Creative Concepts

For those of you who are in the midst of overseeing and guiding the corporate blog, has anyone ever put on the blog a “how to” section?  As we have pulled out of the gate with the Bigelow Blog, many of the visitors who are coming over from the main Bigelow website have never seen or been active on a blog.  The first way to alienate anyone is by presenting something that no one understands and so we have posted a “how to” section to help explain the many facets of the blog (entries, comments, how to comment, categories…).  It is a simple thing but necessary.  As we all become more immersed in this online world, don’t forget that there is a large majority of people out there who don’t get it or maybe they get it but they don’t know how to work it!

Speaking of this premise, this is the idea behind the Business Smart Tools Conference.  Business people everywhere have heard of blogs, podasts, RSS, and many other online tools, but they may not know how to use them when it comes to futhering their corporate strategies.  We provide the speakers who are in the thick of things, we provide a time to learn, we provide a time to chat and connect, we provide live demos of upstart companies who will make a difference in the corporate arena.  We do all of this in one day, in 6 hours, in Connecticut.  Who can ask for anything better than that!!

On a more local note than Disney, I headed over to the offices of the Fairfield Metro Center for a light cocktail party this evening.  What a project that is going to be between corporate and retail and a train station…it will change Fairfield in a great way!

Ran into a good friend, Michael from DesignSite.  He and his buddy Joe are making it big with podcasting in the music industry…more specifically Capitol Records.  They created The Pet Sounds 40th anniversary podcast series.  It got a crazy big number of hits on iTunes..check it out.

It has also been a big day of blogging and websites.  Working with a host now where we are having problems uploading a simple blog design for a corporate client.  They are working hard at solving the problem but come on..my client is waiting…other solutions are waiting in the wings on Friday that is for sure.

Bigelow Tea sent out an email blast today to 49,500 of their biggest supporters….56.41% of the visitors to their blog were new today…love those multi level communications to get the word out…blogging, email and search engine press releases (those are coming)…you can’t get any better than that.

Ok, I am done for the day!

One of the predictions of this whole Spocko/Disney debacle is that Disney will encounter its worst nightmare: mainstream media will get wind of the story.  The ball is rolling.  Melissa McNamara from CBS News reports the story.

Just to finish up on the Disney story, Spocko, the guy who reported that Disney’s super right wing radio affiliate KSFO condoned torture and murder, was supported and given a big hurrah from the blogging world. 

Once the blogoshpere learned about Spocko’s site being taken down because of uploading audio files from the radio station, other bloggers (both national and international)  posted the audio files on their sites and different hosts offered their services to bring Spocko back up.

What are Disney’s lawyers going to do now?  It’s only a short time before mainstream media picks up the story.

This is what I love about blogging, the internet, and consumer generated content: the truth has an easier and faster way of bubbling up to the surface.  The big guns like Disney can’t beat the small guys into submission any longer because there is no controlling the messaging.  This scares some (and many Public Relations people fall into this category of fearing the uncontrollable) but to me it brings total satisfaction.  The blogosphere can bring down the bad but at the same time it can boost up the good ones (and the bold ones)  :)

Disney, as reported by Tom Siebert of Online Media Daily, has actually succeeded in bringing down a blog that posted audio files from the super right wing Bay area ABC affiliate radio show KSFO.  The blogger and media critic “Spocko” of the blog “Spocko’s Brain” reported on comments made from guests who support torture,  reported that the station sent out a call to hang New York Times editor Bill Keller and other journalists and a recommendation that Sears’ Diehard battery be attached to an African-American’s testicles.

Disney’s claim is that there were copyright issues in posting the audio files and so they got a court order to either take the files off the site or bring down the site all together which happened; Spocko claims “fair use” of the copyrighted material which is a battle that is just beginning the courts.

 

I am proud to say that Creative Concepts has successfully gotten the Bigelow Tea Blog off the ground.

Why is the blog successful? Cause many players from the ground up to the top have a hand in the blog. The blog is honest (and so is Creative Concepts with full disclosure on the about page) and insightful from bringing health tips and info about tea to the co-presidents message about her life as a Bigelow family member, as a female running a business, as a person loving her job and career.

And please let’s not forget about Bob, VP Sales and Marketing…he has brought on some of his heros to help support Bigelow Green tea in the marketplace…sports greats like Joe Torre and Phil and Chris Simms not only talk about Bigeow on Imus in the Morning and do photo shoots for ads but they choose green tea for health reasons and choose Bigelow tea cause the company makes a high quality tea that people can count on (check out the pictures where Joe and Phil recently visited Fairfield, Conn. headquarters of Bigelow).

There are many more stories to come from Bigelow…this blog shows that within any company there are many personalities and many interests and all can successfully fit under one roof…all can come together to produce a product they are proud of…all can blog about it in a way where we can learn, share and enjoy all that this company offers.

Take a look and enjoy!

So what is a flog? It is a fake blog (writers from PR firms who pretend to be blogging honestly about a product or company in order to start a buzz) created by the geniuses at marketing and pr firms. Just kidding about the genius part. Edelman PR, one of the largest firms in the world and most recently Zipatoni have mislead their clients into believing that they know the best way to get exposure and get new clients and they know what is going on with emerging technology and viral marketing…for this Wal-Mart and Sony pay the big bucks.

Well if any of these men and women from these firms took the time to truly learn about blogging and its effectiveness within its communities and if these men and women were clear about doing business ethically, then the word flog would never exist.

Corporate blogging is a highly effective communication and marketing tool. eHobbies is a toy site. Once they created a blog, sales increased by 2-4% which is the trend for retail sites with blogs. There are many reasons to blog for business: increased search engine rankings, new clients get a feel for the business, reaching out to past and present customers…the list goes on and on. And yes PR and Marketing firms can be involved but only if there is full disclosure!!

As with everything else in life, there is no shortcut. Success comes from honest hard work.

Read about Sony’s flog debacle here.

Take a look at this report from Technorati about the State of the Blogosphere as of October 2006.  They are tracking 57 million blogs where the age and post frequency of the blog matters plus they have made global notations of the bloggers.  Check it out.

Well, I have done it again…I have had a gap with the entries but I don’t want to write unless I have some news or some interesting thoughts so today I am writing about news and I am writing about Creative Concepts.

Constantin Basturea’s blog reports a list called PR meets WWW.  This is a fully detailed list of pr agencies and consultants worldwide and their blogs along with some interesting entries.  Creative Concepts was mentioned so thank you for that!

Also take note, Techcrunch is coming to town (NYC) for a Meetup and Creative Concepts is their communications sponsor.  While the event is already sold out, I am looking forward to meeting all of those who are ready to party in bed in nyc with techcrunch!!

And for those of you out at the blog business summit in Seattle, look for Sabine Kirsten, Emerging Tech Director for Creative Concepts.  She is enjoying the conference and will be attending the Blogher meetup tonight.  Ask her about all of our corporate blogging projects…we have lots to share!

Being in the middle of setting up corporate blogs has afforded me some interesting experiences.  So far this week I have had to temporarily bring down a site because of hosting issues, I have had to meet with an IT department who were a joy, I had to fend off a designer who is young, easy to anger, and very unprofessional, and I met two new clients who want a blog and don’t know where to begin.  My conclusion?  Blogging has hit the maintstream and now it seems that it is business as usual (doesn’t everyone deal with issues like these every day?).