As internet marketer, you are presumably well acquainted with all bonuses and gifts that the Magic Bullet System affiliates are suggesting. This is one of the merits why it is successful in selling out in nine hours! However, in accordance with some leaked out information, the system may be reopened only for a single day for those folk, who could not get their seat on launch day.
If for some reason this information looks strange to you, there could be two variants: either you are busy (probably with piece of good luck?) with gaining money, or you have not selected appropriate mailing lists.
I would like to relate you my unwelcome story as affiliate marketer, who endeavoured to suggest encouraging bonus of $500, in order to receive a small supplementary pay in my pocket, and why the final result was that I even paid for purchasing the Magic Bullet System package.
Well, the time is ripe for moving on! My inbox was word for word swamped with emails making publicity for the astonishing Magic Bullet System and offering unlikely (and in most cases over valued) bonuses. No wonder that also John Reese, Gauher Chaudhry, Chris Carpenter, Mike Filsame, Frank Kern and other great names took part in this publicity. Originally I directly obliterated ever so many of those emails from my inbox, but gradually they commenced provoking my curiosity, and I found myself clicking in one of those links endeavouring to reveal what kind of bonuses they suggest, what this Magic Bullet System was all about, and what the final price would be.
There is normally a pretty close relation between the bonus values suggested and the products price. Moreover, when the great players take part, there must be some satisfactory money to gain.
What actually happened was that I contravened the word I had given to myself , to not open or read any promotional messages that kept constantly coming into my mail. Useful ebooks, e-courses, due software – I by now had it all to turn into one of the successful affiliate marketers (as so many others that have gone wrong awfully). But I will not give up. Was this is the wonder I have been anticipating for so long?
In spite of that fact, I found myself signing up to AND even watching all 3 videos, what somewhat created an impression on me was that the information was really productive and I even learned some tricks of succeeding marketers that I think could come into good usage.
I commenced grasping that the Magic Bullet System was a total solution in the overall picture of affiliate marketing. If you howsoever have NOT seen any of these advertising videos – which is nearly unbelievable – the following information will give you an idea of the nature of Magic Bullet System:
The following information is only a outgrowth of my grasping of all this large marketing talk and sales videos, and the future only will manifest who is right!
To begin with, the main point of the Magic Bullet System as a total Internet based software suite, is that it is directed to those affiliate marketers who are non-technical but all the same want to automated their business as much as possible. What you have to do is to make a project targeting a certain website or niche (keyword) and the following steps can be used in a such way for each project:
It sounds magical, but is it genuine? Well, I already mentioned that I am in possession of a fine collection of all required tools to successfully carry out such a process, but what I have learned from some unwelcome experience in the past is that no software can assist you to magically find the most profit-yielding niche and keyword, product and ads or to write down a credible sales copy for your blog. You are always left alone to make these most important resolves, and have to count on your creativity and common sense.
The initial inference could be,… The Magic Bullet does not exist, and none, or a touch of those bonuses would help me either! But, what were the grounds I at the end made up my mind to buy this Magic Bullet System? Well,…:
Well, I still could not make up my mind!
Ooops, this has become longer than I expected. I will continue in the next article. There I will tell you more about how I by accident began promoting the Magic Bullet System, the amount of money I lost –in spite of (or because) I proposed a bonus of $500 – and how only one phone call made me think differently. Important! Have a look at the info downwards too.
I by now mentioned that, in accordance with to some not too untrustworthy sources, the Magic Bullet System may resume with a little number of free seats for those people who could not receive their chance on launch day. We will know shortly. Come back once more and make sure you Bookmark this page (CTRL+D), or register and receive the privileged backdoor access list.
As my ….Thank You, for heading over and signing up for your backdoor access, a surprise suite is in store for you. Take a look immediately
Take care.
