Blogs, Self Promotion, and the Pope
I don't know if Rogers Cadenhead meant it as an exercise in self promotion when he successful picked the domain name for the next pope, but if he didn't, I'd like to give him the prize for making good use of a unique opportunity.
Promoting a blog is one of the things I help my clients learn. Starting a blog is a piece of cake. Promoting it takes some creativity and effort.
Now I wouldn't necessarily advise domain speculation as a blog promotion strategy, but what Rogers did deserves some notice. Note that Rogers could have sold BenedictXVI.com for a tidy sum (as did the the owner of benedict16.com).
Instead he handled the situation with grace, donating the site to a worthy charity.
I'm pretty sure that Rogers didn't have self promotion in mind when he picked up Benedict XVI (you can read his statement on the topic here), but it had the effect of directing a huge number of new readers to his well-presented, well-written weblog. I know that I found it that way, and it's still on my RSS feed.
Was Rogers wrong to use the domain in this way? Has his treatment of the matter been too irreverent? I sure don't think so.
Besides, I have to respect a guy who says he gets "geeked out" on the papal election process.
Promoting a blog is one of the things I help my clients learn. Starting a blog is a piece of cake. Promoting it takes some creativity and effort.
Now I wouldn't necessarily advise domain speculation as a blog promotion strategy, but what Rogers did deserves some notice. Note that Rogers could have sold BenedictXVI.com for a tidy sum (as did the the owner of benedict16.com).
Instead he handled the situation with grace, donating the site to a worthy charity.
I'm pretty sure that Rogers didn't have self promotion in mind when he picked up Benedict XVI (you can read his statement on the topic here), but it had the effect of directing a huge number of new readers to his well-presented, well-written weblog. I know that I found it that way, and it's still on my RSS feed.
Was Rogers wrong to use the domain in this way? Has his treatment of the matter been too irreverent? I sure don't think so.
Besides, I have to respect a guy who says he gets "geeked out" on the papal election process.
posted by Unknown at 11:07 AM
1 Comments:
Thanks. I didn't have self-promotion foremost in my mind when I registered six papal domains, but like most bloggers I do not avert my gaze when I catch a glance of myself in the mirror. Having more than 100,000 people visit my weblog in one day, before I redirected the domain's traffic to the charity Modest Needs, was fun. For one glorious moment I was bigger than InstaPundit, Daily Kos, and Scripting News. A fact I will never get tired of sharing with people.
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