the(new)mediaslut

PR Tip #92384: If you have to cancel a journalist’s junket because of reasons, be courteous on your reply. Even when the journo’s email may sound as if he/she is a diva, be courteous all the way.

So a journalist got his junket canceled, he replied to the marketing manager to ask why and the response was a bit shocking.

“I think your attitude towards us is quite a surprise to me,” wrote the manager.

“Let me remind you that its an opportunity for the newpaper you work for to attend this, and the cost is being paid by xxx.

“I certainly do not need to answer to you, and justify why I have personally cancel your trip.

“I would have no problem in giving you the reason, why I have cancel this trip, but now I can tell you that I do not like your attitude, and do not want to associate something I feel very special for us, with people like you.”

Come on. The journalist only send an email to ask why. Such a reply is going to put you and your company in bad light.

By the way, “what is people like you” was this marketing person referring too?

I have asked two questions before in this blog before and the readers’ answers are very enlightening.

Here’s a thought for the week.

Why are fools and fanatics always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts?

Chris Jaques painted such a scary picture of Internet advertising in a column in Media magazine this blogger advice to him is to stop using the Internet! Really, stop using the Internet!

Chris wrote users don’t trust email advertising any more because “About 250,000 computers a day are transformed into botnets”.

250,000 computers and that’s a huge number.

But if you put the numbers into perspective, its quite a small percentage of computers that turn into botnets.

According to the CIA fact book, the US alone has estimated 164,100,000 computers. If only US computers turn into botnets, then it is a low 0.15% of computers that get infected everyday. Take the global numbers of computer and there could be zeros before the decimal point.

Here’s his other statement. “Technorati reckons that splogs - spam blog mass produced to manipulate search engines - now make up as many as 90 percent of all new blogs out there.”

So on July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50million blog. If 90%, or 45million of them, are splogs, that’s a cool five million blogs which are the real thing and advertisers have the opportunity to reach out to them.

Are there 5 million radio stations in the world? 5millon newspapers? 5 million TV channels?

“And, from an advertiser’s perspective, a recent analysis proved that at least 14 percent of clicks sold by search engines to advertisers last year were fake,” wrote Chris.

Hmm.. What about the remaining 86 percent? Are they real clicks? Of course there will be fake clicks, but it isn’t 50% or more that are fake clicks!

Check out another blogger’s view on Why we shouldn’t “Stop Wasting Your Time on Internet Advertising”?

The whole experience of putting up Blog2u.sg’s advertiser Chain of Beads had this human touch to it that seem lacking from Nuffang and Adverlets.

The human touch may not be as efficient as automation, but it at least gives me, as a blogger, some control to what advertisings I want on this blog.

So Blog2u.sg contacted me about the banner ad placement for Chain of Beads on Oct 26 but I only replied the email yesterday.

Bloggers have the right to reject the ad, but Blog2u.sg has highlighted they won’t penalise you for it with regards to consideration for future ads.

Though the maximum 10 slots were fully taken, Cherry from Blogs2u.sg replied saying that Chain of Beads was interested to look at more blogs to advertise on.

An hour later, Cherry replied to highlight this blog was approved together with the code and the ad was up on this blog within minutes.

After which I replied with bank account number and the SGD3 was credited immediately.

The transaction was done over email but hey, isn’t email still communication? I hope Cherry isn’t a robot mass mailer software.

Here is a suggestions for Blog2u.sg.

Send out a fresh email with a new headline when you have an advertiser for the bloggers. Most emails now are stacked base on conversation, so when you hit the reply button, it justs stacks onto the original email. This could be a possible reason why I might missed out on the email though I accessed the account over the weekend.

I noticed a spelling error in the ad though and I was wondered if this was done on purpose.

There is no plural in jewellry.

However, when you google “beaded jewelries”, Chain of Beads hits as a result on position 4 on page 1 and position 5 on page 1 on Google.

If you put “beaded jewelery” or “beaded jewellery” or “jewellery making”, the Chain of Beads site doesn’t appear on the first 100 results of google.com.

For Google.com.sg though, Chain of Beads came out on position 3 on page 1 for “jewellery making” and position 5 on page 2 for “beaded jewellery”.

I emailed some questions to Izel Ang, the owner of Chain of Beads, but have yet to get a answer to put into this post.