Andre Klein
Filed under Wordpress · Tagged with Affiliate, Affiliate Marketer, Bonus, Bullet, Chris Carpenter, Curiosity, Disillusionment, Final Result, Frank Kern, Gauher Chaudhry, Good Luck, Inbox, Internet Marketer, John Reese, Launch, Launch Day, Magic, Magic Bullet, Marketer, Merits, Mike Filsame, Publicity, Receive, Single Day, Story, System, System Affiliates, Trying, Variants
Hi Friends
Google is Best and Top Search Engine, We know that But not everyone from us know How can get traffic and visitor from Google.
Many Times I looking for site or software to help me.
Sometimes it takes weeks to months for Google to crawl your new website. I am putting here a list of 5 best methods to make your site get indexed within hours, which I follow whenever I launch a new website.
I am putting this list into 2 different articles to make it easier for me to keep the article short and informative. The first method I follow as soon as I launch my new site is
1. Submitting the site to social bookmarking sites from multiple accounts: The trick here is to submit your site to the sites having high crawling rate. Google loves social bookmarking sites as these sites are filled with constantly updated and fresh content. Hence, the crawling rate of these bookmarking sites are very high. As soon as the search engines find your URL in these sites, they index your site as well.
Submit your site to Stumbleupon, Delicious, Digg, Propeller, Mixx. And email your friends introducing your site and requesting them to do the same from their accounts (only if they like your site. Nothing spammy! ). I personally follow this method. Using this method alone, my sites get indexed within minutes and sometimes within hours.
2. Linking to the already indexed page: If you have newly added a page to your old site and want to get it indexed, pick up the most frequently indexed page and popular page from your site and add your new page URL to the content of the already indexed page. Make sure that the content of the old, already indexed page is related to the content of the new page. So that, when you add the URL in the content, it should look natural to the reader as well as to the search engine.
3. Article Submission: After you implement the first two methods, if your site is not indexed yet, start writing article related to your niche having a link to your site, and submit them to different article directories. If you do not have enough time to submit to 100’s of directories, start with EzineArticles.com. You should be getting traffic to your article within minutes after your article is successfully submitted. As you keep getting traffic, Google finds your article, crawls your article, picks up your site URL and indexes your site.
4. Blog Pinging: If your site contains a blog, submit your blog to blog pinging sites. These pinging sites update the search engines that your blog is updated. There are many blog pinging sites available. One of them that I use is pingomatic.com. Make sure that your blog is updated with new content and importantly, place a link to your site from your blog. So that when Google visits your blog, it visits your site too and indexes it.
5. WordPress: Create a Wordpress blog and link your site from your blog. It just takes minutes/couple of hours for a Wordpress blog to get indexed. That is because Wordpress automatically submits your blog to search engines. Place a link back to your site from this Wordpress blog.
You can submit your website URL to 20+ top search engines for free, including Google. all this free manual and auto submission to the highest-rated…
Submit Site url To all Search Engines.. add url Now
Thank you and Good Luck
Filed under Wordpress · Tagged with Add Url, Article Submission, Digg, Engines, free, Google, Hi Friends, Launch, Mixx, New Url, Niche, Propeller, Search, Search Engines, Site, Site Software, Site Url, Social Bookmarking Sites, Software Help, Submit, Submit Url, Top Search Engine, Traffic, Url Search
Marketing your business properly is one of the most fundamental skills required to achieve success. In order to have a successful, established business, it’s important to be sure you are advertising your business in an effective, value for money way that’s likely to generate a return on investment. Not all advertising works, and where some advertising campaigns may turn out to be incredibly successful, others will have minimum or only short term effect.
Crucial to learning to properly market your business is determining the difference between direct response advertising & brand advertising.
Direct response advertising is far more important, at least in the short term, to the success of your business. This is advertising that demands an action from the target. Examples could include details of a specific offer, a new promotion or launch of a new product. This is advertising designed to tug at the emotions of customers, prompting them into action, and it is this form of marketing that will boost sales and cash flow in the short term.
The alternative, and less effective for a new or small business is brand advertising. While this might be a successful technique in some niche markets, generally it is a more expensive way of building sales than employing direct response advertising techniques. By strategically promoting the brand and the underlying brand values, this form of advertising ultimately vicariously promotes the individual products and helps to build customer loyalty.
