How NOT to attract traffic to your blog

Log in to your blog. Wait for the statistical figure to show. Fingers crossed—wish Total Views number surprisingly skyrocketed. “What the hell is wrong with people? Why don’t they read what I write?” You wonder.

 

Yong checking his blog view statistics

Almost all rookie bloggers fit into the profile I just described. Don’t feel ashamed if you are one of them, even if you are already a veteran blogger.

It is human nature to be noticed, cared, praised or criticized, and liked or hated. Your blog is part of you. It wants spotlight as well.

Basically, every blog is important to at least 5 people: your father, your mother, your husband/wife, your kid, and of course, yourself.

But you want more people to read what you write up there, make their comments, or just leave a smiling face like :-).

How to generate traffic

So you learn to write online, fighting some old habits of so-called “good writing” in the traditional sense.

Thanks to David and Paul, two funny lecturers who specialize in online journalism, I now have some golden rules for online writing, including blogging.

• Write for Google search engine (SEO).
  Over 40% of all traffic to a site comes from Google search. This doesn’t include those who first know your site through Google but later visit your site by typing the URL or clicking your URL address in their bookmark.
• Key words for headlines
  and less than 60 characters. Jacob Nielson acclaimed BBC News for having the best headlines
• Keep sentences short and simple.
• One idea per paragraph and keep paragraph short.
  Why? Because it’s easier for online readers to scan. (I know there are two ideas in the above line. No need to remind me.)
• Use sub-headings after 5-6 paragraphs.
• Use list or bulletin points.
• Cut, cut, cut and cut again.
  or, shall I say cut just once and cut the other three cuts?

Dailyblogtips gives 30 traffic generation tips. I would suggest Jacob Nielson’s Writing for the web before worrying about the number of your blog visitors.

How NOT to generate traffic

It’s always easier said than done. And persistence requires even stronger mind.

I could have finished piling up what I want to say in a lump within 15-20 minutes, but one hour later, I’m still here writing because I’m trying to follow those golden rules.

Back to the headline of this blog, how not to generate traffic, or how to lose traffic, the answer is very simple: Do not follow any online writing rules.

You can tell I’m kidding, right?

Well, I noticed some habits, or “mistakes” over the past few months that might cause bloggers to lose readers.

• Write about things of not much “value”
  You can write about your own life, but unless you are a celebrity like Opera Winfrey or Brad Pitt, you should not expect people to be interested in your blog.

  Jonathan Morrow from Coypblogger wrote a touching story On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas that best makes clear this point.

• “Force” readers to visit your site
  Many people now read in RSS readers such as Google Reader or Blogline. Some set their feed export to “abstract” or “headline” instead of “full text”.

  What makes you so confident that you write better headlines than BBC News or irresistible first paragraph (with a few more lines, usually considered “abstract”) so that people would click on the feed and go to your site?

  Most probably, they will just never bother checking your feed or simply cancel their subscription of your feed.

• Bolden sub-headings
  Sub-headings not only function as road signs all the way down your post, but also gives tags to Google search.

  If you just bolden the sub-headings, they are actually still body texts put in that <p> tag.

  You have to set them into Heading 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 according to your blog layout. Headline 1 is usually reserved for THE headline. This gives a <h> tag that Google spider catches.The Headline block usually is located in the style tool bar, next to other layout buttons such B (bold), I (italic), U(underline), etc.

• Update blogs irregularly
  “Sorry, I’ve been busy these days so I didn’t update.”People don’t care about your schedule.

  If they come to your site on day 1, and see no new blog, then on day 2, still nothing, then there is a slight chance they might still come on day 3, but if then they still see no updated blog, they might never come back.

  And on day 4, you feel like writing, and you publish 3 blog posts, or 4, or even 5, but sorry, the gone readers are gone. They are not coming back.

All in all, blogging is about quantity, but more about quality;
it’s about talking to yourself, but more about interacting with others;
it’s about following hot topics, but more about offering original idea; and
it’s about finishing assignment for the Online Journalism module, but more about polishing your writing and getting prepared for a journalism career.

Briton executed in China over drugs

A British man convicted of drug smuggling was executed in China today. BBC’s coverage of the story lacks balance, fairness, objectivity and impartiality.

