About two weeks ago a new online service called “Bre.ad” was made publicly available. At first glance, Bre.ad seems like a run of the mill link shortener, but it goes quite a bit beyond that. The service enables users to upload graphics and ad some text to create what they call your “digital billboard”. When you shorten a link with Bre.ad, visitors are first presented with your graphic and written message for 5 seconds before being taken to whatever web address your link was meant to go to in the first place.
I was dumbfounded when I read a recent New York Times article about mommy bloggers that indicated a conference session topic at an event called Bloggy Bootcamp was how to let public relations firms know you don’t work for free. A few months ago, I reached out to a prominent mommy blogger on Twitter to let her know that I had a client whose products she might be interested in – not a pitch, just a light toss that indicated I may pitch her down the road. She responded by saying, “I’ll be happy to work with your client. My fee is $125 per hour.” I was stunned.