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KHJ-AM radio in 1927
Journalism uses the web now

We last wrote about Help A Reporter Out (HARO) in November 2008.    At the time, we were using a line of 23,000 addresses.  I have no idea if that was HARO honcho Peter Shankman’s number or one that came to me in a dream, but I know from observing (disclosure: and from buying ads) that HARO has grown like a weed.

What started as a Facebook group is now a lovely little site that just happens to connect 100,000 people with 30,000 journalists. Wow. You need to be one of those 100,000 if you’re not already.  I’ll venture a guess that I send a client or friend a HARO listing at least 3-4 times each week.  They’re appreciative 0f the chance to be a source for a media outlet, and I’m glad that someone whose skills and knowledge I trust is actually a source.

Since writing that last HARO piece,  the list is now a site that lets you specify additional verticals you want to read about and has a nice web interface for managing your web account. Over a relatively short period of time, my wife has appeared in a book on working moms, I’ve been interviewed by NPR for a healthcare piece on a subject dear to me and a really terrific blogger ran another interview with me about small business ad agencies.  Then there are those hundreds of referrals.

So sign up for HARO already.  I have no affiliation with the site beyond finding HARO the best example of crowdsourced data sharing that ever hit the Internet.  You’ll get a minimum of 3 pieces of email a day and some reporters have tight deadlines so at least skim the mail when you’re reading the rest of your email.  Stacking it with other email to read on the weekend doesn’t quite work. Oh, and HARO is free for reporters and sources.  Ad supported with a single tiny text ad at the top, HARO is a smart read. See you in the Sunday papers.

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Amazon Kindle DX
Amazon’s new microtargeting initiative

This is how microtargeting works and why the best continue to earn great profits. Amazon (AMZN) is that e-commerce company that continually launched and refined until it assumed a position in worldwide retail, not just e-commerce.

Pundits scoffed at the free shipping for $25 offer until data showed that incremental purchases and lifetime value paid for the shipping.  Skeptics scoffed again when the company said it would deliver millions of Harry Potter books on each book’s drop date, but the company made it happen and secured millions of pre-orders.  And even more skeptics derided the notion of Amazon Prime, the $75 fee that provides free two day shipping and low cost 1 day shipping for a $75 annual membership fee.

I’m in my third or fourth year of Amazon Prime membership so I can’t scoff too much at that one. Now here’s the gamble that underscores how a company doing its research can create amazing sales lift. TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon has a 30 day money back guarantee on its Kindle e-book reader with shoppers allowed to keep the Kindle even if they get their money back. Before you go running off to burn Amazon for a free Kindle, the offer is only available to certain customers.  I didn’t get one, and I’ve spent thousands at Amazon over the years.   Smart money says that Amazon is screening demographics, buying characteristics and web analytics for prolific buyers with the goal of getting more Kindles into circulation. Some people will get a free Kindle.  More will buy the Kindle, like it, goose sales of e-books and influence others, maybe even become evangelists.

The lesson is that being rigid about your analytics and metrics allows you to be an aggressive marketplace.  About seven years ago, I created Carfax’s BuyBack Guarantee program.  That was an aggressive program too that essentially promised that the data company would buy any vehicle if a Carfax report had been purchased and a problem title was later found on the vehicle. The marketing team loved it.  The CEO loved it.  The money people, the insurance people, even some of the data people were a wee bit skeptical.  But I had enough data to overcome Board objections, to convince the insurance people and to roll to market.   Our agency even recut our ads to tag the new program at the end of each spot. I just checked their site and the program is still active, just like Amazon’s $25 free shipping program is interwoven into that company’s brand promise. The whole thing starts with data.  If you don’t understand all of your data, you can’t be aggressive and profitable.

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Our conference call to discuss implementation logistics with a brand new client was minutes away.    I closed my office door so I didn’t bother my neighbor and fired up my contact list. My computer seemed to hesitate and then something bad happened. The computer began rebooting.

A printed phone list is your equivalent of belts and suspenders

Remember this was a brand new client whose contact information hadn’t yet made it to my address book and phone.  The computer seemed to take a long time simply to get to a Windows splash screen.  The call was due to begin. What do you do in that case?  Does someone run to an office, find the number on the shared calendar, copy it down (hopefully doing so correctly while in a rush) and dash back?  Do you wait for the computer to finish rebooting and then quickly access your files?  Yes, you should have dialed in at least five minutes early, but you didn’t. What if your network was down?

Here is what I learned. A simple printout once a week of my phone list reduces a lot of hassle.   You don’t need a Rolodex the size of your grandfather’s with yellowing cards, coffee stains and liquid paper corrections from typing the information.  Once a week, whenever you do your essential office housekeeping, print out a telephone list and stash it in your bag.

There have been two recent RIM outages so don’t crow about your Blackberry.  There have also been Gmail outages and any network person will tell you that servers, workstations and laptops will all fail at some point.  But the entire phone system in your city?  Not likely, and anything that causes that widespread an outage is on the news.

After what seemed to be an hour but was in reality a couple of minutes, I was dialing the phone and welcoming the new client to the fold.  Of course, I first had to apologize for dialing into the call after he did, something a printed phone list would have prevented.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazbot/ / CC BY 2.0