Top story on BBC news front page on 29 Dec

The British man Akmal Shaikh was executed for smuggling 4 kgs of heroin into Urumqi, Xinjiang in the north-west of China.

UK government and Akmal’s families made repeated pleas for clemency and visited him in Urumqi this weekend.

BBC has been following the story heavily in the past few days, and the execution became its top story today.

The headline: good and/or bad

On its news front page, the headline is “China executes Briton over drugs”.

By criteria of headline writing, this is undoubtedly a good one. With just five words, it tells who did what and how and why. It even hinted where and when.

Besides, it uses an active verb. This is where the editor shows off his wisdom.

People who get killed usually become the subject in a headline, e.g. “Man killed in harbour car plunge in Cornwall”, and “Iran protesters killed, including Mousavi’s nephew”. However, the editor obviously wants to put the blame on China.

Let’s compare BBC headline and my headline for this post.

• China executes Briton over drugs
• Briton executed in China over drugs

Is “China” a specific person who did the execution? Which appeals to the British readers more, China or Briton? And does two letters longer really matter here?

Now let’s click to read the story. Oops, the headline changed. Now it reads “British man said to be mentally ill executed in China”. Interesting, hah?

Wait a minute. What is that “said to be”? If you are not sure of something, make sure of it, or don’t talk about it. How can you even put it in a headline?

EU national Vs. Briton

Let’s move on. Here comes the third paragraph:

The execution took place despite repeated calls from his family and the British government for clemency.

This sounds ridiculous to me, well, because of the structure of the sentence, especially the use of that “despite”. UK government and his family called for clemency, so what? Should China let the man go just because some guys made the plea?

The prime minister Gordon Brown also made fun of himself by saying “am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

Okay, you are the almighty PM, so whatever you request, we have to grant. Is that what you mean?

However, this is not the worst part. One paragraph down, the following sentence stands out.

Mr Shaikh is the first EU national to be executed in China in 50 years.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that BBC used EU national referring to Mr. Akmal Shaikh. What’s the point, please? Is this impartial? What are you trying to “achieve” here, soliciting sympathy from other EU members so that they will join you condemning China? You wish.

Keep journalists code of conduct OUT of mind

Two paragraphs down, BBC brought up the man’s mental illness issue again. Let me give you some key points from the article:

• family said he suffered from bipolar disorder
• They said he had been delusional
• Mr Brown: particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken.

According to Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC World service and Global News Division, “Balance means arranging things in equal or correct proportions to one another. ”

If BBC is indeed balanced, where are the explanations from the Chinese side?

Don’t tell me you can’t get China’s officials to talk. They have explained this a long time ago. Besides, your Chinese correspondent should have told you about the procedure of asking for mental illness verification in court.

If you keep on reading, you’ll see all quotes are against China. Don’t you think this is biased?

The article also quotes legal charity Reprieve’s communication director saying that “he (Akmal) was frankly failed by China and by their legal system”.

An opinionated and false accusation. Can China sue for defamation? The quotation marks doesn’t prevent you from being sued.

Role of media

In the past few days, the Chinese media remained absolutely silent about the story. Equally oddly, the British media showed excessive enthusiasm while the public didn’t appear to be very much interested.

After all, it is a man who committed felony in China and was trialed and sentenced in accordance with China’s laws. It’s a criminal case, as simple as that.

What the UK government and Mr. Shaikh’s family were trying to do was to ask the Chinese government to overrule the court’s decision.

However, aren’t they used to criticise the Chinese government for their intervention into judicial independence?

What do they apply double systems when a British man is involved?

And what role have the British media played? Is it right for them to allocate so much space or air time for the drug smuggler story? Are they acting as the mouthpiece of the British government as they always accuse their Chinese counterparts for doing so?

All in all, can a public service broadcaster really stay independent, willingly or unwillingly?

Update at 10:00 am: The Telegrpaph also puts the story on its front page. Their reporting is much better in terms of following journalistic code of conducts.

Can they save the British man sentenced to death in China

UK government, media and families of a Briton sentenced to death in China are making their last effort to save his life, with only 24 hours left before his execution.

