4 February, 2010

Blog comments for linkbuilding

Posted by Melanie Seasons under Blogging, Rants, Spam | Tags: , , , |
1 Comment 

Blog comment spam

There’s a debate going on about whether or not to turn comments off on a blog. While I don’t believe a blog is truly a blog without comments, I’ve actually been thinking about turning the comments off on here – at least for posts older than two months.  It’s not because anyone’s being too mean on here, which was the reason Engadget recently shut comments down. It’s because the whole point of a blog is two-way communication, and with the exception of my newer posts, that is not happening. Instead, I’m getting crafty selfish spam that I have to take time out of my day to deal with.

Spam has evolved to the point where it’s difficult to tell if anyone is actually reading this.  I receive, on average, about 10 comments a week on random posts from the last two and half years telling me how ‘brilliant’ my writing is, or how they’re ‘really happy they’ve come across the site’ and how they’re ‘instantly hooked and have immediately subscribed’.  There are never any spam pr0n-esque links in the body of the comments, but instead links to the most ridiculous off-topic sites. Rugby? Panama Travel? You name it, they’re supposedly reading my blog.  Flattered as I might be that I’m reaching such an eclectic audience, their motives are disingenuous, and it pissed me off.

Linkbuilding is an increasingly popular business. Getting more ‘influential’ links to your website means Google thinks you’re more important and theoretically raises your Page Rank. Everyone’s doing it too – SEO people, PRs (yep, like me, but sooo not in this way), media agencies, digital agencies and of course your random Harvard Law blogs who are ‘always ‘researching online for articles that can help me get further ahead’. The latter example being a comment I received this morning on a post called ‘Klassin’ it Up in the Blogosphere’, which was all about the most offensive things I found on the Internet that week in September of 2007 (including a BBC story about a man who peed on a dying woman and deemed it You Tube-appropriate). I would love to see how that story will help them in their career. Really. I’m all ears.

So, yes, I think I will turn off comments on all posts older than 60 days. Sorted.

**Photo from WORD: The official blog of Read Magazine.

 

16 January, 2010

The concept of home

Posted by Melanie Seasons under Moving to England
[4] Comments 

January is always a weird month of self-reflection. Partly because of the after-holidays low, partly because everyone is obsessed with reinventing themselves in the New Year, partly because it’s my birthday month, and I feel obligated to take a step back examine my life.

I’ve been in London for about a year and a half – a year and a half that’s flown by like nothing. And while it’s all I thought it would be, there’s been a lot that I didn’t see coming. Like my recent bleedingly obvious realisation: London is normal. Not so much in the ordinary sense, because I think that’s the furthest thing from the truth, but normal as in everyday.

It’s an odd change when you start to bend what your definition of ‘home’ is. When I moved away from my mom’s to go to Eastern, I remember it taking about 8 or 12 months before I stopped saying ‘I’m going home for the weekend’ and started saying ‘I’m going to my mom’s house’.

For some people, home is where they sleep at night. For others, it’s the house they grew up in. For me, it will always be Michigan. However, 18 months on from moving countries, I’m starting to get a bit confused. When I was in Michigan, there were at least a few times when I said ‘Well, when I get back ho- I mean, to London’.

I am officially at the Home Home vs. Home stage.

I realised all of this coming back into London after Christmas. I really loved being home home and visiting everyone, but as soon as my key opened the door, and I collapsed on my not-very-comfortable bed, I was really happy just to be home.

If that makes sense.

 

18 December, 2009

I’m a Mac too!

Posted by Melanie Seasons under Randomness | Tags: |
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I love this from Sandrine at Buzz Attitude. I’m a Mac too, and I hate the Windows 7 ads.

 

10 December, 2009

No fame in blogging

Posted by Melanie Seasons under Blogging, Social Media, The Internets | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 


At the end of another year, there are sure to be quite a few ‘RIP Blogging’ posts. Nothing like a new year to make people bring out the ol’ soap box, right?

Personally, I don’t think blogging is dead, but I do wonder if there’s room for many more of them.  I don’t mean to say that new blogs aren’t created everyday ( Istarted om nom London this year, after all), and certainly not that newer blogs aren’t interesting, but how many of them are going to organically rise to the top from the dredges of the overly-saturated blogosphere?

