Archive for May 21st, 2008

Okay, we all pretty much agree David Cook was the class of the field once they got down to the top 12 on Idol.

But was he always that way? Let’s flash back to the first time he appeared before Simon, Randy and Paula.

So David got moved to Hollywood Week - but if Simon had his way, that’s where it would have ended.

Yay, it’s over. But get ready - Canadian Idol starts in 2 weeks. Ugh.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

Working in radio locks me in to a pretty specific time frame. It’s not flexible, I’m on the air from 2p-7p every day. That’s it. That’s my shift. If I’m not there, it’s dead air.

I had an ex who joked that I would be so easy to cheat on, because she could just turn on the radio and know exactly where I was. Hmmmm I wonder why she’s an ex?

Jen’s a sales rep, so her schedule is a little more flexible and fluid. She has some conference calls and meetings, but really she makes her own hours to get the job done.

Z is pretty sick this week. The poor little bear is congested, has a runny nose and is having trouble sleeping. I caught a piece of what he has this weekend, and you can add achey and miserable into the mix.

Today as we were getting him ready to take him to daycare, he just started fighting. He was stuffy, coughing and crying. We couldn’t take him - but who would look after him? Jen had a day planned with her supervisor to get retrained coming back from mat leave, and I have to be on the air at 3.

Rock, meet hard place. Hard place, meet rock.

Eventually I traded shifts with our evening guy, so here I am at the radio station rocking the evening shift for the first time in more than a decade. It’s weird - but fun.

A caller just told me about Nannies On Call. A local company of bonded professional nannies who will offer care in a pinch.

Nannies on Call is Western Canada’s premier childcare agency serving Calgary, Vancouver and Whistler. We have been offering exceptional on call, temporary, part-time and full-time nanny services since 2001. You can put your mind at ease knowing that all of our nannies have been carefully screened – we ensure that our nannies are highly experienced, educated women with a passion for childcare.

The service is recommended by the concierge at the Fairmont Hotel, which makes sense. Away for a weekend and you want to leave the kids for a night - these pros will help.

$18/hr would have nicely covered the 2hr window between my work starting and Jen’s finishing today.

Next time.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

This article originally appeared in 24hrs Vancouver on May 21, 2008.

Don’t hate me, but I’m a daddy blogger.

I realized it this week when I looked down the article list at The Blog According to Buzz and found I had written more about the horrors of daycare and mango pits as teething aids than media and pop culture.

It’s not such a bad thing, I’m a new parent, it’s what my life is about right now and I’m meeting other new parents and sharing stories and support.

Heather Armstrong is perhaps the most famous parenting blogger on the internet. Online, she’s known as Dooce – a word that is also a verb. To be dooced is to be fired for writing about your work online. In 2002, Armstrong was fired as a graphic designer for writing about her experiences at a dot com startup. Since then she has told stories of depression, pregnancy, parenting and her family life in Utah. Her blog became so popular she didn’t need to look for another job and her husband quit his to handle the ad sales for Dooce.com.

You can read the full story here

… when you can watch YouTube the next morning?

David Cook blew it last night. He sang Collective Soul’s The World I Know.

He should have sang Billie Jean.

This means whiny, soft, sugary, lame, Broadway bound David Archuletta (and his crazy ass dad) will win.

It’s probably a good thing for Arch, I can’t imagine what his dad would have done to him if he lost.

In the end, just like in previous seasons, the loser will be the bigger winner. Cook will be on the radio by year’s end, Archuletta will be little more than Clay Aiken’s understudy.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

Guy Kawasaki interviewed Pro Blogger, Darren Rowse, for his Sun Microsystems blog last week and a piece of conversation at the end grabbed me.

Question: What do you think of Seth Godin not having comments on his blog?

Answer: I think that it works well for Seth (as does many things he turns his attention to). While the common convention is to give your readers a space to interact with you in the comments directly below your posts Seth’s chosen to let his readers interact with what he has to say on their own blogs (or with him via email).

From what I can tell, one of his main reasons for this was to cut down the work that he needs to put into comment moderation. I understand the temptation to do this - I’ve just hired someone to help me with this very task on ProBlogger.

However another stroke of genius (I’m not sure if it’s intended) with this approach is that Seth has made his blog a little more viral by not having comments. What happens when he writes something that people want to respond to? In many cases they blog about it - ’sneezing’ his post further than his current readership. [source]

It’s the type of marketing every.single.producer craves. Word of mouth. It’s not an advertisement, it’s not a pushed out message. It’s an honest to goodness recommendation from a friend to two friends who tell two friends and so on and so on and so on.

In Seth’s case, closing off the conversation forces the conversation to continue in a way that spreads his message. It’s a sneeze that instantly goes viral. It’s fabulous and immediately understood imagery. When Seth catches a cold, he gives to his readers who instantly want to spread it with every.single.other.person. Seth is patient zero.

Most radio stations can’t quite do that - yet. There’s not enough of an army mobilized to take the message and spread it. The passion in the audience just isn’t there, so opening up a forum for conversation on a show blog, or station website would be a good start to foster a sense of community and encourage the listeners who do care.

Seth explored the notion of the marketing sneeze 2 years ago on his site.

Lessons Learned from Trader Joe’s

I was talking with a colleague today about the magic of Trader’s. Here’s how they make billions:

1. they target a consumer that cares a great deal about what they buy at the supermarket. As a result, their customers are more loyal, and more important, are willing to drive farther to get there. This means they can have smaller, lower-rent locations (and fewer of them) which drives up sales per square foot and profits.

2. These customers are big mouths. They sneeze. When they serve something from Trader’s they brag about, they tell the story of the store. This drives down advertising costs. [source]

So how can radio create something to sneeze at?

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Video, Websites are all necessary tools to get the word spread, but unless your tools are properly set up to encourage community and word of mouth, you’ll fall flat. You’ll also need something engaging to be spread - a cold.

The personality needs to be outrageous, the content needs to be contagious, the audience needs to feel engaged and connected to the product to want to sneeze about it anywhere they can.

There’s a disconnect right now. A bridge needs to be built on two fronts. One - from radio to technology. Two - from radio to listener.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?