Akmal Shaikh was arrested for carrying 5-kg heroin in Xinjiang Airport. Under China’s zero-tolerance drug policy, he was sentenced to death months later.

His finally appeal was rejected and his execution will take place on 29 December 2009.

His families and some UK officials have flown to Urumqi on 27 December to visit Akmal, and will make a last plea for clemency from the Chinese government.

UK prime minister Gordon Brown has also written to Chinese officials including President Hu Jintao asking China to spare the British man’s life.

Chinese media Vs. British media

Almost all UK media report this story these few days, including BBC, Channel 4, Itv, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, you name it.

Akmal was on the frontpage of newspaper or in the headlines of TV and radio programmes. The only competitor was the failed terrorist attack on a US plane by a Nigerian man.

On the contrary, the Chinese media kept silent about this story. Not a single word on the mainstream media.

This is quite different from over two months ago when Akmal making his second appeal to China’s Supreme Court.

A journalist back in China confirmed to me that no written notices from the central government were given, but there was an oral instruction, telling them to follow the Foreign Ministry. As the foreign ministry says nothing so far, there is no reporting at all.

Kill or not kill

The journalist also said that he didn’t believe the Englishman would be actually executed.

He said that the Chinese government “banned” reporting of this story was a proof. The government would let him go, but wanted to save face at the same time.

We don’t know if Akmal will be killed or not.

In China, shooting in the head is a normal execution method. If Akmal is indeed executed, I don’t believe this method will be used. Electric chair or injection seems to be more appropriate.

Kill or not kill, China is now facing a difficult choice.

Interview: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

A friend called me to speak on BBC Radio. The thought of giving an interview, especially one that would be broadcast live to thousands or even millions of listeners scared the shit out of me. Shall I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

Source: Jason Ralston

I was dreaming something when the call woke me up.

“Yong, what do you think of the Copenhagen Accord? Want to join our live talking tonight at 18:00 to 19:00?”

It was Jessica. She is doing one-week internship in BBC World Service, Chinese Service. She was trying to secure some interviewees for a BBC programme.

We discussed about the topic and I figured out what they wanted:

• opinions on the climate summit from a Chinese;
• how the summit was reported in the Chinese media; and
• what did the general Chinese people say about the outcome.

“Do I have that much information they need?”
“Is my English good enough to go live on BBC radio?”
“What kind of image shall I present about the Chinese media?”
And, “what if I said something wrong?”

Many questions flashed in my mind. I even thought of those people whom I contacted asking for interviews for my TV and radio assignments.

“Did they think about the same things as I had?” I wondered.

“Yes” or “no”

Jessica was waiting for my confirmation on the other side of the phone. There wasn’t much time for me to hesitate.

“Okay, as long as they don’t mind that I am a Chinese journalist.” I told her.

I said ”yes”, for the sake of myself and Jessica.

This would be my first live interview. No matter how scared I might feel, my consciousness told me that I had to do this. If I don’t take the first time, there will never be a second time.

I also thought about Jessica. I could even imagine how much she needed a “yes” answer after making so many calls to secure someone for the interview. Her editor might be whipping her to get things done. (I made myself seem noble, eh?)

How did the interview go?

Well, I couldn’t tell you how the interview was.

It never happened.

From 17:30 until 19:00, I checked my mobile phone 4 or 5 times to make sure it has signal. I thought about the interview and couldn’t focus on anything else.

I looked into the mirror and tried to speak as I was being interviewed. Then I wrote down some key points. And then, I just sat and waited.

After 19:00, my phone haven’t rung at all. At last, I was sure they wouldn’t call.

Why? Possible reasons included:

• mobile phone is never good for live interview
• other interviews went too long and squeezed out my time slot
• my identity as a Chinese journalist might be a concern
• they found someone else who went into their studio (as I was not physically available)

I’m proud of myself

I felt relieved and happy. You might understand why I felt relieved, but why happy?

Well, I was happy because I said “yes” in the first place. I felt proud of myself. I didn’t have to regret that I didn’t have the guts to go live on a BBC English programme.

True, this could be a small piece of cake for you, and some of you might even dream of having such an opportunity.

But for me, it was not. I dared myself, and the go-for-challenges me knocked over the shy me. It was a glorious battle I won.

