stedavies.com - communications consultant

Anyone who reads Ewan MacLeod and the gang over at SMS Text News know that they blog like troopers. Every day I’ll find roughly five (sometimes more) unread blog posts in my feed reader. They’re the one stop shop for news relating to mobile phones and the blog’s generally written in lively and humorous tone. Lately Ewan’s been blogging quite frequently about mobile operator 3UK and one of his most recent blog posts is an interview scoop with 3UK’s director of sales. Great for any blog to have a large operator take it seriously and rightly so.

However, one of the SMS Text News blog’s regular commenters suggests that Ewan is being paid by 3UK to blog about their products, service and (in this case) their staff. Ewan’s wrote a follow up post and this is what he said:

“I’ve recognised that the coverage we’ve been giving to 3UK has been pretty continual recently. There’s a simple answer why, though: Nobody else talks to me – and I think 3UK are, generally speaking, doing a good job. I haven’t been afraid to hop up and down in annoyance at, for example, their N95 delays and the market opportunities I believe they lost as a result.

“However, when I’ve talked to other operators – in the UK and beyond – they dont reply. I have written emails and, on occasion, made phone calls to PR departments. Generally speaking, they don’t want to know, or don’t know how to handle interaction with a blogger.”

He continues.

“3UK do pick up the phone to me. Their PR (external and internal) are very responsive. They called last week and asked if I’d like to talk to Marc. They called three weeks ago and asked if I’d like to talk to Fergal, their Director of Handsets. They phoned up a while ago and asked if I’d like an N73 device to review – I explained I already had one, but then recognised it wasn’t factory-fitted with X-Series, so borrowed the device and handed it to Ben Smith who wrote a brilliant summary.

“So, 3UK coverage here on SMS Text News will definitely continue – more so if they continue to react and communicate with me as they have been doing. I’m always excited to meet industry executives, irrespective of the brand they work with.”

So, there you have it. I don’t have any stats on the SMS Text News blog but I know it’s popular in mobile circles and am willing to bet that those involved in the mobile space will read it, either frequently or infrequently. I don’t know a great deal about Ewan and the rest of the SMS Text News team either but, from reading the blog, I know that they’re passionate about all things mobile.

The other operators are missing an opportunity in my opinion.

technorati tags: sms+text+news, ewan+macleod, three+mobile, blogger+outreach