Deciding which route is most relevant for your business is the first step in ensuring that you are advertising your business properly and effectively.
Brand advertising is pretty effective for big businesses or a business in a particular small market niche which may find it profitable to appear to be a brand leader. However it does require much more significant investment, because of the lack of direct responses generated and the more subtle effect it has on bottom line sales. Thus for a new business on a start-up budget, it might be best to steer clear of brand advertising – at least, initially.
The next step is to find some way of tracking your return on investment (i.e. response) from each specific advertising campaign. This could be achieved by only advertising one offer through a particular medium, or by advertising with slightly different phone numbers to manually record the number of leads from two different advertising strategies. Also, remember to take account of the cost of different advertising campaigns. Work out overall which advertising strategies are most cost effective for your business.
Finally, advertising your business must be viewed as a cumulative process. To start with, going for direct offers is the best way to encourage first-time buyers, which could then hopefully translate into a loyal customer based. Continuing to grow your business through advertising of this nature is perfectly plausible, and over time it may even prove cost effective to switch to some brand advertising techniques.
It is important not to rush in to advertising in a big way until you have tried out some mini campaigns to evaluate the response.
Filed under Advertising · Tagged with Advertising, Advertising Campaigns, Advertising Techniques, Advertising Works, Amp, Brand, Brand Leader, Brand Values, Business, Business Response, Cash Flow, Customer Loyalty, Direct Response Advertising, Emotions, Fundamental Skills, Individual Products, Launch, Market Niche, Niche Markets, Response, Return On Investment, Small Business, Subtle Effect, Target, Your
A good copywriter can help your business flourish but with the myriad copywriters all competing for your business, just how do you know who you should or shouldn’t hire?
In such a situation, knowing the right questions to ask is not only extremely useful, it’s absolutely essential.
1. Do you have examples of successful copy?
Every copywriter has to start somewhere and therefore some won’t have any successful campaign samples to refer you to. While these people obviously need a break, can you really afford to take the chance on somebody who may or may not be good at their trade? Your business is relying on the person you hire to produce copy that will draw buyers in and get your products or services moving. With this in mind, hire somebody who can show you successful copy for the medium you require and, preferably, provide you with references.
2. How long do you require before project completion?
Every project is different and only after giving your copywriter a full and thorough brief will he or she be able to provide a delivery date. However, it’s important that a deadline is agreed upon and that it falls within your requirements. There’s no point, after all, in receiving copy after the launch of a new product.
Always insist on:
A) A date for the first draft to be delivered, and
B) A delivery date for the final copy.
3. How much do you charge and what are your payment terms?
Some copywriters charge by the hour, others by word count and yet others by each individual project. In my experience it’s best to aim for an agreement on a “per project” basis although this does entail your giving the writer a thorough brief of the job before he or she can be expected to quote you. Always remember that you get what you pay for.
It’s also important that you agree on payment terms. Some copywriters require a percentage of the fee “up front”, others after delivery of the first draft and yet others require nothing until project completion. You should also agree on how and when payment should be transferred.
4. Are any necessary revisions included in the price?
Because a copywriter can’t possibly know your products or services as well as you do, there’s little chance of your receiving a perfect first draft. Of course, it’s your job to ensure that your copywriter has enough information to be able to put together copy that’s in keeping with your requirements but some editing will undoubtedly be necessary. Ensure that the fee quoted includes at least two revisions although expect your copywriter to set a deadline for such revisions; nobody wants to leave a project hanging open indefinitely. However, should you change your brief then it’s only fair that your copywriter bills you for any extra time spent working on the copy.
5. What information do you need in order to produce my copy?
For a copywriter to be able to produce his or her best work it’s important that all necessary information is provided beforehand. Your copywriter should be able to tell you exactly what he or she needs before the assignment begins, thus saving you the time and hassle of answering numerous questions “along the way”.