I might despise myself if I said “no” in the first place, no matter whether the interview went as scheduled or not.

Something I neglected before

In fact, the aborted interview made me think about interview again.

When we approach people asking them to give an interview, do we ever think about their worries or concerns? Have we ever put ourselves in their shoes?

When I did my TV interviews, I contacted people from Harrow council, the NHS primary care trust, a hospital, and many other institutions. Why was it so difficult to get their “yes”? Some even looked frightened when they saw my video camera and tripod. Did I ever think of it, that people might be scared of speaking on TV?

After all, it’s not about what we need, but what they can or are willing to give.

TV talenet show exposes China’s race issue. Or, really?

CNN website published a story about a black Chinese girl causing controversies allegedly due to her skin color, and concluded that racism is a serious problem in China. Is this reporting objective?

Picture from: SMG

Lou Jing, 20 years old, was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African-american father. The only difference she has with other Chinese girls is her black skin.

Four months ago, she participated in a TV talent show in Shanghai called “Go Oriental Angel”, and was eliminated before the finale.

At the stage, she said she was raised in a single-parent family, and now wanted to find her father.

Off the show stage, Lou became the center of heated discussion. She was “attacked” on the Internet. Some Chinese netizens even made racial discriminative remarks such as “she shouldn’t have been born” and “get out of China”.

Did she lie?

This is basically the CNN version of the story. But, was it really her skin color that sparked those hostile remarks as CNN claimed?

Let’s hear the other side of the story.

With the help of “human flesh search engine”, some Chinese netizens claimed Lou was lying.

Lou’s mother was married to a Chinese man. When she left work to pursue further study in a Shanghai college, she had an affair with an African-american who also studied there. The man left before Lou was born.

The Chinese man was protective of both Lou and her mother. He said Lou’s black skin was because her mother ate a lot of Chinese herbal medicines when she was pregnant.

For three years, the Chinese man protected “his” family until he could no longer undertake the never-stopped finger-pointing. He gave up his career and left for Japan.

However, Lou said she had never had a father and was raised by her mother single-handedly.

Those who believed she was lying felt it was unfair for the Chinese man who sacrificed so much for three years to bring her up. They started to pour their anger over the web.

Has CNN been objective?

I’m not here to judge which side of the story is true; I can’t prove anything.

But I’m sure that CNN was absolutely wrong to say that it was Lou’s skin color that was the center of the disputes.

Totally disagree. The central issue of the disputes was honesty.

Besides, those racial discriminative remarks were made by just a few. They were not the main voice on the web.

In fact, I had some doubts about CNN’s reporting of this story.

• The story happened in late August and lasted until mid September. Since then, it has subsided. Why did CNN pick it up after three months later?
• Why didn’t CNN mention the real controversies about Lou Jing? For fear of defamation? Then why didn’t CNN ask Lou or her mother to clarify?
• Was it right to say that a few unreasonable people’s remarks stand for what most Chinese people think? Search “Lou Jing” in Chinese in google, there are only less than 600,000 results. If you can read Chinese, you’ll see nearly 80% talked about her story instead of racial problem.

These is nothing wrong to report a single case to address a general issue, but there must be a solid connection between these two; otherwise, it’s like you call a white cloth “black” when all you see is just a black dot on the cloth.

Jounalist’s code of conduct

When we talk about news reporting, there are four rules that journalists have to abide by:

• objectivity
• fairness
• balance
• impartiality

Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC World Service and Global News Division, had an article “Holding on to objectivity” in which he talked about the differences of these four principles.

Sadly, none of them is loyally implemented in the CNN story.

Movie review: Avatar

No dazzling stars. An expense worth $500mln. And a 3D wonderland never seen before. Based on a 5-star rating system, I give the 3D movie Avatar 6. Yes, you read me right. SIX.

Avatar is a story about an indigenous race called Na’vi fighting against humans who intruded their planet Pandora for minerals.

Director James Cameron imposed his ideology against war in this movie. You can hear the buzzwords in his movie such as “preemptive strike”, “shock and awe”, etc.

You can also hear the heroic declarations such as “they think they can take whatever they want; no, they can’t; this is our land” (not the exact quote).