When is that last time you heard about a new blogger who started out with just a free template, and ended up making it big? It feels like we no longer ask ourselves who the next Scoble or Cashmore will be. They are established. They are unreachable. You don’t see many people starting blogs to acheive fame, as it used to be. They use Twitter instead.

Would love someone to prove me wrong though…

 

3 December, 2009

Has Twitter become too big for its own good?

Posted by Melanie Seasons under twitter | Tags: , |
[2] Comments 

Looking at Twitter from the time I joined to now is an experiment in hyper-evolution.

A couple years ago, I made the disastrous mistake of saying I didn’t think Twitter was going to be any big “thing” and it was just a lot of hype over nothing (this was after a good 7 months of sporadic use).  But then, we all know what happened. It grew, it evolved and it became useful for things both personal and professional.

For a while, we hit the sweet spot – people sharing information, people getting information, meeting face to face. It seemed like Twitter could do no wrong.

The next stage began to evolve with celebrity involvement. For once, the masses could get a glimpse into what Stephen Fry’s life is like. This made the perfect transition into Twitter as entertainment. Some people can’t even imagine watch The X-Factor without a live Tweet stream.

Now, with lists and trending topics, I can’t help but wonder if it’s all too much?  I know I’ve scaled back my Twitter usage in general. I’m at my limit at the amount of people I can follow (lists or no lists), and the amount of information is bordering on overload.

I’m not saying Twitter is over – far from it.  But it’s been a couple years now… I think we’re all waiting for the next thing.

 

4 November, 2009

Eulogy! wins agency of the year!

Posted by Melanie Seasons under OMG, Onlinefire, Shameless Self Promotion | Tags: , , , , , , |
1 Comment 

Eulogy PR online Onlinefire PR London b2b consumer

Congratulations to Eulogy! – Onlinefire’s sister agency who won Agency of the Year at last night’s PRCA Awards!

Eulogy! had been nominated for three awards: Agency of the Year, Specialist Agency of the Year and Best B2B campaign. We also at Onlinefire had been shortlisted for Best Technology Campaign as well for work that we did with Virgin Mobile and its 30p tariff last year. Remember that one?

At the end of the night Eulogy not only scooped up Best Agency, but also Best B2B Campaign for their work with Mortascreen.

And as Helen said on the Eulogy! blog, “Apologies if we deafened anyone sitting near us. We were the noisiest and most fun-loving crowd in the room!”

The moment we found out we had won PRCA Consultancy of the Year 2009!

It was an absolutely spectacular night. Many thanks to all the judges and everyone at the PRCA. Good times!
 

28 October, 2009

Contacting online journalists at national newspapers

Posted by Melanie Seasons under PR Resources, Shameless Self Promotion | Tags: , , , |
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I’ve just had my first piece posted on Reputation Online, the latest New Media Age outfit headed up by the lovely Vikki Chowney.

The article is about how PRs are having an increasingly difficult time working with proper journalists in the online space…

Notiz mit contact us

Online and offline PRs used to have very distinct roles.  Instead of print journalists, online worked with ‘bloggers’; instead of pitching to news desks, online had conversations with ‘influencers’. It was all very clear-cut.

But now, with social media officially in the mainstream, PR is going through an identity crisis. Whether this is another effect of the recession – publications going online-only or newspapers completely shutting down – no one can say for sure. But what is evident is that the lines between online and offline PR are blurring fast, particularly with national newspapers.

Most newspapers used to have separate online and offline news desks. Increasingly, there is little difference between the content that’s in print and the content that can be found online.  You can sell in what you believe to be a story for print and then find it on the web site only in a few hours time.  With publications vying to be the first to break a story, it seems that the immediacy of online has begun to take the lead over print.

With all this ambiguity, it’s very difficult to have a thorough understanding of who covers what space – and the tools that PRs normally use to research exactly this type of information don’t necessarily work in an online world.

To read the rest, do head over to Reputation Online.  there are a few comments on there already, but it would be great to keep the conversation going.

Ta!

 

15 October, 2009

Jackenhacks Carnage

Posted by Melanie Seasons under 2. London, etc., Events, Fun with Vodka | Tags: , |
[7] Comments 

Ah, gotta love events – especially boozy PR ones that involve cheeky awards and random karaoke at the bar across the street.

