Month: October 2008

Blog search: Can Iterend upend Technorati, Google?

There’s a new blog search engine on the scene called Iterend that hopes to take on the top blog search engines, Technorati and Google Blog Search.

Mashable tested the newcomer against Technorati and Google and concluded that “the old dog Technorati still seemed to provide the best and fastest results when searching for the same exact keywords.”

Here’s the Mashable screencast of the experiment:

http://cdn.episodic.com/player/EpisodicPlayer.swf?config=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.episodic.com%2Fshows%2F2%2F256%2F10%2Fconfig.xml

Iterend is still in private beta, but if you want to test-drive it, first make sure you’re set up to accept cookies, then submit your email address to the site, and you’re in.

HighEdWeb according to .eduGuru and friends

The 2008 HighEdWeb conference is going on as I blog just down the road in Springfield, Mo. Since I’m not there to blog about it, I’m turning you over to .eduGuru, where Kyle James, Michael Fienen and Karlyn Morissette will be posting updates. You can also follow the conference action live on Twitter.

Friday Five: phoning it in with contextless tweets

It’s feeling like a bang on the drum all day (video) kind of day, and you know what that means. More uninspired blog blather from yours truly. I’m totally phoning it in.

Today’s topic: Contextless tweets from the world of Twitter. Don’t try to read anything into this. Just go with it. Or not. Either way, happy Friday. Can I get a w00t w00t?

Pitching story ideas to bloggers

Some questions for the public relations and media relations folks out there:

  • How do you pitch your story ideas or press releases to bloggers? What tips, techniques, etc., do you recommend for successful story placement?
  • How do you decide which blogs and bloggers to pitch? Are you going for the big guns only, like TechCrunch and Boing Boing? Or are you targeting niche blogs?
  • More importantly, are you even pitching to bloggers at all? If not, why not? What things are keeping you from doing so?

I asked these questions last week on a communications listserv as part of my research for PR School 2.0, which happens in just a few weeks. I only received two responses about pitching to bloggers — one from a media relations guy who has had some success targeting niche and newspaper bloggers, and another from a media relations guy who doesn’t pitch to bloggers but had advice on how he would do it, if he did. The lack of response tells me that very few of us in higher ed are trying to pitch to bloggers.