OurielOhayon

Execution is the key: #2 the PR/blogger situation

Second in our series of posts dedicated to execution (i created a special category for this)

Blogs are the new PR field. This is not a secret. You got a new product, you want the world to know. Specially if you are a web startup. But from my experience not many PR people really caught the right way to interact with bloggers

The problem when you start to have some audience with your blog is that people think you will necessarily find an interest in talking about them. Specially PR agencies/department. And I cannot count anymore the number of press releases I am receiving per day to talk about this new startup or that new service. Honestly? I just throw them direct to my mail bin and even created a gmail filter to deal with them.  This is not arrogance: but just total disinterest for impersonal communication (and also lack of time and necessity to prioritize).

So I tried to think what I would do to really get a bloggers attention if I was running a pr department or a pr agencies.

• First know this: bloggers don't want press releases. They want true communication and interaction. A none personalized email is simply ignored. For one simple reasons : a blog is rarely a job and a blogger focuses on what he likes meaning writing and interacting with readers.  A spammy mail sent to a bcc list of bloggers is unlikely to land anywhere.
• Learn about the blogger BEFORE: read his blog. Know what he likes and what he does not. How he thinks. This will help you in communicating with him. Of course if you can meet him even better.
• Initiate communication with him much before you "need" him. Comment his posts (does not mean you have to be nice to him for free). Send email to introduce yourself to start a human and honest discussion around his blog and your potential future intentions. Show interest and your intentions will be understood in return. The reward will be immediate. Believe me
• Give him some notice before you need him: again a blogger does not write on demand. It is not a job or an obligation. If he's busy (like all read bloggers) notify him at least a week before. There is nothing more irritating than asking a blogger involvement from today to tomorrow. Which rarely happens unless you provide a MAJOR scoop.
• Be clear on timings, exclusive and embargos: make sure you precise clearly when you want the info out (what is called an embargo) if this is an exclusive, or preferred period of publication. If you promise exclusive, keep the promise. And if you promised to several bloggers/media at the same time, be transparent and avoid frustrations on all sides.
• Find original ways to involve him: it does not have to be a post on his blog. A few ideas: including a pic in his Flickr account, a message in twitter, a widget in his blog. A beta test on your own service.
• Give him some spicy info things that will make him feel unique. If possible an early preview at best an exclusive. It could also be some unique insight, pics, inside story...
• Do not condition what you give: let the blogger decide if he wants or not cover your story. Find the right words to empower him with the decision

I do not know many PR companies/persons that know well how to interact with bloggers. When you are a young startup you don't have the luxury to hire an agency: so you'll have to do it yourself. 

I recently had a great experience with Microsoft which had the perfect approach to have me test the new vista OS. I will write more about it soon.

The problem is that this process of approaching correctly bloggers takes some time. For sure more than sending blindly a PR and certainly not scalable to hundreds or thousands of bloggers.

Therefore it is important to spot the bloggers you will bet on in advance meaning reading blogs and understand the blogosphere beyond technorati rankings and traditional media coverage. I would certainly recommend you write a blog to understand what this is about. The PR guy who is a master in that and a blogger i admire is Steve Rubel from Edelman who writes MicroPersuasion. A must read

Note: posted from new Windows Live Writer client which is really good. specially thanks to many great plug-ins (flickr, video, capture screenshot...)

 

Technorati Tags: pr, press release, public relation, bloggers, blogs, marketing, buzz

LeWeb3 2007 edition: video answer to Loic

I took a few minutes to answer my friend Loic’s request on what LeWeb3 conference could offer this year. I realized doing this that video production and edition is a process that takes a lot of time. And i am not sure i am so good in this. But anyway here is the thing

By the way book the date: Paris, December 2007 11th and 12th

 

 

Original announcement on Loic’s Blog

Tags: leweb3

Difference between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Branding: a brilliant illustration

Many companies i meet want to do Marketing, PR, advertising and Branding but very little know the difference. Here is a brilliant visual illustration i shamelessly copied from Pronet Advertising.

They should have added one more illustrating Viral Markerting. I would have drawn two women talking together “I was with him, he s a great lover” and the second that would repeat “She was with him he s a great lover”

Tags: marketing, pr, branding

One good reason to be a VC blogger: not miss opportunities like FEEDBURNER

Hear Dick Costollo in this video interview about why Union Square invested in FeedBurner (one of my top 5 favoriteinternet startup ever) recently acquired by Google. They were bloggers and understood better and faster than others the interest and opportunity of this company

I know in my side that if i had not been a blogger there are deals i would have totally missed or not understood. Future will tell if they are good.

 

Technorati tags: vc, feedburner, blog

That's what i call a bloody good trailer

I have not a seen such a good trailer since The300

After my frustration with the wasted Spiderman 3 i hope the promising Transformers will make it up.

Tags: transfomers, movie, trailer

Outbrain rating system integrated in Feedblitz

Congrats to the OutBrain team, an LgiLab portfolio company for the upcoming distribution deal regarding the integration of Outbrain rating system within Feedblitz email service (thanks to the OutBrain API)

If you read this blog you are already probably aware of what Feedblitz is although very discrete. You see this subscribe this blog by email on the top left? this is a feature provided by Feedblitz and they are one of the leaders providing RSS to email.

Lots of people read blogs by email. By my internal stats we are talking about more than 20% that prefer this format to pure RSS

Soon you will be able to rate your favourite posts but also to have an immediate view on how interesting a post is.

This is a good biz dev move by OutBrain to reach quickly million of users. Of course you will see soon the 5 star rating system on this blog too

More on Outbrain blog and Feedblitz blog

Tags: outbrain, feedblitz, lgilab

Scriabin: my favourite russian composer

Many know Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, but not enough know in my view Alexander Scriabin which is my favourite Russian composer. He composed mainly for the piano. 

