Marketing plan

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

How to Get Great Photos for Your Blog Posts

I like to use to use images to help illustrate the theme or point of a blog post. It’s a proven “best practice” in blogging and I highly recommend that every blogger do it.

One trick for easily finding and properly using images in your blog posts is to search the creative commons licensed photos on the photo sharing site Flickr.

So, what’s Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has created a standardized set of tools for granting various levels of permission for people to use creative works freely. The author or in this case photographer of the works designates a type of license and then Flickr allows you to sort through and find only photos that are free to be used for blog posts. I choose to use photos that carry the attribution/share alike license. This means that I may use the image here as long as I attribute the image to the Flickr user’s account where I found it. Here’s Flickr’s description of CC license s.

So, here’s how to find and grab great images.

1. Surf to the Flickr Creative Commons Search Page - all images you search for here are free to use with proper attribution
2. Search for a specific phrase or concept and choose the image that fits
3. Click on “all sizes” and choose the size you wish to post on your blog - I use the “small” as 240 px wide fits my blog design
4. Right click the image and choose “copy image location” - use this path to paste into your blog post where you want the image to appear
5. Copy the link to the original image and link the photo in your blog post to it (this is a nice touch for the creator of the photo)
6. Somewhere in your post add the words - Image credit and the link to the Flickr account where you found the image (see at the bottom of the post)

To be a good Flickr photo user make sure you:

• Link back to the original photo
• Credit the source of the photo
• Thank the person who made it available by leaving a thank you note in the comments section of the photo on Flickr
• Add your own images and make the available through the proper CC license - you can make this a default account setting

Image credit: likefunyouare22

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

What Really Generates Referrals

So much of the literature on the subject of referrals focuses on the proper ways to network, ask for referrals, and create incentive programs for referral sources. While some of these more tactical things do indeed produce referrals for the organizations and salespeople that employ them, they are often little more than window dressing when it comes to the big picture.

Building a foundation that automatically generates referral momentum is not done through external actions – like some many things in life, you do it from the inside out. Plain and simple the most widely referred business are purely more referable.

I’ve studied a lot of businesses that easily generate referrals and they share some common internal tendencies as part of their brand and culture.

Make people look good

Looking at all business relationships with an eye on making prospects, customers, vendors, mentors, and staff look and feel good is a tremendously attractive internal quality. I read this quote recently and I think it works well here - “To a large degree, our success and happiness in life depends on how much people like themselves when they’re with us.” Joe Caruso

Ready to refer

We all know that giving referrals is one of the best ways to get referrals, but the difference lies in the systematic preparation. There is a big difference between understanding this philosophically and practicing proactively. Building your back pocket with a group of “best of class” providers takes work. You’ve got to discover, recruit, train and build the trust necessary to develop a proven network of providers who can help you add value to your client relationships, but once you do, the rest is pretty easy.

Keeps promises

The word trust is easy to use and even easier to lose. But, as Stephen M.R. Covey so correctly points out in his book, The Speed of Trust – trust is a hard currency and asset. Trust impacts how fast things are done and how much they cost. It is so much easier and less expensive to refer a business that keeps its promises.

Creates an experience

We will travel to the ends of the earth to be entertained or at least not bored to tears. The businesses we love to refer aren’t boring. They realize that it’s not just about the product and service they sell, it’s equally about the total experience – the marketing, the message, the people, the processes, the delivery are all carefully considered as props integral to a successful customer experience.

Educates, instead of selling

Nobody likes to refer a friend to a sales pitch, right? But, exposing a friend to information that might help them get more of what they want out of life, now that’s a different story. Even better when that information is packaged and presented in multiple locations, formats, and venues.

Adds value beyond price

In Bob Burg’s book the Go-Giver the main character, Joe, encounters the 5 laws of stratospheric success. The first law, the Law of Value states that your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. This is a tough one for so many people because we often have no great baseline for the value we bring. The key here is to work tirelessly to understand, quantify and enhance the value our customer receives and the rest will take care of itself.

Does something talkable

My spell check isn’t balking at the word talkable, but I think it properly expresses this one. You’ve certainly encountered the concept of word of mouth constantly of late, but I think that concept tends to lean heavily on tactics and stunts, like viral videos, that might create a flurry of word of mouth. To do something talkable to me is to have something at the core of your business, a higher purpose, an inspirational story, a product or service that is simply brilliant, or a habit that makes people smile. Authenticity and consistency are what make something talkable.

Exceeds expectations

This one seems pretty easy, but why isn’t it. When someone buys a product, toss other stuff in the box, right? Maybe, but the only way to actually exceed expectations is to know what they are. And that’s where people fall down. In business and in life, it’s extremely difficult to exceed an expectation you have not participated in setting . Widely referred business work very hard to set the proper expectations and then it’s pretty simple matter to exceed them. So, you see exceeding expectations might also include understanding and attracting the right customers, laying exactly how you work to get results on the line, teaching customers what’s expected of them, and even saying no once and while.

Focus on even one of the internal mindsets and practices above and watch how much more referable you become.

I also created a public mindmap of this article and would love it if you would contribute your thoughts on the tactical elements of each of these principles listed above. You do have to sign-up for a free Mindmeister account to add your thoughts, but it’s a pretty cool tool anyway so you might like to play around with it. You can find the map here - http://www.mindmeister.com/23949165

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• The Ultimate Measure of Marketing Success (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Ivan Misner, Bob Burg and Bill Cates on Making Referrals (ducttapemarketing.com)

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pdiv style=”float: right; margin-left: 10px”script type=”text/javascript” tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/07/4th-of-july-marketing-ideas.html’; /script script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js” /script /divspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”This 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. /span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”a href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c-pi” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”7_July” class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c-550wi” style=”width: 550px;”/a/span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Here are a few ideas:/span/pol lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongFireworks Finder Mobile App /strong- A simple map based application that would allow you to search for local destinations that have fireworks to decide where to go. In addition to the location, it would offer useful information like what else is happening, and how long the fireworks in that area are estimated to go for. After all, who doesn’t want to see the longest fireworks display? emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em Fast Food Restaurant (could show nearby restaurants), Fireworks seller (link to nearby retail spots), Local city governments (to increase tourism and locals who stay close to home)/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongFireworks Countdown Timer /strong- One of the biggest questions on the 4th of July as people pack into large cities and gathering areas to watch fireworks is when exactly they will start. Though they are scheduled, often the real start time is different and due to weather or when it actually gets dark enough. This timer could be a mobile app that would be updated in real time with the true start time of the fireworks. It could also count down as the fireworks are running until then end so you know how much time is left. /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Baby/Kids Product Makers (as a useful service for parents to answer impatient kids), Watch/Timekeeping Brand (relates to keeping time), Cell Provider (exclusive download to certain cell networks for subscribers)/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongFireworks Photo Tips PDF/strong - During the fireworks, people often can’t help taking their point and click cameras and trying to get a shot of the fireworks. Usually, there are some simple things, like zooming in, turning autofocus off and turning the flash off that can make a big difference in the quality of pictures. Giving people a download ahead of time with how to get the best photos from the day could be a great useful printout that people actually offer their email in exchange to download and print to take with them. /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Photographic Equipment Manufacturer (include info on best cameras with night modes), Photo printing services (offer a coupon for discount on uploading and printing your photos afterwards)./span/li /ol pspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Anyone seen any of these ideas being used already? While every retail brand is doing the typical “4th of July sale” - the may be opportunities are out there and waiting for your brand to engage people through social media and stand out from your competitors in the process./span/p/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=bzusgwDkjcc:76ttsHynhBM:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/bzusgwDkjcc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmlpdiv style=float: right; margin-left: 10pxscript type=text/javascript tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/07/4th-of-july-marketing-ideas.html’; /script script type=text/javascript src=http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js /script /divspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;/spanspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;This 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. /span/ppspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;a href=http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c-pi style=display: inline;img alt=7_July class=at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c src=http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570acb099970c-550wi style=width: 550px;/a/span/ppspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;Here are a few ideas:/span/pol lispan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;strongFireworks Finder Mobile App /strong- A simple map based application that would allow you to search for local destinations that have fireworks to decide where to go. In addition to the location, it would offer useful information like what else is happening, and how long the fireworks in that area are estimated to go for. After all, who doesn’t want to see the longest fireworks display? emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em Fast Food Restaurant (could show nearby restaurants), Fireworks seller (link to nearby retail spots), Local city governments (to increase tourism and locals who stay close to home)/span/li lispan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;strongFireworks Countdown Timer /strong- One of the biggest questions on the 4th of July as people pack into large cities and gathering areas to watch fireworks is when exactly they will start. Though they are scheduled, often the real start time is different and due to weather or when it actually gets dark enough. This timer could be a mobile app that would be updated in real time with the true start time of the fireworks. It could also count down as the fireworks are running until then end so you know how much time is left. /spanspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em /spanspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;Baby/Kids Product Makers (as a useful service for parents to answer impatient kids), Watch/Timekeeping Brand (relates to keeping time), Cell Provider (exclusive download to certain cell networks for subscribers)/span/li lispan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;strongFireworks Photo Tips PDF/strong - During the fireworks, people often can’t help taking their point and click cameras and trying to get a shot of the fireworks. Usually, there are some simple things, like zooming in, turning autofocus off and turning the flash off that can make a big difference in the quality of pictures. Giving people a download ahead of time with how to get the best photos from the day could be a great useful printout that people actually offer their email in exchange to download and print to take with them. /spanspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;emstrongWho This Idea Works For?:/strong/em /spanspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;Photographic Equipment Manufacturer (include info on best cameras with night modes), Photo printing services (offer a coupon for discount on uploading and printing your photos afterwards)./span/li /ol pspan style=font-family: Trebuchet MS;Anyone seen any of these ideas being used already? While every retail brand is doing the typical 4th of July sale - the may be opportunities are out there and waiting for your brand to engage people through social media and stand out from your competitors in the process./span/p/div

