Week 5 of PR laboratory…

This week’s task in Ariel’s music PR program is on blogging. Yet again – I’ve already implemented her program, to some awesome success! Here’s what I did:

• Write up process to delegate “trolling” music blogs (see below)
• Hired my nephew to be my anointed “delegate”
• Monitored and followed up on his work, giving constant feedback to improve his work
• Combined a one-two punch by following and commenting on the owners of these music blogs on twitter!
• The result of this is “slow-burn”, background marketing messaging that earned me my first album review – a positive one!

Initial Setup

• Install or start the firefox web browser
• Install the del.icio.us plugin for firefox
• Log into del.icio.us (to make the firefox plugin show Ben Sommer’s tags

Ongoing Process

• Highlight the “bensommermusicblogs” tag in the top half of the del.icio.us browser sidebar
• See all the sites in the bottom half of the del.icio.us browser sidebar
• For each site/link
  • Click each link to load the page in the browser
  • Find the latest article/forum/blog post
  • Read it quickly – enough to get the gist
  • Media – quickly listen to a song or view a video if one is posted in the post
  • Once you have an idea for an intelligent/witty comment to offer, skip to the end of the article and prepare to comment
  • Leave the comment and move to the next site/link
  • Be sure to include a signature if this is a site that Ben hasn’t already setup a profile on:
    • Signature: “edgy political prog rock: http://bensommer.com”

Logistics

• For all sites
  • Tag the page as “bensommermusicblogscomment” in del.icio.us when done with the post
    • Right-click the page
    • Select “bookmark this page in delicious”
    • Start typing “bensommer….” in the “Tag” field
    • Select bensommermusicblogscomment
    • Click Save
  • Be sure to only do this if
    • You’re able to get a unique URL for the comment/post (first preference), or
    • There is a unique page for the blog/article post itself

Writing Guidelines

• General writing style
  • Prove that you read the article/page:
    • Reference something in the article (name, author, subject, band, etc.)
  • Be brief
    • 2-5 lines is plenty
  • Be polite:
    • Do not fight or flame
    • Err on the side of “boring” rather than “witty/obnoxious”
  • Be intelligent & interesting
    • Spend ~30 seconds googling/wikipediaing on topic or term if you’re unfamiliar with it
• Forum-type sites
  • These sites have many concurrent discussion threads
  • These sites are easier to quickly engage in since one only needs to chime in on previous users’ posts (which are usually brief)
  • Don’t post a fresh topic – only reply to existing topics
    • Ben Sommer himself should be the one to initiate new topics – too risky for someone else
  • Aim to post 5 quick replies per visit (per day)