6. Will you be doing the work yourself?
Project managers often assume that the person they’re dealing with is the person who will write the copy but this isn’t always the case. If your copywriter is sub-contracting work you should ask to see copy previously written by the person producing your copy. A middle man generally tends to mean that some information is also more likely to be misunderstood (think Chinese whispers).
Other questions to ask are:
Have you handled this type of assignment before?
What size and type of business do you specialise in writing for?
What type of assignments do you handle? (e.g. web writing, press releases, brochures, speeches, etc)
Do you provide design work and/or graphics?
Of course, good old-fashioned “gut feeling” also come into play. A good working relationship is important – if you don’t feel comfortable with your copywriter then it’s probably best to look elsewhere.
Don’t try and re-invent the wheel, Let me show you how to start your own
business and be successful…The UK
Entrepreneurs Success Training Site…take a look today, you wont regret it
Filed under Copywriting · Tagged with Asking, Before, Break, Copywriter, Copywriters, Essential 1, First Draft, Flourish, Hiring, Individual Project, Job, Launch, People, Project Basis, Project Completion, Questions, Quote, Should, Them, What, Word Count
One method that many affiliates use to increase sales is offering a bonus package if they purchase the product through their affiliate link. It is best to offer a bonus that coincides with the product you are marketing.Instead of just telling them about the bonus in the email you send out have a link in your email to page that will have your review of the product and your bonus package. By showing them pictures or even a video will increase your conversion rate.The first benefit for using an adsense template, is that you have a web page that is professionally designed and can be edited with your content very easily and have the web page live very quickly. The professional looking web page will also help you increase your conversion rate. By seeing that you have a professional looking page, visitors will take you more seriously and trust your opinion of the product.The second benefit is that you also have adsense ads on the page that blend into the page. They will seem like they are a part of the web page and will not be screaming that I am an ad. If the visitor to your bonus web page decides that the product you are promoting is not for them, then they might click on one of your google adsense ads instead. The ads being shown will be relevant to the content on your page so the ads will be of interest to your visitors.Now the money you will make on the adsense click will not be as much as the commission of selling the affiliate product, but making some money is better than making none.A third benefit is you can use traffic techniques to rank your bonus page in the search engines to generate free traffic to your page. If you do this correctly then you can rank high for the keywords for the affiliate product. By doing this you can have traffic to this page for the long term and keep making commissions and adsense revenue long after the initial launch of the product.
Filed under Affiliate Products · Tagged with Ads, Adsense, Affiliate, Affiliate Link, Affiliate Products, Affiliates, Benefit, Benefits, Bonus, Bonus Package, Commissions, Conversion Rate, Design, Email, Free Traffic, Generate Traffic, Google, Keywords, Launch, Money, Package, Page, Page Visitors, Products, Search Engines, Templates, Video Conversion, Web Page, Your
Social Media sites are basically communities where like minded people gather to share information and experiences. They are viewed everyday by massive numbers of people and these same people actually generate the content for these sites. These sites are growing in importance because they contain information users find interesting, timely and informative and they are becoming a target for Internet Marketers who see them as an untapped reservoir of potential clients.
The top five Social Media websites in terms of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast are lead by MySpace. MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people internationally.
It is one of the most successful sites in recent years, amassing 124 million profiles and has transformed life online since its launch. MySpace is one of the most visited sites in the world and it’s introducing a huge number of people to content syndication and they allow millions of people around the world to publish to the web for the first time.
It is by far the dominant social network in the US and is at an all time high in terms of audience reach and engagement according to both comScore and Neilsen. Coming in second is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is booming in terms of visitors and contributors. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for the most part written by the masses and therefore should be viewed accordingly.
It is meant to be a starting point, a place to go for basic information and therefore it’s like any encyclopedia, a place to begin your research but not a place to end it. Wikipedia is full of information, but this doesn’t mean that it’s all reliable information. Wikipedia is a good example of the new Web 2.0 and is a fine first step to get the basics quickly, especially for technology and pop culture related questions.
