First time I found Get Content Get Customers in a bookstore - Borders at the Newark Airport...sandwiched between Porter and Ramsey.Picture #1 shows the actual position of the book when I arrived. Picture #2 shows the book as I left the bookstore. Amazing, isn't it?Also, for all you Kindle fans, GCGC is now available on the Kindle and currently sits at #8 in the Direct Marketing category.
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Junta42-Content Marketing
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Get Content Get Customers Sighting at Newark Airport
3 Jul 2009 | 5:58 am -
News Flash: Guardian Seeks to Grow through Products, Not Content
30 Jun 2009 | 9:39 amIf you are a regular to this blog, you've heard this before: in the future, it will be very difficult to tell the difference between media companies and brands that sell products and services.Heck, we may be there already. Media companies are working hard to develop products while their advertising revenues plummet. Brands must develop consistent content and publishing strategies in order to attract and retain customers (to ultimately sell their products).It's a strange marketing world we live in today.Another shining example of this happening is at The Guardian, the liberal UK… -
Content Strategy as the Future of Marketing
25 Jun 2009 | 12:09 pmKristina Halvorson (@halvorson) from Brain Traffic did an amazing presentation about Content Strategy as the Future of Marketing. It's thanks to Kristina that I've been presenting more about a greater focus on content strategy as THE critical part of a total content marketing strategy. My key thoughts while reviewing her presentation include: Relevance is key to your brand's importance to a customer. Relevance is created through the distribution of consistent, compelling content. Information from a brand must be useful. It must solve challenges or entertain… -
Social Media Stages of Involvement - Where You Should Be Spending Your Time
23 Jun 2009 | 11:08 amGreat social media presentation short by Andrew Davis from TippingPoint Labs given last week at Custom Media Day in New York City. The video is three minutes long and worth the time.DISCLAIMER: I took this with my new Flip camera, which I love. The only problems with the Flip are that you need to be close to get a good video and you need steady hands. I failed on both accounts. Andrew is an expert at social media adoption, and breaks down the percentage of time brands (and in this particular case, custom content provider clients) need to spend on social media at certain… -
10 Social Media Tools - Best Kept Secrets
19 Jun 2009 | 4:59 amMy friend Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler) gave an outstanding presentation at Web Content 2009 on social media tools - best kept secrets. The full presentation is below, but here's the quick take on the 10 Scott shared: 10 Web 2.0 Tools Marketers Can Use TodayView more Microsoft Word documents from Scott Abel. Google Docs Forms Designer. Create custom forms for surveys and downloads. Customize in less than 10 minutes. Delicious Promotions. Scott reviewed the power of promoting events and offers through Delicious. Tynt. Scott's favorite tool. It tracks what users copy from…
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Online Marketing Blog
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7 Ways To Develop A Unique Brand For Your Blog
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 amWith the blogosphere churning out nearly 1 million posts every 24 hours, an unstoppable river of content flows over the web daily. It’s daunting, especially if you’re new to online publishing. The good news is it’s still very possible to succeed, even if you’re just starting out today. Developing affinity with a group of readers who will actually take the time to link, comment and share your material requires a commitment of both resources and creativity - this is common knowledge. But all other things being equal, you can and should give yourself an extra advantage… -
Intersection of Search and Social Media
26 Jun 2009 | 3:10 pmEarlier this week I gave a presentation on the intersection of SEO, online PR and social media to a great mix of people (mostly agencies) at a SEMPO Arizona event. The SEO/PR/Social topic is an interesting mix due to the convergence that’s been happening over the past 2-3 years and of course, because it’s the essence of what we’ve been doing at TopRank. Forward thinking companies are investing in social media for a variety of reasons, including gaining a competitive advantage through building relationships, creating content and capturing mindshare. I think it’s safe… -
How Direct is Social Media Marketing?
23 Jun 2009 | 7:00 amI had nice back and forth with Brian Clark of copyblogger on Twitter last week about direct marketing and social media. Ultimately it was more an issue of perspective and semantics but there were some great points about the intersection of direct marketing on the social web. I’ve been an advocate for several years as have others in the social media consulting space, that the social web is not a place for direct marketing. In the past I’ve even posted a fairly good comparison of the difference between direct marketing and social media marketing. Brian’s position via our… -
Influencing The Social Web: Agility Is A Factor
22 Jun 2009 | 6:28 amHow agile is your marketing? Do you have layer upon layer of approval processes, committees, lawyers, and executives who need to sign off on every piece of external communication before it goes out? If yes, your business is structured for a pre-Internet world, and unfortunately this means you will always be at a disadvantage compared to agile competitors designed to take advantage of a connected society. An inescapable truth isthe web rewards companies (and people) that are nimble. People interact deepest with thoughts and ideas that have character and personality. And if there is one… -
Strategic Link Building for SEO
18 Jun 2009 | 10:14 amNot many in the Search Engine Optimization game would argue that link building isn’t tactical. The problem is, approaching link building as an end goal and tactically, is very much like a hamster running in it’s cage. That’s what many mechanical SEO consultants do: Chase links one by one or get creative with link bait to attract an influx of links from blogs that write about the kinds of things other blogs do for link bait. I should know, in the past 12 years of providing SEO services, there have been many opportunities to do just that. It’s not scalable, not…
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Copyblogger
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Three Tips for Creating Your Own Independence Day
3 Jul 2009 | 7:51 amJuly 4 is Independence Day here in the States, which, for most of us, entails the risk of losing: your fingers to cheap fireworks; your waistline to hot dogs; your liver. All of which, as a red-blooded American, I support wholeheartedly. But if you’re spending today celebrating the country’s independence, how about putting some attention on your own personal independence? It might be independence from a day job, or financial stress, or even a mindset that’s keeping you from making things happen. Here are a few of my favorite tips for declaring your own individual independence. Expand… -
How to Write an Ebook that Sells in 2009
2 Jul 2009 | 8:35 amYou’ll see one theme come up again and again on Copyblogger. If you want to create real revenue with your blog, you need to have something worthwhile to sell. Most sites are disappointed by the nickels and dimes that come in from advertising. If your site gets massive amounts of traffic, it can work, but if not, you’ll want to find a much more profitable source of revenue. But most of us find that it’s not all that easy to translate high-quality content from your blog into a high-quality product for sale. Four or five years ago, you could have slammed together an ebook over the weekend… -
Old-School Marketing No Longer Working? Blame Canada
1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 amCanadians are a funny lot. They use strange words and spell with a U. They kiss cod. They enjoy being frozen solid nearly 8 months a year, and they call their money Loonies and Toonies. Don’t get me wrong; they’re nice people just the same. They’re nature lovers and humanitarians and they like things simple and friendly. And contrary to popular belief, they’re actually pretty smart. But there’s just one problem. Your marketing strategies? You notice how they’ve been changing? That the old-school methods aren’t working anymore . . . at all? Well, I’ve figured out whose fault it… -
The Courage to be Wrong
30 Jun 2009 | 8:28 amI used to think being “right” was a big deal. I had to say the right thing, dress the right way, know the right people, read the right books, live in the right neighborhood, go to the right school. It wasn’t because I wanted to, exactly, but because I thought it was a prerequisite for success. If you want other people to respect you, then you have to look and sound a certain way, right? Makes sense, if conformity is all you’ve ever been taught. What no one tells you is the cost. Yes, conformity gains you a certain type of approval from others, but it comes at the cost… -
The Future of Copyblogger
29 Jun 2009 | 10:59 amWhat a wild three-and-a-half years, huh? Copyblogger started out as a way for me to demonstrate what I knew and could do in order to collaborate on new media projects with others. Now it’s the hub of a business enterprise that supports three families, two single guys, one single mom, and a host of domesticated animals. And we’re just getting started. Of course, that means having a clear picture of where we want to go is pretty essential. Guidance from the Wise Bald One I’m not going to pretend that Seth Godin and I are best buddies who hang out on weekends and major holidays. But if…
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Writing on the Web
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White Papers: A Key Piece of Your Content Marketing, Especially Offline
2 Jul 2009 | 5:14 amI'm working on a white paper for one of my long term clients. I had a flash back: it reminded me of my first journalism assignment when I was a cub reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune. That was 50 years ago! I feel like I've come full circle back to my first job and first love: writing about people.If you don't have a white paper you can use for your marketing, think about doing this. My client has plenty of web pages up and does a superb e-newsletter (I know this because I help him with his!) But as he says, "My clients are CEOs and high-level directors of companies. They don't spend… -
How Chip Scholz Gets Content Marketing Right (even if it hurts...)
30 Jun 2009 | 4:59 amOn a recent post about leveraging what you know to help other people online, one of my favorite clients, Chip Scholz, commented:Great post, Patsi. Thanks for reminding me of the power of writing, and of delivering great content. I find writing extremely time consuming and almost painful! How can I find ways of making it easier and less time consuming? Do you have any suggestions on resources (other than you of course!)Time consuming and painful, ah, yes. And the pain is where, exactly? I'm a doctor, but help me out here, Chip. I'm a doctor of psychology, so if the pain is anywhere in your… -
4 Ways to Keep Your Brain Healthy: Think Heart, Eat Happy
29 Jun 2009 | 5:08 amYesterday I gave a talk at the Lake Chapala Society about "4 Ways to Keep Your Brain Healthy." As a former psychologist, I have a passion for sharing what neuroscientists are discovering about the brain.The four areas you need to pay attention to for your brain are mental challenges, cardio exercise, healthy diet, and happiness. I call this the "Think-Heart-Eat-Happy" brain program.The most important thing to do for your brain, at any age, is to get regular physical exercise that raises your heart rate to around 60-70% of maximum. This will elevate levels of BDNF: Brain Derived Neurotropic… -
Do You Understand the Archimedes Effect?
25 Jun 2009 | 5:33 amI love my job. My boss lets me play tennis everyday, as long as I get my work done. I'm joking, of course, since I'm self-employed. I really do have a dream life. So how can you do the same thing, leverage what you know, teach it to others, and make money working from home doing what you love?Today I read about the Archimedes Effect from Chris Brogan, who's new book is called Trust Agent:The Archimedes EffectUnderstanding leverage is what separates the hobbyists from the professionals. Do you understand how to take what you’re doing in one instance and extend it out into something bigger or… -
Don't Forget Facebook: Here's a Big Source of Readers
23 Jun 2009 | 6:56 amI'm really upset at the recent article about Facebook over on Copyblogger. Here I've been spending valuable and scarce free time over on Twitter, ignoring Facebook. Now I've just found out I might be missing a crucial traffic builder. I'm not completely missing the boat, I do have some presence over there at Facebook, just not visiting it daily. My blog posts and twitter updates are automatically fed into my Facebook page. It's a good thing, too. Turns out there's a huge pool of potential readers on Facebook and we need to be nurturing them too.Go read this article and make up your own mind…
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Influential Marketing
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Unexpected Marketing Ideas That Could Transform Your Customer's 4th of July
2 Jul 2009 | 7:11 amThis weekend is the celebration of the American Independence Day on July 4th and if you have ever lived or travelled to America on this date, you know that the day is typically celebrated with BBQs and fireworks. Across the nation, people get ready for traditions that have remained largely unchanged. As the big day dawns, though, there are several ways that social media and particularly social media tools on mobile devices could transform the day for the digitally connected - and offer a great promotional idea for the right brand in the process. Here are a few ideas: Fireworks Finder Mobile… -
8 Interesting Facts About Sweden And Social Media
30 Jun 2009 | 10:44 amAs the US continues to struggle with how the healthcare system needs to be reformed, it was interesting to spend a week focused on Sweden in my Global Communications class this week as it presents an interesting opposite. The country has a high degree of nationalized services, which citizens of Sweden pay handsomely for with a tax rate that hovers between 50% and 70% - but for this amount everything from healthcare to long maternity leaves are covered. Coupled with a relatively isolated location in relation to Europe, beautiful geography and a national obsession with the environment, it is no… -
Signs Of Hope For The Transparent Future Of The FDA
25 Jun 2009 | 9:20 amSeveral weeks ago, what some might consider the most unlikely government agency to embrace social media decided to launch a blog. The FDA Transparency Blog was aimed at bringing a level of transparency to an agency that its own leader FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg recently described as a "black box that makes important decisions without explaining them." Central to this effort for transparency was the creation of a "task force" of individuals that would examine the inner workings of the agency and provide recommendations on how to make it more transparent by the end of this year (2009).To… -
Why Google & Virgin America's Online Scavenger Hunt Campaign Rocked
24 Jun 2009 | 8:25 pmEarly this morning Google Apps partnered with Virgin America to launch a unique campaign where they invited people taking Virgin America flights all day, as well as those sitting on computers at home or work to participate in an online scavenger hunt for clues to answer questions they would pose at you on a website called "Day In The Clouds." The scavenger hunt offered questions requiring you to use many different Google apps and online tools to find the answers, and integrated with Virgin America both for some questions as well as by offering free WiFi to any passenger on one of their… -
How Social Media Could Have Saved FlyClear
