Flip the Media » Marketing

Nevada GOP’s fail whale: A warning to all political organizations

Corey Christiansen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:50:11 +0000

I’m currently traveling with 4 other PhD, Masters and undergrad students, and several faculty members as a collaboration between the Communications Department and the Seattle Times. Our blog, UW Election Eye follows the campaign trail through the perspective of students and faculty. This piece is being cross-posted because we felt it tied in well with the theme of Flip the Media.

Storify is a software that enables a media-rich method of synthesizing and telling of a story. We employ it here to document and interpret key moments in the Nevada Republican Party’s decision to use — and trumpet — technologies such as Google and Twitter to digitally publicize caucus results.

But they failed to provide a crucial element: The analog infrastructure actually required to count hand-marked ballots. Take a look at the Storify that we’ve created as a part of the UW Election Eye team to show how technology and media are being used to cover this Republican primary.

Consider this a cautionary tale for all political organizations, including the Republican Party in Washington state, which hosts caucuses slightly less than a month from today.

Lindsey Meeks and David Domke contributed to this story.

Share this post:

January 26, 2011 -- Social Media Fuels Egypt’s Largest Protest in Years (6)
January 14, 2010 -- Storytelling, Digital Media and Constrained Communication: Town Hall (2)
November 9, 2009 -- An Ode to Contemplation (32)
April 4, 2009 -- Twitter on the auction block (4)
February 1, 2012 -- Google Analytics Adds New Insights (0)

Viral Video of the Week–Bad PR

Kat Schroeder — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:35:27 +0000

“Just Wow.”

That’s the name of the blog post that was the inspiration for this week’s Viral Video. The blog post was hugely viral in the gaming and PR/Marketing communities, for good reason: it was a perfect storm of funny, appalling, and just plain crazy.

But wait–there’s more! Once the wrath of Teh Interwebs was invoked, people went digging into the antagonist’s alleged penchant for steroids and domestic violence, his previous PR gaffes, and his impersonation of others in the name of damage control. Eventually, he apologized with ill grace, both to the customer and to the owner of penny arcade.

Not that that will help him at this point.

(warning: there is a bit of swearing in the video)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Share this post:

January 6, 2012 -- Viral Video of the Week (part 1)–Sith Lord Revisited (0)
December 23, 2011 -- Frogger–IRL (0)
December 16, 2011 -- Viral Video of the Week–Carol of the Sith Lord (1)
December 9, 2011 -- Viral Video of the Week–Breast Cancer Awareness (7)
November 25, 2011 -- Viral Video of the Week–Best PSA Ever (5)

Get the Inside Scoop on 5 Strategies to Create Buzz

Sam Rosenbalm — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:23:47 +0000

Are you ready to supercharge your company’s story telling strategy? Creating viral buzz for your startup, is easier than you think if you know the industry’s inside secrets. So clean off your whiteboard, grab a marker and get ready to go “backstage” to learn the Top 5 Buzz Tips from Seattle’s tech media elite.

On October 13^th, the MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest hosted the program, “Pitch, Don’t Spin – How to Create Buzz Around your Start-up” featuring a panel of five seasoned news experts: John Cook, Co-founder, GeekWire, Brier Dudley, Technology Columnist, Seattle Times, Leslie Helm, Editor, Seattle Business Magazine, Mike Davidson, Vice President, Social News, msnbc.com and CEO, Newsvine and Curt Woodward, Senior Editor, Xconomy.

The panel shared personal insights and answered questions from a packed room of Seattle startups about creating buzz and the best way to get your story looked at and published by reporters and influential bloggers. You can watch the full event here recorded by Puget Sound Media.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To save you a few hours of play-pause-play-pause, I have consolidated the wealth of advice into the top 5 buzz strategies for success.

Top 5 Strategies for Creating Buzz around Your Startup:

1. Create Great Content

Leslie Helm suggests creating two press releases, “one for niche trade pub, and another for people who don’t care about that specificity.” Leslie also reminds us to stick to the basics – “market size, competitors, key advantage” in four sentences or less. Unfortunately, many people don’t do that. As a consequence, Curt Woodward stated that “most pitches plain suck.” John Cook prefers to have potential sources “boil down news nuggets a few days in advance” with a few sentences, blog link, or press release so he can triage. Brier Dudley wants us to “talk about it the way you would talk to a friend or family member.” You should also take advantage of all of your digital resources including the about us page, pictures, bios, contact address of the company, etc. Leslie highly recommends hiring a professional photographer or designer to create good art and make it super easy for reporters to show off you and your story

2. Build Relationships

Curt challenges you to “make me want to write about it vs. thinking that I have to.” That is how you can have a relationship with people to help down the road. But even with a strong relationship, Curt shared this insightful tip regarding the timing of news releases. If you want to keep it under wraps, you have to use the magic words “Must have hold for release, do you agree?” The reporter doesn’t care about your product release schedule. Once you send the information without first getting confirmation that the reporter agrees, “it is public.”

