Sound of the second clue dropping...
A couple of days ago I poked and prodded an announcement from MediaMap about their plan to add journalists' blogs to their database of media contacts and profile information.
I was...er...less than convinced. Read the original post, below, and you'll see what I mean (meant?).
Then today, I got email from Jeff Mooney, MediaMap Director of Content Management and Educational Services. Jeff immediately got my attention by both flattering and then agreeing with me ;-) But he also went into a little extra detail about their strategy. With Jeff's permission, here's the main part of his message:
"...We definitely took the safer route by starting with journalists that are already familiar with who we are. We've learned quite a bit. The logical next step is to cover the most influential blogs in specific industries regardless of the blogger's background. The challenge is to do it well. For many of our customers this is the first time they are learning about blogs and they need to understand the rights, wrongs, risks and rewards before they pick up the phone."
This is very good news, imho. And my enthusiasm has only a little to do with what they're doing - I'm just delighted by how they're doing it.
Clearly their first announcement gets them out ahead of the game, even if their plan's not fully baked yet. To build from this point on, it sounds like they're going to be doing a lot of listening. As Jeff said, in a follow up message: "This is definitely an area where we have put our toe in the water and we want to use feedback from both the blogger and PR communities to help us..."
More than a demi-clue in that, IMHO.