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/SkyreV7D_8I/AAAAAAAACoc/TiQPSobvN2I/s1600-h/reporter1.jpeg”img style=”margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 86px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/SkyreV7D_8I/AAAAAAAACoc/TiQPSobvN2I/s320/reporter1.jpeg” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353842594805972930″ border=”0″ //aReporters are dying to quote entrepreneurs, small business owners and consultants just like you. The trouble is, they don’t know you exist! If only you can get your hands on a great media contact list, then you can get your name and credentials in front of reporters. This way they will contact you when they are writing a story that would be perfect for you.br /br /So how can you get your hands on a great media list that’s filled with information about reporter’s who want to quote you in their articles? Many companies sell names of reporters. Like everything else on the Internet, they vary by quality, features and services. Before you buy a media list, be sure to ask questions like the ones below.br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”10 Questions You Must Ask When Buying a Media List So You Get the Most Bang (Publicity) for Your Buck /spanbr /br /1. When was the list updated? Reporters change jobs quite frequently. And many newspapers and magazines are laying off people. So you want to make sure the list is updated on a daily or weekly basis. Otherwise, you’ll waste time, money and energy sending messages to people who don’t work there!br /br /2. What contact information is included in the list? You’ll want a list that has name, title, email, phone and snail mail address. Yes, snail mail. This way you can send books or product sama onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/Skyri6wLdFI/AAAAAAAACok/A6kAjLnxocA/s1600-h/reporter2.jpeg”img style=”margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 139px; height: 120px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/Skyri6wLdFI/AAAAAAAACok/A6kAjLnxocA/s320/reporter2.jpeg” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353842673411912786″ border=”0″ //aples. You’ll want email for sending pitches, press releases and press kits. You’ll want the phone number to pitch by phone. Of course, you will have much of this information on your website, but you’ll want to have every means available to contact reporters in the format they most desire. Reporters can be very, very picky!br /br /3. What information is included about the reporter? Most basic lists you’ll find on the Internet will have contact info, but not much else. That’s not enough to do target marketing. You want to know what topic (referred to as a “beat”) the reporter is covering as well. Some of the best companies offer additional insights into the beat. For example, some lists will tell you if reporter A only covers politics with a conservative slant. That will help you when you fine-tune your pitch to her.br /br /4. Do you get a list that is sorted by the topic the reporter covers? Some list companies will sell you the entire database of each publication. That’s way too broad for most people and will lead to a lot of waste. In other words, it’s not enough to know that Jill writes for Business Week. You want to find the person who covers your topic. Because if Jill doesn’t, she’ll just throw away your message.br /br /5. Does the list contain a reporter’s personal information? Most lists don’t have information such as “like to bowl,” or “wrote a screenplay” or “recovered from cancer.” But if the list has this information, you might gain extra insights into the reporter and you might be able to build rapport faster.br /br /6. Does the list have the publication’s URL? Let’s face it, not everyone knows everything about every publication. Nor is every publication available at your local newsstand or library. However, if you have their URL, you can easily read about the publication, get its view on the world and read articles by that reporter. It’s a great time saver.br /br /7. Does the list have web-only publications, like websites and blogs? These outlets are beginning to play a much bigger role in telling stories to you audience. Don’t overlook the online-only opportunities.br /br /8. Does the list show circulation figures? Since you don’t have all the money in the world to send out books or product samples, or even to call everyone on a good list, you must decide who is important. That’s where the circulation figures come in to play. Start with the biggest and work your way down. If you don’t have the circulation figures, you don’t know who the big boys and girls are.br /br /9. Is the list searchable and sortable? Look for a list that is delivered in a digital form, like a spreadsheet or a word document. That way you can use sorting and searching tools to find the best reporters.br /br /10. What rights do you have to the list? Some companies give you one-time use of the list. They even “seed” the list with fake names so they can tell if you use the list more than once! Look for a company that gives you unlimited use of the list so you can get the most value for your investment. If you follow these tips, you’ll find a list of media contacts than can serve you well at a price you can afford.br /br /Guest post by Dan Janal who is media relations expert, author and speaker who coaches entrepreneurs, doctors and wellness professionals just like you on how to get publicity and turn it into REAL profits. Now, Dan invites you to go to a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.bullseyepublicity.com/”http://www.bullseyepublicity.com/a to get a free e-course on how to successfully pitch reporters with media lists. Go to a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.bullseyepublicity.com/”http://www.bullseyepublicity.com/adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”For more free marketing advice, visit the a href=”http://www.marketingscoop.com”marketing experts/a at a href=”http://www.marketingscoop.com”Internet marketing expert/a at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30060900-5485335902806073940?l=marketing-expert.blogspot.com’//div

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pMarketers using text messaging beware. A recent federal court ruling says sending ads in text messages potentially violates the law./ppIn a nutshell, here’s the situation:/pul liThe Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals a href=”http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleamp;art_aid=108370amp;passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchResltsamp;art_searched=20king%22amp;page_number=0″said/a a lower court mistakenly absolved Simon amp; Shuster and its agency partner ipsh! of violating telecommunications law in sending text messages to promote Stephen King’s novel “The Cell” in 2006./li liThe case hinges on two critical questions: Was an auto-dialing system used for the campaign? And, should a text message be defined as a “call”?/li /ul pThe case, which now goes back to the lower court for review, has galvanized mobile vendors like Shane Neman, CEO of Ez Texting, whose own company faces a similar suit. Neman has organized the Mobile Advocacy Coalition, which intends to ask the FCC to recognize vendors as “mere conduits” of text messaging, giving them an exemption from this kind of legal action - an exemption the carriers already enjoy, he notes. The coalition is not seeking to exempt unscrupulous marketers who violate the law by sending unsolicited text messages./ppbrThis is a very important case for marketers because it could result in new restrictions on the use of text messaging. It also points to the growing pains for mobile as it becomes a more established marketing platform./p/divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?a=l9THOFHhFTc:HcoZOwieDHU:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?a=l9THOFHhFTc:HcoZOwieDHU:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ForresterMarketing/~4/l9THOFHhFTc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

The world of the B2B agency is evolving at a rapid rate. B2B Marketing examines how different players are developing their offerings to reflect clients’ changing demands.

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img src=”http://guykawasaki.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c527353ef011570a4e857970c-pi” alt=”Fotolia_402046_XS.jpg” border=”0″ width=”140″ height=”140″ align=”right” / pThe harsh reality of the startup scene today is that revenue is the best, and maybe only, form of funding. While many conferences focus on gaining the attention of investors, wersquo;ve put on together that focuses on generating revenue. /p pItrsquo;s called Revenue Bootcamp. Itrsquo;s on Friday, July 10th, at the Microsoft Mountain View, California campus. Click a href=”http://revenuebootcamp.garage.com/”here/a to learn more about it and to register. /p pThe topics include increasing traffic, selling advertising, and utilizing other revenue streams. There is also a keynote and booksigning with Chris Anderson, the author of emFree: The Future of a Radical Price/em. /p pThe final session is a fireside chat with Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital (think: Google) and Paul Graham of YCombinator. Again, click a href=”http://revenuebootcamp.garage.com/”here/a to learn more. Use this discount code to get $50 off: ldquo;FGK09.rdquo;/p/div pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/O8RdINVD4IU” height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img src=”http://guykawasaki.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c527353ef011570a4e857970c-pi” alt=”Fotolia_402046_XS.jpg” border=”0″ width=”140″ height=”140″ align=”right” / pThe harsh reality of the startup scene today is that revenue is the best, and maybe only, form of funding. While many conferences focus on gaining the attention of investors, wersquo;ve put on together that focuses on generating revenue. /p pItrsquo;s called Revenue Bootcamp. Itrsquo;s on Friday, July 10th, at the Microsoft Mountain View, California campus. Click a href=”http://revenuebootcamp.garage.com/”here/a to learn more about it and to register. /p pThe topics include increasing traffic, selling advertising, and utilizing other revenue streams. There is also a keynote and booksigning with Chris Anderson, the author of emFree: The Future of a Radical Price/em. /p pThe final session is a fireside chat with Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital (think: Google) and Paul Graham of YCombinator. Again, click a href=”http://revenuebootcamp.garage.com/”here/a to learn more. Use this discount code to get $50 off: ldquo;FGK09.rdquo;/p/div pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BV6aKGLV3DQtwjXGOo2HGqaQWkg/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=O8RdINVD4IU:csM3U-30wRA:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/O8RdINVD4IU” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun looks set to spark renewed consolidation in the IT sector, but what are the brand implications? And how should competing SMEs respond?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Yahoo Pipes a Smokin Radar Tool

Yahoo Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Frankly, it has been around for a couple of years now and while it’s advanced a bit, I don’t think it has ever really caught on in a big way. The interface is a little funky and takes some getting use to, but once you do, it’s a pretty cool tool.

Pipes can do some very complex things, but what I think it does better than most other options is allow you to aggregate, sort and filter many RSS feeds into one. So, you might be asking at this moment, why would I want to do that.

I can think of number of reasons pretty quickly:

• Monitor mentions of your brand across multiple sources
• Monitor mentions of your competitors
• Monitor specific topics of discussion across the web
• Aggregate the columns of key journalists you want to influence
• String the blogs of your strategic partners into one feed

The image above is an example of output from a Yahoo Pipe for Duct Tape Marketing

I put together a quick sample pipe that includes mentions of Duct Tape Marketing and John Jantsch with duplicate content filtered from RSS feeds including:

• Yahoo News
• Google News
• Techorati
• Bloglines
• Google Blog Search
• Twitter
• Backtype
• Boardtracker

The image above is the source code of modules used in this pipe example

In the social media world we live in monitoring across platforms that track social media sites, bulletin boards, blogs, blog comments, PR newswires and web sites has become important and more complex. A simple monitoring mashup from Yahoo Pipes may provide a good DIY fix.

Pipes also comes with some tools that allow you to easily create widgets and badges to place on web and blog pages.

If you want to dig a lot deeper into the use of Yahoo Pipes, I suggest checking out Dawn Foster of Fast Wonder Consulting. Her blog is filled with down to earth tutorials on how to use Pipes for many things - here’s a recent tutorial on using CSV files to run keyword searches .
Related articles by Zemanta

• How to use Yahoo Pipes For Creating Unique Content from RSS Feeds (via delicious) (totallyfreeblogtools.com)
• Five ‘S’ Steps to a Professional Web Intelligence (article in progress) (fredericmartin.typepad.com)
• Yahoo Pipes: getting started with custom RSS feeds (arstechnica.com)

Now, or in the near future do you need to secure serious business funding?

 This may be from a bank, from investors or maybe from a well-heeled potential shareholder.

If the answer is yes then please read on.

Let’s start with the basics

I’m making the assumption that you have a Strategic Business Plan or an Internal Business Plan.

 In other words, you are clear on the purpose and direction of the business. And you have a system of action plans or a roadmap to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

 If you don’t have a good workable plan of this type, then this should be your first priority.

 Elsewhere in this blog are articles on how to do this. If you are short of time, the simple 100 day plan might be an attractive option.

  Back to getting the money   

To persuade someone to invest or lend you money, you should prepare a document that investors call “An Information Memorandum”.

 This is typically a 10 - to 30 page document that provides information on what the business is all about, the amount of money you are seeking and the risk/reward information needed for an investment or loan decision.

  The very critical part

Most Information Memorandum documents are never fully read. Many are instantly dismissed. The reason for this is because the Executive Summary did not ‘hook’ the reader.

Financially successful people are usually busy people. They like business proposition to be presented to them in a clear and concise way.

If you can prepare an executive summary that instantly grabs an investors attention in the right way, you are well on your way to success.

It was my intention to provide you with a series of tips to help you achieve this. But here’s a much better way.

Frank Peters is a very experienced angle investor in Southern California. As well as his own personal angel investment experience, he gained a wealth of experience as Chairman of the much admired Tech Coast Angels http://www.techcoastangels.com/

 On his website, Frank has published what he calls his irreverent Guidelines for Executive Summaries. http://www.thefrankpetersshow.com/attachments/ES.pdf

 This is a gem - straight from the horse’s mouth. Follow this and you will be far ahead in the race.

