I found this interesting post from Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail and Editor-In-Chief of Wired Magazine.) He’s tired of getting hammered by PR folks who don’t know how to pitch to him via email so he’s banned them from his email. To take it up a notch he posted all the banned email addresses on a blog post. Yes, the deer have guns. Here’s another example of a PR firm that struck out. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger was providing some insight on this topic recently too.

Imagine we’re in a deep sea fishing contest. You and me. It’s a fishing contest for a full day. At the end of the day the winner is the one with the most fish by weight. Though we’re in the same contest we have two different approaches. You have assembled the best deep sea fishermen you can find. You have expert marlin anglers since the marlin is one of the biggest (one marlin can weigh over 800 pounds…here’s a 560 pound marlin) and most prized fish you can catch. You have the best boat and technological advances for finding the marlin. Catching a marlin is hard work but you’ve hired the best in the business and you know when you come in at the end of the day with several big marlins everyone is going to be very impressed with your catch.

My crew has decided to take another route. We’re going to fish with nets. Our boat and crew is smaller and less impressive than yours and we’re going to catch salmon. Salmon are considerably smaller than the marlin weighing anywhere between 6 and 100 pounds each. I know, however, that salmon swim together and a good catch could put us in contention for the prize.

At the end of the day we return with our catches. You had a great day with nine large marlins with a total weight of 5,300 pounds. We only had one catch with 400 salmon. As we offload our salmon on the scales we estimate the average fish in our catch is 28 pounds, much smaller than your large marlins but our team’s total catch weight is 11,200 pounds. It turns out the cumulative weight of many smaller fish is much heavier than a few really big fish. We win.

New media marketing is a small fish strategy. I think that’s why traditional marketing mindsets are unsure of it. They’ve never considered a small fish strategy because it’s the exact opposite of their focus. Big fish are traditional promotional strategies. Big fish marketing tactics include magazine ads, television and radio spots, billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail campaigns and the like. Small fish marketing includes new media tactics like blogs, podcasts, social networking, online video, social media, etc.

Big fish know they’re prized and know everyone wants to catch them which makes them harder catch. They require more effort and more expense with less yield. Small fish are numerous and concentrated. They’re cheaper and easier to catch with a higher cumulative yield.

Marketers are fishing every day. Most are going after the limited supply of big fish. A few are going after the hundreds of thousands of smaller fish. Sure, it’s great to catch a big fish if you can. Catching big fish is what the industry was built on. Sometimes a really big fish gets you raises and recognition and may even bring a high return.

A funny thing is happening now though. There are more and more small fish all the time and the means to catch them are widely available, easy to use, and often free. Once you know how to catch a lot of smaller fish why would you ever try to catch a big fish again? Forget the big fish.

I find myself recommending blogs on a regular basis. I think it’s a great idea for almost every organization but I have also realized there are organizational characteristics that would lead me to say they shouldn’t blog. Here’s my list of those who should not blog (or use other social media for that matter):

Organizations that don’t trust their employees. If your organization doesn’t trust employees then a blog strategy will constantly be plagued by the legal department’s involvement or management trying to control the message. If the organization doesn’t trust the employees to represent them well without micromanagement, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that don’t want to hear bad news. Blogging and other forms of social media are inherently interactive and conversational. Once you decide to jump in you should prepare to respond as needed. If a corporate blogger gets negative feedback or criticism on a service, product, strategy, etc. the right thing to do is respond truthfully and candidly. That doesn’t necessarily mean a concession either. The organization’s blogger can totally disagree with the the feedback without being disagreeable. What this interaction shows is that the organization isn’t afraid to hear and engage people even when it can be negative. If you’re not ready for this, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that want absolute control over their message and reputation. Organizations can’t, and never have, been able to control what people say about them. To think otherwise is foolish. New media tools allow those conversations that may have previously been private to be more widespread and more easily discovered. If your organization is determined to control every message about it and is under the delusion that it can also control what other people say about it, don’t start blogging, it will only create frustration when the facade of control begins to crumble.

Organizations that create by committee. I have been a part of numerous “writing by committee” situations and almost every single time the final message is so diluted from the original intent it becomes a shell of what it could have been. Blogging by committee is not good for at least two reasons. First, it will take forever to get a post done by the time you get everyone involved and consider their revisions and debate what should stay and what should go. Second, it will very likely not be a candid, fully engaging post, but rather something diluted. Contributors to a blog are good, committees are not. It’s not a bad thing to have multiple bloggers for a single blog as long as it’s clear to all that the blog was set up that way. If your organizations writes by committee, however, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that are slow. One of the true benefits to blogging is that you can create a post in a matter of minutes so there is a wonderful opportunity to respond quickly to a situation in the event that it’s necessary. Depending on the industry, response time can make or break how a something is perceived. For instance, if an company had some negative press they could use the blog to respond quickly and provide their perspective. By doing so, the blog post will be part of the news and balance the original negative story. Without the blog the organization will issue a less timely press release if they respond at all and possibly miss a window of opportunity. If the organization isn’t prepared or comfortable with a quick response then they will not be fully utilizing the blog. If your organization is stuck on slow, don’t start blogging.

The Internet is afire with Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing video but I’m going to pass on it as the video of the week. Instead, here’s a television shopping channel blooper. It’s classic. Just remember: “You have to lock it.”

