Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
23 May 2012
Blogging for freebies
Since the last posting I've been in Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the USA twice each; and in Australia, Macau, the UK, Poland, France, and The Maldives. The lack of even a single word on any of these trips is an indication that I prefer to write for a living, and with travel, administration, not to mention family responsibilities there's little time to waste on financially unproductive activities.
Apparently, however, there's a whole world out there of people who blog in order to be noticed, and whose principal activity when not blogging is doing anything that will drive traffic to their blogs; notably tweeting. In many cases the purpose of the blog is to attract sufficient attention so as to bring free gifts and some advertising revenue. Many of them (I find from looking at the links given in various tweets) are absolutely appalling: unpublishable in any other form. But if enough traffic is generated, from the point of view of destinations, outfitters, and properties hoping for increased sales, it's a case of 'never mind the quality, feel the width.'
Now one website is offering a service which claims to provide a measure of influence, and with coverage in Wire and elsewhere its name is about to join Twitter, Google, Facebook, as part of everyday speech, or so it seems to think. If the boosters are to be believed our Klout score (www.klout.com) is already being taken into account by employers and by those looking to get persuasive coverage on-line for their products and services: get high enough Klout and couriers will be arriving at your front door laden with desirable kit for you to write about.
However, we're entering a world in which influence is only measured by interaction with others, and only on-line, essentially through Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. It's about being mentioned in other's tweets, about being re-tweeted, and about getting responses to posts on other social media.
I joined Twitter early, and left it again almost straight away. It is probably already obvious from looking at this blog that 140 characters is not my preferred medium of expression, and I'm not interested in communicating the trivia of my day. I've discovered, though, that a significant number of my friends and colleagues do most of their communicating via Twitter. Some are now required by their employers to keep the profile of their organisations up by constantly tweeting together with links to the organisation's site.
But just as so much blogging is about discussing what others have written, so most tweeting is about drawing attention to such comment or its subject, and re-tweeting links posted by others. A small amount of original content mostly goes round in circles with very little added value. In the Klout world, however, the persuasiveness of the content has nothing to do with its inherent value. Well-informed and well-expressed criticism has less value than vapid gossip if it is re-tweeted fewer times.
I find this world picture one of fascinating horror: a little like being unable to look away from a car crash. The Klout score above which the couriers start ringing the doorbell is 50, we're told. The average Klout score is 20, but every successive increase in value becomes harder to obtain. Given that the average person in the world isn't even on-line, I was surprised to find I had an initial score of 12, well below the average. This was despite having published several articles across North America this year, as well as in the Asia edition of the Wall Street Journal, reaching audiences of millions and beyond the wildest dreams of more than a handful of bloggers. But off-line influence apparently doesn't matter, even when the articles also appear on-line. And there's apparently no account taken of the relative persuasiveness of items appearing under the auspices of organisations with large, long-standing reputations in the real world, compared to items under the banner of Joe Bloggs' Blog.
This may be the world wished for, and the world predicted to come to pass, but it isn't here yet, and it will be a worse world if it ever arrives. However, and playing the game by its own rules, I re-joined Twitter, and within two days my Klout score had rocketed to 42.
Life isn't really like this, but since I heard a story from a colleague that he'd been turned down for a press trip because he didn't blog, I've been asking various PR people I've come across (rather a lot, unsurprisingly) about the emphasis they place on bloggers versus those being published in print media, and I've yet to find anyone who puts any weight at all on blogs.
Last year I visited Scottsdale for the third time, and about two weeks ago two resulting stories happened to appear in Canadian media at the same time. As the people at Scottsdale are always well-organised and helpful (and likeable), and as I'd been thinking that they'd gone a long time without seeing a return on their investment (not that any is ever guaranteed) I took the time to send a note with links to the two stories.
I received a delighted reply. I then received an equally delighted email from one property mentioned in one story. I received another from a property that got a passing mention in the second story, rather disproportionately small given the amount of effort it had put in, I felt (but that's just how it goes sometimes). Finally today I received a letter personally signed by Managing Director of one of the properties. I imagine this was written for him by the PR person, but nonetheless the effort had been made.
I'll perhaps discuss in another post why all this is unnecessary but the point is that these people are in no doubt where clout's important. And it's with four million newspaper readers across Canada. The on-line presence is just a bonus.
26 April 2008
Some things go well
I managed to slice one day off the trip, and one spa visit, although I couldn't avoid another. I must admit, though, that my face has responded well to being smeared with an entire dessert trolley's worth of fruity and chocolaty substances and is softer than a baby's bottom. Since I regularly have to get close up to a baby's bottom these days I'm in a position to make this rather predictable comparison.
Perhaps one thing that made this trip not just successful but enjoyable was that I had low expectations. It's a commonplace in North America for destinations to be over-promoted, and to be pretty thin on real attractions especially if the emphasis is historical, at least to a snotty European. But in this case, in addition to the tiny, slightly Disneyfied Wild West old part of Scottsdale, there was mid-20th century history well worth a look, particularly in the form of the oddly-named Hotel Valley Ho, a late-50s masterpiece recently renovated and partly rebuilt not with its rooms an exact copy of the period, but rather in homage to it, right down to a Viewmaster next to the bed. (It's impossible that such a device would be named today without an intercap.) The colour scheme contained hues I can seriously say haven't been seen since the 60s, and I fully expected a Dr. No-era Sean Connery to step out of the shower in nothing but a towel at any moment. It was truly enjoyable in a way most hotels aren't.
The other mid-century masterpiece was Frank Lloyd Wright's winter base, originally set up miles from anywhere, and now swallowed by Scottsdale's sprawl. Taliesin West was where Wright trained his apprentices in slave-like conditions, making them not only design shelters for their accommodation way out in the desert, but build them by hand, having first raised the funds themselves. In between this they built the combined studio and residence building, constantly tearing down and re-erecting sections on Wright's whim. Scottsdale is still home to many who studied with Wright in this way, none of them now young, and part of the purpose of the trip was to take a tour of the remarkable buildings in the company of one of them, and to talk to some others. This was something of a privilege, not least since all were remarkably quotable and founts of good stories about Wright the man, while in some cases displaying the kind of idolatry more usually connected with cults, especially those still living on the vast desert property in buildings that were largely invisible. This, Hotel Valley Ho, the anti-suburban planning ideas of the 88-year-old Soleri (another ex-Wright pupil), and some other unexpectedly excellent art-related experiences in Scottsdale form the core of a story that I'm actually looking forward to writing.
And its hard to dislike a place with relentlessly predictable sunny weather (Wimbledon should be rescheduled for spring and moved here), palm trees, and giant cactuses with real personalities.
Best of all, it only took four days to do. I'll take more fam trips like that, thank you.
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