“Chances are that they already know about your embargoed info,” said John. He also advises startups to “look at archives, number of posts, comments threads, etc.” for a specific reporter. John also prefers electronic communication over calls.

3. Be Bold

Mike Davidson believes that “courage and the fact that you have nothing to lose is the number one tool you have as a startup.” Brier sounded a little more philosophical with his comment that “your best tool is your mind, being observant and knowing where you want to go.”

4. Time Your Approach

Leslie reminded the group that timing isn’t always in your favor and that “if you don’t take the opportunities when they come, you may not get another chance later.” Brier added that everyone should “think about timing, gadget and holiday season” and encouraged startups to “stay away from big waves at industry events. Piggy back doesn’t really work.”

Mike commented on the changing face of networking, stating that “one link from anybody isn’t going to do anything, but a cluster makes the difference.” To build that cluster Brier suggests going local because it can “be easier to get picked up by regionals like the Seattle Times.” In fact, Brier shared the little secret that “big stories usually click back to a wire service or local story.” You can test this yourself by looking at the history of video propagation on YouTube views, noting which sources are picked up by their bigger peers.

5. Tell Your Story

Curt believes that “the best stuff is human. News is what I am not supposed to know, the rest is just releases.” John suggested that you spend more time developing your story. “Everyone has an app,” he said, “but they also have a story.” For the story to work, Curt cautioned startups to “be real [and] be authentic.” He shared the story of when PopCap Games did their pre IPO roadshow. The CEO and Cofounder apparently sat down with reporters, but ended up providing insight about other game companies like Zynga. They could have pushed back and insisted on talking solely about their company, but by being flexible and providing a service to the reporter, they received great press coverage.

Because of those stories, Mike reminded the audience that “people follow people, not companies.” Brier emphasized that thought, indicating that “the most interesting thing about your company is you, more than your stuff. The person behind the company. The “who” is what makes your story interesting.” He stated that reporters “are always looking for the good human interest story. What is special about you?” He said that you should think about your idea or passion for something and talk about how it will change their lives, the community, or make other people’s lives easier.

Case Studies

So how do you bundle all that advice into real world examples?

John Cook related an example of packaging and presenting your story the right way. BigOven CEO Steve Murch took the time to create a story content package and deliver all of the essential reporting elements on a silver platter. Steve provided a link to his website, product images, headshots, a YouTube video and the personal human element from his own life to the story. “It was perfect,” said John. They did the entire interview via email. Read John’s post to see how he used the elements. John did say that he “wishes he would have had a little bit better art, but [it was] otherwise perfect.]

The next case study serves a dual purpose. Mike Davidson’s edgy anecdotal story both showcases how one presidential hopeful used digital media the wrong way and how Mike used the perfect pitch strategy and timing to propel his story to the national stage. At the time, Mike was CEO of startup newsvine.com. From Mike’s blog post we read, “John McCain’s people commandeered my world-renowned MySpace design template and did a few things wrong.”

It really is so easy to provide attribution to your sources, but apparently, the McCain camp not only forgot to provide credit, but they also used an image being served from Mike’s own server. Can you guess where this is going? As Mike put it, “I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.” If you are going to do something to a presidential candidate’s website, you might as well go big so Mike contacted Michael Arrington to provide the scoop and perfectly time the lesson in internet etiquette. You can still see a copy of the site change in Michael’s post.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Mike knew he had “made it” when the story got incorporated into this Daily Show edition at the 2:30 mark.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

If you found these tips and case studies helpful, start building your media relationships by taking a moment to send an email or tweet to your favorite reporter from the panel and say “thank you.”

I would love to hear some of your success or failure stories in creating buzz around your startups or other media projects.

Share this post:

October 12, 2011 -- It’s Scary Starting a New Business (8)
January 29, 2010 -- Startup City: Mobile Giving Foundation (4)
October 21, 2009 -- Startup City: Serra Media (3)
March 3, 2009 -- Learning from maniaTV (1)

Video Syndication – what are we paying for?

