The Best Time for a Webinar?

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Ken Molay of The Webinar Blog poses an interesting question – are our assumptions about when to schedule a webinar rational?  

Currently, most webinars are scheduled from Tuesday – Thursday to capture the largest number of viewers. But why are Monday and Friday ignored? Ken wants to hold this survey to see what you – people who attend webinars – truly think.

Please take a moment to fill out the survey. Though “unscientific” I think this will provide some interesting perspective about the timing of webinars.

In reviewing the survey, I realize Ken was seeking to get a quick pulse and minimize drop off. I wished Ken had included one question asking about industry or role. This would provide invaluable information to marketers on how to schedule webinars that may target a specific industry or management level.

For example, would financial services people want events earlier in the day or after the markets close? Would senior executives respond differently than marketing managers?

I think this survey is in the right direction. It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves.

Disclosure: My company provides webcasting solutions which can be used for webinars.

PR Meets Marketing Weekly Articles: April 17, 2022

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This week’s Weekly Articles looks at a variety of topics from Twitter, search to spamming bloggers. Another interesting article highlights lead scoring benefits and how sometimes a bad pitch isn’t really a bad pitch.  You can click on the  Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed.

If you feel that you have an article that would fit in the weekly articles, leave a comment and I’ll check it our for the following week’s digest. Enjoy.

Tweets for You – David Berkowitz of Search Insider does a great job reviewing tools that can help you search on Twitter.  Frankly, Twitter is losing out on a huge opportunity here. Instead of inserting ads in the tweets, they could have done a Tweetsearch and done a similar model to Google. Lost opportunity anyone?

Out of Focus – The Church of the Customer highlights how Vocus’ practices are pissing off bloggers. I thankfully haven’t had the “honor” of being added to this database, but they have pissed me off by incessantly calling me for services. I told them to stop calling.

Blending the New with the Old – Center for Media Research highlights a new report on blended search results.

“Since users have historically ignored the vertical offerings of the major search engines, a marketer might conclude that users aren’t interested in that type of content, and as a result, not invest in producing or optimizing digital assets,” said Robert Murray, President, iProspect. “But that would be a mistake – the findings of this study make that quite clear. Marketers have a great opportunity to claim more search shelf space by optimizing their news, image, and video assets.”

Respecting Embargoes – Rick Turoczy of CenterNetworks writes the first of three parts of how to manage the embargo process with bloggers. Check out my previous post about embargoes in the brave new world of PR. 

The Value of Lead Scoring – Laura Ramos wrote a post about the value of lead scoring for determining campaign effectiveness. This was prompted by her recent briefing with Eloqua. It’s surprising to me that lead scoring is not a normal part of marketing. Maybe I’m spoiled that my company has incorporated lead scoring into our products.   

Good Pitch, Yet Could’ve Been Better – Scott Monty of Social Media Marketing highlights a recent pitch titled “Do Taxes and Social Media Mix?” At first, he thought it was a spam pitch but realized that there was relevance to his blog. His post highlights the importance of participating or being more relevant to getting a pitch noticed. He succinctly states:

“I probably would have been even more likely to pay attention to it had the author been participating in my community, used a different subject line or been a little less scripted in her email.”

Facebook Chat?

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Interesting. Facebook offering chat now. Do I really want another IM feature? Crap, I don’t even us Google Chat.

The Blogger Social 2008 High

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I went to the blogger social last weekend in New York and was it an event. I was amazed at how 80 bloggers came together to meet, chat and get to know one another. I have to admit. I knew who some of the folks who were in the room through my RSS feed or twitter. But I didn’t recognize most at first (I should blame it on jetlag!). I should have read bios and checked out everyone’s blogs. Heck, many SHOULD have been on my feed to begin with.

Despite this, I found the event fantastic. I met so many smart and funny folks. And now my husband is thinking of starting his own blog. Save me now…

I’m already planning to meet folks at Ad:tech next week. The friendships forged truly highlight the benefits of writing a blog. Yes, yes – people are making money or seeking to drive business via blogs, but the relationships are more valuable in the end.

I would love to attend the next social. Rumors are leaning toward Europe. That may be a stretch, but you never know. As I come down from the Blogger Social 08 High, here is what I’m thankful for:

1. CK , Drew McLellan and Lori Magno for planning an awesome event.
2. All the companies who donated awesome swhag – Jim Beam via Jason Falls, MarketingProfs membership via Ann Handley, Ideablog and others I can’t remember.
3. All the authors (or their publicists) who donated their books and just increased my reading list for the next year – Geoff Livingston(aka I am Joe Jaffe), Rohit Bhargava, Tsufit, John Rosen/AnnaMaria Turano, Steve Cone, Tom Asacker, and Brian Reich/Dan Solomon.
4. For providing me with enough T-Shirts that I can ruin with pain, backyard gardening and more.
5. Most of all, thanks to all the awesome bloggers who came to the event:

Susan Bird Tim Brunelle Katie Chatfield Matt Dickman Luc Debaisieux Gianandrea Facchini Mark Goren Gavin Heaton Sean Howard CK Valeria Maltoni Drew McLellan Doug Meacham Marilyn Pratt Steve Roesler Greg Verdino CB Whittemore Steve Woodruff Paul McEnany Ann Handley David Reich Tangerine Toad Kristin Gorski Mack Collier David Armano Ryan Barrett Lori Magno Tim McHale Gene DeWitt Mario Vellandi Arun Rajagopal Joseph Jaffe Rohit Bhargava Anna Farmery Marianne Richmond Thomas Clifford Lewis Green Geoff Livingston Kris Hoet Connie Reece Cece Lee Toby Bloomberg Seni Thomas Darryl Ohrt Joe Kutchera Paul Dunay Marshall Sponder Chris Kieff Tara Anderson Jason Falls Paul Soldera Roberta Rosenberg Saul Colt Todd Andrlik Nathan Snell Ryan Karpeles Mike Sansone Jennifer Laycock Neil Vineberg Cam Beck Mike Arauz Matthew Bailey Heather Gorringe John Rosen Cathleen Rittereiser Tamar Weinberg Rita Perea Linda Sherman Matthew McDonald Kaitlyn Wilkins Terry Starbucker Jennifer Berk Jane Quigley John Wall Scott Monty Kevin Horne Virginia Miracle Amanda Gravel Susan Reynolds David Polinchock Shashi Bellamkonda David Berkowitz Vahe Habeshian

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: April 10, 2022

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The Weekly Articles list is back! Thanks for everyone’s patience as the last few weeks have been a bit hectic. I frankly haven’t been able to get through my RSS feeds, which at one point, numbered over 600.

I will now try to keep up with my blogging duties in the future =):

Bordering Cultural Differences – AdAge highlighted the issues of cultural advertising in an increasingly global world. Frankly, I thought this was funny and was obviously meant for a specific market.

A Selling Blog – HubSpot’s Small Business Blog is one of my favs for getting useful tips. This recent posting provides anecdotal examples of how the company’s blog has helped the sales process. This is a great example of how a blog is helping a B2B company.

Inside the Media Blogger – I couldn’t get to the full interview referenced in this posting from PR Communications. However, the interview tidbits provided in the posting give you an inside look at how reporters view blogging.

It’s the Content Stupid – The Flack highlighted that sometimes it’s not the format of the press release that attracts attention, it’s the content within.

Off topic: Beijing Olympic Torch Relay

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I don’t include my political leanings on this blog. That’s not the purpose. With that said, the recent uproar over the torch relay hits home a bit.

I majored in East Asian Studies with a heavy dose of Chinese language and culture. I lived in Tianjin (2 hours south of Beijing via train) for one year in undergrad and Taipei for three years after graduating. So I’ve been exposed to the dialogue on China for years.

The torch relay in San Francisco will be tumultous. Though I don’t support disrupting the runners, I am amazed at how “organized” some of the protests have been.

I believe that the run up to the Olympics will not be what the Chinese government wanted. An opportunity to showcase China around the world. But i also believe that they underestimated the response. Whether it’s too late or not, the government is seeking a PR agency to inevitably help in the run up.

This will be a fascinating inflection in China’s global relations.  The question is whether China considers this  a loss of face or an opportunity to open up. If history is any indication, I think the former will be true and further isolate China from the rest of the world.

In the end, I hope the politics don’t prevent the atheletes from fulfilling their lifelong dreams.

Update: The route was changed to avoid the large crowd of pro-torch and protesters near the previously announced route. I tried to catch a bit of history and missed it unfortunately. Sounds as if protesters were able to catch up to the torch. I’ll have to see it on TV tonight.

Is Twitter Just a Popularity Contest?

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I’ve been thinking about this recently. I notice that certain folks seem to have very active, two-way conversations or multi-person chats on Twitter. Sometimes, I engage in a conversation with someone about an upcoming event or meeting up. 

What I’m talking about are the extensive conversations amongst multiple folks. This has only happened once when I asked folks about PR agency retainers. But when I do try to get a conversation going, I hear nothing but crickets. 

I then tried a very unscientific experiment. I posted a question about Social Media releases vs. traditional releases on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Which was the best? LinkedIn. I had THIRTEEN responses which then extended into private email conversations about people’s responses.  

On Twitter, my question could’ve disappeared BEFORE people had a chance to see it. Whereas on LinkedIn, people could stumble upon the question over a period of hours and days. 

This leads me to ask, is all this talk about conversations on Twitter isolated to only “popular” tweeters? The more who follow Those who have more followed the are more likely to get responses and start a conversation?

Or is it just a function of who’s online, who’s listening, and who’s willing to respond? 

So what do you think – Is Twitter just a popularity contest?