If you love Chopin, you will love Scriabin. It is however darker and more sophisticated than the Polish composer. Scriabin requires muscular technics for who wants to play it and has very complex harmonies (not as complex as Prokofiev but not far) and very jazzy avant-guarde colours for his time.

I wanted to share with you one of his most beautiful piano composition. His nocturne for the left hand.

Close your eyes: it sounds like there are two hands playing

Tags: scriabin, piano, classic

Alexa.com sucks, another proof

I keep repeating it all day and it just makes me crazy hearing people referring to it as if it was the Bible.

DO NOT RELY ON ALEXA

Not even at trend level or indication. If you are a little serious about analytics you will come to the same conclusion

Others have done it already.

If you want more reliable data take Comscore/Nielsen/Hitwise (unfortunately not free but reliability has a price). Those are the only metrics companies able to provide some usable data.

If you build a startup, don’t waste your time on Alexa except if you want to get easy attention (since like porn no one uses it but everybody is watching)

Worse: you can even pay to get your ranking higher and game even more the system

Tags: alexa

Execution is the key: #1 the registration form

I am testing hundreds of websites and using the internet tens of hours a week. So inevitably there are things i learn, things i like, things i don’t. I have decided to share with you things that i believe are common mistakes in execution and i really see often. And since the sentence i hear most often is “Execution is the key to success” i believe this could make it even more relevant

It will be published in a series of posts. Today #1: the registration form and login process

It is very rare to find a web site with a well thought registration process which is a KEY step in the experience of a website. A good registration process should be fast for the user but informative enough for the company. Coupled with registration is the login process which should be dead simple and fast (meaning saving all click that are not necessary)

• login /refresh: the most common mistake i see is that website do not give access to login within the homepage but requires you to click on a login link to lead you to a new page where to include your credentials. Ideally you want login/pass to appear from home with a “remember me” feature or in worst case using ajax a log/pass that appears in one click (see Digg.com for example or Skype which is PERFECT). YouTube is doing half well (login link at the top + directly log from home)

• Birth Date: a common mistake i really see VERY often is the birth date field and gender. Website creator forget to ask the user the possibility to choose and instead put a default choosen field (eg: date 1/1/1990 and gender: male) one example here. This will affect your whole database later as many users will not take the time to rectify the default data and input their own. Instead put a “ – – – – “ mention that will oblige users to choose
• Country/address: same mistake with country where USA appears by default (this is very very american) and website creators do not think of their international users. Some website smartly use the IP adress to see where you are coming from and save you this steps (but there can be some margin of error here depending on the ISP). Curiously Linkedin makes that mistake. MySpace too. Bebo is doing well

Another mistake i see (again very american) is the field “State/County” which is totally irrelevant for most countries and that most people do not know how to handle. Take off this field depending on the country

• Captcha: the captcha is this series of letters/numbers you are asked to write down to check the registration is not managed by a robot and save spam account. If you don t have one you should. If you do you should make sure it is readable. Many time if find captchas that hard to read and once you press enter and realize you did not write down the good series of characters, you have to start the process all over again. Why not add a “see another series” like FaceBook is doing. Operator11 eleven is doing it PERFECT

There are tones of other mistakes i see often like (short list)

• asking too much information (meaning information you will not need or the user will not understand why you need them for)
• not asking enough: after the registration process it will become very hard to ask for more information to your users. think well what you need to know. Many new startups do not ask age or gender even if they plan to do advertising. I believe this is a mistake (metacafe for example do not ask that).
• long perceived layout: again speed is key. even if you ask a lot of info give the feel to your users this will go fast (blocks of colours /steps / progressive registration / speed of process/…). Mybloglog for example is not asking a lot for registration but engage you in their website to declare more and this is perceived ok as users understand the necessity to give more data to share with their community
• Validate email structure BEFORE registration process is over if possible while being written down (ajax allows you that now)
• Confirm registration by email with active validation to save fake accounts/non valid accounts
• Hard to find sign up page (MySpace is not an easy one, Operator 11 is perfect)

The beauty of the web is that you can test whatever you want to optimize your registration process provided you are aware of the necessity and have build the necessary tools to track conversions and registration sessions abandonned in the middle. So you can try different registration form until you get the right one. Watch also closely the structure of the data you are collecting. If only man born 1/1/1990 are registering, then you have a problem

One tip: offer OpenID option to your users to minimize also the risk of mistakes and typo

Tags: registration+form, process, ID, identification

Enough of PopCorn breaks in movie Theaters

Yes i know, there are more important things to do in life. But i just had enough yesterday because i really feel fooled.

I think the petition i created against Movie Theathers Pop Corn break is illustrating how little those companies are paying attention to their customers. If you think this is useful please sign it here. I ll make sure it is distributed to the right personns. Here is the text of the petition

We, as paying customers, have enough to be hostages of Movie Theaters companies that decide to impose a Pop Corn break in a middle of a movie. And for that matter we wish to complain

We are paying money to come to see a movie from beginning to the end and do not want to be interrupted in the middle of it only for the benefit of a minor number of customers going to buy PopCorn, which they can do anyway without a break if this is so desperate. Please take the time to count how many personns really take advantage of this break. Listen to your customers

Moreover most of the time when the movie does not start again right where it stopped and the "mood" and magic is totally broken.

We urge to stop that practice with no delay. A few countries like France respect their customers

Let us view the movie we paid for. Do not tell us how we should view it. Or if you want to finance your activity by Pop Corn breaks, offer free entrance to your customers

 Digg the Petition if you think it’s worth

Tags: petition, popcorn, break, movies