New contributor (and Cheap Eats publisher) Alexa Clark got a sneak peak at Canadian book giant Indigo’s new Community Network last week. Will Indigo’s first foray into social media reach the bestseller list or end up in the remainder bin? Click through for Alexa’s review of the site’s features and her take on what’s working and what could work better.
5 CommentsMonth: September 2007
Jon and his team at Petro-Canada recently launched Pump Talk, a blog where they can engage with customers and other key audiences to discuss issues around gas prices and fuel efficiency. One Degree sat down with Jon to discuss what led up to Pump Talk, how success will be measured and the lessons that Jon and his team have learned about corporate blogging.
One Degree: You had some success with posting videos about gas prices on YouTube last year. Why was a blog the next step for Petro-Canada?
I believe much of the original buzz from last years videos came from people being shocked that a big oil and gas company not only knew what YouTube was, but had posted videos on it. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we recieved a lot of feedback – good and bad – on our effort. Aside from a number of “You Suck”‘s and other angry comments, we heard from people engaged in and enthused about Social Media who told us we needed to be interactive and much more relaxed. In other words, we were welcomed to the party, but told to lose the bow-tie and our parents couldn’t stay. Faced with the choice of just doing more videos, or taking it to the next level, we decided to step it up and launch a blog.
Read the rest of the interview after the break …
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Yahoo! Canada recently launched The Kick, a social network for soccer fans in Canada. As part of their launch program, Yahoo! Canada used a Social Media News Release (SMNR) to share details with mainstream journalists and bloggers alike. One Degree recently sat down with Hessie Jones, marketing manager for The Kick, as well as David Jones, Julia Stein and Michelle Book from Fleishman-Hillard Canada, Yahoo! Canada’s PR firm, to discuss the use of the Social Media News Release.
One Degree: How did you decide to use a Social Media release for announcing The Kick?
A few months ago, we did a traditional press release for another Yahoo! Canada property. We received from commentary from bloggers that we could have done a better job. So, in planning the launch of The Kick, we wanted to make sure that the online channel was integrated into a comprehensive PR program. How and where you reach people largely depends on the specifics of your audience. For Canadian soccer fans, they are largely online; sports like soccer have a passionate fan base but is not well represented in the mainstream media.. We wanted to reach them and their advocates where they live – online.
From a content perspective, The Kick is an online community – so why wouldn’t we use a social media news release? Plus, Yahoo! has a number of social media tools – del.icio.us, Flickr – at our disposal and it made sense to take advantage of these tools in pulling together an announcement.
The rest of the interview is after the break …
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