One mind going into another body is not so much an original idea, but the beauty of the planet created with CGI, computer-generated imaging, is really breath-taking. It is a fluorescent world new to our visual entertainment. There is nothing to compare with, and my words are too limited and pale to describe it for you.

Huge investment

Mr. Cameron first came up with Avatar idea 15 years ago, but he had to put it on shelf for a while as the technology was not sophisticated enough to visualize his envisions.

When he finally started, the movie consumed an astonishing amount of money estimated to be $200-300mln. Plus the high-profile marketing, total expenses are expected to be close to $500mln.

However, the last movie Cameron directed, Titanic, brought in $1.8bln for the investors. They have enough reasons to believe that this movie will success as well.

Avatar fans

Avatar 3D is not a 3D movie in the traditional sense, by which I mean there is nothing suddenly flying to your face to beg for that “ah”.

It brings a new perspective of 3D movie production. The world created in the movie is like another Harry Potter magic world.

Less than a week after the movie is on, it has attracted many fans. Avatar movie fansite is an example.

Try to google “avatar movie”, as by now at 23:26 on 22 December, you’ll get 120,000,000 results. If you just google “avatar”, you’ll get 562,000,000 results, with all the top five among the first 10 results actually about the movie and only two about computer user representations.

I watched it in Vue cinema in Harrow last Friday, and I’m going to watch it again on the 26*20-meter screen in BFI IMX.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming sounds fascinating. Ideas come up like running water in a brainstorming session. Well, I know “like running water” is a cliché, but don’t criticise yet–this is Brainstorming Rule No. 1.

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / Freedigitalphotos.net

Brainstorming is a relatively new word but the method itself has existed maybe since the beginning of human beings.

It is a method of problem-solving either by a group of people contributing ideas or by one single person generating a variety of possible solutions.

Basically, everyone can have or conduct a brainstorming session, but it requires one who is trained to do so to guarantee a satisfactory outcome.

A failed brainstorming

About eight years ago I was an Account Executive in a PR company with 20 or so employees.

One day I was asked to hold a brainstorming session about how to sell a brand of wine (one of our clients) in night clubs.

I didn’t know what to do except for repeating “what ideas do you have”.

After two or three people spoke up, the room submerged into silence.

It was really awkward. Some colleagues looked at each other while others played with their pencils or bended their heads down reading some papers.

“What the hell went wrong?” I panicked and stood still in front of the whiteboard before my supervisor took over.

I didn’t remember what exactly happened after that, but I did remember we “discussed” some ideas, both positively and negatively.

Brainstorming rules

Most of the time, we discuss instead of brainstorming. There is a huge difference between these two.

Discuss involves opinions and analyses of ideas while brainstorming is to generate ideas themselves. Based on experiences from my failed brainstorming and later on successful ones, I would suggest the following rules for brainstorming, with reference to a post by Dean Rieck titled “How to brainstorm brilliant ideas for your blog“:

• Don’t criticise ideas, even not discuss them;
• Define the problem clearly
• Clarify what ideas you expect;
• Prepared a few ideas beforehand if you are the conductor, in case no one speaks up after a while;
• Write down every idea and let everybody see them immediately;
• Allocate easy time during the session, e.g. one-minute joking or nonsense talking, but do drag everybody back to the table after that;

In fact, there are many sites talking about brainstorming if you are interested. I would like to say a few more words about rule No. 1.

People tend to criticise

To criticise an idea seems easier than coming up with an original one. Why? Maybe criticizing satisfies their self-esteem for making them feel better than others. It is hard to people to hold back the desire to criticise, and many even don’t realize it when they are criticizing others or their ideas.

To some degree, it is human nature to criticise. Let me explain.

When babies start to know things, they learn to refuse to do things they don’t want to. For example, you give them milk, they might push your hand away. “I’m not hungry,” they might say: “drinking milk now is a bad idea.” See?

However, criticising is not always a bad thing. In fact, constructive criticising is more valuable than compliments, especially those I-don’t-actually-mean-it compliments.

To expand this topic, we can discuss criticising as an art, both for those who criticise and those who are criticised. I’ll not go into details on this.

E-reading ushers into a new generation

An innovative platform for the next generation of E-magazines was revealed recently. If reading on screen is no longer different from, or even better than reading on paper, does it mean the end of paper era?

