November 30, 2005 in Advertising, Brand Strategy, Marketing, Media Orchard by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Goodbye, Mr. Six


Yep, the Six Flags “spokesgeezer” apparently has been canned.

Well, at least now the bloggerati won’t have to argue over whether he should have a “character blog” — we’re still debating over Jack in the Box and others.

Technorati tags: , , ,

 
3
November 30, 2005 in Media Orchard by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Exit Strategies Are for Quitters


BusinessWeek‘s Stephen Baker writes today in Blogspotting:

I’m reading more and more about the market value of blogs — and believing very little of it. Maybe I’m blind to opportunity, but I think the overwhelming majority of our blogs have little or no market value unless the blogger is included. And that’s less a sale of a blog than a blogger getting a job.

Others, Stephen notes, see things differently. He cites Peter Brady (no, not that Peter Brady), who writes on Performancing that business-minded bloggers should ask themselves:

1. Do you as a professional blogger have an exit strategy?
2. Where do you want your blog business to be in, say, 2 years time?
3. Are you positioning your blogs with an eye to a big payday or for long-term organic growth?
4. Who might be likely purchasers of your blog business?
5. Have you considered the potential for a stock market flotation at some point?

Stephen then suggests Peter is getting ahead of himself.

Having read Peter’s entire post, I can’t say Stephen is being particularly fair. Peter is only making the point that “there will eventually be consolidation in the blogosphere as there has been in every industry before it. Casting a cursory eye towards that future will do you no harm.”

He’s absolutely right.

That’s a far cry from the speculative silliness of the “How Much Is My Blog Worth?” tool on the Business Opportunities Weblog (which is nonetheless very fun, Dane. I’d love to believe Media Orchard is worth that much.)

Technorati tags: , , ,

 
5
November 30, 2005 in Media Orchard by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Pick of the Orchard 11.30.05

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,

 
2
November 29, 2005 in Media Orchard, SEO by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Folksonomy, Folkschmonomy

TagCloud has a cool folksonomy tool that “searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. Clicking on the tag’s link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword.”

Here’s the TagCloud for the Media Orchard feed. If nothing else, it’s a reminder of our enduring fascination with Technorati (as well as the fact that we include the term “Technorati tags” at the bottom of every post.)

TagCloud offers a useful way to organize feeds. Still, it might be more fun to build a cloud to display all the different search terms that people use to find a site.

For example, here are some terms that people have entered in search engines in the past few weeks to find Media Orchard:

“finnegan the squirrel hoax”
“katie holmes navel”
“smurfswar”
“anderson cooper fan club”
“sexy teacher blogs”
“demonic condoleezza”
“50 cent billboard”
“eva herzigova billboards”
“clayton christensen disruptive”
“CNN caller listen”
“burundi child soldiers”
“celebrity airbrushing”
“kate moss fat line of cocaine”

Now, that would make for an interesting cloud. Useless … but interesting.

Here’s info on which Media Orchard posts have been most popular with search engine users.

Technorati tags: , , ,

 
0
November 29, 2005 in Media Orchard, PR and Pop Culture by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Is Being Named One of Playboy’s Top 10 Party Schools Good or Bad for PR?

Playboy will feature its “Top 10 Party Schools” in the May 2006 issue. The list was announced as part of a casting call for coeds, and photographers have been snapping pics at the selected campuses for the past six weeks.

The schools, in no particular order, are:

  • Arizona State University
  • University of Wisconsin – Madison
  • San Diego State University
  • Florida State University
  • University of California, Santa Barbara
  • University of Georgia
  • University of Tennessee
  • Indiana University
  • Ohio University
  • McGill UniversityAs Playboy rolls into town, news outlets in Phoenix, San Diego and elsewhere are interviewing sheepish administrators and university PIOs over the selections. A typical reaction comes from ASU president Michael Crow, who talked with The Arizona Republic:

    In ASU’s case, the party-school ranking is “a gross simplification that doesn’t have anything to do with who we are and what we are,” Crow says…

    A few weeks ago, Mark Jacobs, dean of the school’s Barrett Honors College, boasted to high school recruits and their parents that ASU had dropped off the Princeton Review’s list of best party schools.

    Now comes Playboy’s list.

    “How do they really know?” Crow asks. “How do they really assess that? ASU is a very serious school with very serious students. It’s also a place where people have a great time and is a great place to be.”

    My view is that the Playboy acknowledgment can be a good thing. It’s certainly nothing to get defensive about.

    First, some background. Contrary to popular belief, Playboy does not publish an annual list of top party schools; this is an urban legend. From Playboy‘s Web site:

    Since about 1955, rumors have floated around every campus in the country that Playboy had at one time run a survey of drinking on campus and that a particular school was listed as number one. But we’ve ranked party schools only twice, in January 1987 (top school: California State at Chico) and November 2002 (top spot: Arizona State). As the old saw goes, if your school isn’t included, it’s because we didn’t rank professionals. Two caveats: In September 1968, we listed the University of Wisconsin at Madison as the most permissive campus in a sample of 25 universities. We also called it “the party school,” primarily because it served beer in the student union. We repeated the exercise in October 1976, naming UCLA tops in “campus action.”

    When I was considering colleges, I looked at the University of Virginia and William and Mary. For a liberal arts education, the schools are comparable academically. What tipped the scales for me is that my friends told me that U.Va. was more fun — that it was a better party school. In fact, U.Va. made Playboy‘s 1987 list.

    Social life is also why many Ivy League students choose Princeton over Harvard; Harvard has a rep of being too serious and intense.

    Damage from the Playboy accolade only comes when a school hasn’t established its brand academically — so it becomes known only as a party school. That’s not Playboy‘s fault; it’s the school’s fault.

    It’s this larger problem that university administrators and PIOs should focus on addressing. Defensiveness is weakness.

    (Oh, and that devilish logo doesn’t help you, either, Arizona State.)

    Technorati tags: , , , , , ,

 
6