Should Company Reps Post News Here?

I want to run something by DomainInvesting.com readers that I have been tossing around internally for a while.

How would you feel about having a representative from major domain industry companies (parking services, registrars, registries, marketplaces…etc) publish news releases and other articles here on DomainInvesting.com?

At first blush, people might see this as “PR fluff” or something along those lines. The way I see it is that readers would then be able to follow up with questions and comments about the service. This would create a public dialog that would benefit visitors who are able to get answers to questions they pose. It could also help industry companies improve or fix products and services.

I’ll give you an example of what this would entail:

Yesterday, Uniregistry announced the launch of Uniregistry Market and I wrote an article about it. Instead of having me write about the news, a company representative would author an article about the launch and about the new Marketplace. People could then post questions and comments, which would be seen by the company. This would make it easier for companies to respond to questions and comments that might be shared by other people in the business.

I see the downside being that it could come across as public relations more than news. The positive aspect is that people could ask their questions publicly, directly to the author of the article. These companies would know that comments aren’t generally censored, so they would need to be prepared to deal with positive and negative comments in a public manner. This isn’t all that different from forums, but the company would be expected to participate.

I am eager to hear your thoughts on this.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. If I want to read news posted by someone else, I’ll go to their blog to read it. Or they can buy a promoted headline on Domaining.com and I can decide if I want to read it.

    Your job as a blogger and news reporter (sorry, not sure exactly what you consider yourself to be) is to provide insight. If you do a good job, I’ll come back and read your blog more often and hoepfully click on a link or two of an advertiser if they offer me something of value or interest.

    If you continue to let your blog be overrun by press releases, that would be a disappointment. Your insights go well beyond any press release copy that someone can write. And it’s going to be such a “glossy” piece that it won’t even sparka discussion.

    In my opinion, it would be a real waste of space.

    Continue what you do. Review press releases. Don’t waste your time writing about crap. Dig into the details, and provide us something worth reading. In other words, keep up the great work!

    • I appreciate the feedback.

      What spurred this is that I am still a bit confused by Uniregistry Market, and I think others might not understand everything there is to know. Allowing a rep to publish news would ensure questions and comments are seen by the company. The company would understand that in exchange for the opportunity to share news, they would also need to be willing to field questions and address concerns.

      For all I know, there might not be any takers!

  2. Elliot, with you as the gatekeeper, I would welcome something like that. I really need to stay informed on new companies & services but have limited time to do so. While there will likely be some critics of the proposal, it could potentially be very helpful to a good number of domain investors. I think it is definitely worth a try – maybe a test run would be a good idea.

    • One of the good things is that if I tried this and allowed some companies the ability to write articles, I could revoke that access if they weren’t willing to answer questions or found that it was being abused somehow.

  3. It is like guest blogging vs news.

    Though one person’s news is another persons SPAM.

    Where do you draw the line? on what is news or not news? If you say you take news, then someone says, “I HAVE NEWS” and you say “NO THANK YOU, that is not news to me” … well you are then the jerk.

    You can always “excerpt” news stories in your blog post, like the “anti” Sarah people have been doing for the past 3 days …
    http://academic.at.sfsu.edu/CMS_uploads/files/7faff-358.pdf 🙂

    Depends on your taste, I believe.

    I would choose excerpting and give a link to their press release, as your “editing” a excessive news release again could bring hard feelings, depending on how sensitive the press release owner is 🙂 LOL

    Good Luck!

    Remember when you had the “guest post” of .ws domains …

  4. You do not want to have confusion of what is your content and what is the press release content.

    The wiser thing to do is make a box where your ‘recent post’ box is located.
    ‘recent post’ would drop down 3 inches.

    The press release box would have a main title line and a summery description. Or, the first couple sentences. Ron brilliantly does it on the front page of dnjournal like ‘today in the lowdown’, etc. In Ron’s case, it is at the top of the page. I would suggest you experiment with having it on the right side (no pun intended) so it does not interrupt your daily articles.

  5. It’s already bad enough that half a dozen bloggers cover the same breaking story most of the time. Let the companies continue to put out their own puff pieces. I’d rather read the analysis of one or two insightful bloggers.

  6. In short Elliot NO. I am not interested in reading infomercials, scripted and/or paid content from big companies.

    It’s your site Elliot, you run it and provide the content. I come here for your thoughts, insights and perspective not some company or their paid employees. I enjoy YOUR site.

    These companies have their own sites to fix issues, take feedback and provide clarity to their customers. If they want to comment and respond to your articles or readers comments, let them do so in the comments section. Don’t give them a free platform to spin and spruke.

    Each day we already get enough bombardment of Flip this, Uni that, Daddy up and Jet you…

    Your objectivity will also be questioned. All bloggers who have paid advertisers or strategic relationships know which side their bread is buttered. They know the rules to not question or entertain criticisms of their advertisers and/or content providers. We get it.