Yes, I finally made it to the Flackenhacks (or as they were called this year in tribute to the late King of Pop – the Jackenhacks).  This is the third year for the awards. The first one was shortly after I started this blog and The World’s Leading gave me my first plug introducing me to the London PR scene. I was gutted I couldn’t go, and promised to go the second year’s, but that didn’t actually end up happening. I believe it was because I had just moved to London and my bank account was in dire straits.

I suppose that brings me to the cost this year… and meh – not so impressed.  Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time, but for £35 I ended up having two glasses of wine and a few nibbles. I can’t remember what time the bar actually ran out, but I think it was around 10, 10:30? The food was really tasty, but that too, was available for way too short  a time. The poor lady going around with the tray was nearly attacked everytime she came out of the kitchen.

The awards themselves, while funny enough, were completely impossible to hear since people talked through the whole thing.

Anyhoo, suffice to say I had a much better time when we retired to Murphy’s to sing American Pie and Total Eclipse of the Heart at a ridiculously loud level.

Oh, and also watching girls trying to rip off Tim Hoang’s shirt while he took down Brendan Cooper was pretty funny too.

 

7 October, 2009

Does forced disclosure on blogger endorsements change anything for you?

Posted by Melanie Seasons under Advertising, Blogging
[2] Comments 

The US has announced a crackdown on product endorsements. For years, we’ve all been used to seeing celebs and models hawking everything from car insurance to beauty products, but surprisingly this ruling isn’t limited to Iggy Pop or Sarah Jessica Parker – it includes bloggers too.

The new rules say that anyone endorsing a product must give full disclosure about what he or she received – if anything – in compensation for the endorsement or else face fines up to $11,000.

Oddly enough, an attorney for several advertising groups in the States said this ruling is the ‘worst fears of businesses have come true’. That seems a bit of an overreaction to me. It won’t be a surprise to people that celebs are paid to endorse products (or even lie about them), and most bloggers I know already do disclose the terms in which they’re either endorsing or reviewing a product, i.e. So-and-so asked me to review, I wasn’t paid for this post, etc.

I’m curious to hear what other bloggers think, but my hunch is that we spend so much time trying to prove that we haven’t sold out that this ruling (should it ever make its way across the pond) won’t change very much at all.

 

27 September, 2009

Posted by Melanie Seasons under blogs
Comments Off 

So you know it’s bad when your dad e-mails you to ask why you haven’t updated your blog in a while…

Yes, I’m alive. And I come with good excuses. Here are the Top 5 things I’ve been up to in the last month

1. Living in London for a year:

The 22nd of August 2009 was my one-year anniversary of moving to London. I spent it in the Louder Lounge at V Festival with work. It was sunny, I saw The Killers and hung out with a chick who’s famous for having her backside projected on the Houses of Parliament.

2. Holiday
I went home for two whole weeks! I’ve never had two whole weeks off of work in my life since I started working.

Living in London, you tend to get this sort of tunnel vision where things on the outside don’t register as much. Like, if it’s 10pm here and 5pm at home, I have a really hard time putting myself in that place – imagining what it’s like to be in Michigan.

This trip home sort of put that in perspective. I didn’t realise how much I missed my mom, my dad and my friends until I was there. I had an amazing time. It was brilliant.

Plus, the weather was amazing!

3. Not being social:
Post-holiday, I’ve pretty much been invisible. Really what I’ve been doing is saving money and being on a massive diet (I ate WAY TOO MUCH in Michigan). Soup and porridge FTW.

4. Work:
I don’t think I’ve ever taken a holiday where somehow, it complemented out with my workload. Seriously: the two weeks I was gone, were the two calmest weeks of work ever. I even had a pretty calm Monday back. Things then, of course, picked back up and now… well… back to normal!

5. Computering:
My computer sort of died. Or at least the hard drive did. Yesterday I was getting ready to go to the gym and I heard this buzzing/grinding rattle of death. I thought that maybe a terminally ill fly got into my room somehow, but when I tracked it down to my computer and saw it frozen, I knew it couldn’t be good. I tried to restart, but then got this**:

BUT, my new roomie did some voodoo, and has me working off of Snow Leopard on an external hard drive until my new 250gb hard drive and 2gb of ram arrive on Friday.

So things are fantastic. I’m still giddy at the thought of living in London, still love my job, still have amazing friends and family back home, and am just about to get a computer makeover. Who could ask for more?***

**Photo yanked from this blog because I wan’t smart enough to grab my camera when I saw the Folder of Death.
***I may or may not be drinking wine while writing this.

 

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