24 Jun 2009 | 2:48 amThis is the sad story of a company that died. Actually, it's more of a question of how it could have been saved. I'm talking about the now defunct FlyClear service run by a company called Verified Identity Pass that launched in nearly 20 airports across the country with a paid service that promised a way to avoid the travel lines at security with a dedicated "VIP" line. The reasons for their demise are relatively easy to understand ... as the number of travellers has reduced, the lines too have reduced and fewer people are seeing the value of paying $99 or more per year to access these…
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Web Ink Now
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B-to-B marketing fundamentals do not change
2 Jul 2009 | 10:06 amTimes change. Markets change. Technologies change. Fundamentals of B2B marketing don't. I keynoted the Business Marketing Association's 2009 “UnLearn” national conference in Chicago last month. Just prior to my gig was a live staging of McGraw-Hill's classic 1950s "Man in the Chair" ad. Fortunately it was captured on video because it is terrific. (Tough act to follow!) It's fascinating how the fundamentals of business-to-business marketing are the same today as they were 50 years ago. It's still about relationships although today we have new tools and techniques at our disposal. Direct… -
Social Media is the new punk rock
30 Jun 2009 | 3:10 amThanks to Trevor Young the PR Warrior for alerting me to this wonderful video produced by Engage | ORM. Back in the day, I was into punk rock. It was loud, it was NOT disco, there was a culture surrounding it, and the cult-like followings for the bands were intense. Although I didn’t do the hair thing, I did dabble in the clothing and attitude a bit (well, as much as a suburban kid from Connecticut going to Kenyon College in Ohio could). This will date me, but… The Ramones played my high school at the time their first album came out. That was Rock and Roll High School. I was fortunate… -
So you want to write an ebook? 30 tips for success
29 Jun 2009 | 5:23 amEbooks are one of the most effective forms of new marketing. Ebooks have tremendous perceived value and therefore people tend to pass them on. They help solve problems and therefore buyers appreciate the content, branding the writer as someone worth doing business with. Ebooks lead to sales! Many people have achieved business success by writing an ebook. So can you. Martin Soorjoo sent me his latest ebook The Black Book of Lie Detection: Effective techniques from a professional lie detector. It is really well done and I hope Martin doesn't mind, but I am using his ebook as our example. What… -
Launching ideas at the U.S. Air Force
25 Jun 2009 | 5:23 amI recently spent the day at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ to meet with public affairs officers and senior leaders of 12th Air Force / Air Forces Southern Air Combat Command. In this video, I ask my friend Capt. Nathan Broshear about his current role as Director of Public Affairs, how he uses social media, and a little about his 6 months in Baghdad working in public affairs in a war zone. Capt. Broshear says of his work: "We're not launching missiles, we're launching ideas." While mainstream media is critical for launching ideas such as the 60 Minutes story that Capt. Broshear… -
ZeroTrash shows how to create a social media grassroots movement
22 Jun 2009 | 6:30 amI had an opportunity to connect with Chip McDermott, founder of ZeroTrash who I originally met at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. I haver become fascinated with the online grassroots movement Chip started that's gathering momentum and is now instrumental in ridding the streets and beaches of Laguna Beach, CA of trash. Chip started ZeroTrash Laguna as a nonprofit organization in November 2007 with the support of XS Energy Drinks, Hobie Sports & Thalia Surf Shop. Though population and tourism had exploded, the city had not kept up in providing a sufficient infrastructure for…
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Marketing with Meaning
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Recap of P&G Global Alumni Reunion
1 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amOne of the benefits of having worked at Procter & Gamble (I was in marketing for six years from 1997 to 2004) is access to an alumni club of thousands of the smartest business minds in the world. Every two years the P&G Alumni Network hosts a global summit that brings together top leaders from around the world, including a few of the top current leaders still at P&G. Two years ago the event in Cincinnati was outstanding, so long ago I made plans to attend this year’s event in Rome, which was held two weeks ago. I took the opportunity to take the family on a vacation… -
Celebrating Pringles Cannes Hands
29 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amAs most marketing readers likely know, last week was the annual Cannes Advertising Festival in France—unarguably the world’s most prominent advertising industry get-together, where the brightest creative minds in our business gather to compare the best work over the past 12 months. Last year I got to attend for the first time (with blog posts here if you’re interested), but this year I was on vacation in Italy with my family instead of Cannes. I missed one of the biggest moments of the history of my company, Bridge Worldwide, when our team won a Gold Cyber Lions award for the… -
Kroger Delivers a Dose of Prevention
25 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amA few weeks ago, Jonathan Richman from my team at Bridge Worldwide sent me this photo of complimentary disinfecting wipes that are available at our local Kroger stores near the shopping carts at the store entrance. I’m not sure if he specifically noticed this due to Swine Flu concerns, his growing traffic at his blog, Dose of Digital, or the fact that he is reading an advance copy of my book. Whatever the reason, it’s a nice reminder that little details can make a powerful impression on customers. Kroger (full disclosure: a client of ours) has actually been providing free… -
Panera Adds Community Services
23 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amWhat I love most about digital is that it opens up so many simple ways to provide meaningful marketing to a brand’s customers. As much as we all like to spend hours developing deep digital strategies and playing with the latest innovations, it’s often best to go to the absolutely simplest slam dunks that you can think of. My current favorite example of a no-brainer in meaningful digital marketing is a program called MeetAtPanera. MeetAtPanera.com is a very simple website that allows people to set up a meeting with a friend or group of friends and send invitations to join… -
Polling Readers on a Hard Call
18 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amIt’s time for some fun on a Thursday, folks. One of my readers, who I am choosing not to identify, pointed me to an article on Newsweek.com about the rising issue of low testosterone among men. It seems that as many as 13 million middle-aged men in the United States suffer from this issue. For some, the answer is increasingly a prescription for a steroid such as AndroGel, but new and old studies show that simply having an erection—including by watching porn—is enough to get low testosterone levels up to snuff. And so this, dear readers, is the question of the day: Should…
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Nigel Hollis
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Are 70 percent of brand decisions really taken in-store?
28 Jun 2009 | 6:45 pmEvery now and again a topic stirs up a quick flurry of debate across the Millward Brown email network. This week it was the old chestnut about 70 percent of brand decisions being made in-store. Prompted by a link to this article in BrandWeek, my colleague Gordon Pincott responded, “My point of view is that [...] -
You can’t have a strong brand without a strong business
24 Jun 2009 | 7:54 pmWhile Professor Joe Plummer and I may not see eye to eye on everything (see my post on the definition of engagement), there is one thing we definitely agree on: an enterprise can achieve optimal results only when its business and its brand are aligned to work in synergy. When business and brand are out [...] -
Dear client, Jeff Goodby wants your marketing to be famous. What do you want?
24 Jun 2009 | 8:14 amIn the lead article in today’s AdAge, Jeff Goodby, creative genius of Goodby, Berlin Silverstein, called for Cannes judges to take into account the sheer “famousness” of a piece of work when they make their determinations. In the process of making his case he stated that entries should not be judged on “whether the stuff [...] -
Another reason brands need to clean up their act
21 Jun 2009 | 8:19 pmIs your vinegar made from petroleum? H.J. Heinz Co. is running print ads to draw attention to U.S. federal regulations that allow certain vinegar-making processes to include petroleum. (Click here to read the article in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette.) The article admits it is not clear how many vinegars on supermarket shelves do actually contain ethyl [...] -
Twitter really is for the birds
14 Jun 2009 | 8:32 pmEvery spring and fall, skeins of geese fly over our house as they migrate. I always wonder how the lead bird gets to be the lead bird. Is it the one with the best sense of direction, the one that knows best how to use the prevailing winds, or simply the dominant male? It turns out [...]
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Conversation Agent
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My Twitter 20 Interview on Conversation and Community
3 Jul 2009 | 4:00 amIn case you missed it, I was a guest on Jay Baer's Twitter 20 interview on Twitter this week. Thank you for that, Jay. It was fun, especially since I had no idea what questions you were going to ask.I met Jay at SxSWi when I had the opportunity to have face time with him and a group of smart professionals like Debbie Weil and John Havens of BlogTalk Radio.We had a reunion recently at Marketing Profs B2B Forum in Boston. The Twitter appointment with 20 questions was a natural progression - although some call the medium a regression. The ultimate presence tool, Twitter allows people to be… -
Right Place, Right Time - Free
2 Jul 2009 | 4:00 amOne of the things that you probably learned by hanging out with me here at Conversation Agent is that I tend to bring together a lot of ideas in a short space, show you how those ideas are connected, and why you need to care. But, here's the thing, you care only if I catch you in the right frame of mind, if when you're reading this post you wrestle with the very same thoughts.Attention and contextIn other words, I have your attention - and sometimes I'm even fortunate enough to have your take in the comments - when you're already paying attention to that issue yourself. It's like buying a… -
Social Media Program Lifecycle
1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 amOr as Gianluca Arnesano calls it, the only slide you need to know. I translated the word campaign as program, because I do really believe that it's a cycle with a long tail that probably nearly doesn't wear off or go to zero. This is the work of Italian agency Frozen Frogs born out of the work the agency has been doing with consumer goods companies. It's a brilliant rendition of the dynamics of attention, something Gianluca has been working with for a number of years.In this graphic, which he explains in the PDF offered at the post, he distinguishes between the actions of the company and/or… -
Are *You* Truly Engaged?
30 Jun 2009 | 4:00 amIt was a comment from Zoë and a title of a blog post from Chris Brogan that made me ask the question. Twitter can be tiring and pointless noise, and social media can be a bunch of chores, if the intent does not match the intention. If your involvement is not engagement, then what happens to the outcomes?As Zoë put it so well, when we approach these tools with intention and honesty, they fuel fulfilling outcomes. But when we approach them out of boredom or restlessness, we remain unfulfilled. And so we do and so do companies that are thinking about joining the social media bandwagon. Yes,… -
3 Steps to Mapping the Customer Journey
29 Jun 2009 | 4:00 amI've been reading David Lee King's book Designing the Digital Experience [courtesy of David himself] and I can tell you that many corporate Web masters could learn a thing or two about designing sites from the users' point of view. If you define the digital and customer experience from the point of view of the buyer, not the seller, there are several consideration to make.Even as marketers understand the ideas of customer journey and persona, the hard part is translating that information into truly executing on the customer experience - digital or otherwise - when we're not there. The…
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Buzz Marketing for Technology
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Social Search could it be a Google Killer?
29 Jun 2009 | 8:08 amThis morning I typed into Google the search term: VoIP (which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol) and I got 64 Million responses. 64 Million!!How archaic is that?Does Google have any idea how long would it take me to go through 64 Million responses? One day we are going to look back at the days of searching and getting 64 Million responses to anything and equate that to a Commodore 64 or Betamax tape.I know, I know the point is Google is trying to bring me the best responses to the term in the first few pages (if not the first page). But the best responses according to who? Why don’t… -
7 Ways Facebook will Change your Life!
29 Jun 2009 | 5:00 amSo I have just finished co-authoring a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) due out this summer. It was a very eye opening experience to say the least. But the one thing it taught me was a profound respect for the Facebook platform.What you are about to see is a number of ideas I have about the future of Facebook. These are not pie in the sky ideas or something I dreamed up - I feel these are very doable. In fact I wondered if I could get this eBook out fast enough to share these ideas with you before they actually happened!So get ready to enjoy what I think is a sneak peek into… -
5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing
23 Jun 2009 | 6:31 amOne of the great things about the Facebook platform is that it provides you access to a large audience of over 200 Million people worldwide at a low cost. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strategy in place for what you are trying to achieve. Whether you are a small local business, or even a well known product or service you will need to give some thought to your audience like, who they are, how do they want to be spoken to, what messages would you want them to receive, and what are the tactics for having them interact with your message. So let’s go through some of your options… -
Social Network based Caller Routing
17 Jun 2009 | 1:42 pmOk, let’s say you are searching the web for a new fishing rod. You find the right website but you are having trouble locating the right rod and reel combination. Frustrated you consider giving up but give it one last shot and decide to call the 800 number on the site. And instead of getting the usual IVR tree – you are prompted for your Facebook id.What’s going on here you think?Reluctantly you give them your Facebook id and behind the scenes there is technology at work that matches you up with the best Call Center agent based on your profile information: Age, Sex, Hometown, Current… -
No patience for the ROI of Social Media discussion
15 Jun 2009 | 5:58 amIn a blog post last week, Dell revealed that it has generated more than $2 million in revenue from @DellOutlet, one of its many Twitter sites. Late last year, there were some headlines about Dell crossing the $1 million mark via Twitter and it’s only gotten bigger since then.How did they do it? With a coupon code!Wow, now that’s inventive. But this is not a dig at Dell it’s a dig at all of us marketers who say they don’t understand how to calculate an ROI from Social Media. My point is Dell isn’t using any secret sauce – its just plain old common sense. And at this point in social…
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Post-Advertising
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CALL ME, G.O.P.: Can the Social Web Save the Republican Party?
