Experiments in Success

Re: the previous blog…the point was just to see what hot search words and a ridiculous picture could do for a site’s page views. Experiment: Success. Useless, but still…triple digits just for calling Wiener a wiener.

On to much more interesting and important things. This week I’m excited to be hosting the 2011 Seattle Web Awards on behalf of SeattleWeekly.com. I’m very much looking forward to meeting the people behind some of Seattle’s best web sites, blogs, mobile apps, Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts.

Cheezburger.com's Ben Huh stealing the really hot spotlight at the 2010 Seattle Web Awards.

Last year we had great fun and in 2011, we’re seeing a few of the same winners and nominees. What I have noticed though, is that small business and non-profits have really stepped it up in terms of social media in the past year. This is a great thing to see and I hope they continue to explore ways to connect with their communities – and potential customers – via social media. You don’t have to be a cash-rich corporate powerhouse to experience great success through the building of online community!

Congrats to the winners and nominees – and to those who have already begun their 2012 campaigns for Seattle web domination – nice work.

I Cheated With Anthony Weiner

OK, not really.  This a test. This is only a test.

I have a big white cat who, years ago, had his 15 minutes of fame thanks to a similar video:

But some pictures leave cat moms to wonder – what popular handsome cats do when their moms are at work?:

Cheater?

 

And then, an unfortunate combination of names and terms leads one to wonder – how much traffic can one get to one’s web site through simple, yet creative (if crude), use of said names/terms? We shall see… analytics to come…

There’s Only So Much One Person Can Do

Because I am all kinds of wrapped up in all kinds of things, I mark things that strike me to post here in email, and then promptly forget about them until they are such old news it’s just not worth it. But this recent story from ProPublica is one I actually keep coming back to.

Having worked on both sides of the fence (PR and journalism) the depth and breadth of this story really got to me because I have always felt they are almost one in the same. This is over-simplifying of course – as there are a multitude of examples as to how they are separated on both ends of the spectrum – but in the span of my career, I have been witness more to a muddling of the two.

Now, with the inclusion of social media, there’s even more of a muddle. I frequently find myself asking, “Is this written/opined by a journalist, a PR person, or an ‘expert’ blogger?” and rarely figuring out the difference. For many, it bodes well. For many, it does not.

So, just passing along some food for thought. You can’t always believe what you read on the internet, right? Or maybe anywhere else for that matter?

A quote from the story:

“In their recent book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism,” Robert McChesney and John Nichols tracked the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to the numbers for public relations. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found that the number of journalists has fallen drastically while public relations people have multiplied at an even faster rate. In 1980, there were about .45 PR workers per 100,000 population compared with .36 journalists. In 2008, there were .90 PR people per 100,000 compared to .25 journalists. That’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped, better financed.”