Podland

In our course this semester we have been required to listen to several podcasts. I began to look around at the sites I usually visit and was amazed at the number and variety of podcasts out there. Some of the sites I visit often that have great podcasts are ESPN and NPR. These sites capitalize on their visitors that want more. Podcasting gives everyone the opportunity to be their own broadcaster and distribute their opinions world wide. I am eagerly looking forward to the upcoming podcasting assignment. There are numerous sites out there that can help you refine your podcasting skills. The number of topics that people are podcasting about are virtually innumerable. Besides the trusty iTunes podcast center another good site for finding a good podcast to listen to is The Podcast Directory. One thing I did notice about The Podcast Directory is that there are roughly 4 times as many podcasts relating to entertainment than any other topic. I attribute this to one of two possibilities, either the site is bias towards entertainment podcasts, or this just reflects the popularity of the entertainment world in our popular culture. On a related matter I did notice that in the podcasting podcast assigned in class although it was very informative the speakers appeared almost hypocritical in thier show because they had no mic for the audience questions and they did not repeat the questions for their listeners. I'm surprised no one else in class mentioned this but it was not that big of a deal and did not effect the podcast to dramatically.

Conversational Advertising

In Brian Solis newest blog post I am happy to see the comment by Stowe Boyd which cuts through all the hype of marketing and gets right to the point. Today in class we were introduced to the newest of Ikea's marketing campaigns called America At Home. This campaign is brilliant in it's consumer involvement angle. Interested web surfers or consumers as the marking industry calls them, are encouraged to actively participate in andvolunteer information. The consumer believes they are participating in a fun contest that both gives them an outlet for self expression and a chance to have your photo on the cover of a coffee table book. This is a brilliant way for Ikea to market itself to its customer because it gets them thinking about the inside of their home and encourages them to take photos and if a customer does not like their current interior and is thinking of getting some new furniture this is the perfect time to reach the customer because this social media project has the consumers really evaluate their home environment. From a Social Media PR perspective This campaign is great because it gets potential customers networking on a site that Ikea can directly market to and control the course of discussion. Hypothetically the marketing information derived from millions of photos taken of customer's living rooms and bedrooms could be valuable to a huge Swedish furniture company. If all else fails at least Ikea hopes to sell a coffee table to everyone who gets the book.
Compared to the ideals in Brian Solis's book Ikea's campaign is better than most but not the Utopian experiment in marketing described by Solis. Ikea's s campaign is not totally free form like the social media described by Solis, Ikea guides its participants with daily assignments to keep things flowing with some structure, and in the end Ikea makes the final decision as to who wins the contest.
Ikea's nest commercial strategy focuses on the slogan "Home is the most important place on earth." is pure genius. It gets customers thinking about Ikea products, 'the stuff in my house,'and gets them thinking, 'this stuff is not worthy of the most important place on earth' and finally the ad-execs hope the conversation will turn to, 'I need some new stuff!' I think the concept is great because it gets the customers focused on their home and if the customer finds a problem with their interior Ikea has the solution. In the UK Ikea is using a campaign similar to their my America at home, obviously with a different name, called Not going anywhere. Although one could argue that the similarities of UK to America outnumber the differences the fact is that the popular cultures of both are vastly different. This factors into their campaign and the UK site seems like a real grass roots movement and does not overtly mention Ikea. If i had not been told this was a marketing site I would have thought that this was some quirky site for people really into their homes.

ABC; A Blog Commandment

Our PR class just recently read the second chapter of Paul Gillin's book The New Influencers. One of the most interesting subjects covered in the chapter, that did not go unnoticed by a number of my classmates, was Gillin's five commandments of blogging. While researching other commandments of blogging I found this interesting article that made me question just how free our speech can be on the net. Here in the United States Of America our constitution guarantees us our right to free speech and the freedom of the press. As a novice member of the blogging community these rights are imperative to the existence of the body politic. The net provides us with a soapbox to announce our options to the world but our freedoms don't cross the sub-oceanic fiberoptic lines with our words. The article gives the example of a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign grad student that made some disparaging comments about a Singapore government official. Now when most people think about Singapore law enforcement this comes to mind. The grad student blogger was forced to apologize several times or face legal consequence. The article give a quick list of five tips to follow while blogging that everyone should follow to avoid prosecution form overseas.

Social Site Specialization

While browsing through my news feeds today I stumbled upon an interesting article about social networking sites for our parents demographic. In recent years networking sites such as myspace and facebook have grown exponentially and earned millions for their creators. Marketing agencies can now use these sites to gather information and test new web marketing promotional techniques. But as mentioned in Paul Gillien's The New Influencers most of these sites regular visitors are in the younger demographic. In the Times article “Teens are tire kickers — they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky. Entrepreneurs are now looking to get the older half of the population, soon to be the majority, on the social networking band wagon. The article mentions one of myspace's early investors VantagePoint Ventures recently invested in a site for couples who have settled down called Multiply. Were myspace leaves off helping people find someone for people to make babies with, Multiply picks up for couples interested in multiplying their numbers and networking with others interested in the same.
I have alwase been a bit apprehensive about myspace and facebook only because it seems
too good to be true. A totally free social networking site sounds wonderful but why would such a trivial thing be so huge? Well the answering is marketing and getting members to post as much information as possible on the site. Call me paranoid if you wish but the money in demographics research, lead generation and other forms of data mining is very substantial and the format of myspace, facebook, and other large social networking sites seems like a taylor made system for getting consumers to volunteer survey information. But, I digress, I may very well be wrong and even if I'm right the advantages of social networking might out way the potential loss of privacy. A good rule of thumb is don't fill that personal info out in your profile unless you don't care who reads it or how they use it. As a matter of fact that rule works for just about anything you do, say or watch on the internet because the marketing and data mining companies out there are taking notes.

Discovery

Today we endeavored to create a blog for the ages. A source of pure and virtuous knowledge to enlighten the world and bring some hope to the plight of humanity.