1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 amBlessings and thanks to The Daily Beast for reporting that Story Worldwide, the agency that brings you this blog, has launched an experiment to use the social web to find a true, authentic and sustainable brand for the Republican Party, presently a total and humiliating disaster. To join the struggle to find the new soul of the G.O.P., go to the site we've created: Call Me, G.O.P. (as in "Call me anytime for help or advice"). Here at Post-Advertising (and at Story), we're deeply interested in brands, of course. We continually question how best to create and launch a great brand, or how to… -
Crowdsourcing Journalism
1 Jul 2009 | 5:15 amThe Guardian is often held up as a great example of how social tools can be integrated into a website to create a real community feel. Well, this article (via Mark Earls) demonstrates how powerful that community can then be. I love seeing this type of feedback loop, where a brand is driven to provide ever more creative ways to interact and the commmunity responds with enthusiasm. (Photo by internets diary) There are some really interesting lesson here for any brand (beyond the four outlined). The required speed of response is telling - they had to launch untested. The identification of the… -
Here comes everybody
28 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pmOK, here's the drill, this guy appears to have stolen Dave's camera, laptop and Nintendo DS and we're going to help track him down in a vigilante 2.0 style. If it doesn't work, blame Clay Shirky, if it works then Iain over at crackunit.com gets the credit. The stuff was stolen from Pratt Mews, London, NW1 and you can see the CCTV footage here. Note that the suspect walks in with one bag and walks off (frame 4) with two, one of which appears to be Dave's Lowepro camera bag. -
Making Whuffie
26 Jun 2009 | 4:11 amTwo mentions of Whuffie in the same week, one by our esteemed leader at our recent Health 2.0 seminar and one by James Cherkoff over at his Modern Marketing blog, is too much of a coincidence, so I thought I'd jump on the band wagon while there's still time. Whuffie is the reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's 2003 science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The book describes a world where the basic economic problem, scarcity of resources, has been resolved and therefore money is no longer necessary. Social status is no longer determined by an individual's… -
TV Advertising advertising about TV advertising so advertisers will advertise on TV
23 Jun 2009 | 7:22 amBut follow the money. They won't, anymore. There’s an exceptionally lame TV ad campaign running in the UK at the moment for Thinkbox, the television marketing body for the main UK commercial broadcasters. The scene: a shrink sits alongside a hypnotised patient, encouraging him to regress and express profound, moving memories. Guess what? He sings iconic ad jingles from the golden age of TV advertising, when ads used to work and when, back in the day, commercial television was valued higher than junkbonds. It’s almost funny, and the catchy slogans take me back, back to the…
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Conversation Marketing
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Internet Marketing Puppy Syndrome
2 Jul 2009 | 8:32 pmSome friends of ours got a puppy. Her name's Gracie. She is adorable. Excruciatingly cute and soulful in a head tilting kind of way. Gracie is awesome. But she's a lot of work. Think about that when you decide to launch that blog, or create a newsletter, or set up a Twitter account. You know me - I rarely discourage folks from trying stuff. If you don't test and try, you can't make any progress. But you have to really try. You have to go into a project with your eyes open and a genuine desire to succeed. Approach it like you're looking at that puppy in the window: When you bring it home,… -
Bing's PPC Meltdown
29 Jun 2009 | 12:37 pmI don't try to find ways to pick on Microsoft's marketing techniques. It's just that they make it so easy. The folks at Bing have decided to buy pay per click ads on Google Adwords. Not a bad idea. But they need to learn a bit about phrase and exact match, I think: And my favorite: OK, I'll stop. I'm supposed to be on vacation, after all... Related Posts Bing Goes Bonk: Marketing lessons from the search wars Aggregation Aggravation, Part 1 -
Get Free Marketing Advice (With a Catch)
25 Jun 2009 | 8:48 pmI'm launching a new service called 1Thing. The idea: Provide internet marketing advice, in small bites, at a low price. I've designed a landing page, created the templates, etc.. And I hate it. The landing page is nasty. Horrible. It makes me cry. I've gotten fantastic advice from other marketers. And I've used quite a bit of it. Problem is, they gave me advice from the perspective of super-experienced internet marketers. I need advice from potential consumers. That's where you come in. If you read this blog looking for little nuggets of advice you can use to improve your site, then please,… -
Google Crawling the Wrong Javascript
25 Jun 2009 | 6:43 pmI'm throwing this story out there to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. Google's made a lot of noise recently about their newfound ability to crawl javascript and links that are built into a javascript. Last week I saw a 500% increase in 'page not found' errors in one client's Google Webmaster Tools. The links all looked like this: At first, I didn't make the connection between that and Google's improved javascript prowess. After looking at the client's pages, though, the only place the guilty link appears is in a javascript: In this context, the forward slash ('/') means… -
Speaking at OMS on July 1st
24 Jun 2009 | 2:41 pmI'm going to be on a panel at the Seattle Online Marketing Summit (OMS) next week, July 1st. The session is at 3:30 PM, and is titled "Integrating Email, Search, Social into the Entire Online Marketing Channel". Never mind me, though. Other folks on the panel include Anne kennedy of Beyond Ink and joblr.net, Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies, Jason Gan from Cisco and Steve Gelen as the moderator. I didn't write the description, so I don't have to suffer from whatever hubris-inspired revenge the gods would inflict for calling myself a "World's leading expert". Here's the whole…
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Marketing Interactions
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B2B Marketing Zone Launches
2 Jul 2009 | 10:33 amTony Karrer (Browse My Stuff) and Tom Pick (WebMarketCentral) have created and launched the B2B Marketing Zone as a filter to aggregate content for us in one spot. Similar to the idea of The Customer Collective for sales and marketing professionals and My Venture Pad aimed at SMBs and Junta42 for content marketing, this site focuses on a niche.I'm excited to be one of their launch bloggers along with the terrific expertise provided by Brian Carroll, Paul Dunay, Newt Barrett and Jon Miller. I love that it also includes some new perspectives such as Cece Salmon Miller (PR Meets Marketing),… -
Plan B2B Content for the Takeaway
1 Jul 2009 | 10:24 amThere's an evolving list of all the things you need to consider when developing B2B marketing content. One of the components often discussed is the call to action. And, yes, you still have to do that. What's important to understand is that the call to action is not the takeaway.A call to action is what you want your prospects and customers to do next.A takeaway is the specific impression or memory the audience walks away with after reading your content.A good takeaway is: Conceptual - produces an idea your content helped generate. Conversational - inspires sharing of that idea in… -
Kitchen-Sink Content is a Recipe for Failure
29 Jun 2009 | 8:03 amWe’re all on the receiving end of email marketing messages. The problem is that most of them appear to try and do too much. It often feels like marketers have a list of all the stuff their solutions do and they want to cram it all into one message to make sure they say something that interests you.That kind of content makes my head hurt. It’s confusing. It takes too much effort and I can’t be bothered to listen to someone who’s so unsure what to say to me. Talk about impersonal. That’s about as general as you can get. At a time when buyers can filter the content they choose to read,… -
Socialize B2B Customer Advocacy
25 Jun 2009 | 10:11 amI received a request to publicize a webinar this week from a company I'd not heard of before. Their name is Zuberance. The email content interested me, so I went to check them out. Zuberance is in the business of helping companies mobilize customer advocacy programs.That interested me. It sounded, at first, like something that was more suited to B2C, but the ideas started spinning. So I attended the webinar to find out more, and now I'm full of ideas about how B2B marketers can expand their reach through more effective engagement programs that inspire customers to include your… -
E-Book: It's Not About You Anymore
23 Jun 2009 | 8:13 amGiven what buyers can learn about your company and products without ever speaking directly to you, B2B positioning is more important than ever. The problem is that many companies look around them at their competition and model themselves after the company they want to emulate. But that's "me too" stuff that doesn't differentiate your company.Rebel Brown [my great friend and colleague] has written a terrific E-Book about positioning that will help you begin to spin your own story in ways that are uniquely yours. She says, "Anyone who says there's a…
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PR 2.0
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Tweet This: Twitter Trademarks Tweets ™
2 Jul 2009 | 11:29 amCredit One of the more interesting, albeit not necessarily press-stopping, stories making the rounds in the blogosphere and Twitterverse currently is sure to make you scratch your head or raise your eyebrow in bewilderment. Twitter officially applied to trademark “Tweet” on April 16, 2009 according to Robin Wauters at TechCrunch. The confusion erupted when developers received the following email (h/t to Andy Beal) In its post, “May the Tweets Be With You,” Twitter explains its position this way, “as the ecosystem grows there is also the possibility that confusing… -
Unveiling the New Influencers
29 Jun 2009 | 6:55 amTraditional influence has followed a systematic top-down process of developing and pushing “controlled” messages to audiences for decades, rooted in one-to-many, faceless broadcast campaigns. Personality wasn’t absent in certain mediums, it was missing from day-to-day communications. For the most part, this pattern seemingly served its purposes, fueling the belief that brands were in control of their messages, from delivery to dissemination, among the demographics to which they were targeted. It scaled very well over the years, until it didn’t… Unbeknown to many companies, a… -
Top Media Outlets
26 Jun 2009 | 3:28 amSource While social and citizen media expand in influence and reach, we can’t ignore or neglect the prominence, credibility, and authority of traditional media – no matter how dearly we’re enamored with shiny new objects. BurrellesLuce recently published its 2009 Top Media List for 2009, which includes newspapers, blogs, consumer magazines and social networks. I’ve included all but social networks below as the rankings are outdated and inaccurate. I’ll publish an updated list shortly. Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers Rank, Newspaper, Daily, Sunday: 1 – USA Today,… -
A Pictorial History of Twitter’s Rise to Pop Culture
23 Jun 2009 | 5:21 pmEvery now and then I discover something that is so captivating, that I have to stop what I’m working on to share it with everyone I know. This is one of them. For those veterans who continue to define Twitter’s role in how we communicate, share and learn, those who have recently made its acquaintance, and those just finding their stride, we all linked through common threads and context that pique our curiosity, stimulate our quest for adventure, expand our networks beyond our real world network, and feed our desire for attention. We contribute to the expansion of the… -
Social Media is Rife with Experts but Starved of Authorities
22 Jun 2009 | 6:57 amPerhaps Lewis Carroll was peering into the looking glass when he wrote “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.” In it, we were introduced to Tweetle Dum and Tweetle Dee, a curious duo that always shared a fruitful, entertaining, and complementary conversational exchange even though they always agreed to battle each other. Some suggest that the significance of Alice’s encounter with the twins explores how curiosity leads to the unknown and therefore, may not be worthy of pursuit. It’s just not safe right? These encounters either remind us why we’ve created a comfort…
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Nick Burcher
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Michael Jackson Lego tribute abandoned - but 'Thriller in Lego' is still on YouTube.........
3 Jul 2009 | 12:35 amLegoland California planned to unveil a Michael Jackson lego tribute today. CNN users were given the chance to decide which one of five Michael Jackson models would be used:The plan was to create a four-inch tall Michael Jackson Lego model that would feature in Miniland Southern California at LEGOLAND California. The Michael Jackson Lego model would then be seen by Park guests as 'he exits a limousine in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The scene will include photographers and random paparazzi surrounding the limousine as Minilander fans try to catch a glimpse of the pop icon.'Michael… -
Absolut Vodka Drinkspiration iPhone app - instant drink recommendation application
2 Jul 2009 | 4:01 pmAbsolut Drinkspiration is a new, free iPhone App from Absolut Vodka.The Absolut Drinkspiration appThe Drinkspiration application is effectively a virtual drink selector that contains over 400 drinks including drinks based on Vodka, Gin, Rum, Brandy, Whisky and Tequila.The Absolut Drinkspiration App allows you to select drinks using various criteria - where you are, what's popular, Taste, Colour, Music volume, time of day and many others.Drinkspiration Recommend a Classic featureThe iTunes App Store listing says: "This sophisticated and interactive mobile drinks app combines the 3G iPhone… -
Twitter global usage - 168 million monthly visits! App traffic is 80% of Twitter use, the monthly visit figure is much higher than we thought!
2 Jul 2009 | 9:38 amA while back Neville Hobson used various Twitter stats to try and work out the actual number of monthly visits and estimated that Twitter was getting around 60 million monthly visits when web traffic and app use was combined.So why do I think Twitter is getting 160 million monthly visits?When Neville did his maths in April Comscore were showing 19.1 million monthly web visits and Hitwise were showing UK Twitter traffic had increased to 0.13% of all UK web visits (with a growth trajectory that mirrored the global upward trend.)Now consider that Hitwise are showing Twitter to be at 0.23% of UK… -
Latest Facebook usage statistics by country - 12 months of extraordinary global growth
2 Jul 2009 | 5:43 amI have been monitoring Facebook usage statistics and the last 12 months has seen extraordinary global growth.- On 1st July 2008, Facebook were reporting 82,451,680 active users, Facebook figures now show that Facebook has 233,864,820 global users.- Facebook growth has come everywhere. USA Facebook users have increased by 41,567,420, but Facebook has also seen a growth rate of 3000% in Indonesia!- In July 2008 11 countries had more than 1 million Facebook users, now 33 countries have more than 1 million Facebook users.- Explosion in Facebook users numbers was seen in Western Europe (France,… -
Air New Zealand viral safety video - bodypaint staff have nothing to hide!
1 Jul 2009 | 12:37 amEarlier this year Air New Zealand ran a TV ad using the slogan 'nothing to hide' promoting the fact that their are no hidden charges on Air New Zealand flights.The TV ad shows Air New Zealand staff wearing only body paint. The 'Nothing to Hide' ad has been uploaded to YouTube and is hosted on an Air New Zealand channel called 'AirNZnothing2hide.'Air New Zealand have now taken this campaign one stage further, by integrating the 'nothing to hide' marketing message into their actual product / customer experience. The safety video on domestic 737 Air New Zealand services will now feature body…
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The Toadstool
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I Don't Do Windows
3 Jul 2009 | 2:52 pm“I don’t do windows” is the punch line of many a bad “maid” joke but it’s also an accurate description of how many brands (and their agency enablers) view social media. They’re used to marketing being a very predictable practice: you run a certain number of spots, get a certain number of impressions, sales go up a certain percent. If they don’t, it’s clearly the fault of the creative product. Getting people to remember your ad and watch it is something you accomplish with dollars: the more you spend, the more people see it. That’s why it’s so tough for many of them to… -
Field of Dreams Redux
28 Jun 2009 | 9:57 pmMany of you are familiar with my Prom King Brand theory, which states that a handful of brands have so much social currency (e.g. “cool”) going on, that all they have to do is show up and people will start interacting with them.How that plays out in the real world sometimes seems to get lost in translation, so I wanted to give some concrete examples of what I’ve been seeing:John Smith, CEO of Acme Widgets has heard that social media is the next big thing. He knows that Oprah Twitters and people have told him that not only is Social Media the next big thing, but it’s free. So Smith… -
Porn, Kittens & Your Remote
27 Jun 2009 | 6:25 pmMike Arauz had a cute post up last week, reminding people that their online work needed to pass the "I'd rather be watching porn" test. (Or, for the less pruriently-oriented, the "I'd rather be looking at pictures of kittens" test. (In other words, remember, there's a lot of stuff people would rather be doing online than looking at your brand-sponsored content-- ads included.) It's a basic message, but given how frequently it's ignored, it's well worth repeating.To that end, I'd like to introduce the corrollary: if you've created a TV commercial, all it needs to do is pass the "I really need… -
Bean Cast II
23 Jun 2009 | 4:43 amThe Bean Cast, hosted by Bob Knorpp, is, hands down, the best advertising-related podcast out there and yesterday I had my second opportunity to be appear on the show.My fellow guests were Jonah Bloom, Editor-in-Chief of Ad Age and producer Hal Goodtree from Goodtree & Company.Topics ranged from Cannes (and the growing movement against the glitzy award show) to MySpace (how to reinvent/save it) to contextual advertising.A rollicking conversation, well worth an hour of your time (if I say so myself.)And if you just can't get enough Alan Wolk, I'll be on a panel at OMMA Social in about 2… -
Boardroom Broadway
17 Jun 2009 | 7:19 amI’m convinced that one of the reasons we wind up with so many overly clever and completely useless websites is that the wrong people are often assigned to handle the projects.As James Hipkin sagely noted in a comment here the other day, one key factor is what he calls “Boardroom Boredom” – the fact that what entertains attendees in an otherwise dry meeting to discuss media expenditure is rarely the sort of thing consumers are looking for in a website.Now part of this comes from the agency wanting to put on a fun show. But if you're running a brand, ask yourself how much of if comes…
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Servant of Chaos
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ManWeek #4: Another Word for Father
3 Jul 2009 | 7:36 amI found a small urn today it held the conversations which for you fell from my mouth like riddles The story of my disappointment carries the weight of broken doors and YOU? You wait on the other side All conflict aside All affection left at the doorstep Was that what it WAS all for? You were never there, never there I searched for a tract, for even the smell of where you had been Finding instead the anger in me in me I have never shown this poem to anyone else. It was… -
More Behaviour Less Measurement
3 Jul 2009 | 7:00 amNew strategies require new measurement – or so says Helge Tenno. In this fantastic presentation, Helge suggests that when it comes to the social web, we are using the “destination web” as a basis for measurement – and we are, therefore, using an outdated system to measure the efficacy of emergent networks of value. And I tend to agree. Quoting Adrian Ho: This is because measurements create their own context. For example, I’d argue that it’s precisely because we measure horsepower that horsepower is valued. However, the flow-on effect of this is profound. It means that we must… -
ManWeek #3: Courage and Responsibility
1 Jul 2009 | 8:46 amThere have been some great ManWeek posts. Julian Cole and Matt Hazel both wrote about bullying – each with different perspectives. Matt Moore looked at how men can be uncomfortable with their own sense of self and Benjamin Law shared his love of Mariah Carey. Stan Johnson told us about the way he disappointed his parents with his career choice (advertising) – and who can blame them ;) And Craig Wilson skirted the question but still managed to provide some interesting thoughts on men and the media. But it is Mark Pollard who calls us all out with a searingly honest post about some of the… -
ManWeek #2: A Little Fluffy
30 Jun 2009 | 7:39 amThe ManWeek coverage continue today with bold discussions of sexuality, gender and its link with our sense of manhood. The producer of Triple J’s Hack kicked off the forum discussion with some interesting thought starters plucked from the show: "People that r presumptuous about your sexuality r idiots & suk like alfa males!" "Physicaly i might be classified as an alpha male 6 foot 4 fit and play soccer but i play video games, have never had a girl friend dont drink and don't get involvet in fisty cuffs. I'm cool with who I am even if people think i'm a nerd." "Im a 21 yr old diesel… -
Social Media Monitoring Tools
30 Jun 2009 | 6:16 amIf you have ever wondered what tools you can use to monitor the wide range of social media sites, then this presentation is right up your alley. Not only does it provide a good, quick snapshot of some of the technologies available, it also shows where and when they are most useful to your efforts. And while you may not find one tool for all purposes, if you at least cover listening, measuring and engaging, then much of your social media monitoring can be linked by some simple manual processes – after all, who needs workflow when you will be responding to mentions yourself? I particularly…
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Chaos Scenario
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Branding is Character. What Does Your Character Show?