    As can be seen from the other blogs and forums where company reps do jump out and in to respond, they have a squeaky wheel mind set and only respond to negative comments and criticism. All these companies have a hard time and lack of urgency responding to formal communications with suggestions, issues or complaints.

    Yes Domain Shane, before jump in to defend the company reps… all the companies’ reps quickly respond to you and are very helpful in fixing your issues… Yeah yeah heard it before. Well they don’t show the same level of interest or responsiveness to others or a small fish and you are smart enough to know that and the reasons why.

  7. Definitely a great idea Elliot — And this would be a Super Benefit to Both The Customer — The Potential Customer — And Domain industry companies… The Customers can clarify or comment what they Like or Dis-Like about “This Business” and what they would like to be improved and / or completely changed…

    Most of the good Domain Brokers – Registrars – DN Buyer’s & Sellers – The Domain industry business companies would be Extremely Grateful to Simply know about changes that Would help the Customer and their profits for at their Domain Business…

    * Your Comment (ES): I see the downside being that it could come across as public relations more than news.

    — Absolutely No Problem at All– Just Great Domain Business information for the Public & The Business & Their Customer’s…

  8. You have a truly excellent blog Elliot and what makes it unique is your insights and balanced coverage, as well as the valuable contributions by many commenters.

    I think your current format for covering press releases works great, your review of it adds extra value.

    Personally I would prefer more of your original thoughts and analysis, rather than promotional articles written by company representatives. To take the Uniregistry Market launch as an example, I think it would be interesting if you followed up your first article with a brief interview (5 – 10 questions) with a representative from Uniregistry, asking for clarification on certain issues as well as his/her response to specific suggestions or criticism made by your readers.

    Interviews like this would have significant promotional value, so perhaps you could make it a prerequisite that the person being interviewed also sets aside time to take part in the reader discussion.

  9. Elliot, you provide a valuable service by offering your insights based on your experience as a long time domainer/investor/site developer.

    Publishing PR pieces with company rep marketing hype enthusiasm (due to their inherent nature ) would decrease the reader experience

    Much better to provide a link on your site perhaps titled: Industry PR Releases + Co Reps

    That way you would be serving your readers needs to keep up to date with company new product/service releases, and facilitating dialogue; while maintaining separation of ‘church and state’ so to speak between editorial and advertising (what PR is).

  10. The ‘value’ in what you offer is your unbiased industry insight and analysis. Don’t see how simply becoming a platform for these companies PR machines would be of value. The only way it would work is if you actually asked for questions from your readers after the press release and then used these questions as a basis for a ‘Domain Sherpa’ style interview with representatives from the company.

  11. Before you do anything “Stupid” on your blog, please bring back the weekly domain listing… everyone loves that.

    “BullS” for sale at 1billion USD…

  12. No. Please stay in the format that has been established.

    I read your blog for your insight. PR is available on dozens of sites and will simply muddy up the gold you publish.

    Mark

  13. I think it’s a good win-win-win idea that I’d like to see as long as they are not protected from negative or uncomfortable questions and feedback that is not otherwise clearly and commonly understood to be unacceptable in any venue.

  14. It would be great to have company rep’s on for their views on the upcoming ICANN working group goals and progress. And then, they need to publish your blog on their site!
    An open discussion outside the working group would be greatly beneficial to the volunteers.
    How about subjects like standardizing platforms and transfer processes globally?

    I think the time is right for a respected blogger to bring the registries to the table.

    Cheers

  15. For you Elliot it’d be surely an interesting development for your website. However, for domain investors (as I assume, main type of a reader of domaininvesting.com) more content doesn’t necessarily have to mean more value. Everything depends on this content. Personally, I appreciate your commentaries more than news.

    Simple example:
    Like you’re saying about Uniregistry Market that you’re still “a bit confused”. Me the same! If the company faced all concerns publicly, people may clarify his/her thoughts they were commenting/discussing about.
    Other thing is how words would comply with reality but some public statements could serve as evidence or commitment for future judgment.

    On the other hand, if you treat as “news” information like “another new auction of .whatever domains” or “newG’s leaders” trying to create the new reality and discuss how fantastic their new extension is based on singular end-users they managed to attract somehow, or based on some sales, singular sales among portfolios of thousands of names and hundreds of unsold names in auctions, that nobody wants to buy… well… this would be simple marketing aimed on making hype.

    Looking at domain industry nowadays I’m worrying about situation where “lies repeated 100 times will be taken as the truth”.
    People who have made money in domaining aren’t active publicly (see eg. Rick Schwartz). The most active are these guys who want to make money now and you fellows domainers are one of targets.

    Overall, I think that if you Elliot decided to filter out “news” seriously, based on your best experience and feelings, the idea may work very well.

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