Bill Bennett
Ten years ago is still made sense to talk about Windows Phone when comparing life with Apple, Microsoft or Google:
For some reason that I cannot rationalise, I woke up today thinking about this ancient story from my website and wondered “is this still the case?” and if it is (or isn’t) does anyone care anymore? And by ‘anyone’ I’m including Microsoft.
The time a New Zealand prime minister advertised a new laxative.
Or should that be Luxative?
Short answer: American cars are nothing like as well made as European ones. Or Japanese ones. They’re not even close.
Defamatory advertising algorithms
Any lawyers out there who can tell me if I can sue Google for defamation if the algorithm decides I’m the target market for an advertisement?
I’m thinking here of the time a few years ago when I got bombarded with ads for a Nickleback concert. If any family members or friends had seen those ads on my laptop my reputation as a cool person would have been shot to pieces.
That has to be worth a six figure settlement… right?
Found an America restaurant in Auckland:
It’s only a matter of time until INEOS tries to merge The All Blacks with Manchester United.
Can anyone spot a flaw in that plan?
It could be time to cut all ties with Shopify:
Seen enough of this movie.
Now can we fast forward to the part where Indiana Jones socks Nazis on the jaw and the Ark of the Covenant vaporises Elon Musk?
I installed DeepSeek on my phone and iPad for testing purposes, but it set off so many privacy and security alarms that I now have to stop testing.
Here’s the post I wrote earlier about the AI chatbot:
This Manchester United - Leicester City FA Cup tie is dreary… two teams that look like they don’t belong in the Premier League.
It wouldn’t surprise me if I woke up on morning in New Zealand, opened the news, and found the US president had issued an executive order to reinstate slavery.
Imagine you’ve just been elected as president of New Zealand.
What would be your first executive order?
I realise some people might think this odd, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s trip to Jaycar. www.jaycar.co.nz
This trip is to update my Repair Cafe tool kit, but I bet I find something else when I’m there.
The social web is the web
An excellent post cum manifesto from Dave Winer who has done some deep thinking about the web in the past.
Here he encapsulates one perspective on the current state of play that many of us would subscribe to even if it isn’t orthodox thinking.
Activity.pub is fine and good, but as Winer says, it isn’t the only open protocol. Links are essential, but I’d argue the RSS feeds first developed by WIner are equally important.
Two weeks ago I needed a courier label. Turned the wireless inkjet printer on and got a label first try. Today I’ve have spent almost two hours and still the MacBook can’t “find” a printer that is physically 1.5 metres away.
If you were really committed to a Paleolithic diet, you eat woolly mammoth steaks, the sabre tooth tiger, by the way, is inedible
NZ supermarkets sell bags of fresh chopped slaw and salad, which saves faffing about and means you aren’t left with three-quarters of a cabbage or whatever, but they come with packets of toxic-looking chemicals (allegedly dressing) that we throw away. Does anyone sell salad bags without the gunge?
Get straight to the point
Don’t waste time warming up when writing for online audiences. Get started straight away.
Readers are busy. They scan text looking for meaning and they want it fast. Other writing competes for their attention and it is only a click away.
Your first paragraph should summarise the entire story in less than 40 words. A 30-word intro is better. And make sure those words aren’t all in one sentence.
Don’t overload the first paragraph with too many facts. Save details for later.
Move straight to the action. Passive first sentences send readers fleeing for the exit.
Online, opening words are often a teaser to lure readers. If Google indexed your story, the first 150 characters become the descriptive text telling people what to expect when they click the link.
If you struggle to write short, snappy first paragraphs, imagine you are writing an old-style tweet. When Twitter still had its 140-character limit that was excellent training for writing introductions.
How advertising differs from publicity
People who live outside the marketing and media bubble don’t always understand how advertising and publicity are not the same thing.
Advertising is a commercial deal between a business and the media.
If you are an advertiser, you buy a fixed amount of print space, billboards, radio or TV airtime, or web traffic. You take responsibility for providing the advertising material – we call it copy in the industry – at your cost.
If you’ve got the budget, you can hire creative specialists to prepare the copy for you. Paying for professional writers is worth the cost. Advertising professionals know how to get results.
As an advertiser you are in control. You decide when and where your adverts run. You have the last say over the message.
Advertising is expensive. Publicity is often cheaper. It is also riskier.
Publicity is when you grab people’s attention in other ways. If you hire a publicist, a public relations expert or a press officer, those people will attempt to place stories in the media on your behalf. They can’t usually guarantee anyone will sit up and take notice.
You have far less control with publicity. It works best when you have something newsworthy or interesting to say. If it isn’t interesting then the media will ignore it. And your story can be crowded out on days when there are other more interesting stories.
Editors and journalists’ first responsibility is to their readers. They don’t see selling your business as their job. It is their job to keep readers informed and interested.
Publicity is a scattergun. It can work. It might not. Use advertising to make certain your message reaches your target audience. It acts like a guided missile and costs about as much.
There is a twist on the gap between advertising and publicity. Less professional (or more desperate) media outlets will swallow your publicity and possibly publish it on your behalf if they think their might be a future commercial relationship. This explains why you might often see dull or uninteresting publicity campaigns show up in the media.
Freelance writers have to unlearn bad habits
This is a post from 15 years ago on my main website. It was written in the golden age of online journalism when there was still plenty of money for freelances, but the point about writing tighter copy applies just as much today.
Print publishers paid freelance writers by the word. They needed to fill space around lucrative ads and draw readers in with informative or entertaining copy. There was a ready market for bulk, readable copy.
Freelance writers responded to market forces.
They learned to write long. Some padded their prose with waffle. Most didn’t feel pressure to write tight copy. A longer sentence bought a cup of coffee; a couple of extra paragraphs could fund a night in the pub.
Online publishing follows a different economic model. Web readers don’t hang around. As usability expert Jakob Nielsen says: “If you want many readers, focus on short and scannable content.”
Online publishers want snappy copy over and over to maximise page reads and advertising clicks.
Which means freelance writers have to unlearn bad habits and get back to writing tight copy. For us older journalists this means going back to our roots.
Those of us who learnt our trade in the 1970s grew up in a world where newspapers and magazines didn’t have acres of space to fill. And well-staffed newsrooms meant every available column inch was fought over.
Predictions for Premier League Match Day 23
Brighton v Everton - Home
Liverpool v Ipswich Town - Home
Southhamption v Newcastle - Away
Wolves v Arsenal - Away
Bournemouth v Nottingham Forest - Draw
Man City v Chelsea - Draw
Tottenham v Leicester City - Home
Crystal Palace v Brentford - Home
Aston Villa v West Ham - Home
Fulham v Manchester United - Draw
Last week I had five right. Still wobbling along at 49% for the season to date.