test

Our blog has found a new home. For future marketing insights to grow your business in print and online — Please visit LisaSingh.com.

Online Anglican wars: The man at the center, the Archbishop of Canterbury

Why can’t we all just get along? Especially online.

That’s what Alan Jacobs was wondering the day he visited an Anglican blog, no less. At stake was the reputation of someone whom Jacobs, a top English professor, held in high regard: Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England (pictured, left).

Readers of the Anglican blog world were bashing the archbishop. Calling him, of all things, a liberal.

So, just to pause here a minute: You may not be Anglican. You might not even be into God talk. But chances are there’s something you care deeply about. Your business among them. And let’s just say you found yourself facing a torrent of rage, half truths, and downright lies. In blog comment after blog comment.

What would you do?

For Jacobs, it was all too much. Despite all efforts to shed light on the matter, the Anglican war of the blog world escalated. Until finally, Jacobs looked at his trembling fingers, and then …

“I finally closed that browser tab, and spent a few minutes removing all Anglican-related blogs from my bookmarks and RSS reader,” recalls Jacobs. “I stopped reading those blogs and have never looked at them again to this day.”

Jacobs can afford to disengage from the conversation. (He’s an academic after all, not a sales guy.) Most of us can’t say the same.

This week I’ll bring you a series of tips on how to survive negative blog comments: first, through mental realignment and second, technology. (In the meantime, let us pray …)

He's just kidding: Joaquin Phoenix

We live in an age of hoaxes.

Balloon Boy. Acid Girl. Joaquin Phoenix.

(Sorry, despite Phoenix’s art-house posturing this week — “We wanted to do a film that explored the relationship between the media, and consumers, and celebrities” — it’s still a lame hoax, second to Balloon Boy dad’s tour-de-force performance on Larry King last fall.)

But at least one thing Phoenix said on Dave Letterman this week makes this story more than a freak show sidenote: His bit about consumers. And (just filing in the blanks here), their appetite for quick-hit attention highs.

Companies have always recognized this (think: Abercrombie & Fitch’s quarterly catalogues). But now some companies are upping the game — and “pulling a Joaquin” — over the usual tried-and-true approaches.

Good Old Games: Video company pulls a “Joaquin”

This week, just as Phoenix came clean, the online video game storefront, Good Old Games (GOG), told its loyal base of veteran gamers that the site was going out of business. A few days later, they issued a follow-up statement: Just kidding.

These guys were just kidding, too: Good Old Games owners

It was all a … hoax, GOG said. But all in good fun, they added.

GOG’s defense? They wanted to drum up online publicity for something they’d secretly been hatching: a relaunched site.

Ha. Ha. Ha. So funny.

Well, not exactly. GOG customers were less than amused. In fact, they were downright fuming.

Here’s how one customer put it: “… you guys managed to squander the hard-earned reputation and trust with gamers you spent over two years building. In the span of 3 days you’ve gone from being the topic of near-universal praise on every PC gaming website to being nearly universally reviled — probably NOT the effect you were looking for. Was it worth it for your little joke and attempt at some publicity?”

Maybe Joaquin is wondering the same thing. The other week, his mockumentary, “I’m Still Here” tanked at the box-office.

Was it worth spending a year-and-a-half of his life going from a respected Oscar nominee to freak show prankster? Was it worth GOG going from the top of its game to “universal revilement” by a customer base it had spent the last two years building? Is it worth it for your business?

Lady Gaga gives the Flip

Forget the meat dress. Did you see the flip cam Lady Gaga was holding in a backstage address to her fans the other day?

Check out the video below (hat tip: MGH Modern Marketing Blog.) In a shareholder meeting this past year, the company’s green man, Ron Jarvis, weighs in on a hydroelectric dam project in Chile.

Tina Fey

Here’s a question for you: What single item adds 3.3 to five years to your appearance?

Answer: glasses.

At least that’s what a poll that’s gone viral over the past 24 hours tells us (sorry, Tina). Like wildfire, some of the world’s top news outlet, from Australia’s The Age to The Times of India, have reported on the poll’s findings.

Now, normally when you think of a poll being covered by top news outlets, you kind of assume the research comes from a hefty (or semi-hefty?) source. No offense to the folks behind this particular poll, but we’re not exactly dealing with academic heavies here. Instead, the poll results come courtesy of … dun … duh … duh …

A Lasik practice. Operating out of London.

That’s where things get interesting. From a social media perspective.

New marketing approaches: Poll your way to visibility

Every business faces competition, no-brainer there. What sets yours apart in today’s environment is finding new, creative ways to advertise. That means thinking beyond old marketing approaches — print ads, trade show booths, even Google ads — to position yourself as a news source. Which includes coming up with eye-catching polls (pun intended).

Like London Vision Clinic just did. Since it opened shop eight years ago, this practice has soared above a field of competitors that includes three big chains in the UK. All while beating out an industry-wide sales slump that accompanied this past year’s global recession. Looking to stay ahead yourself? Here are a few winning ingredients of the clinic’s successful poll:

1. Select timely poll topic. Aging is the stuff of endless lament. Especially in a down economy, when older workers struggle to find work. As a business owner: Put your finger to the wind. What is your consumer base thinking? Feeling? Pick up on that theme, and build a poll around it.