Corey Christiansen — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:02:49 +0000

With the rise of online video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler, the almighty video view count has become increasingly more important as a way of ranking success. Success of not only the producer, but also those paid to promote or “syndicate” online videos. While some of us might be uploading videos we think will quickly become the next YouTube sensation, we shouldn’t be disappointed when we only get 100 views and others with similar videos have thousands – they’re likely paying for them.

Online video syndication services have been around for several years and are helping many businesses, advertising agencies and producers transition from paid television ads to paid online video ads. While many of these services provide legitimate ways of attracting consumers to the videos, others have developed ways of short-cutting the process to quickly increase view counts and other forms of engagement.

Video view seeding has been around nearly as long as online video. With the newfound success of brands using online video for advertising, seeding video views has become much more popular. One of the primary reasons for doing this is search engine optimization or SEO. Videos with higher views and engagement rates rank much higher in search engine results. This in turn motivates marketers and producers to artificially increase these numbers in the beginning to earn more organic engagement over the long run

The snag with online video is sites like YouTube have millions of videos uploaded everyday ,so unless you pay to increase your view count, your video can get lost and go unviewed. By rapidly increasing the view count using various techniques, marketers and producers are able to get their video off the ground and give it a better chance of going “viral”.

The cost of buying video views, comments and likes
While doing a simple Google search you will likely find many fancy websites offering a wide range of syndication packages. One website, WebVideoPromoters.com, offers 100,000 views for $1,000 or 10,000 subscribers for $2,800 and provides dozens of examples of well known brands they’ve worked with. Another site, BuyYouTubeViews.net, advertises geolocation targeted views as well as volume pricing for agencies.

While these may seem like excellent deals, things break down when you view their FAQ section to find out how the service actually works:

“Its a combination of being your promotions manager, a little bit of magic, and a whole lotta of hustling… actually it’s pretty complex involving sharing it out to other YouTubers, server technology, and more. But in all honesty, its a trade secret but you’ll love the results!” (webvideopromoters.com)

It really doesn’t take much to uncover some shady practices disguised as “server technology” and “trade secrets” yet because there is little if any regulation, many marketers and producers are willing to look the other way if they are able to save a significant amount of money.

In some cases, the companies that provide very little information online are not actually hiding anything and in fact provide legitimate ways of promoting videos through influencer outreach campaigns and other well-known industry practices. These industry leaders provide multiple reporting metrics including how much of the video was viewed and where it was embedded. They also have the power to target very specific demographics.

What counts as a view? Is it changing?
In 2008 fans of Avril Lavigne attempted to bump her up to the top ranked YouTube video spot using an autoplaying and auto-refreshing embedded video player that added one pageview every 15 seconds. (Wired, 2008) Several weeks later YouTube stopped counting autoplays.

The table below provides a list of video hosting sites and what counts as a view:

Site	Full View	>1/2 View	Refresh	Embedded	Embedded Autoplay	Count Methodology
blip.tv	one/sess.	one/sess.	no count	one/sess.	one/sess.	most stringent
Dailymotion	count	count	count	count	count	less stringent
Metacafe	count	count	no count	count	count	stringent
MySpace	count	count	count	count	count	less stringent
Viddler	count	count	count	count	count	less stringent
Vimeo	one/sess	one/sess	no count	count	count	stringent
Yahoo! Video	count	count	count	count	count	less stringent
YouTube	count	count	count	count	no count	less stringent

Gaming the system
Currently there are at least three distinct methods being used to rapidly increase engagement stats. While all of these methods aren’t necessarily illegal, they do present ethical issues that should be addressed before they cause further harm to the industry.

Paid to view
Sites such as Paid2YouTube.com advertise services that allow YouTube videos to reach thousands of viewers. How do they work? Paid2YouTube pays 0.01 per view, 0.10 per comment, and 0.35 per subscription along with other referral based earning opportunities. Viewers surf through pages of embedded videos and are paid accordingly for each video they engage without ever leaving the Paid2YouTube site.

There are lots of sites offering automating computing scripts to game this method therefore viewers may not even be looking at their computer while these videos are playing. Not to mention that for advertisers, the idea that you’d pay people to watch your video runs counter to what you’re trying to do; you want them paying you!

