Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
The best pitch email I've ever received as a blogger
Below is an email that I received on Monday in my capacity as SA Rocks Editor/Owner. Read it first and then I'll go in to my reasons for liking the way it is structured (albeit coincidentally).
Hi Editor,You won't know me - I'm a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.Anyway, I'm going to take a flyer here - just drop a little bait and hope for a bite...I'm a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it's just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We've had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloiNow, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African - hope you're impressed!I'm not too sure what to say from here, man. I won't beat around the bush - obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic - another viewpoint to see what we're doing right!Look forward to hearing from you!
Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.
References
The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth's sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email's author.
Hope and a wish
The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn't being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.
Know the blog
James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: "My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album."
Play on my field
Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it's how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it's a good thing James didn't tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy's music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew "Apologize" by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.
Play to my Ego
The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: "Now, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos."How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.
End the pitch
Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.
Wordpress and Blogger both offer custom domains
I've said it before and I'll say it again; I hate it when people talk about things that they don't know about.I was reading a post wherein a commenter on the post was upset that the post referred to wordpress.com and blogspot.com blogs as free, easy and customizable. The commenter argued that Blogger and Wordpress don't offer custom domains. They definitely do offer custom domains such as .com, .net, .info, .biz and others, almost anyone domain you so choose really.The only cost you will incur is purchasing the domain of your choice (around R100 or less) and redirect your DNS (which only some hosts charge for). That's it. Bob's your Uncle, Fanny's your Aunt. Done and dusted.Strangely enough if that person had actually read this blog and simply done a search they would have found that I have posted on this topic before. My post was Blogger specific as I was using blogger back then.Let's review a quote from that blog post:
You need to purchase your domain and make sure that it’s working before you can select it as your new domain on blogger. Once these steps have been completed your old url will point to your new url so there wont be any links lost or time wasted in the past.
It's as easy as that.Wordpress is much the same as far as I know (which admittedly isn't too far). If you have a wordpress.com blog already all you have to do is enter your admin panel and enter a domain you have already registered and Wordpress will redirect all your links to that domain. Simple.From the Wordpress website:
It’s here: you can now use your own custom domain with your WordPress.com blog. For example, if your blog was currently at example.wordpress.com you could buy example.com from us and we would automatically move your blog over and redirect all your links and readers to the new domain.
If you don't have a domain registered you can use Worpress to register your desired domain for a measly $15/year. That is cheap. In fact that is under R400 a year to have a great looking, functional and customised website.
Big website, big adspend and a blogger blog?
Vottle has pumped some serious moola in to their advertising campaign recently. I think we have all heard them on 5fm or whichever other radio station it was.Yet I am left a bit baffled and bemused at their approach to blogging. They clearly believe they have a massive product if they are willing to pump money in to their campaign. They clearly have the money to do this, but they have a BLOGGER blog?Not only is the website a .com url, which means they have a hosting package attache to that .com, but they most probably have a great big hosting package to cope with the traffic they built up over the ad campaigns. So I ask you, where is the .com/blog blog? What are you thinking?Blogger might have been cool a couple of ages ago, but now blogger blogs are filled with porn, spam and clutter. .com blogs are the way forward, .co.za blogs are a very suitable substitute, but a blogger.com blog is not acceptable. They might have redirected the blog to "blog.vottle.com" But they have chosen to keep the Blogger template. This really makes no sense to me.I suppose that any online presence in the form of a blog is better than no online presence. But surely an ONLINE company knows better and knows about better services?Lock it up and throw away the key. Get a Wordpress blog.
DOWN WITH BLOGGER!!!!!!!!!
Ok, that heading is a bit overboard but I was fed up and about to slit my blogging wrists (but how would i type then???). So instead of doing that I have moved to Wordpress. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't get what I needed out of blogger, she was good for me at one point, but in the end, the relationship needs to be a two way street. I was giving more than I was getting.After I read this post on techrunch I knew I had to move and was making the right decisionThanks to the gracious assistance of one Mr Justin Hartman, I am able to host my site and have moved. Dude, you kick ass!Welcome to the new look for nicharalambous.com. I will not be changing the theme for a while now. I promise. I have said that before but this time it is believable (that's what all pathological liars say isn't it?).Please let me know what You think of theme, if you dig the design and if you think I stink!
Blogger Issues
I have been having some serious problems with blogger of the last 24 hours... is it just me?
TechAttack #4 - Haloscan
Haloscan is a comment moderation tool that replaces bloggers comments. I am trying to make use of this due to my recent discovery of coComment (see TechAttacks 3 & 3 update). coComment allows you to follow comments you have made on any blog,account, website or anything. Now to make use of coComment through my own blog I need to get rid of Bloggers comment system and install Haloscan. This all seems very complicated, but trust me, if I can do it, anyone can.The pro's of having Haloscan is that you can customize the look of your comment box and it has a directly built in extension for users who wish to make use of coComment (perfect for me). It also allows you to track comment numbers, people, stats etc. Blogger does not do this.The only downfall I can see so far is that I don't think that I can keep any of the old blogger comments without personally copying and pasting them in to the Haloscan comment block one by one... that's a lot of work for one person. So I am in the process of debating the whole value of using Haloscan if it means losing all the brilliance of my readers. We shall see.Keep a close look and see how it all works out. Let me know what you all think.