30 Jun 2009 | 6:14 amStuff happens.So does branding. This is true whether you call it "branding" or not. As it turns out, branding has less to do with cutesy creative and clever themes than it has to do with your ability to consistently keep promises of your company -- to build your company's reputation as a firm of good character. Not all promises are created equal, and all people do not assign equal value to all promises. This is why it is so difficult -- and increasingly useless -- to build a brand that pleases all people, all of the time.Before all else, know who you are and what you stand for. Only then can… -
Keep it simple
11 Jun 2009 | 7:07 amThe transition from traditional media to digital media is a lot like going from a desert to a rain forest. Although there are quite a few ways to measure traditional media, many times it's not cost effective to pay firms to get the data. It's all a bit suspect too because you're forced to use sample groups that may or may not be representative of the rest of the population. Online media is infinitely measurable. Geography, activity, technology and in some cases even behavior before and after the click is measured in a way that floods an analyst with data. Those of us who have built our… -
Marketing in a recession
4 Jun 2009 | 7:11 amInside corporate America, marketing is often seen as just a sub set of sales or worse, as a bunch of liars. The Dilbert comic strip has expressed the feelings that a lot of people have toward marketing departments. Given this perception, it's no wonder that I know so many great colleges who have been laid off, much more so than in other business disciplines.The perception of marketing as just necessary when sales are booming or as a support function for sales misses the point. Marketing is about building brand, establishing a company's reputation and driving sales. It's not just a support… -
Reason: The impotent antidote for the arbitrary whims of powerful and selfish people
28 May 2009 | 3:29 pm"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." - Ronald ReaganHave you ever had one of those dreams where you knew somebody you love was going to experience some major calamity, but you were unable to warn him or her about it, no matter how much you wanted to or how much you tried? Usually it starts off innocuously enough, with only a minor sense that something is wrong. But as the dream progresses, your heart rate elevates as the events unfold, and… -
Lest We Forget...
25 May 2009 | 7:06 amNote: This Memorial Day, as a tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I am republishing one of my favorite articles, which was originally published 11/8/1998 on OO-RAH.com. The events being described are real, but the names may have been changed (including the author's). Be advised that this article describes intense situations and quotes people who used language that some may find offensive. - Cam BeckLest We Forgetby Harrison GreeneThe hill in front of us was lit up like daylight on this particular November morning in Vietnam. We could see an occasional burst of our artillery…
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No Man is An Island
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Famous inboxes #2 Lord Voldemort
30 Jun 2009 | 8:30 amSerious and practical posts are all very well, but I need a little light distraction now and then.So after wrestling with the complexities of mobile email challenges, it's time to return to the famous inboxes series.Part 1 revealed the contents of Darth Vader's email account. Here's one for Harry Potter fans to tide them over before the new movie appears. -
Mobile email: dealing with the marketing challenges
26 Jun 2009 | 5:20 amLast week's post proved that mobile email is on the rise and outlined half a dozen related challenges for email marketers.So how do we deal with those challenges?How do we, for example, adapt email design to account for the limitations of mobile devices, but without sacrificing on impact when the same email is viewed on a PC?Should we even try?Two years ago, ExactTarget published a detailed report on mobile email use and the implications for marketers.The results of a follow-up survey are out shortly and Morgan Stewart (ExactTarget's Director, Research & Strategy) was kind enough to pass on… -
Outlook 2010: Bad news for HTML email design, but...
24 Jun 2009 | 12:41 amThe folk at Campaign Monitor have important information on the likely rendering capabilities of Outlook 2010, slated for release in about a year.In essence, the problems associated with Outlook 2007 have not been fixed. So Outlook 2010 is set to be equally resistant to animated gifs, background images, various CSS properties, etc..Since HTML email design adapts to the lowest common denominator, Outlook 2010 would continue to place limits on design creativity and functionality.The only "good" news is that if you've adapted your emails for Outlook 2007, you hopefully shouldn't need to make new… -
Mobile email: the marketing challenges
19 Jun 2009 | 9:51 amLife is full of unavoidable truths, mostly involving waistlines and wrinkles.One of them is that more and more people are reading your emails on a mobile device.While we all feel we should somehow take account of that in our email design and strategy, few of us do. Mostly because it's hard to work out exactly how to deal with the "mobile email challenge".The problems start when we try and work out what exactly the "mobile email challenge" is. Much advice on the topic carefully avoids going into detail because the challenges (plural) are various and changing.Back in 2008, Morgan Stewart summed… -
Webinar: Hidden costs of lazy email marketing
15 Jun 2009 | 4:16 amQuick note to say I'm speaking on this topic at a free webinar hosted by Listrak on Wednesday, June 17th at 1pm EDT. Details and registration here.I'll draw out some of the problems with email marketing you might not have thought about, throw out some examples, and discuss some of the simple improvements that can make a big difference to your success.You also get to laugh at my British accent and the way my voice gets gradually higher as I get excited about the topic...
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What's Next
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A Social Media Reality Check from the C-Suite
3 Jul 2009 | 12:43 pmBy B.L. Ochman In 2005, Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads.com told me that when he went to get his teeth cleaned three years earlier and the hygienist asked what he did, he said "blog advertising." "Umm, hmm," she replied. The next year, his answer was the same. Her response was "Oh! I've heard of that!" The next year: the same exchange, and the next. As he was leaving on the third year, she called out "Good luck with the flogging!" I got a similar reality check yesterday in a conversation with an incredibly successful CEO who said "I don't read blogs, and Twitter makes no sense to me, even… -
$100 Discount for What's Next Readers at Digiday:APPS Conference
3 Jul 2009 | 11:52 amSponsored Post What Does the Future Hold for Advertising on Apps? Find Out on August 12th, 2009, The W Hotel, NYC. $100 Discount for What's Next Blog Readers with code DABL08 on registration form. (Be sure to hit "apply" after entering the code!) Digiday:APPS - a conference devoted to mobile and social apps, dynamic integrated content and offers, video, storytelling, and the rich functionality of online and offline apps. Focus is on the emerging mix of branded mobile applications and in-application advertising that is finally poised to deliver on the promise of mobile and social marketing. -
Can't Make This Stuff Up: Sci-Fi Channel Explains Why It's Changing Its Name to SyFy
2 Jul 2009 | 4:48 pm"There's always a resistance to change," Sci-Fi Network president Dave Howe told the NY Daily News. "But in a few years, no one will notice the difference." And that is as good a reason as any for spending gazillions of dollars to change the station's name. "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" (Alice in Wonderland) The top reasons the company's agency gave for recommending the change: 1- The agency needs the… -
Updated List of Social Media Gurus on Twitter: a Public Service for CMOs, from What's Next Blog
18 Jun 2009 | 9:39 amBy B.L. Ochman Companies large and small are scrambling to pick a social media guru to guide them through the wilds of new media marketing. Fortunately, there is no shortage of self-declared social media marketing gurus, experts, consultants, agencies and stars. Provided as a public service, an updated search of Twitter bios on Tweepsearch provides the following count: Self-proclaimed gurus on Twitter = 5,855, including: 155 social marketing gurus 16 social marketing stars 5088 social media marketers 1,132 social media consultants 379 social media 16 social media stars 264 social media… -
PR People Please Take This Quiz Before Pitching Another Blogger
17 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pmBy B.L. Ochman This post first ran in 2007. It is running again for obvious reasons. Dear PR people: please take this quiz before you send out another press release or email pitch. (The correct answers are below: ) 1. Has the print, online or broadcast reporter you are pitching ever covered this topic? 2. Why Would this pitch or release elicit a response from people who read it? 3. Is this pitch or release bullshit? 4. Would anyone pass along a story on this topic to a friend or colleague? 5. Have you Googled the reporters and bloggers on your list so you know if they've covered your…
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Buzz & Viral Marketing
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How to Test Bras on a Roller Coaster
3 Jul 2009 | 9:42 amWhat could be better than showing "well endowed" blondes on a roller coaster to show the effectiveness of a bra? Not a whole lot of things, according to Ultimo Bras, so they put it to the challenge: Des filles en grand huitby yom_ This video, seen on Suchablog, does make us question the pertinence of such an action. Granted, the idea is funny and original, but does it really help out the brand? The people that will enjoy the video the most are men, not the women who actually buy bras. This is of course unless the men in question have such large chests that they need to wear one... ;) All in… -
Torture: What If You Were The Victim?
1 Jul 2009 | 8:08 amAcat.ch, an association that fights for the abolition of torture, has launched a creative ambient marketing campaign. They did this very simply by placing stickers on public transport and cinema seats. The images on the stickers give the impression that the person sitting is tied to their seat. There is a message next to the tied hands that reads "Victims are people just like you and me". This campaign reminds us all that torture is still a huge problem in many countries worldwide. Sources: Directdaily The original article on culture-buzz.fr Translated by H. Turner -
Transformers: Turn into a Robot!
30 Jun 2009 | 1:37 amIn honor of the new Transformers film launched on June 2, a new augmented reality application has been created, "we are robots", which should greatly please all fans. This time however, no more need to print tags, show print ads or anything of that nature to the webcam, the application recognizes your face and places a robot mask over it! If you don't believe your eyes, you can move your head and the mask will stay... We haven't found any other real uses so far, but we're sure that the true fans will! And here is a demo: Sources: Adcoholic The original article on culture-buzz.fr Translated by… -
Coca-Cola: A Velcro Billboard
30 Jun 2009 | 1:29 amJust when you think that you've seen everything, you're bound to come across something extraordinary that confirms that there will always be room for creative ideas... Coca-Cola is releasing a new bottle that is designed for one to be able to have a firmer grip on it. The challenge is: how does one communicate a design change that optimizes the consumer experience? The answer is simple: by making the customers live the experience... Coca-Cola has placed billboards covered in velcro at bus stops. The people that pressed up against them without noticing it at first were definitely surprised… -
Quiksilver Pops Out Of The Frame
26 Jun 2009 | 6:21 amHave you ever seen anyone come out of a video? Yes, of course in Last Action Hero... but how about while surfing websites? Quiksilver does just that on its skateboarding website... The concept is as follows: Upon entering the site, a video automatically launches, and the skater pops out of the frame! It is then that Tony Hawk, Alex Olson, Danny Garcia, Reese Forbes, and Kyle Leeper all join forces to actually destroy the page you are on! This is a great surprise to the visitors, who are then able to share the experience with friends via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, reddit, del.icio.us,…
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Be the Voice
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Blogging should be a core responsibility of a CEO
16 Jun 2009 | 3:43 pmPaul Levy is the CEO and President of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and author of the blog, “Running a Hospital.” Summary: Paul Levy knew nothing about health care, medicine, or running a hospital, yet he still found it fascinating. So he decided to start writing a blog. Paul Levy posts real time data of operations at BIDMC to brag about their success, but also to expose issues that need improvement. Blogging has inspiring clinicians to do better because they know their results will be seen by the public. Blogging should be a core part of a… -
Social Media Realities: Interview with Patty Azzarello - The Discussion
2 Mar 2009 | 9:06 amThis is the second part of my two part interview with Patty Azzarello. Patty actually interviewed me and here’s the discussion that came afterwards. I posted this before, but I’m reposting it so subscribers to the podcast can pick it up as well. Related posts:Social Media Realities: Interview with Patty AzzarelloThe Social Media FallacyThe blog is the new resume - podcast -
Social Media Realities: Interview with Patty Azzarello
21 Feb 2009 | 3:27 pmI’ve included this interview Patty Azzarello conducted with me along with the discussion we had with live callers. I think you’ll find these interviews valuable and relevant to the “Be the Voice” blog and podcast series. Last week I conducted an interview with Patty Azzarello, CEO of the Azzarello Group. Patty does career coaching for C-level executives. I met Patty at the CMO Club conference in November where she gave a presentation entitled, “CMO is a Credibility War Every Day.” I was really impressed by Patty. First, at the last minute, because… -
Don’t make ads, make news
20 Jan 2009 | 11:56 amInterview with Bob Thacker, Senior VP of Marketing and Advertising for OfficeMax, about building a new voice with their “Life is beautiful. Work can be too” campaign. Summary: Office supplies are not traditionally an exciting and fun space. The category is known for big dull bland spaces that are pretty much all alike. OfficeMax’s “Life is beautiful. Work can be too” campaign is trying to change that viewpoint. ElfYourself was OfficeMax’s attempt to associate its brand with Christmas. It succeeded hugely. ElfYourself was one of twenty applications they… -
Word of mouth marketing is a lot easier than you think
20 Dec 2008 | 9:00 amAndy Sernovitz is the author of “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” and founder of GasPedal, a word of mouth marketing firm. Summary: If you have a strong personal brand or corporate brand it supersedes whatever the hot product of the day is. Launching word of mouth marketing requires marketers to stop thinking about what can I get for my budget. Once you start talking to people and they start talking back, you can never put that genie back in the bottle. Word of mouth is a function of customer service. For word of mouth to work you need talkers,…
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Really Pratical Marketing
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TechCrunch and Mashable Get Articles on Twitter Trend Badly Wrong
2 Jul 2009 | 6:50 amBritish actress Mollie Sugden, most famous for her role in ’70s comedy Are You Being Served, sadly died yesterday. In typical Twitter fashion (mostly) British fans set up a hashtag – #mrsslocombespussy in reference to the show’s running double entrendre – as a tribute, and it quickly became one of the most popular topics on the [...] -
How to be a Content Marketing Heavyweight
29 Jun 2009 | 1:57 amYour Content Has to Have Weight High School science class was some time ago but if I remember correctly weight is a function of mass (and gravity). Mass, in turn, is a function of both size and density. Something can be very large but not very dense – like a cloud – and so have very little [...] -
How Much Should You Be Paying for Content?