It’s a wonderful resource if you use your own judgment and don’t always believe what you read. It is supported by a non-profit organization and exists to serve information in an open platform. Anyone can edit it and, of course, this opens it up for all the issues and inaccuracies that come with an open platform. However, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and often provides excellent summaries and detailed articles.
In third place we have YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Founded in February 2005, and based in San Mateo, California, they specialize in showing short videos created by everyday people. YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience.
It is the most popular site to visit for viewing online videos, sharing your favorite videos and for commenting on what you’ve seen. A slightly newer feature of YouTube is the ability to send invitations to people through email by using the “Invite Your Friends” feature.
In fourth place we have Facebook. According to Wikipedia: “Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves.”
Finally, at number five we have Photobucket. Photobucket is a photo-sharing and hosting site owned by News Corp. Photobucket is a photo and video tool that could become an online warehouse for the storage of digital media.
It is the Web’s most popular creative focal point, with nearly 40 million unique users around the world linking billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to hundreds of thousands of websites. It’s a tool that allows users to host images for use on social networking, e-commerce, gaming and blogging sites.
These sites are all about shared experiences and are based on the technology of Web 2.0. Social media sites are where people come together online to interact, share experiences and make friends. When formulating your Social Media Marketing strategy these five sites are the ones to target in order to make your presence known in the social media network and to drive this traffic to your website. They are the new wave online and it’s a wave which doesn’t appear to be going out anytime soon.
Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has turned his sights on internet marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob please visit:
Free Internet Marketing Advice
Filed under Social Media · Tagged with Comscore, five, Google, Inbound Links, Interactive User, Internet Marketers, Launch, Massive Numbers, Media, Myspace, Neilsen, Network Of Friends, Networking Website, Online, Page Rank, Personal Profiles, Photos Music, Social, Social Networking, Target, Today, Traffic Data, Untapped Reservoir, Websites, Wikipedia, Wond
After the launch of Bing with the positive market reaction, it is initially penetrated highly among the US searches. The growth rate of Bing throughout the June was good. As a result, it gained 0.4% share (Comparing with previous month share of Microsoft offices), according to Comscore. With that pace it was able to squeeze the growth of the Google. However, when we compare the shares of these two with June 2008, Bing lost 0.8% and Google gained 3.4%.Bing, With Rapid Growth Rate Penetrated Into The MarketThe repositioned Bing had a rapid growth rate in June. It is definitely positive sign for Bing. It may be due to the reason that people are curious about the new product by Microsoft and to test it. If Bing gives good experience to the users especially in its initial days, it may become a major competitor to Google in near future.No Growth For Google In June 09In June 09, Google led the search engine market with 65% share but with no growth from the previous month. Google overall yearly growth rate is 3.4%. So it is clear that the launch of Bing showed some impact on the search engine market. But still Google has its unbeaten competitive edge.Compared With the Previous Year Share of Microsoft Sites, Bing Lost 0.8%Even though there was rapid growth rate in Bingâs market share, it lost 0.8% from June 2008 to June 2009. Bing not even reached the old âMicrosoft sitesâ share. It is not a negative sign but a challenge for Bing. It shows that the initial efforts are not enough to sustain in the market.Bing Gained The Lost Market Share Of YahooYahoo retained the second position with 19.6% Market share but lost 0.5% from May to June 2009 and overall it lost 1.3% from June 2008 to June 2009. It is clear that the 0.4% gain of Bing entirely from 0.5% dropped share of the yahoo.Bing succeeds in its first month. Bing gained the lost market share of Yahoo. Though it indirectly affects Google, Bing gained on the Yahoo but not on Google. In order to perform well and gain on Google, Bing has to put more effort and maintain high momentum than earlier. Overall, this leads to a healthy competition between the three major search engines.