This platform is jointly developed by five newspaper and magazine publishers including Times Inc. and the News Corporation.

It is supposed to set up the standard for the industry. No name of the platform or the equipment is given. How much they have invested is not known either.

The companies will sell the new electronic versions of their contents through an online store like iTunes.

Features demonstrated in the video released by Times Inc. are just some of the sophistications of this new platform.

E-reading won’t kill paper reading

The media conveying messages have changed dramatically throughout the history: from stones to bamboos, from parchment to papyrus, and now from paper to electronic screens, such as Kindle of Amazon.

No medium has incurred so many controversies as the latest development of electronic screens. To many, this is brand new experience.

The benefits one could possible get from e-reading include:

• enormous materials in one “book”, the e-reader
• visual and audio entertaining compared with black-and-white of most books
• interactive with authors, writers, publishers, and even advertisers
• cheaper content, hopefully, at least after wide application of such an e-reader
• real-time multi-user sharing, with the incorporation of Internet access in the future

Younger generations have already accustomed to reading online. They would be more than happy to embrace a portable screen.

However, book lovers might stick to their old habit. You can touch the screen to read the next page, but you’ll lose the pleasure of actually feeling the books: its weight, its texture, its papers, etc.

Besides, your eyes might easily get tired after long-time reading on a screen. You will also not be able to send a good book as a gift.

Therefore, e-reading won’t take the place of paper reading, at least in the foreseeable future.

BBC College of Journalism website launched

BBC launched its College of Journalism website on 14 December. From staff journalists to part-time journalists, an era of pan-journalists has finally come.

BBC CoJo Snapshot

The website, also called CoJo, was created three years ago, but its access has been limited to BBC staffs until this Monday. Now, all people in the UK can visit the site.

As CoJo first director Vin Ray says, CoJo is to “design and deliver training and learning for BBC journalists in the UK and around the world.”

However, CoJo is not just for BBC journalists. It suits everyone who is interested in telling their own stories in a journalistic manner.

Why go public?

Martin Moore, Director of The Media Standards Trust, explained the importance of the launch of CoJo website.

CoJo teaches the public about principle of journalism. To put in a way that the general public can better understand, it is about trust, trust in what you publish on the web: bbs, blogs, facebook, youtube, among others.

Working journalists or student journalists who are already familiar with these principles can reflect on their practice using guidance provided by CoJo, nevertheless, they may find the skills part more useful.

For the general public who contributed a big part to the avalanche of information over Internet, CoJo website offers the most substantial online sources for journalistic practice.

What comes next?

Everybody can tell a story. The development of technology has substantially diversified the ways of telling a story.

Many years ago, it was the job of an extremely limited group of people who were called journalists.

The wide application of Internet created hundreds of millions of bloggers. Sometimes it is hard to tell the differences between bloggers and journalists.

Nowadays, anyone who can write, speak or film can be an amateur journalist. They can write blogs, post pictures, upload podcasts, or publish video clips.

Some of their stores were indeed used by the mainstream media.

For journalists, it might be the worst of time as they will be competing with all people to get their stories published or aired; but for the public, it might be the best of times.

That one talk that inspires you

If you “sacrifice” one year, you’ll get back much more than what you lose for the present.

One of my lecturers told me this today, but not to me. I’m not even close to as good as he is. This is what his teacher told him when he was in college.

He was smart, really smart. As a DJ, he made 200 pounds a week back in the late 1980s. He hanged out nights after nights; he drank a lot; and it was reasonable to assume he skipped classes a lot.

Then one day his teacher told him that if he wanted to achieve something, he needed to give up his “luxurious” life and focus on study; and after one year, he would get back what he lost and even more than that.

He did what his teacher said, because he was smart. He knew what was right and what was wrong. Years later, like his teacher said, he got everything he deserved.

Mentor

I felt so much like studying after listening to his story. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time in the past two months.

Sometimes all you need is just that one talk to get yourself enlighted. And that person who gives you such a talk is like a mentor.

My lecturer might not have even realized how important his words were. To him, well, he just told a story of himself, but to me, it was something huge to take in.

A college or school might have many good teachers, well, excellent and outstanding ones, but if they don’t have someone who could act as a mentor, I doubt students will miss the college or school too much.