23 Jun 2009 | 8:46 amOK, before we even get started I’ll declare my self-interest in this one. I write content for clients and, as such, am keen to ensure that I’m fairly rewarded for my work. But I also commission content for both client projects and my own. And while I’ll always push for a good deal, I also want [...] -
Are Content Marketers Making A Mistake With Opt-in Content?
15 Jun 2009 | 10:15 am“Everything that becomes digital will become free. There will be a free version, either you will be competing with free or giving it away for free and selling something else. If it is not zero today, it will be zero tomorrow.” As you can tell from the quote above (as reported on Techcrunch) Chris Anderson, Wired [...] -
True/Slant: A New Model of Web Journalism?
12 Jun 2009 | 3:26 amThere’s no question that the business model of news has to change. The demise of print journalism – largely dependent on plummeting advertising revenues – has been well documented and each week brings news of more layoffs and closures. Against this backdrop it’s always interesting to hear of new business models being trialled – the subscription [...]
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Bringing Brands to Life
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My Interview with Author and Communication Coach Nick Morgan
2 Jul 2009 | 6:02 amI am incredibly thrilled and honored to share with you my first ever blog interview. Nick Morgan is President of Public Words Inc and author of Give Your Speech, Change the World, and Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. He is a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy Center and former editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter. I enjoyed "Trust Me" so much I wrote a review and then decided I wanted to ask Nick a few questions for this site. I "met" Nick on Twitter and asked him if he'd be willing to answer a few questions about his ideas in relation to corporate videos and he… -
Introducing Speed Linking: Week #1
30 Jun 2009 | 4:38 amSeveral years ago, I started sharing links for my readers by bookmarking interesting things I discovered on the web through Delicious. I always knew that there a small problem in doing that: only the RSS readers of this blog (and a handful of other Delicious users) would benefit from seeing those links. To resolve that, I'll start "speed linking" once a week. Speed linking was introduced a few years ago and made popular by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. "Speed linking" is simply a convenient way of rounding up five to ten links I think you'll find interesting and thought-provoking. I'll… -
Can We Capture Reality? The Art of Documentary Amazing Website
26 Jun 2009 | 5:27 amI can't believe it. I haven't seen anything like this. Ever. What am I talking about? It's perhaps the most amazing website the documentary world has seen. The National Film Board of Canada has recently announced on their blog an incredible new website, "Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary." This media-rich site is packed with over 30 master documentary filmmakers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles sharing their thoughts and insights on the craft of making documentaries and how they try to capture that all too slippery thing called, "the truth." The site features over 160… -
What's Next for Company Videos? 5 Links to Get You Thinking
17 Jun 2009 | 5:42 amI’ve recently bookmarked so many interesting sites on how companies use video I figured it’s time to open the vault and share a few of my favorite discoveries with you. I hope you’ll find something interesting, useful and thought-provoking here. While I don't have a crystal ball, the trends are crystal clear. 1. Herman Miller Video: Making of Setu Watch how the team members sit around a table and one team member shares their compliments about another person on the team; interesting spin on the traditional interview. We also get a quick tour, see the chair in action and catch some… -
You’ll Love This Book, Trust Me
9 Jun 2009 | 5:46 amOne of the questions I get asked the most is “How do you get people to talk so naturally on-camera?” The simple answer is it starts with my intention. That’s why I’m so thrilled to share with others Nick Morgan’s new book “Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.” Setting intentions is one of the central ideas in “Trust Me.” Business leaders and non-filmmakers involved in any aspect of creating a corporate documentary will find this book invaluable. (And yes, filmmakers will find it awesome, too!) Think your spoken words carry the most weight during a conversation?
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ContentMarketingToday
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6 Best Read Content Marketing Today Posts in 1st 6 Months of 2009
3 Jul 2009 | 4:59 amProving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella. While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things. Here’s the tasty topics menu from which to choose: how to create effective elevator speech to drive your content marketing using content marketing to survive the recession low cost research as killer weapon making an eBook a core component of your content marketing strategy become… -
Why Every Wedding Planner Should Have a Blog–and You Should Too!
26 Jun 2009 | 5:57 amWhen your customers have an important need, they need to know the kind of company you are and why they can trust you I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a combined group of wedding planners from Southwest Florida, the Wedding and Party Planners of Naples and the local National Association of Wedding Planners chapter. As I was preparing for the talk, the importance of content marketing in general–and of blogging in particular–really hit home. Because a wedding is so important in so many ways to women of every age and circumstance, each bride needs to feel absolutely… -
Here’s A Public Agency That Really Understands Content Marketing
26 Jun 2009 | 4:42 amAC Transit’s Dedicated Site, ACTForMe.org, Paints a Brilliant and Loving Portrait of the Benefits of Public Transit AC Transit operates a very sophisticated bus transportation system in the San Francisco Bay area, handling more than 65 million passengers annually in an area covering 364 square miles. That’s pretty impressive. But what really impressed me is the fact that they also make excellent use of the web to tell a story that turns taking the bus into the obvious transportation choice. AC Transit has created ACT for Me as “Your Guide to the Future of Public… -
Why Does this BMW Dealer eNewsletter Talk So Little About Cars?
19 Jun 2009 | 9:25 amHow To Put the Brakes on Their Five Major Marketing Mistakes [Please note that I have made a few changes to the initial post based on constructive feedback, particularly to clarify that this is a dealer enewsletter,not a BMW corporate effort ] If you were to imagine an eNewsletter from your local BMW dealer, you would probably expect it to lead off with a picture something like the one to the right. As a BMW owner, you tend to be a certain kind of person. The folks at BMW have understood your persona well over decades in the United States. That’s why I’m mystified at the June… -
What is Your Unique Buying Proposition?
19 Jun 2009 | 6:02 amToss Out the Company-Centric USP and Bring In the Customer-Centric ‘UBP’ to Underlie Your Content Marketing Strategy. Don’t get me wrong. The unique part is critical. But the age old concept of a unique selling proposition views the problem of positioning almost backwards. The idea of a unique selling proposition is that you need to differentiate yourself from the hundreds or thousands of other vendors with whom you compete. Theoretically, if you have a really good USP, you can stand apart from all the same old same old that everyone else is selling. I think…
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Hard Knox Life
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Brands I Love: Knob Creek tells the world “Thanks for Nothing”
1 Jul 2009 | 10:16 amI have to admit,this is one of my favorite print ads out there. But then again, I seem to have a soft spot for great liquor advertising. In the world of Consumer Packaged Goods, Knob Creek is going through what we call “allocation.” And allocation is usually a bad thing for a brand… a really bad thing. But the marketers at Knob Creek have taken the high road and used the shortage to reinforce their equity of “uncompromising quality.” It would have been easy for them to start using some product that hadn’t aged the “full 9 years”. But… -
Don’t Count MySpace Out Just Yet
30 Jun 2009 | 3:38 amThere is one constant when it comes to Digital Marketing: people are always looking for the “next big thing” while announcing the “end” of the last one. Lately, the digerati have been increasingly calling out “the end of MySpace” thanks to their latest restructuring and layoffs. And many are pointing to the visitor growth of Twitter and Facebook as rationale as well. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, I think: “the reports of MySpace’s death are greatly exaggerated.” This is a point I have been trying to make to many of my fellow… -
Why Consumer Reviews Matter to Brand Managers
29 Jun 2009 | 2:22 amOver at AdAge, Abbey Klaasen just published a great story on “Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review.“ As the story states: …for all the ink spilled on the importance of Twitter and Facebook as feedback and customer-service channels, there’s another social-media tool marketers are increasingly finding useful, not just as an online-shopping tool but as an internal, culturally changing consumer-criticism channel: the humble product review. This is a great point that deserves reinforcement. While it is easy to get distracted by the latest “shiny… -
Digital Weekly Round-Up: 6-28-09
28 Jun 2009 | 11:53 amWhile summer is upon us, there is plenty of news happening in the world of Digital Marketing. Here are some of the articles / pieces of news that jumped out to me in recent weeks: Team Wins Netflix $1 Million Crowdsourcing Prize: For several years, Netflix has had an open challenge that whoever improved their recommendation engine by 10% would win a prize of $1 million dollars. This has always been one of my favorite examples of Crowdsourcing in business and it looks like someone is finally going to claim the prize. Panera Adds Community Service: I love the simplicity of… -
John Battelle’s Thoughts on Online Marketing
23 Jun 2009 | 4:00 amEvery Brand Manager and Marketer should have a handful of go-to people who are guaranteed to stretch your thinking. I am talking about people that live and breath a topic and will put your mind into overdrive with their words and writing. For me, John Battelle is one of those guys, especially when it comes to the future of the Social Web and Online Marketing. As Chairman of Federated Media and co-founder of the Web 2.0 Summit, John is someone whose opinion I definitely trust about this space. At the most recent Federated CM Summit, John kicked off the event with a great opener where he…
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Web Strategy by Jeremiah
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Breakdown: 3 Ways Brands Are Earning –and Buying– Followers on Twitter
3 Jul 2009 | 7:39 amCompanies who don’t have iconic brands with millions of adoring fans, often have to resort to other ways to get the attention of the market. This isn’t evil, nor is it uncommon, it’s just business, and was here before the web, and will be afterwards. Don’t get mad or emotional about it, let’s break it down to understand how it’s going to work, if you’re a concerned user, use this post to figure out how to beat it. If you’re a marketer, figure out what works –and throw away what doesn’t. Breakdown: How Brands Are Buying… -
Facebook’s Awkward Adolescence
2 Jul 2009 | 6:21 amFacebook is undergoing pubescenct changes in the next few years –from a private pre-teen to a public facing member of society –that’s what I told USA Today. Facebook initially made it’s promise to be a private community, but realizes it must now be more public to compete with the open web. Expect more awkwardness for the social network and it’s users’ over the coming years. What are the indicators that Facebook wants to grow up and be public? Previous settings allow members to allow their profile page to be public and therefore findable by search engines. -
As Brands Continue to ‘Pollinate’ the Social Web, Expect Corporate Websites to Aggregate
1 Jul 2009 | 3:44 amBrands are pollinating the social web with easy-to-share features like Sharethis. As conversations splinter across the web, brands must prepare to aggregate those same conversations on their corporate website. As a result, the trusted conversations will centralize back on product pages. [Trusted conversations have fragmented to the social web --shifting the balance of power to communities] Social Pollination: Brands Currently Spreading to Communities Why: Brands are trying to let their corporate and social content spread to many different communities in Facebook, Twitter, Email and others. -
Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams?
26 Jun 2009 | 6:45 amTop Bloggers Spend Less Time Blogging I’ve noticed a gradual change in what we know as blogs when Scoble and Shel wrote the book on Naked Conversations. Both of them are now focused on micromedia: Shel has an upcoming book on Twitterville, and Scoble spends more time promoting Friendfeed than his own blog. Secondly, I just learned that Edelman’s top blogger Steve Rubel has retired his traditional blog, and it’s now a life stream, which aggregates content from any source. Of course, I don’t need to mention that many of the top 100 blogs all look like mainstream media,… -
Report: Companies Should Organize For Social Media in a “Hub and Spoke” model
25 Jun 2009 | 2:51 pmI often get asked by brands: “How should we organize our company for social media?” or “Which roles do we need”, or “Which department is in charge”. So for our latest report (clients can access all the details) answers just that, it has data and graphs about spending, brand maturity in the social space, which department ‘owns’ the program, and how companies are organizing. Companies organize in three distinct models For this post, let’s focus in on how companies are organizing. There are three basic models that I’ve observed and…
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Drew's Marketing Minute
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Did their wires connect or get tangled?
3 Jul 2009 | 7:58 amThe Economist magazine just launched a new campaign in the UK. Through research, they determined that because of the rise in the number of people going on to university, there are now over 3 million people in the UK whose interest in world affairs, travel, news and politics suggests an unconscious affinity with what The Economist reports on every week. The Economist describes these people as the “intellectually curious.”So their new "Red Wires" campaign uses the image of a wire-jumper walking through a city on a series of red wires and the tagline “Let your mind… -
Fear Factor
1 Jul 2009 | 6:44 pmWant to know what sabotages most marketing efforts? It’s not the competition, the small budget or too much work, so you can’t be proactive. So what is?Fear.There is a sweeping attitude (although many who have it won’t even see that they’ve been infected.) that it’s better to be safe, bland and expected when marketing. Many marketing execs and even some agencies are just not willing to stick their proverbial neck out and risk being bold or different.What is there to be afraid of? You might get noticed? You might inspire reaction from your consumers? You… -
Protect your privacy on Facebook -10 privacy settings you should consider
28 Jun 2009 | 6:43 amAs Facebook and other social networking sites continue to grow by leaps and bounds... many privacy issues are also cropping up. Most of us end up blending our personal and professional lives on Facebook and sometimes that can get a bit uncomfortable.We've talked about the issue of whether or not you get to have a private life anymore, if you're active in social networking. But, there are some things you can do to protect your own privacy and also, the privacy of the people you are linked to/friended.This has been a growing concern of mine, so those of you who are my… -
This is a brilliant idea
27 Jun 2009 | 7:32 amYou know those cheesy air fresheners that people hang off their rear view mirror in the shape of a pine tree or a piece of fruit? Why not let people personalize them with family photos like they do with credit cards? Maybe someone like Snapfish could work on this idea a bit?Who wouldn't be happier with a picture of the grandbaby dangling from the mirror and smelling piney fresh?That's it. Just that random idea. If you make a million, you owe me a cup of coffee or something.I feel a little like Bill Blazejowski from the movie Night Shift. "This is Bill. -
Social media isn't all that (is that how the kids say it?)