Link for the feed readers:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6ZhMfzc9RbU

Two things here…

Last week my friend Denver Bierman and his band Denver and The Mile High Orchestra (D&MHO) made it through to the top 12 bands in the new FOX show, The Next Great American Band. The show is on Friday nights so this is my official get out the vote post for Denver and the guys. Tomorrow night is your first opportunity to vote. If you know of Denver and band or like what you see/hear join the D&MHO Facebook group too.

Second thing…this just in from Greg Atkinson of Church Video Ideas :

If you’re interested in exploring how ministry videos can enhance your worship services or happen to be a pro at integrating film into your services and would like to expand your existing media library, Highway Video is offering an amazing sale. From now until October 31st, Highway is offering all their DVD’s for 50% off.

Also, as a “Thank You” from the Church Video Ideas blog and Highway Video, you can pick one free download of your choice. Visit HighwayVideo.com, select a film, and then enter the coupon code: AFF1A9 at check-out to take advantage of this offer.

Last week I mentioned TokBox as a new, browser-based video conferencing tool. This week I discovered ooVoo (via JaffeJuice via Mitch Joel’s podcast) and it’s exciting to see a tool launch that can allow live video conferencing with up to six people. I’ve thought for a while that one of the hindrances with other services was the limitation for only two people to conference. ooVoo will require you to download and install their software but this a great next step in online video conferencing. I can certainly see the benefit for friends, family, and business so it’s worth checking out if you use (or have an interest in) online video conferencing…and it’s free too.

Google AdWords are one of the most simple yet mysterious forms of advertising you’ll ever find. On the one hand it’s so simple and accessible because anyone can create an AdWord campaign. It’s not as if you need to go through an advertising agency or marketing firm to do it. Just visit the site, set up your campaign, and determine what your maximum daily budget will be. It’s that easy.

On the other hand, it’s a little mysterious how Google determines things like an AdWord quality score (meaning how much you should pay for your AdWords and what position they’ll be found in on the search pages) and cost per click. There are some factors that certainly play into things like a high quality score such as a high click thru rate, text relevance between the ad and the page you send people to, and historical keyword performance.

All that being said, there are some things you can do with your AdWords to help your chances. Here’s a here is a formula for Google AdWords I’ve seen work well with several clients:

Headline: Use a descriptive title for your product/service
Line 1: State a benefit or additional description of the product/service
Line 2: State a call to action
URL: Link to a page with text that upholds any claims in the ad

Most people understand the headline and line 1 aspects pretty well but stumble on the call to action. Use words like try, buy, order, find, or browse in that line. A sample call to action line might be “Try a free sample of our product.” The only catch here is that if you’re going to say this you need to make sure there really is a free sample on the page you send people to or Google will recognize that as a misleading (they refer to it as irrelevant) claim which at best raises your cost per click price and at worst will void your ad altogether.

A few months ago I had my first opportunity to play Guitar Hero on the XBox 360 with Chris. It was a ton of fun and I’ve heard that some people are starting to modify the guitar controllers for actual real music use. Turns out David Crowder has one he’s using in concert…

[HT to Greg Atkinson on the video.]

Link for the feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiXMrIoUn1E

I’m always on the hunt for new helpful tools and I discovered two great ones yesterday…

TokBox (pronounced “talk box”) is a free video conferencing service that would be a great alternative to Skype should you want a browser based video system. I’ve used services like this in the past and they’re handy alternatives. In addition to the live conferencing feature you can also record a video and email it to someone from within the TokBox system. That feature alone would be great for personal messages for fundraisers or any organization that wants to take personalization to a new level. If my alma mater’s alumni association decided to send me a personal video from the president rather than a postcard, I would certainly be impressed and would be much more likely to consider giving.

I was very excited to discover Zamzar, a free file conversion tool. If you’ve ever wanted to convert a file from one format to another but weren’t sure how to do it, this is the site for you. If you’ve ever received a document in a format that won’t work with Microsoft Word, just upload and convert it here. The conversion also works with audio, image, and video files. I was most excited to discover Zamzar’s online video conversion. It’s as easy as typing in a link from a YouTube page or any number of other online video sites and loading them into Zamzar and selecting the format you want. I tested it last night with this YouTube video to see if it would work with my new (thanks Fosters!) iPod Nano and it worked perfect.

Well, I guess it was bound to happen. I have officially formed my own new media consulting and development company. The company, microEXPLOSION media, is now officially up and running.

Though I will not be employed through White Post Media I will continue to partner with them and its clients for future new media projects. I’m also planning to do some more writing though it won’t all be specifically connecting new media and Christian ministry as this blog has been since its inception. I’ll also have news about a podcast starting in the coming weeks.

This blog will also be changing over to a new one for the company and I’ll announce that when it’s ready to go. Of course, if anyone is looking for new media help I’m available. In fact, here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself.

Do you know…
…the best way to pitch an idea to bloggers?
…how to get thousands of blog readers for your product or service?
…the four things every online video should have?
…how to respond to attack blogs?
…the best formula for effective Google AdWords?
…three things bloggers hate about many websites?
…four things every podcast should include?
…how to distribute your content with widgets?
…which social networking site is the best for your business?
…the best mindset for a new media marketer?
…how to leverage the six categories of web 2.0?

If you don’t feel good about your answers to these questions maybe we should talk. My phone number and email address are here in the sidebar of the blog.