentially and in that process the marketing process is accelerated. This is the main concept of viral marketing, which is now the effective key to success of online business. As the profitable and effective way of marketing, it is now well popular to the marketing gurus and developers of online business. Viral marketing is defined as the vital chain of marketing and the process becomes dynamic and automated in a stable position. Facebook is the perfect example of that situation and marketing media. Viral marketing is developed gradually in its stable state and the consumers or users act as the media of that marketing. The more people use that service, the more people are invited by the present users and more than more people use that service. The service is improved by the users and general people and that is the main benefit of these types of marketing. For the improvement of viral marketing the service should be user friendly and satisfy the requirements of the consumers. The new services should be come out from innovative thinking and suitable for the time and consumers. The main benefit of this marketing is not so satisfactory and beneficial. This process if not so dynamic to be observed in its initial stage. But with the interval of few periods the real outcome is observed and the revenue is increased gradually. Viral marketing is the helper and media of marketing like social media marketing. Different types of campaigns are observed in popular social media sites. From small to medium leveled the online business are dependable on this marketing and there are a lot of evidences of the improvement of those business. The social media sites are now the perfect place to give indirect advertisement and campaign. It is free but is the major turning point of online effective marketing. For this marketing, you don’t need to invest money, but simply you can place your position in the market of many people. As the improved and self generated process, viral marketing should be the perfect solution for rapid improvement of online business.

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What is viral marketing?

By Peter Robert Casey – Follow him @Peter_R_Casey I’ll be frank. I never intended to leverage my personal Twitter account as a passport to sit courtside at Carnesecca Arena or Madison Square Garden with media credentials . It just happened that way. Thanks to St. John’s University and the progressive vision of Associate AD, Mark Fratto, your Twitter feed can now be considered a legitimate media outlet for covering college basketball, or any sport for that matter. This is only the beginning. Since St. John’s validated Twitter in early August, I’ve corresponded with the executive team of a reputable Division I Conference, multiple NBA team properties, and the NBA League Office. And guess what? They all embrace our favorite microblogging platform, too. Moreover, their peers across all sports, conferences, divisions, and levels are not far behind. My situation may have been undesigned, but press row Twitter access is now open for discussion. Here’s how you can position yourself for an opportunity: Stop, look, and listen. Stop running your keyboard’s mouth and stop taking shortcuts. If you created a separate email account for Twitter notifications that you ignore, stop; merge or monitor your inbox. How do you know who’s following you? Do you really comb your followers list on a regular basis? Get on TweetGrid, subscribe to relevant Twitter lists, and set up TweetBeep alerts to start listening to conversations. Mark Fratto conceived the credentialing idea, but I initiated the conversation. When St. John’s Basketball (STJ_Basketball) joined Twitter in late May of 2009, I was quick to publicly welcome them with an @reply. Who do you think started following me soon after? Focus. On what, you ask? Focus on building trust, relationships, and influence, not followers. Focus on being helpful, and creating practical, value-added content. Focus on one sport or one team, and own it. We can’t be all things to all people, and it doesn’t behoove us to try. You’ve probably heard this expression before: “There’s no ‘and’ in brand. The more specifically you define who you are and what you do, the better chance you’ll have of selling yourself.” This adage holds true on Twitter as well.. If you focus on giving and contributing relentlessly to your niche community, decision makers will take notice. Go off Twitter. As valuable as Twitter is, 140 character messages cannot replace the authority of a well-positioned, content-driven blog, vlog, or podcast. Long form media separates the desirous from the dabblers, and allows a publisher to hone and test their chops. Twitter may be nearing its fourth birthday, but to sports media brass, it might as well be four months old. Having an integrated and influential social media and search engine presence is essential to commanding a press pass. What does your blog or Google say about you? What outlets have you written for? Have you developed an offline relationship with the Media Relations/Marketing/Communications staff at your desired Tweeting destination? Make the ask. If your local college or professional sports team hasn’t approached you yet, it may be time to make the ask; but, only after you’ve listened intensely; established trust and productive relationships; focused on being a valuable and caring member of your Twitter community; shared helpful content and contacts; and built a well-recognized and respected, easy-to-find personal brand across various social channels. Before Twitter lists replace number of followers as the metric for influence, college and pro teams will still look at your follower counts, RTs, and directory-based influence ranks. Where do you stack up? When you’re ready for the pitch, do so privately and don’t burn a bridge if the request is denied. Most media relations departments are still trying to wrap their head around credentialing bloggers, so be patient. What else? I recognize that wide adoption of credentialing Tweeters will take time, but how can we, together, help the cause? Please leave additional advice below. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Tweet Your Way to Press Row