26 Jun 2009 | 4:58 amI've often said social media isn't for everyone. Not every company should have a blog. No one on Twitter really cares what you had for dinner (unless you ate chocolate grasshoppers) and you don't have to possess a single friend on Facebook.Social media is a collection of great tools that hopefully bring out the best in us as people and companies. It gives us the ability to connect, collaborate and create communities.But that doesn't mean it's all that. (pretty sure that's the hip phrase these days!)Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB wrote a very…
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Writing White Papers
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Freelance Writer Hiring Trends: Credit Checks and Drug Tests??
30 Jun 2009 | 9:48 amI have to share story with you. It’s one of the most bizarre things that’s ever happened in my freelance writing career—and it happened to me just recently. Now before I share this story with you, I want you to know that I thought I had pretty much seen it all… I work with some of the largest companies in the world (and some of the smallest) and have seen the many hoops they make us freelancers jump through. But I’ve never experienced about to share with you… (more…) -
Tips for the White Paper Interviews
29 Jun 2009 | 8:16 amThe interview process in writing white papers has some interesting parallels in newspaper journalism—beginning with the all-important needs assessment. So I think it helps to go back to newspaper basics when conducting that first call. Just the facts, M’am… When writing for a newspaper, you learn to keep articles short and stick to the “Five W’s,” who, what, why, where, and when. Bare bones—that’s it. Editors have only just so much space in which to cram those pesky words, so journalists learn quickly to keep interview questions to the point. But that can be easier said than… -
Great Tips for Bloggers… An Interview With Denise Wakeman
17 Jun 2009 | 4:32 pmAre you a blogger or thinking of becoming one? Perhaps some of these questions are on your mind: ‘Is it too late to blog?’ ‘What should I write about?’ ‘How do I find time?’ In this interview with Denise Wakeman of the Blog Squad, we address these very questions head-on. What are your thoughts on blogging? -
Secret to Writing Success: Visualize Your Reader
11 Jun 2009 | 5:10 pmOne of the primary maxims of writing sales copy is: “Know Your Customer.” However, that particular pearl of wisdom sometimes gets ignored in white papers. Why? We’re taught to “Talk Sideways” When I took a speech class in college, one of the tips the instructor gave for handling stage fright was to look over the heads of my audience and avoid direct eye contact. Have you ever heard that one? Or how about visualizing your audience naked? While these “talking sideways” tactics may help temporarily reduced sweaty palms in public speaking, they didn’t help me “connect” with my… -
Should You Give Away Your Secrets in a White Paper?
9 Jun 2009 | 5:12 pmDoes it ever makes sense to give away your secrets in a white paper? This is a question that I hear a lot—and it might be one that you’re pondering. When does it make sense to share the very secrets that make you great? This is the essence of a question I received over email from Andy Marker. He wrote: I feel I’m dumping all my experience and thoughts about what I have done onto a piece of paper and this is theoretically quite valuable, personally if not to others. I can’t really see the value in writing this up and then distributing to various people who basically can…
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Seth's Blog
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What to do with special requests
3 Jul 2009 | 2:20 amThe bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week.A week!What if someone says, "I have a bike trip coming up in three days, can you do it by then?"At most bike shops, the answer is a shrug, followed by, "I'm sorry, we're swamped."The problem with telling people to go away is that they go away. And the problem with treating all customers the same is that customers aren't the same. They're different and they demand to be treated (and are often willing to pay) differently.So, why not smile and say, "Oh, wow, that's a rush. We can do it, but… -
The purpose of a book cover
2 Jul 2009 | 3:11 am(and I think it works for lots of products)Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact?The third.It's the third because if the book has maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is what sells your product, not the cover.Tactically, the cover sells the back cover, the back cover sells the flap and by then you've sold the book. If those steps end up selling a book that the purchaser doesn't like, game over. So you have to be consistent all the way through and end up creating a… -
The risk/reward confusion
1 Jul 2009 | 3:13 amIt's easy to to adopt the policy of avoiding risk at all costs, that whenever possible, the products you launch or the engagements you have should be flawless and without downside.Here's the problem: in most endeavors, a small increase in risk can double the reward. It's the second doubling of reward that brings serious risk with it. But the first leap is relatively painless.In the chart above, notice that going from point A to point B brings almost no incremental risk. It might feel scary, but rationally, it's not. Doubling reward again from B to C, though, brings significant incremental… -
Malcolm is wrong
30 Jun 2009 | 1:37 pmI've never written those three words before, but he's never disagreed with Chris Anderson before, so there you go.Free is the name of Chris's new book, and it's going to be wildly misunderstood and widely argued about.The first argument that makes no sense is, "should we want free to be the future?" Who cares if we want it? It is. The second argument that makes no sense is, "how will this new business model support the world as we know it today?" Who cares if it does? It is. It's happening. The world will change around it, because the world has no choice. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient, but… -
There's always room for Jello
30 Jun 2009 | 2:41 amThis is one of the great cultural touchstone slogans of our era. A culture where there's so much to eat we need to try to find a food that we can eat even if we're stuffed.Often, we'll decide that something is full, stuffed, untouchable but then some Jello shows up, and suddenly there's room.Think about your schedule... is there room for an emergency, an SEC investigation, a server crash? If you took a day off because of the flu, is your business going to go bankrupt? Probably not.So, if there's time for an emergency (Jello), why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?
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Greg Verdino's Marketing Blog
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microMARKETING: learn more
2 Jul 2009 | 1:18 pmAbout the Book | Progress Reports | Get News and Updates First -
Coopetwition gives two soda giants bubbly feelings
2 Jul 2009 | 7:11 amThe story: a member of the Twitterverse suggests that @pepsi and @cocacola put age-old competitive rivalries aside and become Twitter friends. The brands agree and shake virtual hands.Sure the person who made the suggestion isn't quite an everyday Joe -- he is the founder of the Aussie arm of Razorfish and has done work with PepsiCo -- and the gesture between the two soft drink giants is as silly as it is symbolic. But still, it makes for a fun story.Can Twitter teach the world to sing in perfect harmony?(via Darryl Ohrt; image reposted from my Posterous.) -
5 ways every marketer can have a "dancing man moment"
29 Jun 2009 | 11:11 amLast night, social media serendipity led me to a video of a man dancing at an outdoor music festival. The dancing man himself isn't anything special -- a clumsy show of flailing arms and legs that wouldn't get him through the first round of auditions on So You Think You Can Dance. What happens next is pretty special (or at least interesting.) When the man starts dancing, he is the only member of the crowd moving. In fact, it almost seems as if the rest of the audience is blissfully unaware that they're at a music festival at all. But within seconds he's joined by one, then two, then… -
Bits, bytes, posterous, punk
23 Jun 2009 | 6:58 pmA recent post by Steve Rubel inspired me to dust off my "lightly used" (a euphemism for "never used") Posterous account and launch a new blog-like-object called Verdino Bytes. With an easy-to-use bookmarklet for clipping content straight from the web and an even-easier-to-use post via email function, Posterous is ideal for creating and sharing content that falls somewhere between my fully formed blog posts and my malformed tweets. It's a perfect tool for capturing and sharing everything from cool photos, interesting videos, random thoughts, stray ideas and crap I find all around the… -
Tomorrow is gone too: social media RIP
18 Jun 2009 | 7:35 amFriend, look-alike, PR man and Now Is Gone author Geoff Livingston is stirring the pot today, with a pretty provocative proclamation -- "social media is dead."Tucked away in a post about why the next Blog Potomac conference -- slated for October 2009 and featuring fellow crayonista Jane Quigley -- will be the last, lies Geoff's eulogy for a form of media and marketing that many still consider the latest shiny object in the marketing practitioner's box of baubles.The technology adoption cycle has been maturing for social media (and social media, web 2.0 whatever you want to call it is…
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News from the Herd
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What's your website good for?
3 Jul 2009 | 8:30 amWhat's your website good for?View more documents from Dirk Singer. This is a theme I've been meaning to post about for a while. The tendency of more and more sites (especially agency ones) to be social media based - either blogs, or mirrors of online chat (like Twitter feeds). The most recent example - Ad agency CP&B giving a lot of its site over to news, blog and twitter mentions. Is a lot of this a publicity stunt, a way to get people to people to coo about something they'd never otherwise, a website? Hell yes, but in the long run, who cares? That's because long term the principle… -
How trends spread / taking real life dating into virtual worlds
3 Jul 2009 | 1:13 amTo coincide with the sixth birthday of the virtual world Second Life, two posts, one part-recycled from 18 months back: How trends spread and the limits of social contagion First of all a piece of research from the University of Michigan who looked at the virtual world to see how trends spread. When you create an avatar in Second Life, the starting point is fairly basic - a rudimentary 'skin', clothes, shape, and gestures / moves. Hence a whole economy has sprung up where enterprising residents create add-ons that you can use to customise your AV. The University of Michigan researchers looked… -
Out of all ad formats, display ignored the most
2 Jul 2009 | 10:18 amRecently Comscore was commissioned to do a report on behalf of online publishers to show that online display really does work. Forget about the click through was the angle, what matters is that these ads drive awareness. A piece of research out by Harris Interactive casts some doubt on that. A survey of American consumers found that when it came to ad formats found to be the most 'helpful' in influencing purchasing decisions, TV came top on 37%. TV was followed by newspaper advertising on 17% while search engine advertising scored a respectable 14%. However at the bottom of the table, only 3%… -
Time for a metrics overhaul
2 Jul 2009 | 7:12 amNew Strategies Require New MeasurementsView more presentations from Helge Tennø. Check out this excellent presentation by Norwegian digital strategist Helge Tenno, where he questions whether the way we currently evaluate and analyse web campaigns are in reality a few years out of date. See also this presentation I put together on web metrics and the necessity of taking intuitive calls, despite the fact that this is often anathema to a lot of marketing departments. I only wish that my presentations were as easy on the eye as Helge's but it's always good to have something to strive to! Related… -
iPhone users prefer mobile web over print newspapers
1 Jul 2009 | 11:07 pmYou could read a number of things into this, but Comscore and admob has released a study showing that iPhone and iPod Touch owners use their device more than they read printed newspapers and (for iPhone users) magazines.Does that stat mean that they read the news on their iPhone? Not necessarily, this finding could simply point to the trend of printed newspaper readership going down and smartphone usage going up.Having said that, the fact is that after years of mobile newspapers being touted as the way forward despite people having to struggle with WAP (we worked for a client called Mobizines…
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EyeCube
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Malls need to tell a story
3 Jul 2009 | 1:54 pmAttention Shoppers. Hello? Is this thing on? Is it just me, or are you going to malls a lot less than you used to? Growing up I went all the time, and even after I got married and started a family we would go fairly often. There is no shortage of evidence that we’re not the only ones staying away from shopping centers in droves, despite efforts to re-imagine the mall from an architectural standpoint. There is even a website chronicling the decline of these retail meccas. Of course, the easy answer is the economy has people spending less, and there is no doubt truth to that. But the mall… -
The Social Media Economy Matrix
2 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amThe discussion around Chris Anderson’s book, Free, continues as BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum weighs in. This whole episode got me thinking about not only the cost, but the value of various elements of the Social Media Economy. So, with apologies to New York magazine and their backpage feature, The Approval Matrix, I give you the Eyecube Social Media Economy Matrix: Freeconomics 101 Click on the image or here to see a larger version of the Matrix. Legend: Upper-left quadrant - The TED Conference TwitterPromoter.com Free, by Chris Anderson Upper-right quadrant - Collective… -
Freeconomics: Gladwell, Godin and Anderson on Free
1 Jul 2009 | 5:34 amFreeconomics 101 Business models and the survival of entire industries are the stuff great debates are made of, and we’ve got one brewing here. Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine editor and author of The Long Tail, has a new book out, called Free, the future of a radical priceHe puts forth arguments that look pretty compelling to anyone who has followed the demise of printed publications – both magazines and newspapers. You can check out his Wired story on this from Feb. 2008 here. You can listen to Chris Anderson on an Amazon Podcast here and buy his book, Free, from Amazon… -
Lessons to learn from a design master
30 Jun 2009 | 7:35 amLess, but better Design is something I certainly appreciate, though I’m not a student of it. Yes, Tinker Hatfield is a personal hero and I enjoy stories about 13-year olds stuggling with what was once the height of design, but the guys at BBH Labs are serious about this stuff. So serious, that they interview guys like Dieter Rams, one of the really influential industrial designers of the last 50 years. The interview is terrific; Rams is an uncompromising designer with a strong aesthetic and strong opinions. I really liked the insights that Ben Malbon gleaned from the interview: 1. -
A & Q with Seth Godin: Ready to ship?
29 Jun 2009 | 7:30 amThis is the first of a new feature called “A & Q.” The idea is to engage some of the smartest marketers I know and have them first answer a question, then ask one of their own. The Shipping News I can’t think of a better person to start this off with than Seth Godin. I’m not going to stop to list off of Seth’s accomplishments, it would take too long, but here’s his greatest strength, at least to me: He cares about people. He answers his email and always remembers it’s about human interaction, not technology, or marketing speak or any other…
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Find and Convert
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How Broad is Your Footprint on the Web?
