Many bloggers, or would-be-bloggers, end up with the same old cry of “I don’t know what to write about!” Well, the answer is “WRITE SOMETHING! QUICK!” I always like to think of writing a blog post like going to a botanical center, or a friend’s house that has a pond full of koi. I always like to feed them, and when you drop in food, they always rush and bump into each other, each frantically trying to get to the food. (the same activity can be seen in the popular game Insane Aquarium.) Your content is the food, and Google / Your audience are the koi. They are waiting there for your next post.

So where do you get ideas?

Well, you can wait for Chris Brogan to post another 100 Ideas for Bloggers on his blog. But the best way to never run out of ideas is to make yourself an editorial calendar. You can use a regular calendar, a Google Calendar like Steve Rubel, or even Microsoft Excel like Andy Wibbels does.  I started using the Andy Wibbels spreadsheet last week, and it has proved useful every day.   I have days marked with Content, Community, Commerce, Facebook, Social networks so I know what I can talk about on a certain day.  By getting into this habit, your readers will also know what to expect.  Now everybody knows that I should be talking about “content” on Wednesdays.

Content is so important to the web, from getting a good PR, to simply providing something useful.

Where do you get your ideas from?

Filed under: content, Andy Wibbels, Chris Brogran, Commerce, community, content, Editorial Calendar, Steve Rubel | Post a comment

My previous posts was about Joseph Jaffe’s new book, so it is only fitting that today I post a request that almost seems to be ripped from the pages of that book.

In his book, Jaffe encourages so called “marketing gurus” at major companies to take a hard look around them and embrace social media.   In it, he also gives a case study where a company “almost” gets it, but their “new way” or marketing is to ask their community to produce a commercial, and the winner will air on national TV.  The result?   While some people did as the brand wanted and produced a commercial in favor of the truck (Note:  I can’t remember the name of the actual truck manufacturer at this time, my bad) there were even MORE entries about how much the truck “sucks.”

Enter last week’s forray into almost the same thing - Tide.   Using YouTube, Tide invited people from around the country to film their own “talking stain” commercial, upload it to YouTube, and the winner will be shown on National TV.   Fair enough, right?   Well, out of hundreds of entries, the final 10 have been announced - and a studio I am loosely affiliated with has been chosen in that top 10.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/mytalkingstain?utm_source=gatorade_OLAfame 

So, if you have time, and want to help, please click on the link above, and go vote for the video produced by “diepart” - which is a young man asking a young woman’s father if he can marry his daughter.    You will recognize it by the higher production values than some of the rest.   I think you have to click the green “thumbs up” button and actually hit the “next video” button to record a vote.

I’m a bit torn whether or not to include things like this, or Bum Rush notices on this blog - what are your thoughts… does it add or detract?

Filed under: community, joseph jaffe, Tide Talking Stain | Post a comment

Reposted from TroyRutter.com:

I realize that I am a tad bit “late” on my review of the book “Join the Conversation” by Joseph Jaffe, but as the saying goes - better late than never. OK, I really hate cliche sayings, but I can’t seem to think of a better one right now.

After Reading Joseph Jaffe’s first book, “Life after the 30 Second Spot” and subsequently subscribing to his blog at www.jaffejuice.com, I jumped on the chance to review his latest book “Join the Conversation” under a system called UNMTPNM, or “Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing.” In the experiment, Jaffe sent out review copies of his book to several bloggers in turn for a review… and also a promise to pay the book forward when they were done.

Like his first book, Jaffe writes a lot like I think… with parentheticals and sometimes off-the wall references. In addition, many of the references are “in your face” such as when he talks about getting a “rod shoved up” a certain part of the anatomy. All in good fun of course.

The main question I had throughout the book is for whom it was written. It contains numerous examples of ways corporations have “missed the conversation” and in turn had public relations nightmares. An example being a man who built his entire living room furniture out of FedEx boxes, and was consequently sued by FedEx instead of supported. If I were take a guess, I would say the book is directed towards advertising/marketing/promotions CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, rather than new media people such as myself.

I was particular interested in the case studies since I had sort of a “join the conversation” moment myself 2 years ago with Adam Curry of PodShow. I had a problem - I wanted an iPod. I had a second problem - I didn’t want to pay the $300 for the video iPod. Now most people would have just sucked it up and saved up to buy something they wanted, but through a series of events, a web site called troyneedsanipod.com was born. When Adam Curry heard of it through a podcast comment to his show, The Daily Source Code, he immediately saw the opportunity to plug GoDaddy’s domain registration company, and launched a contest of his own “Who needs an iPod more than Troy?” The catch - you head to register a domain name through GoDaddy. The promotion was a success. (Plus I got an iPod!)

Jaffe’s book is full of the opposite kind of story - the companies who missed the boat. The points he brings up help the reader learn to recognize opportunities to leverage new media into good PR, based on oftentimes negative reviews or customer comments.

The book’s chapters stand alone nicely, so it is easy to pick up, read a chapter, and then pick it up again in a couple of days. One of the things that I think could have used a little more consideration is starting a conversation. Too many of the examples mentioned were reactionary stories. ie: Joe Blow posts a blog post and Youtube video about company X and company X does (or in most case doesn’t) respond. In this case the consumer/user (sorry Joseph) initiates the communication. But there has to be example of corporate initiated conversation out there, someplace. (besides the make your own commercials)

One place I felt myself slump at was when he talks about the 6 C’s. Long ago, when the Internet started, my friend and mentor Jim Moloshok of Warner Bros. Online would talk to me about Content, Community and Commerce. This was ingrained in my so much that I even just started a blog called contentcommunitycommerce.com .

Oh great, there goes all of my credibility, Jaffe says it is no longer completely accurate. Is my blog done before it even began? I don’t think so. No matter how many more C’s you add on, Content, Community and Commerce will continue to be the “ring leaders” in successful web sites and media.

Would I recommend this book? Definitely. There are a lot of great ideas on how to take a potentially bad situation and turn it around. I intend to “pay it forward” to a member of the Des Moines Bloganostra at the next meeting

Filed under: Book Reviews, bloganostra, book review, Jaffe Juice, join the conversation, joseph jaffe, Troy Rutter | Post a comment