Gillette limits Tiger Woods’ role in marketing

Gillette said it would distance itself from Tiger Woods after the golfer admitted cheating on her wife. The same day Accenture ended their sponsor for Woods.

The Procter & Gamble razor company said they would limit Woods’ role in its marketing to “help protect his privacy”.

Several other major sponsors including Accenture have already taken down Tiger Woods’ name from their websites. Sponsorship contracts are terminated.

It is estimated that Mr. Woods will lose more than £66 million of advertising income over a year after his sponsors dropped him.

Gillette didn’t say they would terminate Mr. Woods’ contract; instead, they would just limit his role in marketing.

Gillette Vs. Accenture in news sense

Gillette’s Woods story was published on the front page of Telegraph. On the same day, Accenture dropped the golfer from their sponsor list, but this was only published in the Sports channel.

From news angle, Accenture could have been more news worthy than Gillette. There are at least three reasons:

• Accenture was the second largest sponsor of Tiger Woods;
• They terminated contract with Tiger Woods while Gillette just limited the golfer’s role;
• The public may want to know what happens next after Accenture terminated contract with Tiger Woods.

However, Gillette’s story was published on front page.

Smart Gillette

If you look at the two stories, there were not much differences. Both talked about Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs, estimated losses he might suffer from losing sponsor, and the stance of major companies who sponsored him.

Gillette did a better PR job than Accenture.

Since it made onto the front page, I even doubt that it was actually an advertorial article.

One proof could be that there were no byline for both stories. No author was accredited, not even “Telegraph staff” as they did in “Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2: match report” story.

Morally acceptable?

If the story was indeed an advertorial article, should Gillette be morally blamed for adding salt on other’s wound?

Or, they might just argue that business is business. I pay you, so I expect publicity for our brand from you.

Gillette was very carefull about the bottom line that they do not offend the public, especially Tiger Woods’ fans by playing on the hero’s scandal. That’s why they choose to “limit his role” instead of dropping him from their sponsor list.

But who knows whether or when they will abandon the golfer after his last PR contribution to the company?

Asking tough questions in interview

Ask tough questions; put some pressure on the person you are talking to; bring up some heat; and “bang”, you make a good interview.  Is that really a GOOD interview?

Mike, our radio lecturer, taught us some valuable rules for interview:

• don’t make statement; ask questions;
• make your questions short;
• don’t ask double-barrelled questions;
• be informative naive
• …

Apart from that, he stressed “asking tough questions”, and did a live demo in class by interviewing one of the students. He called it the “bang” moment.

Are interviews really about asking challenging questions?

Who won?

In BBC’s Today program this morning, James Naughtie interviewed Pamela Taylor on the prospect of reduced water bills (click to listen). Pamela is the Chief Executive of Water UK.

At around 02:40, James appeared aggressive, and rudely interrupted Pamela to “question” her. You can even hear him breathing while Pamela was talking. Was he still excited after throwing out a tough question?

Then at around 03:05, he sounded so eager to bring Pamela down and you can almost tell that he was laughing inside.

At 04:43, he tried to convince his listeners that he succeeded in trapping his interviewee by stating the controversy in Pamela’s talking.

Keep on listening, you’ll see that James kept on challenging Pamela all the way till the end of the interview.

What makes a good interview?

Is James’ interview with Pamela a good one?

Not to me, at least. Simple put, I didn’t feel comfortable with the way he treated his interviewee.

Judging from above criteria for good interview, James did a good job, but he appeared to be following the “asking tough questions” rule to an extreme, which made him sound as if he was superior to the person he was talking to.

My reaction to that was “who the hell do you think you are?”

It’s hard to tell what a good interview is, but it’s easy to tell what makes a bad interview–an interview that makes your listeners uncomfortable.

An art

Some classmates said they didn’t like the “aggressive style” either.

I would put it this way:

• asking tough questions is okay, but they shouldn’t dominate the interview;
• do not use them at will because they DO NOT make you look or sound smarter;
• when you do ask tough questions, please be polite. Remember you are not a policeman or policewoman, neither your interviewee a suspect or prisoner.

Asking questions is an art, and it takes time to be an artist.