28 Jun 2009 | 1:59 pmCreate a Broad Footprint on the Web to be Found the way Buyers Search The first decade of the new millennium is almost over. As I look at the history of marketing on the web over the past two decades I make these big picture observations, which I discuss in my book, Marketing 2.0. 1990 to 2000 - Most businesses developed their first website. Websites were a one way communication medium from the seller to the buyer. Most businesses had little understanding of organic search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising to “be found” by buyers. Websites served mostly as an… -
YouTube or MyTube? Video Content Marketing
19 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amPodcast/Video Interview with Shaun Pope of Endavo Media This podcast interview with Shaun is about using video content marketing in a Marketing 2.0 strategy. Shaun is the co-author of the video chapter in my Marketing 2.0. social media book. Endavo Media is an Internet TV platform that allows a marketer to easily upload video content, brand it, control it and monetize it. It allows any marketer to create “branded entertainment.” Shaun points out that those companies having the most success with video have fun with it! A video excerpt of this interview will be posted on the branded… -
The Future of Search is Here
11 Jun 2009 | 6:16 amCreate a Broad Footprint on the Web I frequently advise “create a broad footprint on the web” if you want to be found by your target audience. Create content that will be found easily across the entire web. In my book, Marketing 2.0, I harp on this a lot. When people search by keywords, increasingly the results presented to them are diversified. The conventional search results have been known as “web results.” We refer to them as organic results and paid (or sponsored) results. The latter is also known as pay-per-click advertising. Some refer to it as SEM. However,… -
Help Me Select Social Media Marketing Book Cover Design
7 Jun 2009 | 4:49 pmMy new social media marketing book is coming out this summer. And, I need your help selecting the book cover design. The book title is Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing. The book is written for small and medium size businesses. It is a how-to book for marketers who have not yet fully developed their social media marketing strategy. The book provides guidelines for developing your strategy and real world case study examples from other SMBs for inspiration. You’ll hear more about the book soon. For now, I want you to help me select the… -
Long Tail SEO Strategy Delivers Gold
30 May 2009 | 2:14 pmI recently wrote an article for our Optimize newsletter about the importance of aligning goals with plans. The gist of the article is that if you have big goals, your plans better match up or forget about reaching your goals. I used the analogy of an athlete who trains for high levels of performance. Her training program is much more intense than the weekend warrior who trains for local competitions. As a marketer are you a weekend warrior or are you going for gold at the Olympics? The point to my question is more about developing realistic goals, a winnable plan and measuring your results in…
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Techno//Marketer
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Trendrr [del.icio.us]
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Rebuilding corporate reputations - The McKinsey Quarterly [del.icio.us]
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newsmap [del.icio.us]
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Text to newsstand
10 Jun 2009 | 6:46 pmI was flipping through the Economist the other day (because it exhausts me to try to actually read the whole thing) while I was on the plane and came across this insert in the magazine. I found it quite interesting and wanted to get your take. The point of the service is to send a text message to receive alerts when the print publication is hitting newsstands. It's an interesting idea in the promotion of print with digital platforms. Obviously the content strategy is to release at the stands first and then online to keep print subs up. What do you think of this? Would you sign up? -
How Apple's New iPhone Changes Mobile Marketing - Advertising Age [del.icio.us]
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Eat Media Blog
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Kodachrome: Another Digital Obituary for Photography
26 Jun 2009 | 9:36 amThe digital revolution has driven another stake into the heart of the old world. And as a journalist who’s entry into the field was as a photographer, this one hurts. Kodak announced on June 22 that it was ending the production of Kodachrome slide film, it’s oldest film product, and for many photographers, the gold standard for capturing life-like color. This comes on the heels of other bad news in the photographic world. Nikon, probably the world’s most famous manufacturer of cameras, now builds only two flim cameras, both SLRs, one pro model and one for amateurs. It makes no point and… -
What’s on Your iPhone?
23 Jun 2009 | 10:02 amNew iPhones hit the stores last week, and consumers—weak economy and two-year contract with AT&T be damned—went home with more than one million of the devices. Despite the name, iPhones are not phones; they are powerful handheld computers. I own a first-generation iPhone and it can do things that early cell phones could never dream of; in fact, it can do things my first Apple product, a Macintosh SE purchased in 1990, never dreamed of. Sure it can do all the standard smartphone tricks—texting, calendar, camera, maps with turn-by-turn directions, etc., but where the iPhone really… -
The tweet heard round the world
19 Jun 2009 | 12:54 pmDespite being a self-professed non-tweeter with a twitter account, and an avid follower of tweetingtoohard.com, I have been fascinated by Twitter’s role in the disputed Iranian election. Today, between 2:00–2:01 p.m. eastern standard time—10:30–10:31 local time in Tehran—104 new tweets were added to the #iranelection thread, the primary national news source for Iran since Iranian press coverage was suspended last Friday. Between 2:00–2:10 p.m., 671 tweets were added to #iranelection. A tweet heard round the world, repurposed by countless major news sources, reads “We have no… -
Where does content strategy go next?
16 Jun 2009 | 12:38 pmA lot of the discussion in the content strategy Twittersphere has the feeling of a group of blind people trying to describe an elephant. There’s a lot of talk, all of it descriptive, some of it incisive, but it falls far short of describing the elephant. And that’s the problem: talking about content strategy isn’t going to answer any of the problems at hand: if you really want to know the elephant that is content strategy, you need to talk to a zookeeper. The content zookeeper has a base of knowledge that may have come from textbooks. But the reality is, those textbooks were written by… -
30 days of “content strategy”
12 Jun 2009 | 1:21 pmWith all the talk about “content strategy” I tracked how it trended on Google for 31 days. Is there enough data to determine an absolute—no. Is there enough to extract some interesting details—I think so. Data Details: -Over the course of 31 days “content strategy” came up as a result (for that day) and average of 480 times. -The overall high was on 5/14/09 with 718 instances. Of those 718: 321 (month’s high) were for “content strategy” + jobs 251 (month’s high) were for “content strategy” + events -”Content strategy”…
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Emerson Direct Marketing Observations
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Are you the change agent? 10 questions you need to ask yourself
2 Jul 2009 | 7:56 amIn marketing, in social media, in PR and in just about every other role. Innovation and great ideas can bubble up from anyone. The key and qualities are many. I know of a number of change agents, some personally, and some not, but in each case, it was a person that truly possessed many of the qualities below. Whether you’re looking for that change agent when deciding on a go or no go on a project, or you are wondering whether you could be that change agent in your company- Ask yourself these 10 questions. Do you say, “There has to be better way? Is this you? Are you the only one… -
5 Ways To Reduce the Risk of Engaging in Social Media
30 Jun 2009 | 11:30 amLast week I was invited to talk with my good friend Paul Chaney from Bizzuka on his very popular show User Friendly Thinking on Blog Talk Radio. Paul and I got to talk about the risk of engaging in social media on a corporate level and from that conversation bubbled up this post. In the age of the social web, companies can no longer afford to delay their response to the conversation taking place. They need guidance, structure and security when embarking down the road of social media and how to use it. Companies need a “risk aversion process” for learning social media. So here are… -
20 reasons why social media is such a popular subject…
26 Jun 2009 | 6:11 amBelow is my tongue in cheek look at why social media is such a popular subject to talk and write about. Feel free to add yours to the bottom of the list. Because it seemed like a good way to make new friends Because bloggers see the traffic that comes to their sites every time they write about it, so it must be good. Seems like a good way to drum up more business for the agency The content is always fresh because no one has a clue as to what they are talking about You can be vague and no one knows it, including yourself and your clients It’s a good way to become an authority on… -
Brands: You can’t hide and then expect to participate in social media
25 Jun 2009 | 12:20 pmSo I’m late. There’s a killer pick up game of basketball going on down at the park. I know they play every Monday , Wednesday and Friday at 5pm. For weeks I sit and watch them. This time I’m gonna play. There’s 11 guys including me. They pick up teams and I don’t get picked. WTF? I know I can play with these guys, their games are weak. Yet, I still don’t get picked. Why is that? Because they don’t know me. Even though I’ve been watching them for weeks, they don’t know me. I could have easily played dozens of times over that span of… -
Don’t learn social media at the expense of your client
24 Jun 2009 | 5:12 amYou have a client that trusts you. You have been tasked with handling some aspect of their marcom endeavor and you are kicking ass. They ask you about this social media thing. You tell them what you know. But it’s not what you “do”. Then it happens. They ask you if they should “do ” it and whether you could do it for them. You say yes to the first question, and to the second you say… Don’t do it. You’ll earn more respect for saying that you are not qualified then you would for muddling and scuffling through something that on the surface…
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Internet Marketing Blog
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Marketing Headlines of the Week: Know Yourself, Know Your Customer
3 Jul 2009 | 3:30 amMy mom used to leave me notes and lists of chores right in my spot at the kitchen table, an easy drop for her on her way out in the morning. I couldn't eat breakfast without moving it out of the way, making the lists hard to ignore.This should be the case with your company's online presence -- you need to be found in places where your target audience will naturally look for information. One of the keys to getting found online is to have a broad online presence, but targeted in the places that make sense for you and for your potential clients, which is a recurring lesson among this week's top… -
The Inbound Marketing Race: Where Do I Start?
3 Jul 2009 | 12:24 amWhere do I start? Many marketers standing at the starting line of inbound marketing ask themselves this question. So did Laura Neufelder in a forum thread on InboundMarketing.com. One of the best pieces of advice Laura received came from Alyce Lindquist, another inbound marketing rookie. "I recommend learning by immersion! Start small, but just start," wrote Alyce.Here are some of the other insights I found in the forum:Focus on Buyer PersonasCreate a mental picture of your target audience and its interests, hobbies and activities. Where does this persona live? What does she or he like to… -
BzzAgent's Dave Balter Offers Word-of-Mouth Advice
2 Jul 2009 | 12:39 am"Ever since Hotmail appeared on the scene and showed that one consumer can influence many, many others, brands have been chasing the kind of viral explosion that catapulted the Numa Numa dance to web glory," wrote Dave Balter in his new book The Word of Mouth Manual Vol. II. Dave is the founder of BzzAgent.com, a company providing word-of-mouth services for hundreds of major brands.A recent guest of HubSpot TV, Dave offered insights into the pure word-of-mouth aspect of marketing. If you have questions about the new face of content promotion, advertising and blogging, read through Dave's… -
How to Use YouTube's Call-to-Action Overlay Ads
1 Jul 2009 | 12:31 amYesterday YouTube rolled out Call-to-Action overlay ads to its paying advertisers. Until now, only specific partners and non-profit organizations could harness the benefits of this marketing feature.Now businesses can explore one more aspect of online video marketing. By plugging in customized, semi-transparent pop-ups in their videos, YouTube advertisers can refer viewers back to their product sites. Although such YouTube overlay ads existed before, they were limited to only select partners, specific content and video genre. Today, as TechCrunch reported, "brands can link their commercials… -
Video: Increase Your Marketing Performance and Size of Your Lead Flow
30 Jun 2009 | 7:19 amAre you insecure about your marketing performance? Are you afraid your marketing pipeline might be undersized? You're not alone! Here's the story of how one marketer learned how to get his leads up. (This video may not be appropriate for viewers under the age of 18.) Manager: I was looking for a better performance from our marketing. - [You're doing it again!]Marketer: [Oh come on!] - The size and quality of my lead flow just wasn't satisfying her sales demand.Manager: You're doing it again!Marketer: I finally came to understand this is happening to a lot of marketers, and…
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FeedGrowth
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Get a professionally designed, custom banner ad in 48 hours with PointBanner
2 Jul 2009 | 9:18 amIt seems every day some newfangled ad unit is being rolled out. We’re not knocking experimentation, but leasing tweets or splashing branded wallpaper across a site is not a for everyone. If all you really need is a banner ad in front of your target audience, why reinvent the wheel? Try a service called PointBanner. They’ve got one of the cleanest sales pitches we’ve heard in awhile – custom banner advertisements, 3 revisions, 48 hours, $49. Unlike 99designs and Crowdspring, this service is strictly banner ads and all design work is performed by… -
Track and compare trending topics across sites and media with Trendrr
1 Jul 2009 | 11:06 amAnalytics drive most of our marketing decisions, but numbers without context can be misleading. Can a surge in sales be attributed to a celebrity being seen with your product? Is a well-timed viral promotion driving Twitter chatter? Separate legitimate trends from the the noise with Trendrr. This service tracks the saturation level of products, brands, music, politics – whatever you want really – across different sites and media. You can set up a custom trend search or browse data graphs that others are tracking (which is kinda like a trend within a trend). The free… -
Harness your brand buzz by creating a BzzScape brand community
30 Jun 2009 | 12:51 pmSome marketers are hesitant to embrace brand communities as user generated content can be both powerful and unpredictable. Still, if the buzz is good, you want to be participating in the conversation, not watching from the wings. That’s the idea behind BzzScapes. BzzScapes is a collection of member-generated brand communities, where people (BzzAgents) talk about products they like. This can be blog posts, videos, coupons, etc. Once a BzzScape is created, other members can contribute content, rate your content, or add comments. There are also BzzCampaigns, where eligible… -
Use DocMazy to search for a variety of documents online
29 Jun 2009 | 12:54 pmSearch engines don’t index document content well, so if the information you are looking for is buried deep within a PDF or Powerpoint presentation, you could be searching for awhile. Try using DocMazy; it’s a document search engine that returns text, MS Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and PDF results. You can filter results by specific file format (say, you only want PDF’s) and even preview the document before you download. The latter made possible by iPaper, an idea we discussed in Cogito, ergo… We don’t want to spread false information. The major search… -
Control how you appear on Google by claiming a Google Profile
26 Jun 2009 | 12:27 pmOn the first day of class, a professor in Journalism school asked us to google ourselves, because “you’d be surprised what your name is attached to”. Of course, that was ten years ago, before social media profiles and Facebook usernames. Heck, it was even before Merriam-Webster recognized “googling” as a proper verb. Thing is, when someone googles your name (for business research, contact information, cyberstalking), you don’t know what they will get. Sure, we can throw some SEO tips your way, but you’re still at the mercy of Google. Will…
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Marketing Profs Daily Fix
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Paul Williams: The Five Stages Of Idea Acceptance
3 Jul 2009 | 7:53 amYou feel a little jittery. Is it the presentation? Or the pot of coffee you drank this morning while rehearsing? You gather your laptop and index cards and head to the conference room. This is the big day. You've been working on the plan for weeks now. You're ready. It's time to present your big ideas for the Summer 2010 plan.The team is there. Laptop syncs with the projector. You're hitting your key points beautifully. You pause for questions... And then... it starts going sideways. John, at the end of the table casually mentions, "You know, we tried an idea similar to this in '98 and it… -
Paul Barsch: Why Capacity Management Matters to Marketers
1 Jul 2009 | 7:19 amIn a challenging global slowdown, the world seems awash in capacity. Scans of major business publications show airlines reducing flights, companies furloughing or firing employees, and manufacturers closing plants. If you agree that it appears there is more unused capacity than demand, why should capacity management matter?It would seem in the “Great Recession,” capacity planning and management should be a minimal consideration. In fact, capacity utilization for many industries is at an all time low. For example, from January 2008 to January 2009, according to the Financial Times, the… -
Ann Handley: B2B According to Me: The Winners
30 Jun 2009 | 7:47 amAttendees who blogged about the MarketingProfs B2B Forum (and let us know about it) had the opportunity to win a pass to our Digital Marketing Mixer this fall in Chicago. Well, the votes are in, and here are the winners!We looked for blog posts that talked about the 2009 B2B Forum in Boston, and awarded recognition to posts in five specific categories. (Details of the contest are here.) Before I get into the winners, let me just say Thank You to all who contributed. All of the posts were truly great, and the staff here loved pouring through them all. But as your mother always told you, you… -
Ted Mininni: How Can Supermarkets Truly Differentiate?