Andrew Smith
The Business Plan Guy

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pdiv style=”float: right; margin-left: 10px”script type=”text/javascript” tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/06/sweden-social-media-marketing.html’; /script script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js” /script /divspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”span style=”text-decoration: underline;” /span As the US continues to struggle with how the healthcare system needs to be reformed, it was interesting to spend a week focused on a href=”http://globalcc.wordpress.com/category/sweden/” target=”_blank”Sweden in my Global Communications class/a 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 surprise that the country routinely ranks at the top of the list for global quality of life surveys./span/ppa href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”IMB_Sweden3″ class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b-550wi” style=”width: 550px;”/a /ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Online, the country has made big news recently for being the unauthorized home of illegal file downloads through a site called a href=”http://thepiratebay.org/” target=”_blank”Pirate Bay/a. The site has been in a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet” target=”_blank”legal trouble/a of late, being found guilty in Swedish courts of copyright infringement. The debate continues in the country, regardless, where there is even a political party dedicated to furthering the ideology of the site in terms of open copyright free access to content. brbr/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”From our class blog this week and discussions in class, the team shared several more interesting learnings and topics about Sweden. Here are some highlights:/span/pol style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”listrongSocial media is not about ego./strong It is easy to get the sense by looking at the rise of social media in the US and many other countries that it is all about ego. People publishing content in order to get their moments of “internet fame” and focused on getting others to link to their content or retweet their best sayings. In Sweden, most reports point to the central emotion in the culture being more reserved and less about promoting the self. This manifests itself through social media in subtle ways, from limiting the active use of review and ratings sites to reducing the number of individual Swedes who create a large profile and personal brand for themselves through social media./li listrongLanguage is not much of a barrier./strong The language of choice for many Swedish resources was English, and in those cases where there were Swedish language sites, the translations were usually one click away and quite strong. The other implication of this is that unlike some other cultures, global sites such as Facebook also have a strong and a href=”http://thekillerattitude.com/2009/03/two-million-facebook-users-in-sweden.html” target=”_blank”growing local appeal/a here. /li listrongThe country of Sweden is well branded online./strong The first thing you are likely to find when researching Sweden online is the extremely useful official government portal site - www.sweden.se. The site features everything you would ever want to know about the country, includes frequently updated content from blogs and social media, has a easy to use interface and presents what may be one of the strongest country branded official portals any nation has put online./li listrongEnvironmental friendliness is a way of life. /strongEverywhere you turn, you can see evidence of Sweden’s progressive attitudes toward the environment. Their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a href=”http://www.miljomal.se/Environmental-Objectives-Portal/” target=”_blank”16 ambitious objectives/a that are meant to guide the country toward a sustainable environment within one generation. /li listrongFashion is a hot topic in social media./strong There are several blogs devoted to covering a href=”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Lifestyle/Culture/Fashion/Reading/Sthlm-Fashion-Week/” target=”_blank”fashion in Sweden/a, driven by a few big events such as Fashion Week in Stockholm in late January and early February.nbsp; /li listrongChildren are protected from marketers. /strongSweden has a reputation as one of the most aggressive countries when it comes to banning advertising to children under the age of 12. TV ads during prime time are banned to this age group and the country has been active in encouraging other European countries to follow their example. This first gained attention in 2001 when Sweden had ascended to the European presidency for their 6 month rotating term. They are due to begin their next term on July 1st of this year, just a few days from now … so this may come up again as a core issue. /li listrongTexting is for amateurs./strong The sophistication of how many Swedes are using their mobile phones is vastly beyond what many in the US may consider active mobile phone usage. Texting is only one small element of what you can do with a mobile phone in Sweden. More interesting is that you can pay for your groceries, submit your taxes and stream broadband content effortlessly - without losing a signal./li listrongResearch, innovation, technology and creativity drive the economy./strong The country has a long history of research and innovation, including a status as the #1 biotech industry in Europe per capita and a focus on mobile technology and design innovation. This combination recently propelled the country onto the Entrepreneur magazine list of top 5 “Global Tech Hot Spots” along with Singapore, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland. Anyone else spot a pattern?/li /ol pstrongspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Reading List Of Sources:/span/strong/p ul lispan lang=”EN-GB”The Official Gateway To Sweden (useful government sponsored site) - a href=”http://www.sweden.se/”http://www.sweden.se/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Ruling against file sharing’s impact on Swedish Internet usage - a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet/a spannbsp;/span/span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Interesting list of Swedish facts from an American perspective - a href=”http://cva.stanford.edu/people/davidbbs/swedish_facts.html”http://cva.stanford.edu/people/davidbbs/swedish_facts.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Good blog about all things Swedish - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/blog/”http://www.thelocal.se/blog//aspannbsp; /span/span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”On Swedish Business Blog - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/onswedishbusiness/”http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/onswedishbusiness//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Web pioneer to be st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region’s next st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pUS/p/st1:country-region/st1:place Ambassador - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/20176/20090620/”http://www.thelocal.se/20176/20090620//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Swedish Pirate Party - a href=”http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25602990-5014239,00.html”http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25602990-5014239,00.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Article on st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place’s Culture of Creativity - a href=”http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/79254314.html”http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/79254314.html/a /span/li list1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pspan lang=”EN-GB”Sweden/span/p/st1:country-region/st1:placespan lang=”EN-GB” Sustainability Blog - a href=”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Sustainability/blog-about-sustainability/”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Sustainability/blog-about-sustainability//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Why st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place Is One of the Top 5 Tech Countries - a href=”http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/newsandtrends/article180678.html”http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/newsandtrends/article180678.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Perceptions of political marketing in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/263/”http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/263//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Interesting stats on kids and internet usage in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Facts/CHILDREN-IN-SWEDEN-Growing-up-in-Sweden/”http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Facts/CHILDREN-IN-SWEDEN-Growing-up-in-Sweden//a /span/li list1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pspan lang=”EN-GB”Sweden/span/p/st1:country-region/st1:placespan lang=”EN-GB”’s 16 environmental objectives - a href=”http://www.naturvardsverket.se/sv/Nedre-meny/Webbokhandeln/ISBN/1200/978-91-620-1266-3″http://www.naturvardsverket.se/sv/Nedre-meny/Webbokhandeln/ISBN/1200/978-91-620-1266-3/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”SymbioCity: Environmentally friendly development in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://symbiocity.se/?pageId=1″http://symbiocity.se/?pageId=1/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Swedish Delegation for Sustainable Cities - a href=”http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/hallbarastader/sv/in-english.aspx”http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/hallbarastader/sv/in-english.aspx/a /span/li /ul/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/AggwjmODf94″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pdiv style=”float: right; margin-left: 10px”script type=”text/javascript” tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/06/sweden-social-media-marketing.html’; /script script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js” /script /divspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”span style=”text-decoration: underline;” /span As the US continues to struggle with how the healthcare system needs to be reformed, it was interesting to spend a week focused on a href=”http://globalcc.wordpress.com/category/sweden/” target=”_blank”Sweden in my Global Communications class/a 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 surprise that the country routinely ranks at the top of the list for global quality of life surveys./span/ppa href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”IMB_Sweden3″ class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115719233ff970b-550wi” style=”width: 550px;”/a /ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Online, the country has made big news recently for being the unauthorized home of illegal file downloads through a site called a href=”http://thepiratebay.org/” target=”_blank”Pirate Bay/a. The site has been in a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet” target=”_blank”legal trouble/a of late, being found guilty in Swedish courts of copyright infringement. The debate continues in the country, regardless, where there is even a political party dedicated to furthering the ideology of the site in terms of open copyright free access to content. brbr/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”From our class blog this week and discussions in class, the team shared several more interesting learnings and topics about Sweden. Here are some highlights:/span/pol style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”listrongSocial media is not about ego./strong It is easy to get the sense by looking at the rise of social media in the US and many other countries that it is all about ego. People publishing content in order to get their moments of “internet fame” and focused on getting others to link to their content or retweet their best sayings. In Sweden, most reports point to the central emotion in the culture being more reserved and less about promoting the self. This manifests itself through social media in subtle ways, from limiting the active use of review and ratings sites to reducing the number of individual Swedes who create a large profile and personal brand for themselves through social media./li listrongLanguage is not much of a barrier./strong The language of choice for many Swedish resources was English, and in those cases where there were Swedish language sites, the translations were usually one click away and quite strong. The other implication of this is that unlike some other cultures, global sites such as Facebook also have a strong and a href=”http://thekillerattitude.com/2009/03/two-million-facebook-users-in-sweden.html” target=”_blank”growing local appeal/a here. /li listrongThe country of Sweden is well branded online./strong The first thing you are likely to find when researching Sweden online is the extremely useful official government portal site - www.sweden.se. The site features everything you would ever want to know about the country, includes frequently updated content from blogs and social media, has a easy to use interface and presents what may be one of the strongest country branded official portals any nation has put online./li listrongEnvironmental friendliness is a way of life. /strongEverywhere you turn, you can see evidence of Sweden’s progressive attitudes toward the environment. Their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a href=”http://www.miljomal.se/Environmental-Objectives-Portal/” target=”_blank”16 ambitious objectives/a that are meant to guide the country toward a sustainable environment within one generation. /li listrongFashion is a hot topic in social media./strong There are several blogs devoted to covering a href=”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Lifestyle/Culture/Fashion/Reading/Sthlm-Fashion-Week/” target=”_blank”fashion in Sweden/a, driven by a few big events such as Fashion Week in Stockholm in late January and early February.nbsp; /li listrongChildren are protected from marketers. /strongSweden has a reputation as one of the most aggressive countries when it comes to banning advertising to children under the age of 12. TV ads during prime time are banned to this age group and the country has been active in encouraging other European countries to follow their example. This first gained attention in 2001 when Sweden had ascended to the European presidency for their 6 month rotating term. They are due to begin their next term on July 1st of this year, just a few days from now … so this may come up again as a core issue. /li listrongTexting is for amateurs./strong The sophistication of how many Swedes are using their mobile phones is vastly beyond what many in the US may consider active mobile phone usage. Texting is only one small element of what you can do with a mobile phone in Sweden. More interesting is that you can pay for your groceries, submit your taxes and stream broadband content effortlessly - without losing a signal./li listrongResearch, innovation, technology and creativity drive the economy./strong The country has a long history of research and innovation, including a status as the #1 biotech industry in Europe per capita and a focus on mobile technology and design innovation. This combination recently propelled the country onto the Entrepreneur magazine list of top 5 “Global Tech Hot Spots” along with Singapore, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland. Anyone else spot a pattern?/li /ol pstrongspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Reading List Of Sources:/span/strong/p ul lispan lang=”EN-GB”The Official Gateway To Sweden (useful government sponsored site) - a href=”http://www.sweden.se/”http://www.sweden.se/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Ruling against file sharing’s impact on Swedish Internet usage - a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet”http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/04/sweden-pirate-bay-filesharing-internet/a spannbsp;/span/span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Interesting list of Swedish facts from an American perspective - a href=”http://cva.stanford.edu/people/davidbbs/swedish_facts.html”http://cva.stanford.edu/people/davidbbs/swedish_facts.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Good blog about all things Swedish - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/blog/”http://www.thelocal.se/blog//aspannbsp; /span/span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”On Swedish Business Blog - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/onswedishbusiness/”http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/onswedishbusiness//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Web pioneer to be st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region’s next st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pUS/p/st1:country-region/st1:place Ambassador - a href=”http://www.thelocal.se/20176/20090620/”http://www.thelocal.se/20176/20090620//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Swedish Pirate Party - a href=”http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25602990-5014239,00.html”http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25602990-5014239,00.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Article on st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place’s Culture of Creativity - a href=”http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/79254314.html”http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/79254314.html/a /span/li list1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pspan lang=”EN-GB”Sweden/span/p/st1:country-region/st1:placespan lang=”EN-GB” Sustainability Blog - a href=”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Sustainability/blog-about-sustainability/”http://sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Sustainability/blog-about-sustainability//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Why st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place Is One of the Top 5 Tech Countries - a href=”http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/newsandtrends/article180678.html”http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/newsandtrends/article180678.html/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Perceptions of political marketing in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/263/”http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/263//a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Interesting stats on kids and internet usage in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Facts/CHILDREN-IN-SWEDEN-Growing-up-in-Sweden/”http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work-live/Facts/CHILDREN-IN-SWEDEN-Growing-up-in-Sweden//a /span/li list1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pspan lang=”EN-GB”Sweden/span/p/st1:country-region/st1:placespan lang=”EN-GB”’s 16 environmental objectives - a href=”http://www.naturvardsverket.se/sv/Nedre-meny/Webbokhandeln/ISBN/1200/978-91-620-1266-3″http://www.naturvardsverket.se/sv/Nedre-meny/Webbokhandeln/ISBN/1200/978-91-620-1266-3/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”SymbioCity: Environmentally friendly development in st1:place w:st=”on”st1:country-region w:st=”on”pSweden/p/st1:country-region/st1:place - a href=”http://symbiocity.se/?pageId=1″http://symbiocity.se/?pageId=1/a /span/li lispan lang=”EN-GB”Swedish Delegation for Sustainable Cities - a href=”http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/hallbarastader/sv/in-english.aspx”http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/hallbarastader/sv/in-english.aspx/a /span/li /ul/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=AggwjmODf94:X1Y3hI1IIB4:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/AggwjmODf94″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Local as Differentiator

Several years ago, Hilary Brown decided to open a burger joint in Lawrence, KS . She readily admits that folks around town questioned whether the world, or for that matter Lawrence, needed another place to get a hamburger. After all, this is a college and fast food is plentiful.