Another potential way for viewers to be paid to view is through social games. According to an article in VideoNuze, a company called Jun Group has been a pioneer in this emerging space offering “virtual currency” in return for opt-in video views on major brands’ online video ads. (Richmond, 2011) Jun Group works with social game developers to offer targeted syndication that uses an embedded player. (Richmond, 2011) According to Jun Group’s CEO, gamers are responding positively with 90-95% completion rate and 3-5% engagement rates. Jun Group may actually be one of the more legitimate services as they promise “no auto-plays, pop-ups or other view-inflating tricks.” (Richmond, 2011) Depending on how these sites are run, there many be several related legal issues such as complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA).

Stream Fraud
According to Jim Louderback, an outspoken voice on this issue, Internet video has an ethics problem called “stream fraud” which he describes as a company reporting to an advertiser that a video was played when the video was not actually viewed. Louderback estimates in 2010 that stream fraud could have accounted for as much as 30% or more of paid views. (Louderback, 2010)

In some instances these videos can’t actually be stopped and play below the fold on the page with the sound turned off so the person viewing the page might not actually see or hear it at all.

Black pixel markets
Tod Sacerdoti, an author for Media Post’s Online Video Insider blog describes the syndicated black market as a “small number of video syndication firms, ad networks and tier-three publishers” that use invisible 1×1 pixel autoplayers hidden behind a banner ad with the sound turned off. (2010) This appears to be one of the most fraudulent of the three categories described.

Laws and Regulation
Many of the illegitimate practices associated with video syndication fall under case law and the U.S. Code. Similar to the current Google Adwords case, charging customers for video view impressions and using a group of incentivized viewers that regularly click on hundreds of videos to fill those impressions is fraudulent. While there may be some truth to the old adage – buyer beware, some of the companies such as Usocial use FAQs and terms of service agreements that are extremely hard to decipher.

There is nothing illegal about using a “vast network of partners”, but when you drill down and consider that these “partners” are likely incentivized for their actions and might view multiple ads simultaneously to earn more money, it becomes clear that conversion rates will remain low or nonexistent. What you’re really doing paying people to ignore your video, leave fake comments or to subscribe to your channel and then never watch it.

What should be done to stop this madness?
There will always be fly-by-night companies that bend and twist the rules to make a quick buck, whether it’s click fraud or cybersquatting, making it all the more important for legitimate companies to protect themselves. Creating strict industry standards and providing transparency around services and metrics is likely the best way for video syndication companies to avoid government oversight. In order to curtail fraudulent practices like stream fraud, marketers and producers need to educate themselves as to the risks of working with companies that hide under “trade secrets” and be willing to pay a fair price for a legitimate service.

We want to hear from you… Does your business pay for video syndication services? How do you decipher the legitimate services from the fraudulent ones? Is a video’s view count an important factor in determining whether or not you will share it?

This piece was originally written as a research paper for Theresa Simpson’s U.S. Digital Media Law and Policy course at the University of Washington.

Share this post:

It’s Scary Starting a New Business

EvanWest — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:27:41 +0000

A little over two years ago (in the midst of the “Great Recession”) I finished my BA from the University of Washington Bothell. The degree was in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Society, Ethics, and Human Behavior. I looked around for work and I was prepared to except almost any kind of job, but I soon found out how hard it is to get any job at all these days. But with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, I kept thinking, who wouldn’t want to hire me?

Not only was I competing against others right out of college who had degrees people wouldn’t laugh at, but I was competing with others who had been in the workforce for years and had recently been forced to find new jobs because of the recession.

After sending out resumes, cover letters, and continual rejections, I realized that it was time for a new approach. I started to think that if I couldn’t get someone else to hire me I could just hire myself.
Well, it made sense at the time.

I set up Evan West Media, as a a sole proprietorship. I was able to get modest work doing digital media consulting for local bars, restaurants, and even with the City of Everett. I found most of my work through word–of–mouth. Luckily for me I had a fiancé (now wife) with a stable job and health benefits.

Over the last two years my business has been growing…slowly, but growing noenetheless. I have been able to save up some capital (because of the wife with the stable job and health benefits) and I recently decided to expand my business. I have spent the summer working on my business plan, turning my sole proprietorship into an LLC, redesigning my website, and creating new promotional materials.

I have also spent that time defining what I do, and what services Evan West Media LLC offers. In the past I have had trouble trying to explain what I do and what I study in graduate school at the Master of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington. I have told people that I do social media marketing, tell a business’ story online, or simply that I just do “web stuff”. What I have found is that the term “online marking” is all encompassing and pretty much defines what I do: creating online videos, optimizing websites for search engine optimization, creating paid search campaigns, and developing digital strategies.