I hope to hear from her soon.

A Reader’s Toolbox

Usually when one is done with courses like RH302 and VCP-101V, one is advised to move on towards 156-315 and 70-121 since these form the basis of 642-176 and 642-901.

Google Pagerank went “bonkers” recently by demoting or promoting certain blogs and some bloggers were making a big fuss out of it for fear it might affect their blog ad $$$.

It is true some online advertisers consider Pagerank as a criteria for advertising but a majority of them still see the number of eyeballs as a key to their selection of blogs to advertise in.

A high Google Pagerank helps bloggers get those “accidental” visitors who have googled certain keywords to hit your site.

You also want those regular readers and you want them to return to your blog.

So let’s get back to the basic of blogging and here are some ideas on how to get to it.

For a real estate agent it is about “location, location, location!” and for blogs, like any other medium, it is about “content, content, content!”.

Unless some alien life form is reading this entry, your human readers are creature of habit.

Try to have a regular entry every week. Yes, this blogger admits that the blog post here are rather random hence this regular BMT post on Mondays.

Its like watching TV. If you know Heros will be on Starworld on Wednesdays at 10pm, you will be seating in front of your TV on Wednesday at 10pm or be home early to catch an episode. (You can see the whole session on DVD, but this is an example, ok?)

In your regular post, write about the main focus of your blog.

If it is about posting about the media scene (both online and print), like what this blog is trying it damn hardest to do, then take advantage of it.

If your blog about life in general, summarise what you did the past week or what you are looking for during the coming week.

If it is about food, again, write a food post which can be a summary of what you found or what you expect to find in your next planned eatery venue.

By doing so, you create an expectation in the readers as they will be looking out for your blog the whole week to see if you have ate that eatery and the comments you have made about it.

Of course, the blog post that cried wolf will lose readers’ trust and their visits so if you didn’t visit the place as expected, be truthful about it.

If you find you have an entry that suits your regular column but you have to write it down immediately, use the Post Timestamp option in Wordpress, or other similar function in the rest, to post that entry the following week. By doing so, you already created something for that day and if you find yourself having a blogger’s blog, you needn’t worry much.

When creating that content, try to be a little more descriptive of the things you are going to post.

If it is about a dish, describe the taste, the texture, the presentation and even the service level of the place. I noticed that most food bloggers leave out the most important detail in their post which is how to get to the place.

Yes the address can be cut and paste, but it would help the reader if you could highlight the nearest MRT station or the bus you can take.

A photo or two helps with the post, but remember, if you can be more descriptive, it takes away your blogger’s block and makes it more interesting for the reader.

Online writing is different from writing for print which most of us have been taught in schools.

It is much more unpleasant to the eye to read off a screen than it is to write off paper.

What you can do to ease the reader’s pain to read a long post is to break up as many paragraphs as you can in your post, especially long ones.

The easiest rule is to make every sentence a paragraph. However, you can be flexible but putting more sentences to a paragraph, but leave it to a maximum of three.

To keep readers interested in your post, think of creative headlines to generate interests, especially if you are using blog aggregation sites like ping.sg.

The easiest route is to sex this and sex that, but are you getting the right readers?

Sex sells, but at what price and I will leave this for the post next week.

(See the hook to get you back next week?)

There is another trick to get your readers hooked to your post and to introduce a strong verb to your first sentence of your first paragraph as early as possible.

Remember the paragraphing trick I highlighted earlier, try this for your first paragraph.

Choose between one long sentence or one long sentence followed by a short one or have three short sentences for different entries. This helps to vary the pace of your posts and make it more lively.

Though I try not to add sub-headlines as it breaks the flow of reading, you can add one or two if you find problems trying to create that flow. But use it sparingly.

Though many of this blogger’s friend have complained about the Google Pagerank going up and down, this blog remained at a good solid five.

So far the only thing I have done is to install the All-in-One-SEO pack which can be found at Wordpress.org. What it does is that it helps to automatically generate metatags for each post which search engines can hook up easily.

At the end of it all, what you want is to bring readers to your blog so you have the eyeballs to attract advertisers. If you are not a SEO expert, generate content to generate interest. Some of the best blog sites out there have the lowest pagerank but  make the most money because they the readers advertisers want to target.

Have a happy blogging week ahead. If you have any questions or suggestion, please drop a comment.