Brown tells that to her doubters she enthusiastically replied, “what I’m creating is the next generation of burger joints.” Local Burger , as her restaurant is called, takes into consideration where food comes from as well as the environment, unnatural additives, and sustainable agriculture. All of the creative dishes served at Local Burger are prepared from foods grown or raised no more than 200 miles away (some less than 5). In addition, most products are organic and gluten free, including local wine and beer.

The restaurant is billed as The World’s Most Local Burger and the menu even features a chart displaying products purchased from local farmers and suppliers and the distance to each. It also happens to be one of the few places around where you can get elk, buffalo, pork, turkey and tofu burgers.

Using local as a way to differentiate an otherwise commodity type business and then backing it up with every brand element and process is a powerful way to fight chains and the need to compete solely on price. Brown’s strategy and business model have landed her on the pages of Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Outside and on the Sundance Channel. You can follow Local Burger on twitter.

In our current economic environment, local has a nice feel to it as well.

pThere is a lot of talk these days that a href=”http://www.thestrategyweb.com/the-rebirth-of-personalization-cmo-study” target=”_blank”personalization is back in marketing/a but what does that really mean and what are some of the tactics you can use?/ppbr //p p/p p /ppstrongThis is important/strong: Besides all of the technology out there that can make this process easier, it’s important to keep in mind that the goal is to create engaging experiences for your customers and potential customers so that they will respond and ultimately purchase your products and services./ppbr //p A personalized approach facilitates this process. It allows you to make people feel special by providing timely communication that is more like a dialogue than a one way conversation. The trick is to create this type of personalized experience that will drive sales but to make it easy for marketing to execute and not break the marketing budget bank. br /p /ppbr /object width=”425″ height=”344″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/PD9cWETT6eEamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;”param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/PD9cWETT6eEamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″/embed/object br //p pI’ve listed the top tactics that I typically discuss in my day to day client meetings. Together, these make up a personalization playbook that you may want to keep in mind when you plan and execute your future campaign:/p p/p p/p ul listrongEmail / direct mail merge fields/strong: This is the bottom of the pyramid in terms of personalization. Adding someone’s “first name” to an email is the least that you can do these days. While it may seem obvious, don’t overlook it as it’s more important in conjunction with the other tactics I’ve listed below. br /br //li listrongPersonalized URLS (PURLS):/strong I like to think of PURLS like those place cards at weddings that have your name on it and tell you where you’re sitting. It’s like an exclusive invitation that is also very practical. It’s saying “Yes, you belong here – now go sit down at table 10”. What do you do? You go find your table! PURLs act in the same way as they have your name as part of the URL and they take you to what you feel is an exclusive website designed just for you. We’ve found that people have responded better to offers that contain a personalized URL (such as a href=”http://www.fun.com/yourname”www.fun.com/yourname/a). With the right technology, this is also very easy to do. br /br //li listrongForm pre-population/strong: When you’ve strike up a conversation with someone you’ve just met at a party, do you keep asking them what their name is every two minutes? NO! They would feel that you weren’t listening to them and move on. It’s not that much different in the world of marketing. We want to feel that when I’m engaging with you that I’m at a place where “everyone knows your name” (now you know why I included the video on Norm). If you’ve already collected information from someone, avoid asking for it again at all costs. You should make the customer feel that you are carrying on a conversation from where it left off last time – not starting all over again.br /br //li listrongEmail / direct mail sender personalization/strong: Notice how this is getting more difficult as we move down the list? When you send a post card to your family from your trip to Spain (I really want to go back to Spain but can’t with a baby on the way) do you sign it “Yours Truly, the marketing team”? NO! If there is someone in your organization that has a direct relationship with the intended recipient, send it from them.br /br /For B2B companies, have communications sent from sales reps or Account Managers if a relationship has been established. a href=”http://www.demandgenreport.com/home/archives/feature-articles/96-aberdeen-study-shows-email-personalization-driving-higher-open-a-conversion-rates.html” target=”_blank”A recent Aberdeen Research report has proven that this technique can dramatically boost response rates/a. In B2C, this is more difficult but there may be opportunities to explore. For example, some sports teams can experiment having communications personalized from their players.br /br /Yes this method requires additional effort and yes it does mean that your data needs to be in order for it to work but it’s a proven method that brings your company closer to your prospects and customers. When sales reps call into prospects and they’re not seen as strangers, there is a higher chance that they can make traction. This is especially the case if your prospect has already received an email from your company with a thought-leadership piece that was based on their interests and had a picture of the rep to put a face to the name. This process is 100% easier when you have tight integration between your customer relationship management tool and your marketing automation tool. br /br /I use this technique as part of an automated customer education nurturing program that I created and am seeing greater than 50% open rates when emails have the sender name of the account representative. /li /ul ul listrongPersonalized email/direct mail content/strong. There are two parts to this and I could spend a whole blog post just on this topic. I’ve already discussed the first part which is personalizing the sender and signature of email or direct mail communications. The next part which is even more difficult is personalizing the message. br /br /Why is this part so difficult? For example, it would be great to have a platform that would know your home insurance subscription is due in 60 days and have an email automatically sent to you that told you to look for a mailing with your renewal documents. This email would include the name of person that will call you and what the new subscription cost will be. br /br /This can be difficult for a number of reasons: br /olliIt can be costly to have a system that can execute these types of complex campaigns/liliYou need a way to collect the data and systems that make it easy to action on. For example, I recommend creating email campaigns based on the past web behaviour of individuals or their a href=”http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-exactly-is-digital-body-language.html” target=”_blank”digital body language/a. This requires a system that can collect this data and then have an easy way to query this data so it can be actioned on.br //liliYou need to have clean data. To personalize the message, you need to have the data to personalize it that is normalized and complete./liliIt requires data sources that are integrated so they can be easily queried to create lists and personalized messages. There’s no point spending days building a list – it’s just not cost effective.br //liliContent must be created for each segment – this requires resources etc… br //li/olbr /To make this a personalization a bit easier, technology advancements allow you to add dynamic content sections to mostly generic communications. By adding in some slightly personalized sections you can really show that you can really make a difference in your response numbers. This may mean displaying a special offer for repeat purchasers or dynamically displaying an article in your regular newsletter that is geared specially to your customers. Is it worth it to make these personalized adjustments? What I recommend is to try it out and test the results. In countless examples it has led to increased response rates and reduced the time needed to execute campaigns by eliminating redundant steps when targeting multiple segments. br //li /ul ul listrongDynamic landing page/microsite content/strong.This is similar to the last point but typically is more flexible. Emails and direct mail are fairly static while website content can dynamically change on the go. For example, you can create campaigns that ask a series of questions that builds a profile and creates a personalized knowledge library or demo for an individual based on their selections in a web session. This also goes hand in hand with PURLs as the PURL is the gateway to a personalized microsite.br /br /This content should change based on the behaviours that the contact has exhibited over time. Only display the content that the web visitor will find relevant or you won’t find them there very long. We use a technique called “Progressive Profiling” where we collect addition information over time and build a more complete picture for the sale team.br /br /You can blend other elements such as merge fields, form pre-population, and dynamically displaying the sales rep’s contact information to make the web experience as personalized as possible. /li /ul ul listrongEvent triggered communication/strong. We’ve talked about delivering the right message, now we’ll talk about how to deliver it at the right time. There are many different ways to do this but the best time to deliver the right message is at a time that matches your a href=”http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/02/scoring-stages-of-buying-process.html” target=”_blank”customer’s buying process/a. When my air conditioner blows up and it’s 100 degrees in the shade, that’s the time I want a call from someone that can fix my air conditioner.br /br /Here are so more obvious examples of triggered communication:br /olli Sending confirmation emails when a product is purchased or a white paper was requested/liliSending unique communications to new email subscribers Sending a promotion email to an opted-in subscriber who has visited certain product pages X amount of times in Y amount of days/liliEmail and Direct email sent to trial recipients over the lifetime of a trial/liliCustomer communications based on the terms of an agreement. The insurance example above is a good one/liliAn email promotion sent to customers on their birthdaybr /br //li/olSome of the key requirements that I’ve described above are also required to make this a reality – namely a system that can automatically detect these triggers and fire off thebr /right communication at the right time. If you have the right tools and data synced up correctly, your only limits are your creativity and your free time. /li/ul ul listrongAutomated, personalized voice messages/strong. When I think about automated voice messages, I think back to an episode of the Simpsons where Homer spammed all of Spingfield trying to solicit money from them. That is a bad example. br /br /An example that I’ve seen really work well is combining personalized voice messages with email. For example, if you have an important webinar coming up, why not send a voice message from the webinar presenter inviting them to the webinar and telling them to look out for an email invite. For those that have registered, have a personalized voice message reminder. They key is to have this process automated so you don’t have to create different lists and coordinate the execution. All you need to do is to design the process and let the technology handle the rest. br /br //li listrongSales tools/strong. A tactic that I recommend is to create email templates for the sales team that allows them to modify the content and supplement their own personalized messages for each situation based on what they know about a customer or prospect. br /br /For example, I use email templates in Outlook that I’ve created using my marketing automation tool. I can easily change up the text for these emails in Outlook to personalize them based on the specific circumstance before I send them. The template makes this process easier for me but it’s the personalization that is needed to make the content relevant. br //li /ul p /pp /ppYou may have counted 9 points and said “what gives?”. The 10th point is using social media to deliver an automated, personalized experience but this concept is still in its infancy. There are a few examples here and there but for the most part, social media is real time communication by real people and the personalization is controlled more by the consumer. It will be interesting to see what new technologies develop in the near future. /ppLet me know if you have any other examples or opinions that you want to share.br /br /Chad H br /a href=”http://twitter.com/chadhorenfeldt” target=”_blank”@chadhorenfeldt/a/p p/p pPS: Here is a good article worth reading: a href=”http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/01/four-dimensions-of-personalization.html”The Four Dimensions of Personalization/a/p p/p p/p div class=”wlWriterEditableSmartContent” id=”scid:0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:c6e92099-c7a6-49a4-8884-05ecd2f79c96″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline; float: none;”Technorati Tags: a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/personalization” rel=”tag”personalization/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/marketing+automation” rel=”tag”marketing automation/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/Simpsons” rel=”tag”Simpsons/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/microsites” rel=”tag”microsites/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/direct+mail” rel=”tag”direct mail/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/email” rel=”tag”email/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/smart+marketing” rel=”tag”smart marketing/a,a href=”http://technorati.com/tags/Cheers” rel=”tag”Cheers/a/divp/pdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/25332113-1173585301142602218?l=anythinggoesmarketing.blogspot.com’//divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:63t7Ie-LG7Y”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?i=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?i=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?a=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AnythingGoesMarketing?i=vXv_lJ7A-n4:O_uXvzmvH0A:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AnythingGoesMarketing/~4/vXv_lJ7A-n4″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