Recently I made one of the scariest business moves I have ever made. I hired someone else to work for me. I am experimenting with Idea2Result, an appointment setting service. They find potential customers and schedule meetings where I can explain how Evan West Media LLC can help enhance sales and customer engagement. It is strange having someone else work for you, but so far our arrangement seems to be working out well.

So far there have been two major takeaways that I would like to share from this experience: The first is, it may take awhile but it is worth it for you to be able to define what you do in laymen’s terms. For example, most people have no idea what storytelling or “transmedia” mean. Find an easy way to describe what you do. Avoid jargon and empty marketing language. Help the client define what they want and reflect that back to them along with how you can help them get what they want.

Secondly, It may be scary to take the leap and start your own business, but the risk is worth it. It can be very rewarding to work for yourself, and if you never try, you won’t ever know if you could have succeeded.

I’m hopeful that I will be able to expand my business, but if I can’t, it has been a great learning experience. If I’m not successful, I may have to do something even more terrifying than starting my own business. I may have to get a real job.

Evan West is a graduate student in the MCDM program and will provide FtM readers with regular updates on his entrepreneurial journey.

Share this post:

January 26, 2012 -- The Anatomy of an MCDM Foundation Course (1)
January 18, 2012 -- MCDM Town Hall on Sunday (0)
January 17, 2012 -- Why I think CES matters (3)
January 9, 2012 -- Trying to be Chic AND Geek for the Consumer Electronics Show (0)
January 4, 2012 -- May your New Year be full of data! (0)

“Marketing to Millennials:” Do generations have personalities?

Cheryl Lowry — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:58:04 +0000

Recently I attended a presentation that many of us have probably seen in some form by now: “Marketing to Millennials.” The Millennial was described as an entirely new breed, sprung from the forehead of Facebook: innately social, tech-savvy, confident. This was reinforced by a stock photo of a young guy with a messenger bag, fiddling with his iPhone while standing astride a single-speed bike.
“Generations,” concurs Pew Research, “have personalities.” If this is true, Millennials lucked into some desirable traits. The other generations in the presentation I saw were defined against the sterling Millennial standard as progressively grumpier and more technophobic by age: Generation X? Cautious. Boomers? Suspicious. The Silent Generation (silent to whom?) of course downright curmudgeonly, rattling their analog canes defiantly at the 21st Century digital tsunami.

The considerably technical audience watching this presentation, mostly people over 35, seemed unimpressed (or perhaps just ‘cautious?’). Had I the innate Millennial characteristic of confidence, I might have brought up Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus, in which he argues that generational labels are a form of fundamental attribution error. “The conceptual appeal of these labels is enormous,” he writes, “but the idea’s explanatory value is almost worthless, a kind of astrology for decades instead of months.”

Shirky uses the example of Generation X – “labeled slackers in the parlance of the time,” who appeared to have a poor work ethic when entering the job force in the late 80’s, but in reality were only reacting to the recession caused by the market crash of 1987, and its resulting lack of meaningful work opportunities (remember the McJob?).

“At the moment of their earliest adulthood,” Shirky writes, “Gen Xers were entering an economy that was inimical to ambition, and they behaved accordingly. Then, fairly suddenly, the economy started rewarding ambition, and the supposedly core psychological attributes of these young people simply vanished, to be replaced by an almost opposite set of attributes” – founding companies, joining startups, working around the clock.

In other words, patterns in a generation’s behavior are not indicative of collective personality, but merely a reaction to circumstance. Those who came of age in the digital era share everything online simply because they can, not by dint of their innate social savviness. If you’re over 35, do you have any doubt you’d have been texting constantly at age 16 if you’d had the choice?

What Shirky’s take means for marketing is that the construct of “Millennial” is just a label for the current moment, another way of saying “youth.” Today’s digital natives may well find themselves recast as quaint pilgrims of the internet age in slideshows of the future. In the words of the late ‘Silent Generation’ writer John Updike, “the kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up.”

Share this post:

Is Qwiki the future of search?

Sean Wang — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:13:14 +0000

Earlier this year, Corey posted about Qwiki, a startup whose investors include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

Qwiki has opened its alpha release to the public since January. With its stated objective to “deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search”, Qwiki has generated great interest, even hyped by media as the “next Google.”

