Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
The Swedish free daily newspaper Metro will start distribution in 17 new cities in Sweden, according to an article in Svenska Dagbladet. Kalmar, Växjö, Halmstad, Umeå, Luleå and Sundsvall are some of the candidates. Metro have declined to comment on the information.
Metro announced today that its global daily readership is up 22% to 18.5 million readers. Metro now has 59 editions in 19 countries.
Peppercom has done a survey on corporate blogs that says ghostwriting and commercialization are the most common mistakes corporations make when blogging.
The key findings show that:
– 72% of PR and marketing professionals cite the creation of artificial, overly promotional corporate blogs as the principal mistake that companies make when attempting to blog.
– In addition, 50% cite “obvious ghostwriting” as another significant blunder that they have witnessed with corporate blogs.
– 50% also cite companies that just “blog for blog’s sake” as a problem that they have seen.
On the positive side, the survey showed that:
– Most respondents (62%) agree that the blogosphere is an appropriate venue for corporations to communicate with stakeholders.
– 80% of respondents feel that a corporate blog can help improve the dialogue between a company and its stakeholders, customers, and employees.
– 79% feel that a corporate blog helps position the company / chief blogger as a thought leader.
Link via Communication Overtones.
Technorati tags: corporate blogging, PR, Public Relations.
RSS marketing company Pheedo has published some interesting findings regarding the effectiveness of advertising in RSS feeds. It seems that standalone ad placement (ads as separate blog posts) get higher click-through rates than embedded ads (ads within a blog post). Pheedo says that a standalone RSS ad generates, on average, a 7.99% click-through rate compared to 0.85% for an embedded RSS ad.
Other findings are that:
– ads placed in every other feed post get the highest click-through
– Tuesday, Monday and Saturday have emerged as the days with the highest CTR while Thursday and Friday show the lowest percentage
Technorati tags: advertising, RSS.
VamPus Verden is the very first winner of Norway’s Gullbloggen (The golden blog), reports Undercurrent. Gullbloggen is the award for the best Norwegian blog.
Being Reasonable has an interview with author Douglas Rushkoff that is well worth reading. Rushkoff talks about today’s media environment and invasive marketing:
“Companies are no longer treating their consumers as anything other than consumers. When buyers and sellers were living in the same community, they were dependent on each other in a way they aren’t anymore. One of my students was just pointing this out in class: If I am your deli man and you are my pharmacist, I have an incentive make you a great sandwich – not just because I want your business again, but because I need you healthy so that you fill my prescription properly! Companies today see their consumers as consumers only. As targets to be manipulated; wallets to be emptied. And people pick up on that, eventually.”
If you, unlike me, have access to Dagens Industri’s new tv channel DItv, you will be able to see me tomorrow morning, discussing corporate blogs with Mikael Zackrisson, chief editor of Internetworld.
Footnote: My company’s corporate blog can be found here.