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Tweet Your Way to Press Row

The end of what you ask? The end of the newspaper industry? Sure, why not? That’s an easy one and we talk about that probably way too much. The end of free content? Now we’re getting warmer. Earlier this week we told of Rupert Murdoch’s master plan (or is that disastrous plan?) to remove his News Corp. content from the search engines like Google. That’s pretty big talk. Crazy talk possibly but big talk nonetheless. So do you just make that kind of threat then wait and see or do you then draw the line in the sand? You know, set a date as to when this grand gesture will occur. Well, let’s not get totally crazy or at least clear on that one. That smells too much like reality. So what am I driving at here? It’s the continued blustering of News Corp. about pay for content models. Now, they are talking about a sort of uprising that they will lead so that all media outlets will follow. The Telegraph reports Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer, said the media mogul was ready to block Google’s access to his sites soon and that the company would lead the media industry in this direction. “There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate,” Mr Miller told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday. “It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online [by giving its away for free) so something needs to happen. “I don’t believe the media industry can continue to exist in this way.” Soon. Well, that’s definitive. In an attempt to further clarify this threat of a pitchfork and torch uprising by the media industry Mr. Miller then gave the ominous threat of when this will all hit the fan. When asked how long it would be before Mr Murdoch took the step to block Google, which every media company relies upon to send them high levels of web traffic, Mr Miller said it would be soon – “months and quarters – not weeks” Pack up the plantation! They're going to remove themselves from the search engines in a couple of months or maybe like 6 or 9 or 12 months. I don’t know. Do you? Are you worried yet? Even Murdoch himself is back-pedaling on his own claims about when this grand gesture might / may take place. Last week Mr Murdoch warned that his plans to charge for access to content across all of his newspaper sites, by the end of next June, could now be delayed. During a conference call to discuss News Corp first quarter financial results, the media magnate said he couldn’t promise to meet his own deadline – but did say it remained a work in progress and “we are all working very hard” on delivering the pay solution. Oh for Pete’s sake! This is sounding more and more like the ramblings of a mad man than anything else. Why would you rile up the biggest boon to traffic that any news site has then be wishy-washy on the details and even throw into doubt if they have the nerve or, even worse, the backing of the rest of the media industry to pull this off? Also, in all of this talk they are confusing people about pay walls and search engine access. Will that happen together? Are they all part of the same plan? Here’s the final piece that is interesting. News Corp. is even calling out the quality of the traffic that comes from the engines as inferior because it may be one time visitors. Excuse me? What if that one time visitor actually had never expressed real interest in your publication but through the engines landed at your site and thought “Hey, not bad. I’m gonna keep coming back.”? This quote from Miller says a lot “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.” Ok, if you can survive without it then just do it already. Well, that wouldn’t be prudent now would it. However, Mr Miller admitted News Corporation could not make the bold step alone but was prepared to lead other media companies in this direction. “We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul.” Looks to me like this whole thing is just keeping News Corp. in the news because there may not be any real news here since there is no plan and no definition coupled with vague threats and dates of even more vague threats. I say do it and let’s see what happens. There’s no way to predict how this will play out and some game of cat and mouse will just tick off more people than it’s worth. As Henry Rollins shouted years ago “Don’t think about it …. Do it!” Amen. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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News Corp. Getting Ready to Get Ready