30 Jun 2009 | 7:46 amGood question, isn’t it? Have you ever found yourself in a mall store and due to being in virtually the same environment as every other store, and being surrounded by virtually the same merchandise, have you had to step back outside the store and glance up at the sign to ascertain which store you’d ambled into? I’m willing to bet most of us have at some time or other. What about supermarkets? That’s why a recent BusinessWeek article dubbed, “Supermarket Strategies: What’s New at the Grocer” didn’t grab my attention at first. The subhead under the title did: “From… -
Paul Dunay: Social Search: Could It Be a Google Killer?
30 Jun 2009 | 7:45 amThis morning I typed into Google the search term: VoIP (which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol) and I got 64 Million responses. 64 Million!! How archaic is that?Does Google have any idea how long would it take me to go through 64 Million responses? One day we are going to look back at the days of searching and getting 64 Million responses to anything and equate that to a Commodore 64 or Betamax tape. I know, I know the point is Google is trying to bring me the best responses to the term in the first few pages (if not the first page). But the best responses according to who? Why don’t…
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Occam's Razor
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Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data
29 Jun 2009 | 1:40 amIt is such a cliché: Don’t just present data, tell a story. Yet it is rarely followed. We almost always present data. Actually we don’t present data, we send out reports. With data. Lots of it. With 6 size font and some pies and stacked bar graphs thrown in. Then we are frustrated that no one seems to pat us on the back, sing songs in our glory, give us more money. We don’t truly tell stories because it seems like a lot of work. And it can be. But you’ll be surprised at how often it is simply a matter of framing things differently, letting your imagination roam free. -
PPC / SEM Analytics: 5 Actionable Tips To Improve ROI
15 Jun 2009 | 1:43 amA very wise friend, ok Craig, once said this to me: “Paid Search is like playing chess with a Supercomputer.” At that moment I think my reaction was something like “meh!”. Of course Craig was right. Search Engine Marketing (Organic + PPC) continues to be a huge part of any company’s acquisition strategy on the web. Like other online channels it is targeted, it is effective and it is accountable. Perhaps its most unique asset being the ability to hyper-target relevant customer intent. It would be fair to say that Paid Search it has also gotten very complex (Search… -
Slay The Analytics Data Quality Dragon & Win Your HiPPO’s Love!
1 Jun 2009 | 1:10 amTwo truths: 1] Turns out the readers of Occam’s Razor are exceptionally gifted, they understand the challenges of web data 2] They are deeply motivated to do something about it, just not totally sure what. This is a special unplanned post just for you, to help with issue #2. My last post, Web Data Quality: A Six Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model , unleashed an unusually exceptional set of comments from you all (sweet!). Today I want to share a cogent set of “next steps” ideas. Practical strategies to deal with the problems you highlighted, nuances you can exploit,… -
Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model
18 May 2009 | 1:33 amIt seems absolutely dumb to argue that while the quality of data used to make decisions is important, it is actually not that important to have the highest data quality. Generations of Analysts, Data “People”, Decision Makers have grown up with the principle of GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. It made a lot of sense for a very long time. Especially because we used to collect so little data, its lack of even a little quality crapified the decision a lot. GIGO also fueled our every expanding quest for data perfection and data quality. There are entire companies built around helping… -
Dear Avinash: Web Metrics & Analytics Questions, Facebook Edition
4 May 2009 | 1:07 amA few weeks back I had asked this question on Twitter: Inspire me: If there is one web analytics question you want answered what would it be? What’s your juiciest / mundane, daily, challenge? The result was this post: Top Web Analytics Questions, Twitter Edition. Those 16 questions (!) were just one part of the story. My twitter account is linked to my facebook account , so my tweets get posted as my status updates. That means I got a bunch of questions on the facebook account as well. . . . Here is a summary of the 9 questions / topics that are addressed in this blog post:…
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Social Internet Marketing and Jess Sloss
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Find Twitter Followers and Build An Audience With These Helpful Applications
2 Jul 2009 | 5:54 pmI get asked two questions more than any other. “How tall are you?” and “How do I get followers on Twitter” Weird, eh? The answers? 6′7″ and read this Mashable post by Josh Catone: 10 Ways to Find Followers on Twitter How to Find Followers Here are the services linked to in the Mashable Post, for your quick reference. Check out the original for way more info on each service and why it made the list. 1. Twitter People Search – Twitter’s built in people search isn’t the greatest way to find people on Twitter, but it’s probably where you should start. -
3 Tips for Buying Social Media Attention
26 Jun 2009 | 1:51 pmHow Movieset.com bought my attention and 3 Tips to Help you do it too. Have a look in the sidebar, do you see that beautiful odd looking human being they call Bubbles? (not that handsome picture of me top right, scan down a little!) Weird right? It’s part of an outreach campaign by Vancouver Based Movieset.com aptly titled “Trailer Park Boys Secret Bribe Program”( shhhhh ) While I’m more used to being the out-reach-er, than the out-reach-ie, I have to give kudos to the Movieset.com team for their tact in what essentially is a pay for our attention plan. The long and… -
A Dirty Video – Raising Awareness for Ocean Pollution
27 May 2009 | 5:19 pmWe get some pretty cool opportunities at Giant Ant Media, and I’m stoked to talk about this one! The latest has been to work with Changents.com and Timberland’s Earth Keeper Heroes Campaign to raise awareness around Christopher Swain, a man swimming over 1000 miles down the Atlantic Coast to bring attention to our polluted waterways, a worthy cause. Yesterday we launched the video and micro site, DirtyforSwain.com and were lucky enough to get a great post on Treehugger (which will hopefully be followed by a others blog posts as the weeks go on) The idea is that through using… -
Leader of a Tribe: 3 Questions
21 May 2009 | 9:07 amIt’s 9am in sunny Gastown, Vancouver and I’m about to head over to Small Business BC to give a group of Small Biz owners and inspiring chat on social media. I always rack my brain to see what else I can add or subtract from the presentation, to make it better. I’m adding this. Seth Godin and his TED.com talk on Tribes. I strongly suggest you take a look and keep these questions Godin lays out, in your mind: Who are you upsetting? Who are you connecting? Who are you leading? Seth Godin Tribes He talks about Tribes further here: Tribe Management Related posts:Answers to 7… -
Answers to 7 Questions Brands Are Asking About Twitter
12 May 2009 | 5:49 pmIf big brands are asking these questions, chances are so are you. Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist at Forrester Research has posted a short list on his blog titled, 7 Questions Some Brands Are Asking About Twitter. While I question his ability to count (there are closer to 10 questions in his list…) I thought it would be valuable to answer questions based on my experience working with clients at Giant Ant Media, on Twitter and Social Media Strategy. Here it goes. 7 Questions Some Brands are Asking About Twitter 1) Should we create multiple accounts for different divisions? How should we…
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Outsmart Internet Marketing Blog for Entrepreneurs
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Marketing Advice for $0.96 an Hour?!?
22 Jun 2009 | 1:23 pmHave I lost my mind? No. But my friend Tawnya Sutherland has. If you’re a Virtual Assistant who’s tired of “recession buster” offers that make a bigger dent in your wallet than your results, I’ve got a hyper-refreshing offer for you. If you’re a web entrepreneur who wants some inside information on leveraging all things virtual, I’ve got [...] -
A Dead Simple Formula for Overcoming Twitter-Block (and Tweeting Like a Pro)
10 Jun 2009 | 9:56 amWhen people sign up for twitter and, shortly thereafter, cry, “I don’t get it!” my impulse is to say, “Well, have you made a real effort to share and get to know people?” Then I remember that not everyone is a word-a-holic like me. Not everyone loves to see that which they think or feel [...] -
There’s Something in the Air. And it Smells Like … Money.
10 Jun 2009 | 9:17 amLet me explain. I was talking with a virtual assistant colleague of mine the other day, and we were discussing how the recession has impacted entrepreneurs who work virtually. Then she told me her own story which I think is worth sharing. This VA’s specialty for years had been real estate marketing. Prior to the recession, demand [...] -
SEO, Cult of Personality and a Serendipitous Meeting of the Minds
16 Apr 2009 | 10:07 amThe landscape of online marketing advice is so vast and varied it’s hard to know who is worth paying attention to. As marketing managers and entrepreneurs, we’ve grown weary of the gurus, and even when they are right we’re probably not engaged enough to put theory into practice. Yesterday, however, serendipity was on my side. [...] -
Recession Cure for Small Business: This Marketing Medicine Doesn’t Taste That Bad
7 Apr 2009 | 9:56 amIn recessionary times it’s tempting to cut wherever there appears to be no imminent need, where returns are not obvious and immediate. As such, marketing tends to be one of the first casualties. Yet analysts advise businesses to continue marketing spending amidst grim circumstances. The case for a proactive approach appears sound, if not difficult [...]
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Connect the Docs
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ClickInsights: Tips on how to incorporate call to action in your white paper
2 Jul 2009 | 3:00 amClickInsights is an Expert Interview Series brought to you by Connect the Docs (ClickDocuments blog). In ClickInsights Expert Interview Series we feature top notch industry experts and thought leaders and get their insights, opinions and predicitions. We also ask for their suggestions on what reports, whitepapers etc to read to keep abreast with latest trends in their industry. By creating and distributing a white paper you educate and inform your target audience. However, there is also a goal that you are trying to meet. What is that goal? Do you want you readers to buy your product? Do you… -
Using Twitter for Content Marketing: 10 Twitterers You Should Take Example On
1 Jul 2009 | 3:00 amIs it possible to do Content Marketing on a network such as Twitter? This form of marketing is all about, well, developing quality, valuable content, but how can you make this happen in 140 characters or less? Even though it might seem counter-productive at first, developing a Twitter strategy is not only possible but also desirable since it enables live discussions around people's content, making it contributive and alive. Where blogs tend to be planned, Twitter is about immediacy. So how do you go about developing great Twitter content? Learn from those who do it well. These 10 twitterers… -
White Papers - List of Lists - Part 3
29 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amThis is the fourth and last installment of white paper lists for the month of June. The earlier posts on this subject were White Papers - List of "How To" Blog Posts, White Papers - List of Lists - Part 1 and White Papers - List of Lists - Part 2. There is a treasure trove of information in these lists on how to write and market white papers. I separated the list into three sections: List of Lists on writing white papers (published earlier this month) List of Lists on marketing white papers (published earlier this month) List of Lists on assorted topics related to white papers… -
ClickLaunch: Velocity's B2B Content Marketing Workbook
25 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amClickLaunch is ClickDocument's platform for launching new and exciting eBooks, books and white papers. We feature top notch industry experts and thought leaders and get an exclusive insider view into their latest creation. We are very excited to bring to you Velocity's latest eBook: The B2B Content Marketing Workbook -Thought Leadership for B2B Lead Generation and Beyond. Velocity's latest eBook not only has a great overview on strategic B2B content marketing but also a very slick design. Velocity's B2B Content Marketing WorkBook covers these topics. What is Content Marketing Why you need to… -
ClickLaunch: Rebels Brown's eBook on Positioning - It's Not About You Anymore
23 Jun 2009 | 4:00 amClickLaunch is ClickDocument's platform for launching new and exciting eBooks, books and white papers. We feature top notch industry experts and thought leaders and get an exclusive insider view into their latest creation. We are very excited to bring to you Rebel Brown's Positioning eBook It's Not About You Anymore. Rebel Brown is a go-to-market strategist and Spin Doctor specializing in start ups, turnarounds and start-arounds in the high technology arena. She has helped to define, position and launch over 75 individual products and companies since she began consulting 20 years ago. Her…
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SEO Copywriting
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SEO copywriting is dead. Long live SEO content marketing
25 Jun 2009 | 9:52 amI’ve been reading the latest “Is SEO copywriting dead” debate by Glenn Murray and Brian Clark. Considering that I’ve been talking about SEO copywriting for over 11 years - and I’m considered by some as the pioneer of SEO copywriting - reading the headline “Is SEO copywriting dead” is a little like hearing that your baby is ugly. My first response was not just “No,” but “Hell no.” SEO copywriting is alive and well. But then I got to thinking. You know what? I’m going to agree with them. Maybe, as it’s currently… -
Ten common dumbass SEO copywriting mistakes
9 Jun 2009 | 12:17 pmIt’s sad to see people set themselves up for SEO copywriting failure. Every day, I talk to folks who literally hobble their own SEO success. It’s not that they don’t have the resources for a robust SEO copywriting campaign. Heck, sometimes, these folks are swimming in budget (really!), have talented in-house copywriters and a solid site design. Where they get stuck is that they’re making the same dumbass SEO copywriting mistakes over and over…yet expecting different results. If this sounds like you, please, please, consider this a wake-up call. It is possible… -
Ten stupid things catalog marketers do to mess up their sites
13 May 2009 | 11:47 amCatalog marketers - wake up! It’s time to “get” SEO - or run the risk of having a poorly-performing site and subpar search visibility. Last week, I enjoyed the honor of speaking at the Direct Marketing Association’s ACCM conference. And it was an excellent reality check for me. Although I’ve been talking about SEO copywriting for over 10 years, there are many catalog marketers who just don’t “get it.” Maybe it’s because they just started to think about SEO copywriting. Maybe because they tried to do it themselves without having a clear… -
Case study: How SEO copywriting helped one small business owner stretch his marketing dollars
29 Apr 2009 | 1:03 pmWhen Dan Walton, co-owner of the Portland, OR based Pilates studio Studio Blue launched his Website in 2007, he faced a frustrating problem. “I Googled “Portland Pilates” and my site didn’t come up,” said Walton. “Other studios were showing up in the top ten results.” Walton – who isn’t a computer geek and didn’t know anything about search engines – decided to take matters into his own hands. The Pilates instructor learned about search engine optimization (SEO), took a SEO copywriting training course, and learned how to write copy that gets better search engine… -
Searching for catalog marketer SEO pain points
28 Apr 2009 | 8:18 pmAre you a catalog marketer completely stymied by SEO copywriting (or SEO in general?) I need your help. Next week, I’m presenting on “Next level SEO: Supercharge your existing SEO campaign and increase your ROI” during the Direct Marketing Association’s ACCM conference. It’ll be an intense 2.5 hour session, outlining all the things marketers can do to improve their sites and make more money. I want to make sure that I’m discussing the pain points that catalog marketers are feeling right now. If you’re a catalog marketer, what are your biggest SEO…