Qwiki turns text based search into a multimedia experience that is similar to combining search results of Google, YouTube and Wikipedia all on the same page. Test drives show Qwiki is more interesting than practical at this point, although it holds great promises in areas that perhaps wasn’t initially intended.

Here are two reasons Qwiki will not replace Google:

First, Qwiki is indexed to words, not sentences, which is its greatest limitation to replace search. From its inception, it is suited for only a subset of subjects. This is the same way that Wikipedia has been so successful yet never a threat to Google.
Second, while multimedia is great for those who seek the story, the format severely limits the amount of information presented on the screen. Video and voice is inherently time consuming, they are great for interaction, entertainment, education and illustration. But they are inefficient as carriers of raw information.

Google’s strength is still with the simplicity and efficiency of text, as it can transmit and present the most information on the least screen for the searcher to choose from. Google is not always correct, but it doesn’t need to be. Users provide their own intelligence. Qwiki, on the other hand, attempts to digest and select information, and “tell the story” with sound and video. Therefore it is a much more difficult task to present the “right” information to the audience. For example, the word “Washington” could have different meanings. Qwiki has done a better job with its search prompt feature, which displays multiple items as user types, thus allowing the audience to participate in the selection. As shown, the word “Amazon” brought up a number of different subjects.

Qwiki as a search tool is elementary at best, its multimedia style of presentation is more pretty than it is useful for in-depth information. But Qwiki has its shining places.

It is naturally suited for people and places, as well as entertainment, scientific and educational subjects.

Its social media potential is also promising, as it can be the hub of a particular subject, which extends to conversation between interested parties. Qwiki also said that it will provide a service later this year that allows people to merge their Facebook and LinkedIn data, along with other online content, into a personal “Qwiki”.

Qwiki has almost instant commercial value due to its word based categorization. For example, companies will use Qwiki as a great PR outlet, cities can promote tourism, and new film launches will find its multimedia format a natural fit.

Qwiki is not the future of search, but it may be among the new contenders in online media to watch for.

Share this post:

Hyper-Local Blogs and Seattle’s Night Out

Jonathan Cunningham — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:55:38 +0000

Yesterday, residents all across Seattle participated in the 2011 Night Out in an effort to stay better connected with their neighbors and neighborhood. Night Out is billed as a national event but citizens in Seattle are among the few that put any real effort into making it successful. Although knowledge of Night Out is growing across the city, while driving around yesterday evening, certain block parties looked anemic with fewer than five or six participants. Depending on where you were, participation from neighbors appeared minimal, but in other neighborhoods, Night Out was a total success.

I scratched my head trying to figure out what could account for the differences — aside from the person to person relations block to block — and then realized the neighborhoods with strong hyper-local blog coverage of Night Out had the most participation. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog and Central District news got the word out early and strong. Rainier Valley Post did the same thing as did the Phinney Wood blog, West Seattle Blog and others. The stronger the push and readership was on neighborhood blogs, the more successful each neighborhood Night Out was.

When talking with Amber Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post, she fully agreed.

“In my opinion, the support and coverage of events like these on hyper-local sites is indeed crucial to their success,” Campbell said today via email. “That said, I don’t think it’s just the coverage per se, but the model of engagement that sites like [Rainier Valley Post] provide. You probably notice that big media was all over the [Night Out] story last night and this morning, but they tend to participate very little if at all in informing the community prior to the event.”

Justin Carder whose company runs both the Capitol Hill Blog and the Central District News Blog also feels that hyper-local sites where imperative in making yesterday successful for certain neighborhoods.

“For block parties that have been going on for awhile and have momentum already, it might not be so important,” Carder said. “But for new block parties in areas where folks are more transient and younger, without a local news source pushing it, I don’t think you’d see any organized parties yesterday.”

This isn’t to say that person to person contact isn’t the most important means of organizing a block party but having a digital presence via the hyper-local sites we have here in Seattle definitely helps.

Share this post:

Flip the Media » Marketing

Nevada GOP’s fail whale: A warning to all political organizations

Related Posts

Viral Video of the Week–Bad PR

Related Posts

Get the Inside Scoop on 5 Strategies to Create Buzz

Related Posts

Video Syndication – what are we paying for?

Most Commented Posts

It’s Scary Starting a New Business

Related Posts

“Marketing to Millennials:” Do generations have personalities?

Most Commented Posts

Is Qwiki the future of search?

Most Commented Posts

Hyper-Local Blogs and Seattle’s Night Out

Most Commented Posts