Day: May 3, 2005

 Ben Silverman has completed some very interesting research with fifty journalists at daily newspapers.  Among the findings:

• 26% of those surveyed open less than 50% of press releases they recieve via e-mail
• 36% recieve press releases via fax and 56% of those, read the releases they get via fax
• 70% monitor the press release wires
• 76% don’t believe that blogs provide a useful research tool

Ben has a lot more here.

 Molly Wood over at CNET has a really interesting opinion piece on the reality of IT vendors’ “control” over unannounced products.  It hits on a key point for PR and marketing people everywhere. In an online world control isn’t an option.

“And that brings me to the crux of my point today. Thanks to the Internet, there’s a new model for controlling information–that is, a complete lack of control. Bloggers, rumor sites, and even inside sources are running the show, but tech manufacturers are still stuck in their Cold War-like product release behaviors….. We media types need to quit kowtowing to manufacturers who are trying in vain to hold on to the last shred of control they think they have. Those manufacturers need to wake up and smell the RSS feeds–the information’s already out there. Quit acting like you’re doling out spoonfuls of sugar to the deserving few. Your audience is getting its sugar elsewhere.”

 Alice Marshall and Pete Shinbach both point to another example of the clueless pitching the blogger.

 Steve Rubel has a very interesting post on the impact of new collaborative sites such as Wikipedia on the corporate brand.

 The current issue of Bacon’s (nee MediaMap) Expert PR is out with stories on corporate image, PR and RSS, sponsorship, and an interview with Bob Wallace, Editor in Chief of Telecommunications Magazine amongst others..

 

I praise the good work of Good Morning Silicon Valley regularly through this collection of HTML pages.  They’ve now launched a blog which I highly recommend.

• Peter Himler has kicked off a new PR blog called The Flack.

 

• Steve Lubetkin has launched a relatively new PR blog.

 

It’s good to see that the number of analyst relations focused blogs is growing.  Here are two relatively new blogs:

• Joe Guralnick writes Gartner Watch – fairly self explanatory, I meant to post a link to Joe’s blog some time ago. Joe gives an introduction to why he’s writing about Gartner here.

 

• Meanwhile ARmadgeddon is a new Analyst Relations blog that remains annonymous.  I’m always a little uncomfortable with bloggers who don’t reveal their identity and therefore their agenda, however you’re old enough to make your own decisions and there’s some interesting content up there.

Update:

“ARonaut” from ARmadgeddon has been in touch to let me know that the reason the contributors are annonymous is so that they don’t adversely affect their relationships with analyst firms. I can confirm that “ARonaut” doesn’t work for an analyst firm.