Don't Know What to Blog About?

I don't care if you have the most boring business in the world. There's always something interesting going on that can provide fodder for some great stories. I was looking at this article I found through Fark about Roto-Rooter. Looks like they put something out to let the public know about the five most interesting things they've recovered from drainpipes and trenches over the past year.

You can say what you want about Roto-Rooter, but this kind of thing is the perfect thing to blog about. If Roto-Rooter could have let the field staff write about the most interesting things that happened to them during the course of the day, I bet they'd have an interesting bundle of content after just a few months. Maybe not everyone would subscribe to the RSS feed, but it would help to make what on its face seems like a boring business more interesting.

Why PR Is Ahead of Advertising

Remember clipping services? When I was a weekly humor columnist for The Ring-tum Phi at Washington & Lee, I penned a column that reviewed each and every one of the cheap wines available at the local grocery store, from MD 20/20 to Wild Irish Rose. Within a week, a letter from the Ernest & Julio Gallo company arrived on my desk at the Phi's offices. Evidently, Gallo's clipping service had picked up on my column (written in a college newspaper with only a few thousand circulation, no less) and had one of its PR staffers pen a response to my column.

We printed the letter in the next issue, along with a response from me. It was funny as hell that Gallo took enough time out to write us and set the record straight in a humorous way. (I had gotten some facts wrong regarding which cheap wines Gallo made.)

If you take a step back for a sec, realize that what occurred here wasn't all that different from a conversation on a blog. I published something in a tiny venue, Gallo had its feelers out and somehow found it, and they took the time to respond and join the conversation. The participation part is the tough part, but I find many advertising agencies are failing where PR agencies succeed - at least they have their feelers out and they're listening.

Some of the folks I converse with online who work for advertising agencies are amazed at the speed at which I respond to blog posts about me, my writings or my company. Others who work for agencies are always asking me how I find opinions and articles on certain topics, particularly the ones that are important to my clients.

One of the reasons is that I have a lot of custom searches saved up. Google News sends me an e-mail any time anything of significance is written about "Hespos," "Underscore Marketing," "Wading River" (my hometown), "The MathWorks" (a client) or any other number of phrases. I also have searches for these terms built into my RSS reader, so I'm actually subscribed to similar searches on IceRocket, Google Blog Search, Blogdigger and a few others. I get these updates via my Sage RSS reader on a nearly real-time basis.

So whenever someone writes a blog post or sends out a news article about me or several topics that are important to me, I know about it fairly quickly. From there, I can take my lunch hour or a spare few moments in between meetings to respond.

Not many folks are used to getting information this way, though. It may seem simple to me or to many folks reading this site, but a lot of people are plumb mystified by the notion of getting real-time search updates or near real-time news alerts. I can't picture doing it any other way.

Back to my original point, though. The fact that PR agencies are at least listening to the conversation means that they're a step ahead of the ad agencies in the conversational economy. Hopefully the ad agencies will start listening soon as well.

Why Podcasting?

Receiving and consuming podcasts is hard. Not for the digerati, but for average Joes everywhere. The distribution mechanism sucks. It's bad enough that it's tough to find a podcast one enjoys, but then there's this whole thing about subscribing to it, which should be a one-click process, but isn't for most. (In fact, when I recently subscribed to Across the Sound, what I really wanted to do was download the current episode and all the back episodes so I could have them handy. I couldn't figure it out easily, unless I wanted to download each file manually and drag and drop it.) In today's instant gratification society, people don't want to have to deal with that kind of complexity. I think it's probably one of the big factors contributing to low penetration of podcasts.

So why am I so bullish on podcasting?

I think the distribution model will change. I've written Spin columns in the past about how I expect digital audio players and satellite radio/satellite bandwidth to converge. Check out the latest Sirius portable. It's not quite the satellite iPod I envisioned, but it's close. It can already store, rewind, pause and save satellite content. How long before it can receive podcasts through satellite bandwidth?

So that's why I'm digging podcasting. The assets we've created today may be distributed in new and interesting ways tomorrow. When that happens, watch out.

Your Love Is My Heart Disease

So MySpace gave out a compilation CD at the iMedia Summit, which I ripped and stuffed on my iPod. It's a disc full of emo and power pop, which I strangely can't stop listening to. I did want to share some lyrics with you. This is from one of the tunes by a band called New Years Day. The track is called "Ready, Aim, Misfire." Here's the chorus:

Shoot my Cupid out of the sky Break off his wings and gouge out his eyes Thank him for nothing, 'cuz that's all that he gave to me Your love is my heart disease.

Whatever happened to "Baby, I love your way?"