Mike Hayes' Journal

Hey...here's some stuff I'm working on.

James Blake's book is, in my opinion, getting stellar reviews; Darren Rovell, one of the most respected guys in the biz, called it the best book he's ever read by an athlete. Going to circulate this cover shot, and a couple of these reviews.

Also, working with some YouTube vids that I think are pretty quality. The first one is a video of Tursunov clowning around during a mixed doubles match. He dresses up in the same jersey as his female partner Nadia Petrova, and the part where he spikes the shot is hilarious. This video has been viewed 47, 556 times in 8 months - we should be able to double that in week! The second video is of another ATP goofball, Novak Djokovic, giving an interview while sampling one of his favorite dishes - some sort of meat concoction - and what I have to believe is some sort of strong Serbian liquor. It's called Novak's Meat Madness. Very funny, 20,094 views to date. 

So I figured Monday morning was the perfect time to talk about what is going on with my Flickr page; since I didn't do any work on spreading the photos around all weekend, and the views still went up. 

The 'Age of Love' photo set is up to 186 views, and on a related note the other four ATP photos I uploaded are up to 185 views. Additionally the Tommy Robredo photo is up to 2,819 views.

I think this shows that once you put the word out about photos on Flickr they take on a viral life of their own. I concentrated on letting people know about the Age of Love photos last week, and the momentum continued through the weekend. Also, I didn't do any outreach for the other ATP photos beyond just posting them on the same page as my other photos - and they had almost as many views. Additionally, I stopped posting comments and messages about the Tommy Robredo photo early last week, and the views have still increased rapidly (800+ since last Tuesday).

To put this in perspective, Flickr loaded six photos to their Flickr blog (technorati: 302 links) from a Harry Potter event this weekend when the new book went on sale. Each photo has between 300 - 400 views, with this photo of people standing in line getting the most attention. In terms of traffic and views, I'd say our numbers are close to on par with these; it just took more proactive outreach since there is not as much buzz for ATP as there is for H.P. (which sold 8.3 million copies over the weekend!). What does separate these pictures from our photos for ATP are the number of comments. Combined, these photos have 23 comments, while we only have one comment on the Tommy Robredo photo. Since effectively starting and monitoring the conversation is one of our goals for the ATP social media bureau, I'm going to put extra effort against increasing the number of comments this week.

Current Location: New York, NY
Current Mood: mellow

I made an effort to start the conversation about what might happen on 'Age of Love'. I posted messages on 20 entertainment and reality TV message boards that link to over 70,000 sites. I also posted comments on top entertainment blogs. The response was minimal. My question on Yahoo! Answers had the most responses, most reactions thought that Philippoussis is going to pick one the younger girls, because he wants to have kids. That seems reasonable.

I also linked to his ATPtennis.com profile page and the my flickr page, which has photos from the show. The three Age of Love photos on flickr only had 70 views going into yesterday, and now they're up to 165. Not bad, this photo seems to be the most popular (94 views):

In an effort to further participate in the online entertainment space, I'm going to start linking to interesting stories in these journal entries. IGN posted an interview with B.J. Novak from The Office, which just got picked up for 30 episodes for its fourth season, and Dark Horizon's is reporting that Seth Rogen from Knocked Up has been tapped to co-write and star in superhero flick called The Green Hornet. Both links were courtesy of Pop Candy.

In

My viral efforts helped increase the flickr views of Tommy Robredo in Cosmo UK from 70 to 217 as of close of business today! Allowed me to post it in a couple min. 200 views Flickr groups.

To help the Robredo cause, I posted comments in 15 message boards which linked to over 200,000 other sites. This included tennis boards on Yahoo, About.com, Topix.net, Sportsline, ESPN and Yahoo! Answers, among others. Next step will be lifestyle/entertainment blog commenting.

Going to put some effort against circulating these Novak Djokovic YouTube videos tomorrow too.

Current Location: New York, NY
Current Mood: crazy

Trying to make a strong comeback from the holiday yesterday. I'm off to wedding in Vermont shortly too.

I registered today on 30love.net. It's a new tennis social networking site put out and linked to by ATPtennis.com. Hoping to put some pics and video on here real soon. I dugg the story too.

Also, put the story on tennis phenom Donald Young Jr. on the almighty Digg.

Looking for the lucky person who is going to take these Tommy Rebredo shots from Cosmo UK off my hands.

Be well.

Current Mood: anxious

Still working on the look and feel of this page. The avatar is looking good though, if I do say so myself.

Threw this story from the New York Times about the Bryan brothers up on Digg. Interesting to note that the Wimbledon's men's doubles champions will split $450,000, while the men's singles champ gets $1.4 mill to himself!

Happy fourth!

Current Location: New York, NY
Current Mood: ecstatic

Hi! My name is Mike Hayes, and I work in sports PR. I'm going to use this journal as a way to log our social media bureau for the ATP tour. 

Here's an article on Novak Djokovic to kick things off. I posted this to Digg today too.