A lot of PR and ad people are asked by clients how to ‘reach out’ to the blogosphere. The key is to treat bloggers as super-users. People who can influence conversation about your brand within their community. In the old days their community was a neighbourhood, factory, church or club whereas now it’s interest based and faciliated online.

OK, OK I’m massively over-simplifying this but I need to.

Anyway, here is a great example of a brand, Sony, doing it well. They have made somebody, in this case Rick Clancy, Head of Comms, their human face. If you are going to interact with bloggers ie social media then you have to be ’social’. You can’t say sending people press releases or plastering ads everywhere is social:)

As well as responding to queries personally and joining conversations online, Rick is also planning to tour 40 Sony stores in 40 days to get involved in real face-2-face conversations with real customers - WOW!

The big talking point in parts of the PR/ad industry is how to do good blogger events. Is it a bit naff? Will the bloggers be nasty to us? What do we actually do and will they go away and write about us?

First point is DON’T treat bloggers like mass media. They are customers or service users. Their opinions really matter in terms of feedback on your product, your competitors and your marketing plans.

”OK, OK I’m a PR person, will they write about us?” It doesn’t matter if you get good feedback about your products but by involving them in your brand and offering them something directly relevant to what they blog about then why wouldn’t they?

Here’s the experience of a ‘Mum blogger’ that attended a Sony event. 

Congrats to Matt B from London who has designed the new national TV ad for Doritos. You may remember that Doritos went for the ultimate in involving their customers in the brand and asked them to produce an idea and creative for a major TV ad campaign.

All the finalists’ details are here and it’s nice to see that the brand has been true to its promise. The big challenge is for TV advertisers to innovate more as audiences fall and people use Tivo, Sky Plus to navigate away from commercial breaks. Emily Bell makes the point here.

Any advertisers out there with something innovative? There is one who we employed recently on the back of this.

The internet is open. Just don’t tell those incomprehensible fools desperate to regulate this series of tubes!

Paris has said ‘yes’, or more accurately, ‘oui’ to a complete overhaul of the net which will allow the net’s regulator, Icann, to open up strict rules on top-level domain names.

Later this year, we could see the introduction city specific domain names such as .london or . nyc. Following that we could see .movie, .food, .xxx, .kids or .justaboutanything!

For businesses, this means a costly revamp of web strategy when they’re already wrestling with competitors popping up on searches of trademarks.

For consumers, it offers clarity for services with each website having to establish exactly what it does and what service it provides. No doubt we’ll see industries crowding around particular domain names such as the entertainment industry around .film or newspapers around .news.

For years, .com has been the reigning champion of domain names with .co.uk and .net just feeling a bit cheap. However, now I forsee a time when .com is seen as ’soooo web 1.0′.

I’m off to register every .pr, .media, .blog and .marketing sites I can think of and finally make my fortune as a .com millionaire. I mean .pr millionaire. No, I mean .media or is that .blog? .cotton?? Oh forget it!

First, a declaration of interest - I am a fan of The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade. That aside, his comments on the uneasy relationship between journalists and bloggers articulate exactly the dilemma of journalists pre-internet: writing for an invisible body of readers whose views on what you’re writing remain largely unknown. Not so now. With bloggers and, well, anyone with broadband, able to interact with the news and pass comment, the monopoly on the message no longer lies with the “fourth estate”. With the abundance of online channels and social media to participate in, the conversation is gaining currency.

ChangeWave research used a survey earlier this year to show that companies were “hot on using Web 2.0″. But as their graph above suggests, there are more than 60% who won’t touch it with a barge pole. Maybe the avalanche of jargon and new, thrusting brands associated with social media is partly to blame. But what if we called it what it is - word of mouth? Ok, the channels for that word have changed, but the principal remains the same. Steve Rubel, as usual, puts his finger on what matters in social media and reminds us that people tend to listen to and take the lead from people they know and trust. What a concept! If I’m quick, I might just patent that.

Now you’ve got your head around blogs, park that as we’re on to the next big thing: comment tracking. The phrase is my invention (in a futile bid for cultural buzz word fame) but it’s a convenient shorthand for describing the world of CoComment, an online service for collecting in one place all contributions you make to conversations across the web. It tracks comments on your comments and, for bloggers, captures all their extra-blog activity on their own pages.

Leading French blogger, Loic Le Meur, hails this as a new dawn for commentators, who could end up as influential as TV pundits.

His closing comments on the importance of online conversations in consumer choice are a wake up call for brands.

It looks like Manchester City Football Club owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, needs more PR people than centre forwards! We hear he’s now working with former News of the World editor and svengali to the stars, Phil Hall.

The former Thai dictator thought that defending a dodgy human rights record was hard until he sacked manager, Sven Goran Eriksson and realised you just don’t mess with football folk.

Sven had the back pages in his pocket and Sinatra found a populist wave against his regime was overwhelming his efforts to be hero to the blues faithful.

Thaksin uses Bell Pottinger to handle his corporate image, no doubt impressed by their work with various pariahs around the world and has an entourage of minders to keep reporters away from him. Now he’s giving Phil Hall the chance to add to his impressive list of football club clients that include West Ham, Portsmouth and Chelsea. Imagine if that was your client load. Carlsberg don’t make PR agencies but…….

Perhaps Frank Sinatra was impressed with the work Hall did with Avram Grant

As a media junkie I’m fascinated by mapping influence online. Powerful sources are emerging in the field of politics. We’ve explored previously the extent to which the Conservative Party and its supporters/sympathisers have organised in a far more effective way than their Left/Liberal counterparts.

Westminster circles were buzzing yesterday because ConservativeHome and Guido Fawkes had joined forces (swapping research, swapping sources, referencing each other) to uncover the expenses sleaze of a succession of Tory MEPs and the mobilise as a block to force David Cameron to kick them out of the Party.

Bloggers calling for blood is nothing new but ConHome and Guido have relied on Tory HQ briefings to give them so much information, access and help with sleaze investigations into the government, which has built their profile and muscle. Was this their way of demonstrating that they are in no way in Cameron’s pocket? That they are attack dogs who will turn on the powerful whichever Party flag they fly?

Or was this another Tory HQ sponsored attack on some problematic MEPs? Not sure yet but will find out….. 

Just seen this video that Lastminute produced to showcase their theatre offering. It’s a really good ‘watch’ and the sort of things you’d pass onto friends.

Don’t take my word for it, just check out the ‘views’ on YouTube. It has breached 129,000.Lots of companies are thinking about ‘viral’ and want to know how quickly they can get hundreds of thousands of views in no time for not much money. It’s hard and can’t be forced.The art of producing something that your audience will pass on to others in such numbers as to make the spend worthwhile is just that, an art not a science. But as with most media relations it’s important to observe things that do well and try and spot common denominators.

This one had a great foundation for seeding i.e. Lastminute’s existing traffic and email database. But its also got two key success factors…a) enough of a ‘can you believe this happened!?’b) a voyeuristic quality i.e. you can sit back and watch people’s reactions in the knowledge that you know what’s going but they haven’t the foggiest.  

PR Week have covered Gordon’s foray onto YouTube this week. I think its the best thing he’s done, hot on the heels of Paddick’s Twitter, the key to politicians on social media is to recreate the old days, when people were actually able to ask politicians things live! And then they would talk back!

Since TV took over politicians have gone into ‘top-down’ soundbite mode and people are now massively cynical about it. So Gordon has got the medium and the principles right but it will still be Gordon and that’s the bit PR Week have quoted me on!

Seems Drew B didn’t quite have his full view expressed as well:)