Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow offers up 17 sage tips for getting bloggers to write about your site. Embarrassed to admit we're weak on some of his linkage recommendations. We'll need to fix that.
From this week's issue of Informationweek: 17 Tips for Getting Bloggers to Write About You
So what are the particular attributes, characteristics, approaches and philosophies that set these PR gurus apart? Here’s some flavor from five of my all-time favorites:
The microblogging platform, Twitter, remains my Godot. I'm still waiting for someone to show me how it can be a useful PR and marketing tool. To that end, Jeff Jarvis has done a better job than most in making the case in a recent post on his blog.
I'm still not buying it...yet. I'm still in the same camp as Getting To First Base authors, Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo: maybe I'll change my tune in 6 months, but right now Twitter is primarily an ego distillery.
Yet Jarvis' argument that Twitter's cut-to-chase format is ideal for things like real-time political reporting, as well as the interesting new apps being built with its open API, has tempered my skepticism.
Now if someone could only point me to a decent, measurable case study...
Think product reviews don't matter much? Try telling that to gizmo retailer Sharper Image, who filed for bankruptcy today due largely to a crippling review of its Ionic Breeze air purifiers in Consumer Reports magazine.
Suckers like me fell for the company's hyper-advertised clean air wonder. But the review showed that the Ionic Breeze not only didn't clean the air, it released harmful ozone, triggering an avalanche of consumer lawsuits.
Don't get me wrong; reviews are an important piece of a successful product launch strategy. No, strike that: they are an absolute must. A recent study from the e-tailing group found that nearly nine out of 10 US online consumers surveyed in February 2008 were influenced by reviews before making a purchase.
Just make sure your product works as designed and doesn't trigger childrens' asthma attacks first.
In his recent blog entry , veteran CAD journalist Roopinder Tara addresses the “blogger vs. reporter” debate. This post is based on his first person experience of “co-mingling” with bloggers at an industry event. Roopinder intends to write a series of postings on this very issue. 
Mediaweek is reporting that CNN is jumping on the social news bandwagon with a new site called iReport.com in which any citizen journalists can publish content unvetted by CNN editors. It will function much like other popular community-governed news sites like Digg, Reddit and Mixx, though more YouTube-like video centric.
So is CNN finally crying uncle to the unfettered social news onslaught that has eroded its web readership? After all, it's been dabbling with user-generated content since 2006 through its iReport submission site, though with strict editorial oversight. According to the report:
CNN executives acknowledge that iReport.com’s openness is something of a departure for a news organization that prides itself on accuracy and editorial judgment. But iReports have become increasingly popular, and in many cases have even proved beneficial in the reporting of breaking news. Some of the most compelling footage from last April’s shootings on the Virginia Tech campus came from the 420 user-gen video clips CNN received, while last year’s California wildfires yielded more than 11,000 submissions.