Filed under Traffic · Tagged with Bing, Competitive Edge, Competitor, Could, Gain, Good Experience, Google, Google Engine, Google Search, Google Yahoo, GoogleâS, Initial Days, Initial Efforts, Launch, Market Share, Microsoft Offices, Pace, Previous Year, Rapid Growth Rate, S Market, Search Engine Market, Search Google, Share, Squeezed, Yahoo, Yahoo Google
As with any business, you need to get the word out for your Internet business. And getting the word out on the Internet, is a little bit different from conventional marketing. On the Internet, traffic is everything. Without traffic, it doesn’t matter how well you design your site, it simply won’t take off. And if this wasn’t challenging enough, you also need to generate targeted traffic. That is, visitors who are genuinely interested in what you have to say (or sell) on your website. You can easily tell if you get the right kind of traffic just by examining your stats. Usually, genuinely interested visitors will take action on your site. They will click on links, examine your pages, send you emails, subscribe to your newsletter, or even make a purchase. And you want them to be doing something. Otherwise, you are just wasting bandwidth, serving up the pages. There are many ways you can attract targeted traffic. One of the best ways to attract such traffic, is to release news about your internet business on a regular basis. See, one of the greatest mistakes that new internet marketers make is that they wait for things to be perfect before they start marketing their site. This is not the correct approach to adopt. You have to forget about perfection! As soon as your website is ready to take in orders, you have to start promoting your site. Don’t wait until your site or product is product. Start promoting immediately! As an example, let’s say you want to build a membership site with loads of features. You want to have forums, blogs, private member’s lounge, download area, and so on. Don’t wait until you have all these features ready before promoting your site. You can start with just one feature, and release a piece of news about that one feature. It could be the launch of a new blog, or the launch of a new forum, or whatever. You get the idea. As you continue to work on your site and improve on your business, there will be tons of opportunities to release news about various improvements. You launch a new blog, you release some news. You start a download area, you release some news, and then you keep going. If you adopt this approach, you get a lot more exposure for your internet business. In addition, you are also making money along the way, which is great. So never wait, always promote. A great way to release news about your internet business is to submit articles. These articles contain interesting news about your web business, and article directories are more than happy to accept them. With each article, you can include up to 2 (sometimes 3) links. This is great for direct traffic, and also for SEO purposes. Remember, what is want is targeted traffic. It is logical to assume that if someone reads the entire news article and clicks on a link to visit your site, he or she will be more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. When you have targeted visitors on your site, half the battle is won. And success is just round the corner. Now all you have to do is to find a way to convert the visitor into paying customers.
Filed under Blogging News · Tagged with About, Bandwidth, Blog, Business, Conventional Marketing, Correct Approach, Download Area, Emails, Greatest Mistakes, Interested Visitors, Internet, Internet Business, Internet Marketers, Internet Traffic, Launch, Links Pages, Little Bit, Marketing Internet, Marketing On The Internet, News, Newsletter, Private Member, Releasing, Targeted Traffic, Your
The Sky News Blog is UK’s first blog site dedicated to a daily news show. Since a blog is similar to an on-line diary where the writer’s thought is posted, how effective would it be when used in relation to news? Sky News is a 24-hour television show in Europe who has for its main competitor, the BBC News-24.
History of Sky News
Sky News first began broadcasting in February 1989 and has transmitted continuous live news ever since. It quickly gained a reputation for journalistic integrity which gave it the much needed prestige despite operating on a shoe-string budget. It has likewise remained unique in an industry where presenters are rapidly hired and fired. Many of its original presenting team remains with the channel.
Other channels have tried to emulate Sky’s standards and methods but were not always successful in doing so. It was the only channel at its league until the launch of the BBC News-24 in November 1997. Sky News filed a complaint with the European Commission which argued that the publicly funded BBC News-24 was unfair and illegal under the European Union Law. However, the commission ruled in favor of BBC stating that the state aid was justified due to the public service remit of BBC.
To be competitive, the Sky Channel launched its Sky News Active which was a 24-hour service providing headlines on demand. Due to its success, the 8-screen video news service was likewise launched which was way ahead of the standard 4-screen. The Sky News Poll was also popular with its new question for each day. It has become common for questions and subjects to change throughout the day depending on news and developments.