Okay, I wanted to wrap up my thoughts about what I “Unlearned” at the BMA conference. In my a href=”http://www.b2blog.com/2009/06/unlearning-twitter-stream.htm”last post/a, I highlighted this tweet of mine: span class=”status-body”span class=”entry-content”"Sessions at #bma09 feel like a twitter stream about social media./span/span”br /br /Yes, the repeated chatter pushed the ’social media’ agenda. Unfortunately, for industrial marketers like myself, ’social media’ itself is in the someday/maybe pile. Hard to implement, and with limited direct benefit.br /br /But lets not throw the social media baby out with the bathwater.br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”Authenticity is needed/spanbr /The first challenge in approaching social media is also what one NEEDS to approach in marketing today. Social media tactics require authenticity. AND they need to align with your existing marketing/brand. THEREFORE we need to make sure our marketing/brand is authentic.br /br /So our marketing needs to be authentic as a minimum standard to be up-to-date. Then we stand ready to move toward social media (if/when we choose) without having alignment issues.br /br /Those industrial marketers that talk in third-person, arms-length language about being ‘an industry leader’ with additional non-specific marketing-speak, are not only looking dated, but are becoming irrelevant. No one is listening. A possible advantage of social media is the chance to find an authentic voice.br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”"Real Real”/spanbr /In fact, one presenter, a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591391458?ie=UTF8amp;tag=b2blog-20amp;linkCode=as2amp;camp=1789amp;creative=390957amp;creativeASIN=1591391458″Joe Pine (link to Amazon)/aimg src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=b2blog-20amp;l=as2amp;o=1amp;a=1591391458″ alt=”" style=”border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;” border=”0″ width=”1″ height=”1″ /, said that we need to span style=”font-weight: bold;”render/span authenticity. Much like how we would control how our logo is used by other departments, we need to control the tone of our outbound communications to assure authenticity. Of course, this is much easier if the culture and in-house communications uses the same authentic tone.br /br /Joe laid out a chart of authenticity, and I think industrial marketers have no choice but to be in the ‘real real’ quadrant–where the customer’s experience matches with the real company behind their product. Its as simple as ‘do what you say you will do’ (Joe calls this the Polonius test: “to thine own self be true.”)br /br /Unfortunately, this is bigger than a marketing problem, it becomes a systematic, cultural, and management challenge. Lucky for me that I work in a very flat organization that has no choice but to be authentic, but for others with top-down bureaucracy and a detached C-suite, authenticity is going to be a struggle. (Reference the challenges of Twitterer a href=”http://twitter.com/COMCASTCARES”@comcastcares/a.)br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”Functional Bonus:/spanbr /Authenticity requires meeting, listening, and connecting to the marketplace, which enhances the quality of our communications. Great. But there is a greater valuebr /br /Being connected to the market, along with the instant access social media provides, enables us to launch span style=”font-style: italic;”incomplete /spancampaigns and tune them span style=”font-style: italic;”on-the-fly/span, based on response. In the past you had to have everything ready to go at launch, because you didn’t have that chance to fix things.br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”Starting points:/spanbr /I’d look at the written content you are using. Is the tone and message authentic? Websites are the best place to work on this. If it is just cut/paste from a brochure, you’ve got work to do. Outbound emails and blogs, too.br /br /Start Unlearning now, or I truly think you will find yourself behind the eight-ball very quickly. (I’ll talk more about that eight-ball soon.)div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3471387-5530257277344139730?l=www.b2blog.com%2Findex.html’//div

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”p class=”MsoNormal”span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”Recent news stories about Social Media being a href=”http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006953″bigger than email/a as well as the recent beta rel/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”e/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”a href=”http://blog.marketo.com/.a/6a00d83451b45369e20115718821f5970b-popup” onclick=”window.open(this.href,#39;_blank#39;,#39;scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0#39;); return false” style=”float: right;”img alt=”Social Media and Email Marketing” class=”at-xid-6a00d83451b45369e20115718821f5970b ” src=”http://blog.marketo.com/.a/6a00d83451b45369e20115718821f5970b-320wi” style=”margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; width: 254px; height: 253px;” title=”Social Media and Email Marketing” //a/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”as/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”e of Google Wave have made marketers rethink their email strategies, but should we really be mov/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”ing our email efforts to social media? And if not, should they be kept apart, or can they truly work in unison?br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160; /spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”/spanbr /span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;” I think the separation of email and social media started a few years ago when every email began with emForward to a Friend/em written above the emails headline. This seemed like a great way to make emails more social, but marketers ended up disappointed when these buttons were ignored, and left unused. Since this first attempt at socializing email was so poorly received we started to separate out our social marketing from our a href=”http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-resources/email-marketing.php”email marketing efforts./abr / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / But here at Marketo we think that social media and a href=”http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-software/email-marketing-software.php”email marketing/a work best hand-in-hand. During a recent discussion with Michael Smith, Director of Interactive Marketing at a href=”http://www.mlinc.com/”Medialogic/a, a strategic marketing and communication firm, we agreed that social media has complimented our email efforts, not hurt or replaced them. For B2B marketers to stay at the top of their game they must not c/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”/spanspan style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”hoose one or the other, but instead learn how to make them work together.span#0160; /span“The best approach is to build an integrated strategy utilizing both mediums to help seed conversations and engage with your customers/prospects in order to build relationships of significant and sustained value” said Mike. o:p/o:p/span/p p class=”MsoNormal”span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”And in support of this integrated strategy, Mike and I thought we would brainstorm as a team on why social media and email are like a marketer’s peanut butter and jelly. Together we listed our best practices on how to make both social media and email marketing work hand-in-hand.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”Create a Unified Strategy:/span/strongbr / Instead of keeping separate email and social media plans, create marketing objectives and see how social media and email marketing can help accomplish these objectives as one coordinated effort. Create the content for these programs at the same time so they feel coordinated and complement one another. This will also help prevent there from being gaps in your overall marketing strategy or conflicting information in different marketing messages.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”br / Use Similar Voice:br / /span/strongYour brand has a personality. Let it shine through both social media and email, but make sure they both have the same mood and tone. Don’t let emails be boring while social media posts are fun and edgy. Instead, try to design email to look like your social media voice sounds. This is a great way to help prospects and customers become more familiar with your brand.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”Don’t Duplicate Content:/span/strongbr / It’s understandable that a prospect or customer may opt-out of your email or unfollow/unfriend you if all you do is post the same news over and over again on different sites and through email. You must adjust your messages for each site to keep readers interested and engaged.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”Give email recipients the inside scoop/span/strongbr / Use email to share your best discounts and rewards, but allow news to spread virally through social media sites. An example of this is giving an insiders peak and premier registration for events to email recipients, but encourage subscribers to share news via email and social media. Or post new product information on social media sites, but product discount information in emails. These exclusive email discounts will get people signed-up to your email, while news of your discount program may spread on social sites.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”br / Help email recipients share your news:/span/strongbr / Many email marketers are encouraging people to share the details of their emails on Facebook and Twitter. Other marketers are posting links to the company or senders social marketing accounts, allowing email recipients to choose if they wish to receive emails or want to interact with your company through social media sites.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”Utilize email functionalities in social media sites/span/strongbr / Sites like Linkedin and Facebook allow group owners to send messages to their group members. When sending emails remember to create messages targeted for these groups. These sites are often forgotten by email marketers, though are a great way to connect. Watch email opt-outs on these sites and when people leave your group, similar to how you watch opt-outs in email and adjust messaging to your audiences preferences to decrease this attrition.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / strongspan style=”text-decoration: underline;”Shared reporting:br / /span/strongDon’t report your email marketing successes separate from social media mentions. Create a href=”http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-software/marketing-roi.php”marketing reporting/a that is unified and can create a complete picture of your marketing activities. Make sure you show how all the pieces worked together, and how each influenced the overall success of a campaign.br / #0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;#0160;br / By combining these strategies, you will increase the success of both your social media and email efforts, allowing you to create the strongest online marketing effort possible for your organization. Mike and I agree, the power isn’t in social media or email marketing, it’s in how you use them together./spanspan style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: quot;Arialquot;,quot;sans-serifquot;;”o:p/o:p/span/p/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/modernb2bmarketing?a=mNcM4fBHkHk:WiClYjWgKxc:IZZ1qzr7sQ0″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/modernb2bmarketing?d=IZZ1qzr7sQ0″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/modernb2bmarketing?a=mNcM4fBHkHk:WiClYjWgKxc:bcOpcFrp8Mo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/modernb2bmarketing?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~4/mNcM4fBHkHk” height=”1″ width=”1″/

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l6h7gwxUGoM/SkjS6f3jfcI/AAAAAAAAAfA/73fHg2E9m6Q/s1600-h/ebook.jpg”img style=”margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 207px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l6h7gwxUGoM/SkjS6f3jfcI/AAAAAAAAAfA/73fHg2E9m6Q/s320/ebook.jpg” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352760059558591938″ border=”0″ //aThis morning I typed into Google the search term: VoIP (which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol) and I got 64 Million responses. 64 Million!!br /br /How archaic is that?br /br /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.br /br /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 they know I work at Avaya (who sells products and services in the VoIP space) and therefore I most likely have a very different mission in typing in VoIP?br /br /Microsoft just launched Bing a new search service which is supposed to rival that of Google. To me it looks like Google but in a new wrapper with a few enhancements. This post is not an indictment of Bing, my point is they didn’t take it far enough.br /br /Someone can (and will) connect search to my social profile (say on Facebook) thereby making a truly intelligent search engine that will know where I work, and who my friends are. Then when I Google a term like VoIP – it will know I work for Avaya, it will know my friends and can present me with a way to filter the web based on my social profile – call it Social Search.br /br /Then I will be able to narrow down a search for VoIP down in seconds based on the company I work for, members of my marketing team, friends I have in my network and get a completely different view of the internet that I can’t get now.br /br /24 months from now Social Search should be common place – we should see social tools like Facebook Connect or OpenID which are already out there, used for search. I feel everyone wants to make the search market more competitive (right now Google has 87% of the US marketing and 90% of the European market) so perhaps Yahoo or AOL can revive their search business by going Social!br /br /For more ideas like this please check out my latest eBook called a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/phdunay/7-ways-facebook-will-change-your-life”7 Ways Facebook will Change your Life/a!div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/25162405-3577449745351911334?l=buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com’//divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:63t7Ie-LG7Y”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:dnMXMwOfBR0″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=dnMXMwOfBR0″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=VHcX0XMZpDI:YEzkBfaAGKY:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BuzzMarketingForTechnology/~4/VHcX0XMZpDI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

With 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 by developing a unique brand for your blog. This is beyond being organized and having a plan, this is about standing out in a world of infinite choice.

With that in mind, here are 7 ways to help develop a unique brand for that shiny new blog you’ve just built, or give fresh life to your current site. Ideally, you could incorporate all of these:

1. Develop a post archetype

Develop a compelling post archetype that people respond favorably to and continue to feed your content into it. It can be something as simple as using a certain type of image, post heading, graphic, etc. - just something which makes your posts stand out on their own in an RSS reader as content a-la-carte. Your posts looking nice here is a key factor to getting them to spread between RSS users/early adopters who may never visit your actual blog, but are happy to do things like share content in Google Reader . You want everyone using tools like Reader to click the share button with every post, and they’re likely to do so with posts that stand out format-wise, as long as the content tells the same story of quality.

2. Create a simple or unique design

Most bloggers tend to over-complicate their blog designs. Complexity in web design is standard and expected. Simplicity is a thing of beauty. If you’re more daring, develop a unique design that takes a chance and pushes the limits, it’s a good way to get noticed. Breaking expectation with design/presentation of content is a huge strategy in and of itself.

3. Refine your writing quality and style

The single best way to create a blog with a unique brand is to have writing quality and style which is distinctive, emotive or in some way compelling. Writing is the heart of your blog’s brand, and has the power to transcend all other factors - the importance of this can’t be overstated. This is a long-term process of refinement and as you delve deeply into themes, concepts and topics it will become more defined and known. Some bloggers have become so good at this, loyal readers could pick their writing out of a lineup.

4. Find a way to view your topic from a fresh angle or different lens

As long as there is interest in a niche, it can never be too crowded for fresh thinking. Even within the most popular topics, the ways established sites cover ideas is relatively predictable. New sites can use this to their advantage simply by not covering ideas in the same way. A fresh angle or different viewpoint on a familiar topic may prove the most compelling choice of all. Remember, while there are many fans of popular sites, there are also plenty of dissenters just waiting to give voice to something different. Speak to them and they will spread your content more aggressively than even the biggest fans of the established players.

5. Focus on a unique topic, or intersection of topics

There’s really no topic that’s too specific or unique, in fact, the more offbeat, the better. There’s an audience for it, and if not you can make one (bearing you don’t go off the deep end and it’s too esoteric). The key is simply that you can deliver on the thesis consistently and with quality. If you can’t develop a truly unique topic don’t worry, this may not be possible. Another approach is to find a intersection of complementary topics. Music and inspiration, marketing and sociology, personal development and fitness, search and social media - you get the idea. This is compelling because in time it will form a unique community, and the content genres and mixing of audiences will play off each other to make something more interesting than the separate pieces.

