Digital Marketing, Media, PR Analysis And Insight – The Future Buzz

The functions of a traditional, printed community newspaper are to:

• Tell stories that have meaning locally
• Unite small communities
• Provide community calendars and event listings
• Bring hyper-local issues to light
• Provide ads for relevant local businesses

Unfortunately, many hyper local papers are dying off instead of evolving. It doesn’t have to be this way.

What if, in addition to the above mentioned traditional items offered by a print publication, local community news organizations could serve to:

Intro

I have strong thoughts and passion on this subject, and decided to put down just some in a feature connecting the music and news industries with a little history, the future and why everyone needs to come together and not fight change.

As both an artist and someone who works closely with the media industry, I believe I have a unique perspective on how similar the challenges are facing both of these industries and how it is unfortunate that the big players are using their positions of power to destroy a beautiful evolution of technology and communication.

This evolution ultimately will impact society in an incredibly positive way, bringing down the gatekeepers and creating a completely open and free cultural and information economy.

That is, if we (the independents) can win, and the laws are not bent to the fortune of the few when the power of the many is what will most benefit humanity.

A lesson in corporate blogging
I wrestled with whether I should blog about this – but I think it is worthwhile to write this up to show you a great example of what not to do on a corporate blog.

This is of course, my personal blog, and I have a clear disclaimer right at the top. I make zero claim to tie anything on this site to the firm I work with – these are entirely my own thoughts.

A corporate blog is a far different animal. Depending on what your corporation is, you may be able to venture into some debate, but at least do your research first, and be open to fixing something if you post the wrong facts.

This post is the first in a new category on The Future Buzz called startup ideas. This category will feature content about services, .coms and social networks that could potentially be hits in the marketing/public relations industry and beyond.

The current solution

ProfNet is a great service for the PR industry. If you’re unfamiliar, ProfNet is (quoted from their site):

“An online community of nearly 14,000 professional communicators, ProfNet was created in 1992 to connect reporters easily and quickly with expert sources at no charge. We now provide this same free service to other professionals looking for experts, including:

• Academic Researchers
• Authors/Screenwriters
• Bloggers
• Consultants
• Corporate Researchers
• Financial Analysts
• Government Officials
• Industry Analysts
• Meeting Planners
• PR and Marketing Professionals
• Publishers

Did you LOL yet?
Obvious part out of the way: Lolcats are a hugely popular internet meme. If you’re unfamiliar with what an Lolcat is, well it’s actually quite simple. The meme involves combining a photo of a cat with some quirky text to create a humorous image (I included a few in my 50 Viral Images article).

Here’s just one recent Lolcat photo:

There are an immeasurable number of Lolcat images floating around the web across platforms. If you Google lolcat, you’ll get more than a million results.

Yes, they’re popular. And yes, you probably secretly like them even if you complain and post negative comments every time one graces page one of Digg. Of course, I’m talking about lists (top 10 lists, top 100 lists, top 9000 lists, you name it).

Lists are a popular way to arrange content on the web for a number of reasons. Wait for it – I’m going to list them.

Lists:

• Are scan-able
• Provide easy to read and consume content
• Have the novelty factor
• Are many times “must-share” content
• Engage people
• Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
• Are a strong social web meme
• Get strong traffic

Twitter, Digg, Friendfeed, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. – these are all incredibly popular social networks with useful services connecting millions globally.  Notice all of those links take you to my personal profile page within each of those networks (feel free to friend me on any of these sites). 

Within those networks, I am connected with countless others to share news, information, and essentially my life with those interested.  Now, simply put, I wonder what would happen if a company [...]

Just remember, it has to be beyond awesome. You’re competing with videos as compelling as this:
[youtube pVKnF26qFFM]

Viral videos are ubiquitous – they have spread into both mainstream pop culture and corporate America. Everyone talks about developing viral videos, and there are plenty of techniques you can use to give your video the best chance of success.

But, something not talked about as frequently are viral images. Viral images predate viral videos, and have been around since the AOL and Prodigy days when there wasn’t enough bandwidth available for the everyday user to access video. Images [...]

Case study of Joffrey’s Java Beta Test

Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company had a desire for a web campaign with international results and millions of impressions on the Web. Their goals were to drive traffic to their site, increase buzz and branding in social media and the blogosphere and create a promotion which played into their brand essence. They were confident about the product and were willing to put it out there for the Web influencers to try out.

[...]