Sky News won a 5-year contract to supply news bulletin to the British Terrestrial Channel Five in the year 2005. On the same year, Sky News was relaunched from a brand new studio in West London, replacing the one that has been used for almost 17 years in Isleworth. Along with the transfer came heavy revision of music and on-screen graphics. The station has a very recognizable line like CNN which is read every hour, giving the show name and presenters.
This renowned news broadcaster also has a forum called the Sky News Panel, which is basically an on-line research group. It lets its members express their opinions on various subjects. It makes use of short surveys which would only take minutes to complete. Some surveys are targeted at specific profiles but may be weighted to the UK population where national opinion is needed.
Anchors in the likes of Eamonn Holmes and James Rubin have been secured while experimenting on new schedule and format. Sky News aims to provide a fast moving, highly-produced program that gives everyone a chance to catch up on all the news that matters. Emphasis is given on pace, pictures and people combined with the best footage of the day and sharp reporting from field correspondents.
The Live at Five on Sky News features dedicated spots for sports, showbiz as well as its own weblog. The blog spot is Sky News’ way of taking the time out to hear the reader’s views on the news that have caught their attention. A selection of contributions to the blog is read out daily so that real opinions get on the show.
The Sky News Blog
Sky CEO Rupert Murdock has discovered the wonders of the Internet and has placed particular interest on social media and blogging. His interest brought him a step further when he bought various on-line companies including Intermix and http://IGN.com. Not one to be left out from the fun, Sky came out with its first blog in an attempt to connect with its audience. It is widely believed that Sky’s acquisition of Tim Levell, the former editor of the BBC Action Network, had a lot to do with this move. In fact, he has provided some of the posts found in the blog.
The blog is personally led by Sky News at 5 anchorman Jeremy Thompson. It thankfully looks and feels like a real blog which cannot be said for many other things that call themselves blogs. This is actually Sky’s first attempt at blogging but it seems to have succeeded in avoiding the most obvious pitfalls related to it.
This blog is designed to be identifiable and distinct from the channel’s news website offering. Whereas the news website and TV channel delivers news, blogs explain how and why such news are being delivered. This is what is usually referred to as “back channel conversational content”. However, since the launch of the blog coincides with the relaunch of Sky News as a whole, discussion on topics not necessarily thought provoking such as the show’s new set have been occupying considerable space in the blog. Conversations regarding the process of how editorial decisions are arrived at for example are probable discussion of interest to readers.
Large companies and organizations who have managed to establish web presence need to maintain strong control of their blogs. This would necessitate hosting those blogs within their own domain space. Hosting a blog on a third party might not be able to provide seamless integration with the rest of a company’s website. There are important aspects to be considered such as quality control and availability. A site that goes down or begins to bug-out necessarily affects the individual reputation of companies.
The blogosphere is quite partial to personality led blogs. This is one of the reasons why the Sky News blog works. However, it could benefit from more posts written by Jeremy Thompson.
The blog encourages as many people as possible to take part in the discussion of various topics. The company has adopted a light touch policy which essentially allows for any comments as long as it is not offensive, racist or irrelevant. Participants are further encouraged to be constructive, friendly and informative.
Pre-moderating of comments was done during the experimental stage. This is expected to change as the site develops well. The blog is primarily linked to the Live at 5 shows and not the whole channel thus moderation of comments is done during daytime working hours.
Contributors are requested to provide their names, physical address and e-mail address although these details do not get published on the site. It is just a way for the company to determine the intentions of those people who would like to be a part pf their blog. Anonymous postings are not published. Sky News is perceived to have made a very brave move when it plunged head-on towards the blogging world. Whether or not their blog accomplishes something over and beyond the accomplishments of its regular websites would depend on the people handling it and how much they are prepared to meet the changing needs of consumers.
Filed under Blogging News · Tagged with 17 Years, Angle, Bbc News 24, Blog, Isleworth, Journalistic Integrity, Launch, Line Diary, Live News, New Question, News, News Bulletin, News Poll, News Show, Remit, Shoe String Budget, Sky Channel, Sky News, Sky Television, Television Show, Terrestrial Channel, Video News Service, West London
