So, you may have noticed an odd entry in my blogroll - Kathy Griffin’s blog.

Kathy, comedienne and self-proclaimed Hollywood D-Lister has a show on Bravo TV called ‘My life on the D-List‘.

Now, I’ve always thought Kathy was funny so I’ll watch just about anything that she is in - if I happen to know about. And because I watched season one, I’ve been waiting for season two but what drew me to add her on my ‘roll was the interesting marketing experiment Bravo seems to be attempting.

First there is the great push-and-pull of their onair to online voting for what A-List stunt Kathy should pull. (This is what got me interested in the marketing aspect) but then Bravo went and gave Kathy a blog! The blog is, of course, funny (I’m not surprised that a comedienne writes a decent blog). But how will this work from a marketing perspective?

Certainly, it gives Kathy another outlet for her unique voice (at least I hope it’s her writing the blog) but how well will it drive attention to her site/show?

Well, let’s see…
technorati doesn’t think her blog exists
…although…
there are six or seven posts discussing her blog according to the same folks at technorati.

Bloglines says she has two subscribers to her blog (one of which must be me)

Blogpulse shows that she has a little bump in buzz (”scoble” provided for comparison)

The campaign is still young but if Bravo is looking for a “blog mob” they haven’t found it yet.

Why Not?

Well, one of the biggest issues is the site design (yech!) but I’m not planning on spending all my time discussing what’s wrong with that.

I think, that from a blog perspective, a big miss is not allowing comments. Yes, she’s got trackbacks enabled - probably so that Bravo can measure the success (buzz) of the blog but considering that it’s unlikely that her audience is blog-savvy and see the blog more as a traditional journal, it would be far easier for the audience to envision leaving a comment than tracking back from their own blog (which they most likely don’t have).

Secondly, it’s obvious from the first two posts that they are timing them with new episodes. While that’s all fine and dandy, I think that, for me at least, it would be more interesting if there were other posts interspersed between the main ‘episodic’ posts - I think it would keep interest high in between episodes. Oh, and the posts seem to be timed for the East coast feed, which means that I knew all about last night’s episode before I even watched it and there was no spoiler warning!

Third, my guess would be that they didn’t ’seed’ the blog in the blogosphere. Where’s the link-sharing? Where’s the commenting on relevant blogs? These are things that I see happen in the blog world everyday as bloggers try to get noticed (myself included). If Kathy wanted to get her blog noticed more, she should have been more participatory in the medium.

So Kathy, Bravo - if you’re listening, open up those comments and make sure that technorati knows that you exist.

But I’m sure that Jeremiah will tell me how I’ve got it all wrong

BTW, I do like the blog - it reads authentic and as stated above, it is funny.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed here are my own and not endorsed (in any way) by my company.