6. Create a better signal to noise ratio

It’s common to publish frequently for the sake of publishing - but the real opportunity is to make your site known for signal and kill the noise. Becoming known as a site with a high degree of signal is how you will build up a silent army of users active in the social web who share your content every time. If you deliver on this long enough, the world will become conditioned to anticipate quality from you, and your content will be shared each time you hit publish.

7. Focus on achieving consistency

Quite possibly one of the most difficult hurtles to get over for developing a successful, unique blog is being consistent. Blogs that deliver high quality material on a consistent basis get noticed. Out of more than 133 million blogs created since 2002, only 76,000 of them (less than 1%!) have a Technorati ranking of 50 or higher - something that is a result of consistency. In other words, being consistent is a unique element of your blog’s brand in and of itself as most fail to achieve this basic, yet essential quality.

Conclusion

The popularity of web publishing is something which only continues to increase, and with it the battle for attention of readers daily heats up. Becoming an outlier in some regard is the element that will put you on the path with the best chance at large-scale success. This is actually not just important for those new to web publishing. In crowded marketplaces with many choices, a strong brand is more than a way to gain a following, it’s protection against unpredictable externalities. Finding a way to develop a unique brand for your blog is worth spending as much time on as anything else in your blogging roadmap.

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© Online Marketing Blog , 2009. | 7 Ways To Develop A Unique Brand For Your Blog | 2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Making Video an Everyday Marketing Activity

Capturing and adding video to your marketing and social media mix has become a necessary and increasingly expected part of creating your overall marketing message. With each passing day this task just seems to get easier. Camera prices have fallen while quality has risen, editing software is free and simple to use, and video hosting and streaming from sites like YouTube provide most of the heavy lifting when it comes to putting those videos online.

Recently, I added a Flip Ultra HD camera to my portfolio of tech tools and, although I’m late to the party on singing its praises, I believe every marketer and every salesperson, for that matter, should own and use on of these babies.

The fact that you can stick this camera in your pocket means that you can capture video stories anywhere they happen.

• Have each salesperson gather customer success stories and testimonials during sales calls
• Record customers giving your product a test or demonstration
• Capture usability testing as you record people interacting with your web site
• Record short videos of your strategic partners talking about their relationship with your firm
• Capture highlights from every booth you visit at a trade show
• Record salespeople giving successful sales presentations
• Tour your office and record a “meet our staff member” each week

The use of video will only grow more and more important, so making it as easy to capture video moments is one of the keys to getting in the habit of playing this game. Of course, don’t forget to fully optimize your videos on YouTube with lots of tags and very complete descriptions of the content.

Things I like about the Flip Ultra HD:

• Extremely portable
• Very simple to use
• High quality video and sound
• USB connection built right in
• Comes with its own simple software
• Holds up to 2 hours of video
• Relatively inexpensive - $199

Here’s a quick in the field example - I shot this on vacation at Venable Falls in the Sangre de Christo Mountain Range in the Colorado Rockies . (You might turn your speakers down as the water is pretty loud)

Related articles by Zemanta

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• Flip Video gets channels, iPhone app for viewing (thaibrother.com)

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img src=”http://guykawasaki.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c527353ef0115717e4b64970b-pi” alt=”La réalité de l’entrepreuriat.jpg” border=”0″ width=”140″ height=”198″ align=”right” / pVient de paraître en français:/p pLa réalité de l’entrepreneuriat/p pLe guide irrévérencieux pour dépasser, devancer, distancer vos concurrents/p pde Guy Kawasaki /p pPublié en français par les Editions Diateino, avec l’aimable autorisation de Portfolio, Penguin Group. 26 euros./p pCe livre, traduit par Marylène Delbourg Delphis, fait suite à L’art de se lancer, le bestseller de Guy Kawasaki traduit en 10 langues, paru en 2006 aux Editions Diateino./p pLa réalité de l’entrepreneuriat, comme L’art de se lancer, est un livre de chevet pour tout entrepreneur, où qu’il vive. Ce livre vous intéressera, vous motivera – et vous secouera peut-être un peu aussi, car il ouvre des perspectives nouvelles sur les difficultés de l’entrepreneuriat au début de la vie d’une entreprise et il vous donne les moyens de les résoudre. Il vous fera gagner un temps fou, car il vous évitera bien des bévues et vous renforcera dans votre conviction./p pa href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8location=http2F2FRealite-lEntrepreneuriat-Irreverencieux-Depasser-Distancer2F23545600603DUTF83Dbooks3D12462111033D8-1tag=guykawasakico-20linkCode=ur2camp=1789creative=9325″Cliquez ici pour l’acheter./aimg src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=guykawasakico-20l=ur2o=1″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” / /p/div pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BX84tXifm7UKW5W89D3gU3wxb3k/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BX84tXifm7UKW5W89D3gU3wxb3k/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BX84tXifm7UKW5W89D3gU3wxb3k/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BX84tXifm7UKW5W89D3gU3wxb3k/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=fxwztJfqr-0:GiUdT5GS038:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/fxwztJfqr-0″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

This will be my first of many tweetups that I am planning here in Silicon Valley.  It’s great to meet other business professionals here in the valley that use Twitter; and even greater when we can help the surrounding communities at the same time (we are partnering with several non-profit organizations). The first tweetup is scheduled for July 23rd from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM at Rosie McCann’s Irish Pub in Santana Row. Here are the details of the event . Please consider joining the community or following the Silicon Vallley Tweetup Twitter handle . I look forward to seeing you there.

Hey all.. guest post from Joanne Black today on the importance of building relationships with your customers. This is not only a core marketing principle but essential for anyone looking to make the most of a down economy.br /br /br /Yes, the economy is lagging and budgets are cut. Yes, we have competition. Yes, clients are postponing buying decisions. So what?br /br /a href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/SkfO6njJ7HI/AAAAAAAACnk/jF2kVCWhWoI/s1600-h/sales.jpg”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352474188597292146″ style=”FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 133px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 93px” alt=”" src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5teyRpJfosk/SkfO6njJ7HI/AAAAAAAACnk/jF2kVCWhWoI/s320/sales.jpg” border=”0″ //abr /If you focus on building relationships and implement the sales strategies I reveal here, you’ll be able to close more deals and get more sales now. People will buy from you even in a lagging economy — no matter what your price point.br /br /br /strong3 Ways to Get In, Get Started, and Close More Dealsbr //strongbr /br /strongSales Closing Tip 1:/strong Recommend New Approachesbr /br /Good salespeople have always talked about creating value. Now we need to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes and be creative. We must get in and get started. Think smart, not big. It’s always smarter to have a smaller piece of something, than a big piece of nothing. Begin with a smaller project, a reduced order, or a regional, rather than global, implementation. Get in, and get to know the client. Let them get to know you. Get to know their business.br /br /strongSales Closing Tip 2:/strong Create Metricsbr /br /Sit on the same side of the table as your client. Work together to determine the best way to get started. Always, always, create metrics with your client. How do you, together, define success? Get agreement that once this project is successful–according to the metrics you’ve agreed upon–that the client will work with you to identify other sales opportunities within their organization. A successful project breeds a successful relationship, which leads to successful referrals. This means more sales leads and more money for you!br /br /strongSales Closing Tip 3:/strong Negotiate or Walkbr /br /Yes, the client will want to negotiate on price. That’s their job–to build business while watching the bottom line. How many times have you submitted a sales proposal to a client, and had them say, right off the bat, “Great! Where do I sign?” It doesn’t happen. We always want to get the best deal, so why wouldn’t our clients? If you must adjust your price, then adjust the scale of your project or the deliverables as well. Always get something in return and write it into your agreement.br /br /Maybe the client agrees to write a testimonial or promises to refer you to another business unit in their organization, or to someone they know at a different company. Maybe you barter some of your services. Bartering is an age-old way of doing business, and it makes sense in many cases if you want what they have and they need what you have. Perhaps the client has software that your company needs, or a consulting methodology that could propel your business. You get the picture. Work it out. If you can’t work things out, be willing to walk away. It’s a tough decision, but it may be your best strategic sales decision. You’ll be off to the next client who values what you offer and is willing to pay for it.br /br /If you follow my advice in this article , you will build lifetime customer relationships with clients who want to buy from you over and over again even in a lagging economy. You will get more referrals. And, you will close more sales. So, what are you waiting for? Get in and get started now!br /br /America’s leading authority on referral selling and founder of No More Cold Calling®, Joanne Black helps salespeople, sales teams, and business owners get more referrals and attract business fast without increasing the cost of sales. Discover how to turn prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time even in a lagging economy with her No More Cold Calling sales programs at a href=”http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com./” target=”_blank”http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com.//adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”For more free marketing advice, visit the a href=”http://www.marketingscoop.com”marketing experts/a at a href=”http://www.marketingscoop.com”Internet marketing expert/a at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30060900-6300951494715185374?l=marketing-expert.blogspot.com’//div

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Weekend Favs for June Twenty-Seven

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week)

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week

• 100 Social Sites for Every Aspect of your Life - this should keep you busy for a few hours
• 74 Examples of single web page design - draw inspiration from these simple designs
• Tips for improving handwriting - with all this digital work, it’s kind of a fun read

Image credit: happy7museum

Earlier 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 to say that companies making investments in better connecting with their customers now, will have a distinct advantage over those that are resolved to “wait and see” with this social web thing.

TopRank’s survey of the Top Digital Marketing tactic s for 2009 revealed 6 of the top 10 tactics as social media. Marketingsherpa’s 2008 Study of Social Media Marketing & PR reports social media as the top marketing budget line item for increase in 2009.

Why the optimism? Social media offers a variety of benefits:

• Build thought leadership
• Improve customer relationships
• Improve recruiting
• Reduce customer service costs
• Improve search engine rankings
• Increase media coverage
• Influence sales

Despite the optimism, the social web and the practice of better connecting with customers through social technologies is new territory for most companies. Traditionally, communications between companies and customers has focused on marketing, sales and customer service.

Audience at SEMPO AZ Event

According to analysis of Peter Kim’s social media examples wiki, early adopters of social media are focusing on blogging, social networking, microblogging and video in the Retail, Consumer Goods/Services, High Tech, Media/Entertainment, Automotive and Financial Services industries. There are over 900 examples on the wiki.beingpeterkim.com site.

Even with the optimism and efforts at early adoption, social media implementation has been all over the board. Fake blogs, spammy and salesey behavior within social communities and overzealous SEO efforts have represented some of the stumbling blocks and social media fails .

SEO for most companies is tough enough. Add social media to the mix and many are lost. According to Marketingsherpa’s Social Media Marketing & PR survey, adoption of social media is low mostly because of uneducated/in experienced staff along with difficulty in measuring direct ROI. It’s hard to win management buy-in and budget without those resources.

Even when companies do implement social media or SEO tactics, they tend to do so independently or siloed from each other. Core objectives for social media efforts tend to focus on building community. In contrast, company SEO efforts focus mostly on generating leads and sales. The realization that implementing SEO best practices with social media content creation/promotion can actually extend social reach via search as well as compliment an existing SEO program is where the SEO and Social opportunity lies.

A good example of social popularity turning into good search visibility is Blendtec. The video where they “blend” an iPhone has over 6 million views, 6,000 inbound links and ranks top 10 on Google for the search phrase, “ blender “.

What parts of social media content should you optimize with keywords? For situations where you are the one creating the content, optimize:

• Titles
• File names
• Descriptions
• Anchor text
• Annotations, show notes, transcriptions

In cases of consumer generated content, you can influence keyword optimization through the content management system and tools used by consumers to publish. Examples include: keyword rich categories built in (and required), suggested keyword rich tags, sorting top content using keyword lists, and many others.

