How to use Google News and Blog Alerts to Build Your Populist Media Empire

When I was employed by big-corporate PR, I used Google News Alerts religiously. Still do. It’s a fantastic service, constantly filtering the Google index for current news relevant to my search query and delivering it to my inbox every day. At Apollo, I was interested in news about our company, and news about our competitors, partners, and vendors. Every day I’d get slogs of data to pile through, press releases to scan, and punditry to parse.

And after the list of headlines came the list of mentions in the blogosphere; post after post of opinionated bloggers and students, some slamming the organization for one reason or another, largely for things we could do little to rectify (I lost my financial aid money, I can’t drive, the school hates me, my lemonade monkey peed in my hair, etc.). But most of the blog commentary came from conscientious, diligent writers, passionate about their cause, and eager to share that passion with the world.

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Health Net of Oregon Humane Society now up on Vimeo

Here is the first of four pieces I’m working on for Health Net of Oregon. The video was originally part of a four-part series on the communities that Health Net serves through their customers, intended for staggered launch in 2007. Unfortunately, it took far too long to get the four clients lined up to participate, so we were only able to complete this first one on time.

The intent of the project was spot on, however. The company was looking for a way to promote it’s own goodwill. I was — and still am — a staunch believer that the best way to frame goodwill is through the voices of your best customers: guilt by association.

Oregon Humane Society: Health Net Customer Story Part 1 from Pete Wright on Vimeo.

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Why Lessig is 4obama

Watch this video. It’s a presentation cast of Laurence Lessig giving what I believe is one of the best summaries of why we should be considering Obama strongly, particularly those of us who were Edwards supporters, as requested by Lessig supporter. It is not only a great talk, but a wonderful example of effective presentations, by one of today’s master orators.

Beer:30 Live! for 9/21/2007

This week, mean ol’ Uncle Curt Siffert from curtsiffert.com joins Shane and me to talk up the week of oddities. A man gets struck by lightning. In the penis. A University of Florida student is tazered on YouTube. The New York Times prints a story on how the Iranian President will not be allowed to visit Ground Zero on his up-coming trip to the UN, which he doesn’t actually want to visit. Congress overwhelmingly passes a resolution renouncing MoveOn.org as “mean”. All that and more this week on Beer:30 Live!

Beer:30 Live! Ep 47: When Lightning Strikes

CBS Dumps MoveOn.org Ad

All right, how silly is this? Like the network has never run an issue ad or special during primetime? Whatever.