2. Tap a third party to conduct your poll. Otherwise, it’ll look pretty self-serving. Granted London Vision Clinic’s poll looks pretty self-serving as it is. But, not necessarily at quick glance. Skim news reports on the poll, and they say the study was “commissioned by the clinic.” In this case, One Poll, which blasted out the results to media outlets worldwide.

3. Round up a lot of people, and get their feedback. It’ll make your poll’s “methodology” look more robust. The poll on behalf of London Vision Clinic is reportedly based upon feedback from 4,000 participants. Also, make the findings seem really scientific. Note that participants said glasses make you look 3.3 years older. Not three — 3.3 years older. (Did I mention old?)

4. Get a “top name” expert to back your claim. If you really, really want to seem even less self-serving, think of a high-profile expert — someone who’s quoted a lot — to weigh in on your poll’s findings. In London Vision Clinic’s case, the poll’s findings are accompanied by a quote from a “Psychologist Dr Glenn Wilson,” whose Wiki page tells us, is “one of the most frequently cited British psychologists in scientific journals.”

5. Give ‘em a reason to come back. OK, so now that you feel like a dweeb for wearing glasses — thanks London Vision Clinic! — what next? On the flip side, everyone from India to Indiana now knows where to go for help. But before the poll’s findings fall off your radar (or you get reassurance from your mom that you really look OK in glasses) London Vision Clinic is ready with Plan B. More editorial content, courtesy of its blog, to stay on your radar.

The first time Jeff Siegel set his sights on blogging about good cheap wine, he had one thought. And it wasn’t exactly favorable.

“I thought this was going to be a really stupid idea,” says the Dallas-based writer who’d enjoyed a successful freelance writing career up until that point through the traditional “pitch and place” approach.

Fast-forward nearly three years, and that initial idea has paid off big time: Recently, Siegel’s blog, The Wine Curmudgeon, was named one of the 100 Top Wine Blogs.

Not bad for a guy who started blogging less than three years ago, and forks over $90 a year for a blog subscription to keep his brand empire going.

(Oh, and for all you wine lovers out there: Siegel’s blog is based on the premise that the wine business does more to intimidate wine drinkers than to educate them, so he focuses on education — and on writing in English, not winespeak.)

So, what does Siegel’s blog success have to do with your own business brand?

Everything.

No matter what your industry, just about everyone and their mother wants to grow traffic to their blog. Meanwhile, SEO firms keep on spouting 10-dollar words like “algorithm” to let you think there’s some mystical formula to it all. But maybe — just maybe — all you need to know comes from the likes of Siegel — a self-described “cranky old newspaper guy” — who got his start in journalism back in the late 1970s.

Yes, for all the bad rap traditional print media types get, many of their best practices, shaped by the deadline-driven environment of newsrooms of old, hold relevance in growing blog traffic — and in creating your own brand. Recently, Siegel shared his own tips — here’s a rundown from The Wine Curmudgeon himself:

1. Generate consistent and quality content. “No one wants to believe it, but the only way to drive traffic is through consistent and quality content,” says Siegel. For his part, Siegel blogs five days a week — he’s done so from the start. He’s not advising you do the same. “But it has to be regularly,” he says. As for quality: “You have to give people a reason to come to the blog,” he says. “If all you’re going to do is copy something that somebody else has, that’s not going to do it.”

2. Find other online venues to share your expertise. “You have to make an effort to drive traffic to your site … it takes time,” says Siegel. His first month, Siegel averaged 40 visitors a day. “And that’s me who did have a bit of a following and reputation [in the wine industry],” he says. Today, his blog has grown “hundreds of percent.” That growth has occurred, in part, through spotlight appearances in other online venues. A year ago, over the summer, Siegel started appearing two to three times a month on Blog Talk Radio. Those appearances gradually translated into a larger blog audience of his own. “After about three months, I noticed a real upsurge — 10 to 15 percent,” says Siegel. “It took [up to] six months for my appearances to winnow through the internet and for people to find my blog.”

3. Create participatory online opportunities. “If you want to get people to do something on the internet, you have to tell them on the internet,” says Siegel. It’s a lesson he learned early on. A few months after he started his blog, he was teaching a wine class at Le Cordon Bleu in Dallas when he told his students to visit his blog. No bites. “No one has a pen to write down a URL,” says Siegel. These days, Siegel has gone for more creative approaches to drive traffic to his blog. This past year, he hosted a virtual wine tasting on Blog Talk Radio. The response was strong — precisely because it was participatory and it occurred online.

4. Lose the fear — and get started. “Don’t be intimidated, or think you need to call in 27 experts to do it,” says Siegel. “The mindset of some older people is that we’re visitors in this country of new technology,” he says. “Try to think differently,” he adds, “find someone who didn’t grow up with traditional media and ask them [what grabs their attention].”