Of course, SEO isn’t much without links and the ability to promote, share and attract links is one of the most significant SEO benefits from social media. The key thing to remember about leveraging social media for link building is to create content worthy of getting a link in the first place.  Then measure content stuctures, formats, media types and sites that work best and refine.

The kicker with creating great content is that no one will know you’ve created that exceptional content unless you tell them. So, promotion is very important as is the development of channels to distribute your content. RSS works well as does building out networks on relevant social media sites ranging from Facebook to StumbleUpon to YouTube.

Working search and social media tactics together can amplify many of the core objectives. The bottom line is that companies who make the effort and investment to figure out how to test, build expertise and mangage though a strategy, will achieve a distinct competitive advantage over companies that wait.

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© Online Marketing Blog , 2009. | Intersection of Search and Social Media | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

I was pleasantly surprised at the turn out from today’s social networking conference in Beverly Hills 90210. I met some really cool people from a very diverse group of companies. Here is a quick recap of the speakers and you can also check out the pictures below as well:

Session 1: Travis Falstad of Electronic Arts talked about social networking in the gaming environment.This was of keen interest to me since I am a serious gamer and Madden (on the Playstation) expert! “EA Sports, It’s in the Game!

Session 2: I talked about building brand loyalty on the social web.

Session 3: Adam Pisoni, VP of Engineering at Yammer talked about enterprise communications and social media.

Session 4: John Ploumitsakos from Google talked about the changing landscape and trends on the social web.

Session 5: Jeff Bruce, VP of Marketing for Dow Jones talked about the B2B strategies using technology and he touched a little on CRM.

Session 6: Sumaya Kazi shared what Sun Microsystems is doing in the social space; and believe me, they are doing a lot!

Session 7: Clara Shih gave an exciting presentation on the emerging technologies and strategies using Facebook and Twitter. I recorded a brief segment of her presentation below.

Here are some photos of the event.

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pThese are the sites and applications that I used in todayrsquo;s San Diego Venture Group speech about using social media as a marketing tool./p h3Making Connections/h3 pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/”LinkedIn/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/rs?searchOrigin=M”LinkedIn: Find References/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/companies?trk=hb_tab_compy”LinkedIn: Companies/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/answers?trk=hb_tab_ayn”LinkedIn: Answers: Home/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?displayHome=amp;trk=hb_tab_jobs”LinkedIn: Jobs Home/a /p pa href=”https://www.jigsaw.com/”Jigsaw/a /p pa href=”http://www.spokeo.com/user”Spokeo/a /p h3Social Networking/h3 pa href=”http://www.facebook.com/alltop”Facebook | Alltop/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/”Twitter / Home/a /p h3Twitter Corporate Examples/h3 pa href=”http://twitter.com/JetBlue”JetBlue/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/delloutlet”Dell Outlet/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/virginamerica”Virgin America/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/amazondeals”Amazondeals/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/cirquelasvegas”CirqueLasVegas/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/comcastcares”Comcastcares/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/kogibbq”Kogibbq/a /p h3Twitter Search Examples/h3 pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=guykawasaki+OR+alltop+-alltop.com”Monitor: guykawasaki OR alltop/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Comcast+OR+DirecTV”Monitor: comcast OR Directv/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=22″Monitor: Starbucks VIA/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/”Search.twitter.com//a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=camaro”Camaro/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+camaro+near3A100mi”Camaro within 100 miles/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+22+near3A100mi”Venture capital within 100 miles/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/advanced”Advanced Twitter Search/a /p h3Twitter Sites and Applications/h3 pa href=”http://www.twellow.com/”Twellow/a /p pa href=”https://cotweet.com/channels/alltop”CoTweet/a /p pa href=”http://www.twhirl.org/”twhirl/a /p pa href=”http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/”TweetDeck/a /p pa href=”https://www.twitterhawk.com/login”TwitterHawk/a /p pa href=”http://objectivemarketer.com/”Objective Marketer/a /p h3Alltop Examples/h3 pa href=”http://wine.alltop.com/”Wine.alltop/a /p pa href=”http://venture-capital.alltop.com/”VentureCapital.alltop/a /p pa href=”http://innovation.alltop.com/”Innovation.alltop/a o:p/o:p/p /div pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/gUrjQH5gm0Q” height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pThese are the sites and applications that I used in todayrsquo;s San Diego Venture Group speech about using social media as a marketing tool./p h3Making Connections/h3 pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/”LinkedIn/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/rs?searchOrigin=M”LinkedIn: Find References/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/companies?trk=hb_tab_compy”LinkedIn: Companies/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/answers?trk=hb_tab_ayn”LinkedIn: Answers: Home/a /p pa href=”http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?displayHome=amp;trk=hb_tab_jobs”LinkedIn: Jobs Home/a /p pa href=”https://www.jigsaw.com/”Jigsaw/a /p pa href=”http://www.spokeo.com/user”Spokeo/a /p h3Social Networking/h3 pa href=”http://www.facebook.com/alltop”Facebook | Alltop/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/”Twitter / Home/a /p h3Twitter Corporate Examples/h3 pa href=”http://twitter.com/JetBlue”JetBlue/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/delloutlet”Dell Outlet/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/virginamerica”Virgin America/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/amazondeals”Amazondeals/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/cirquelasvegas”CirqueLasVegas/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/comcastcares”Comcastcares/a /p pa href=”http://twitter.com/kogibbq”Kogibbq/a /p h3Twitter Search Examples/h3 pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=guykawasaki+OR+alltop+-alltop.com”Monitor: guykawasaki OR alltop/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Comcast+OR+DirecTV”Monitor: comcast OR Directv/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=22″Monitor: Starbucks VIA/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/”Search.twitter.com//a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=camaro”Camaro/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+camaro+near3A100mi”Camaro within 100 miles/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+22+near3A100mi”Venture capital within 100 miles/a /p pa href=”http://search.twitter.com/advanced”Advanced Twitter Search/a /p h3Twitter Sites and Applications/h3 pa href=”http://www.twellow.com/”Twellow/a /p pa href=”https://cotweet.com/channels/alltop”CoTweet/a /p pa href=”http://www.twhirl.org/”twhirl/a /p pa href=”http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/”TweetDeck/a /p pa href=”https://www.twitterhawk.com/login”TwitterHawk/a /p pa href=”http://objectivemarketer.com/”Objective Marketer/a /p h3Alltop Examples/h3 pa href=”http://wine.alltop.com/”Wine.alltop/a /p pa href=”http://venture-capital.alltop.com/”VentureCapital.alltop/a /p pa href=”http://innovation.alltop.com/”Innovation.alltop/a o:p/o:p/p /div pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/z9SwstdE26OY87MzK5-iMC94wJU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=gUrjQH5gm0Q:nJlOtEmj-QM:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/gUrjQH5gm0Q” height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pI 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 a href=”http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,47666,00.html”our latest report (clients can access all the details)/a 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. brstrongbrCompanies organize in three distinct models/strong For this post, let’s focus in on how companies are organizing. There are three basic models that I’ve observed and surveyed brands: /pblockquote ol listrongThe Tire (Distributed):/strong Where each business unit or group may create its own social media programs without a centralized approach. We call this approach the “tire,” as it originates at the edges of the company./li listrongThe Tower (Centralized):/strong We refer to this centralization as the “tower” — a standalone group within a company that’s responsible for social media programs, often within corporate marketing or corporate communicaitons./li listrongThe Hub and Spoke (Cross Functional): /strong Like the hub on a bicycle wheel, a cross-functional group that represents multiple stakeholders across the company assembles in the middle of the organization. The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the “tire”)/li /ol /blockquote center a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3660453483/” title=”How companies organize for social media by jeremiah_owyang, on Flickr”img alt=”How companies organize for social media” height=”338″ src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3547/3660453483_6f7a628468.jpg” width=”500″/img/a strongspan style=”font-weight: normal;”The above graphic shows how brands we surveyed are organized/span/strong/center pstrong /strong strongbrWhich way should companies organize? /strong We believe the most sophisticated and effecient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralized resources that can support business units. The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing. Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint. brstrongbrRemember: 80% is Strategy only 20% is Technology/strong On a related note, thanks to heavy collaboration with colleague a href=”http://ampersanddot.com/blog/”Zach Hofer-Shal/al we’ve also published a report for clients on a a href=”http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,54099,00.html”community launch checklist/a. This checklist reminds brands that 80% of their success is dependent on understanding their customers, defining an objective, and assembling the right strategy that encompasses: plans, roles, process, budgets, measurement, and training –not a focus on technology. brbrThe faster brands can realize that approaching social marketing and collaboration isn’t about technology, but about process and change management the better off they are. You’ll find simliar thoughts from David Armano –who’s scoping out different models within their framework of a href=”http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/06/sbd.html”social business design/a. Love to hear from you: Which way is your brand organized? In a tire? tower? or hub and spoke. In my experience, I often ask stakeholders in companies to vote by raising their hands on which model they think they are –most often, not everyone agrees –but most want to evolve to hub and spoke. Try polling your internal teams to start a lively discussion./p/divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?a=bba5D-tfYlM:0TSCQqcr5xo:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?a=bba5D-tfYlM:0TSCQqcr5xo:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ForresterMarketing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ForresterMarketing/~4/bba5D-tfYlM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

So 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.br /br /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!br /br /So get ready to enjoy what I think is a sneak peek into the future of social networking …br /br /div style=”width: 425px; text-align: left;” id=”__ss_1639869″a style=”margin: 12px 0pt 3px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;” href=”http://www.slideshare.net/phdunay/7-ways-facebook-will-change-your-life?type=presentation” title=”7 Ways Facebook Will Change Your Life”7 Ways Facebook Will Change Your Life/aobject style=”margin: 0px;” width=”425″ height=”355″param name=”movie” value=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=7waysfacebookwillchangeyourlife-090625132028-phpapp02amp;stripped_title=7-ways-facebook-will-change-your-life”param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”embed src=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=7waysfacebookwillchangeyourlife-090625132028-phpapp02amp;stripped_title=7-ways-facebook-will-change-your-life” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”355″/embed/objectdiv style=”font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;”View more a style=”text-decoration: underline;” href=”http://www.slideshare.net/”presentations/a from a style=”text-decoration: underline;” href=”http://www.slideshare.net/phdunay”Avaya/a./div/divdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/25162405-2864656174712402628?l=buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com’//divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:63t7Ie-LG7Y”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:dnMXMwOfBR0″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?d=dnMXMwOfBR0″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?a=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BuzzMarketingForTechnology?i=3kk6HBu7t4s:CPcoChlJ1RU:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BuzzMarketingForTechnology/~4/3kk6HBu7t4s” height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pdiv style=”float: right; margin-left: 10px”script type=”text/javascript” tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/06/signs-of-hope-for-the-transparent-future-of-the-fda.html’; /script script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js” /script /divspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”/spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Several weeks ago, what some might consider the most unlikely government agency to embrace social media decided to launch a blog. The a href=”http://fdatransparencyblog.fda.gov/” target=”_blank”FDA Transparency Blog/a 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)./span/ppa href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570641715970c-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”IMB_FDATransparencyBlog” class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570641715970c ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011570641715970c-550wi” style=”width: 550px;”/a /ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”To do this, they have posed 6 big questions:/span/pol lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”How can the agency better explain its operations, activities, processes and decision making?/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”What specific information should FDA provide about agency operations, activities, processes, and decision making, including enforcement actions, product approvals, recalls and other actions?/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”What tools, techniques, processes, or other mechanisms should FDA use to be more effective in providing useful and understandable information?/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”What, if any, legislative or regulatory changes are needed to improve FDA’s ability to provide useful and understandable information to the public?/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”As FDA becomes more transparent, what information should remain confidential in order to promote key internal and external policy goals, such as preserving patient privacy, and how, in these cases, should FDA explain the importance of confidentiality?/span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”What metrics should FDA use to gauge the effectiveness of its transparency efforts?/span/li /ol pspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Yesterday, this task force had their first public meeting to start to gather input to answer these questions. The meeting was open to any member of the public, and was a href=”http://wpc.0172.edgecastcdn.net/000172/fda/FDA.htm” target=”_blank”live webcast/a over the Internet as well. I watched some (not all) of the proceedings to prepare for this post. The topics in conversation ranged from how the FDA should release information to ideas on how to improve their website by segmenting it into very defined consumer and industry focused areas. /span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”As you might expect, several of the participants on the speaking roster had a very definite bone to pick with the FDA. From an irate ousted doctor to several underappreciated public interest groups - many of the 5 minute panel segments seemed less constructive then therapeutic … helping individuals who have felt silenced for too long to have a stage to share their emotions. /span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Yet this combination of the passionate neglected with the involved optimists was part of the beauty of the entire meeting. Ultimately, in my opinion there were three key factors that made this meeting a big success for the FDA:/span/pol lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongAsking big questions./strong If you look at the questions copied earlier in this post, you’ll agree that none have overnight solutions. They are tackling big issues at a big agency during a big time of change in the healthcare world instead of taking the easier and more traditional government entity approach of implementing smaller more watered down initiatives./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongListening without getting defensive./strong The variety of opinions shared in the public meeting and through comments on their blog is wide, however they are demonstrating a willingness to listen that many are unaccustomed to receiving from the FDA. Most importantly, they heard the criticisms from yesterday (for the most part) without feeling the need to get defensive or justify things they are currently doing. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongDemonstrating a desire for help. /strongOn more than one occasion during the session members of the task force asked for opinions, guidance and help from those presenting. It was a telling moment that will likely do more than anything to reduce the perception of the FDA as a closed organization. If they can effectively use all these partners willing to help and create stronger ties with their immediate community - they will leap ahead in terms of becoming more open./span/li /ol pspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”The first step in transparency is a willingness to stand in front of your detractors, listen to their problems, and show your commitment to improving. The day after this first public forum meeting, it is tough not to feel the palpable sense of hope that anyone who watched or listened should feel about the future of the FDA. As the world continues to evolve thanks to social media, virtual relationships and real time communication at least one government agency seems determined not to be left behind. And if the FDA can do it, any organization can./span/ppem style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongThis post was a href=”http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/06/signs-of-hope-for-the-transparent-future-of-the-fda/” target=”_blank”originally posted on the 360 Digital Influence blog/a./strong/em/p/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=887onDE84BA:DNq02Xmkyew:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/887onDE84BA” height=”1″ width=”1″/

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

My Top 10 Sources of Content Inspiration

I’m often talking about producing high quality, education based content as way to draw leads to know, like and trust you. So, for example, I always advise small business owners to create and populate a blog because I happen to think it’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to both create and optimize content.

Some of the questions I still receive frequently however, are one like - how do know I what to write about, where do I get all those good ideas or how do I uncover trends, tools and tips that might appeal to my audience?

So, for today’s post I thought I would share the tools I use to get my brain thinking about what to write about. My favorite strategy is to mine these tools and sites for seemingly unrelated ideas. I can’t tell you how often I’ve uncovered the seed of an idea from something totally unrelated to marketing that I could twist to apply it in a totally new and relevant way.

• Customer feedback – I love to turn customer and prospect questions into blog posts and more. You should be keeping track of those FAQs and answer every single one and some that don’t get asked as content.
• delicious – this old school bookmarking site is still my favorite place to go and see what other folks are finding and saving.
• Bing/xRank – I have to admit this is a new one as Bing, the Microsoft relaunched search engine is new, but for now, xRanks seems to be turning up trend faster than Google Trends
• Blogs I subscribe to - I use Google Reader RSS reader and anytime I can I check in with some of the 100 blogs I subscribe to
• OneRiot – another fairly new real time search engine that I use to find the links that people on twitter are discovering and retweeting
• Keyword Phrases – Google’s free keyword search tools can give you phrases that people are actually using to find your products and services and offer some tips for what to call your blog posts
• SmartBriefs – subscribe to a daily briefing on a variety of topcis and see what some pretty smart editors are turning up
• Business Week’s BX – Business Week’s social network allows anyone to submit content to a large group of subjects
• Twitter follows – I follow some folks that are always finding and tweeting good stuff. By setting a select group up in TweetDeck I can always stay on top of these important tweets.
• Magazine pile – I subscribe to Wired, Inc, Entrepreneur, Business Week, and Fast Company and while I sometimes get behind on the pile, I love to go there for inspiration.

Image credit: USMarine0311

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”div style=”float: left; margin-right: 10px”script type=”text/javascript” tweetmeme_url = ‘http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/06/why-google-virgin-americas-online-scavenger-hunt-campaign-rocked.html’; /script script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js” /script /divspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”a style=”float: right;” href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157155b9c6970b-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false”img class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157155b9c6970b ” alt=”IMB_GoogleDayInCloud1″ src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157155b9c6970b-320wi” style=”margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;”/a /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Early 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 a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.dayinthecloud.com/challenge/”online scavenger hunt for clues/a to answer questions they would pose at you on a website called “strongDay In The Clouds/strong.” 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 flights today. /spanbrbrspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”a style=”float: left;” href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060880b970c-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false”img class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060880b970c ” alt=”IMB_GoogleDayInCloud4″ src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060880b970c-320wi” style=”margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;”/a The campaign generated lots of positive word of mouth for the brands and though it is just coming to a close a few hours from now so the numbers haven’t been reported yet, it will likely boost both brands and work strategically to promote what each of them wanted to: Google Apps and the cloud architecture from Google’s side, and the ready availability of WiFi on all flights for Virgin America. Going beyond, here are ten quick lessons that you can take from this engaging campaign on what they know about marketing that is fun and engaging that many brands forget. /spanbrol lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongBuilt on their core products/services. /strongThe level of integration so that users had to use many of Google’s tools to find the answer to questions and learn about Virgin America’s planes, technology and flight schedules as well as how to use the Internet on flights was brilliant. It was done in a way that no other competing brand could have done./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongDesigned for simplicity without compromising./strong The site was easy to use and great looking at the same time. For every marketing person who has sat in a meeting and listened to a designer argue that it is impossible to do both, just send them the URL for this site. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongForged the right partnership./strong The choice of these two brands together worked perfectly to add to the popularity of the scavenger hunt. Both have high goodwill among their fans and drew a tech-savvy audience to participate./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongIntegrated the brand without being overbearing. /strongThe brands were definitely integrated in the questions without making every question about something boring and branded. The light hearted approach worked in this case, because people know clearly that they are on a branded site, and we should realize value of that - but don’t necessarily need to shove it into a user’s face at every turn./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongEngaged through fun and competition while educating./strong The engagement on this campaign was high because the content was great. The format was fun and competition as built into this in a way that made people want to engage and do even better. There were even a target=”_blank” href=”http://twitter.com/techmama/status/2309869275″tweets from flights/a encouraging plane-mates to do better to beat a competing plane./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongCreated a sense of urgency. /strongThe timer counting down to zero as well as the choice to make this only a one day long promotion all added to the sense of urgency for this campaign. It also meant that even on an LA to SF flight (like the one Virgin America took media on in the morning) the time would be enough to complete the quiz./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongOffered a real challenge. /strongLike most puzzle and game related marketing that Google has done (including their a target=”_blank” href=”http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/google_launches.html”smart Da Vinci Code promotion/a), they don’t tend to dumb the solutions down or make it easy. As a result, they keep people engaged and have them try harder./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongInvolved the right ambassadors./strong In the morning, there was a media flight that several high-influence tech bloggers including Ben Par from a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.mashable.com”Mashable/a and Beth Blecherman from a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.techmamas.com”Techmamas/a were on where they played the game and participated in the start of the campaign. These early ambassadors a target=”_blank” href=”http://techmamas.typepad.com/main/2009/06/day-in-the-cloud-challenge-with-virign-america-and-google.html”posted about it/a and drove more interest and traffic to the site throughout the day. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongMade it shareable./strong Once you complete the hunt, you get your score and you have the opportunity to a target=”_blank” href=”http://twitter.com/rohitbhargava/status/2321283139″share it immediately (which I did)/a through Twitter and Facebook. It might have been smart for them to have prefilled text that didn’t share a score too (in case someone was embarrased by their score and didn’t want to broadcast it), but either way this final step meant that people could share via Twitter or Facebook, and also follow the a target=”_blank” href=”http://twitter.com/dayinthecloud”campaign’s Twitter account/a for updates. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongHad real and tangible prizes. /strongThe last smart move the team putting this promotion together did was going beyond recognition and bragging rights. Those are nice, but the winners with the highest scores will get tangible prizes and that is a big motivator to continue to participate even if you may be in it and not want to finish./span/li /ol a style=”display: inline;” href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060883e970c-popup” onclick=”window.open( this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′ ); return false”img class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060883e970c ” style=”width: 550px;” alt=”IMB_GoogleDayInCloud2″ src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157060883e970c-550wi”/a brbremstrongDisclaimer: /strongVirgin America is a current client of Ogilvy PR (my employer) and I have consulted on social media efforts for them in the past. I personally did not work on this campaign, however, and am not being compensated or incentivized in any way to write this post. It is my personal opinion of their campaign and nothing more./emspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”/spanbr/div div class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=5ysEmTow0A8:aF6_JTInqhI:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/5ysEmTow0A8″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

div xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”pspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”a href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115714ee8db970b-pi” style=”float: left;”img alt=”IMB_FlyClear2″ class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115714ee8db970b ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef0115714ee8db970b-150wi” style=”margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; width: 135px;”/img/a /spanspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”This 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 a href=”http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/registered-traveler–4694/” target=”_blank”now defunct FlyClear/a 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 special lanes. /span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”a href=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157059b70d970c-pi” style=”float: right;”img alt=”IMB_FlyClear1″ class=”at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157059b70d970c ” src=”http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef01157059b70d970c-200wi” style=”margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; width: 200px;”/img/a Unfortunately for me and about 250,000 others who already signed up and paid for the service, we are now officially out of luck and left with many questions about the service. Will something take it’s place? Will we manage to get any of our money back? What will they do with our profile data (including in most cases retinal images and fingerprints)? As a marketer, though, my first thought is about how preventable this seemed to be. After all, the people who had the service loved it. And as soon as travel from major airports started to recover (which is fairly inevitable), the security lines and hassle will again drive more people to consider joining./span/ppspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”So how could social media have saved FlyClear? Here are a few ideas:/span/pol lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongCollect real life stories. /strongOne of the truths about the travel industry is that just about everyone has a negative story to tell. FlyClear was one company that could have benefited from this conversation, because their entire mission was to make the process of travel easier. If they did collect stories of the negative (and the positive stories of customers who had good experiences because of FlyClear), social media would have been ideal to capture them and prove the necessity for FlyClear./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongCreate an army of blog ambassadors./strong I was only one among many other bloggers who loved the service and blogged about how great we felt it was. Guy Kawasaki agreed, and even a href=”http://twitter.com/GuyKawasaki/statuses/2290274484″ target=”_blank”tweeted today about its demise/a echoing what many card holders felt when he said “Clear has shut down http://www.flyclear.com/ I just want to cry. I loved that service…” What if they had reached out to bloggers like myself and Guy and any others that had blogged about the service and brought us together to tell their story and drive members more than just offering us a “refer-a-friend” discount code? My bet is Guy would have jumped on it, and I probably would have too./span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongLeverage Twitter for secret offers and promotion./strong FlyClear did have a Twitter account that is now taken down, so it is tough to go back and see what they did or didn’t do with it, but it would have been the ideal platform to run membership drives, share updates on travel delays and answer customers and potential customers directly. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongExtend memberships through social media./strong The nice thing about the business model for FlyClear is that it scaled well … ie, the more members they had, the better they could do. The problem they had was that they never hit that critical mass. To try and get it, they did offer free memberships to members of hotel frequent flier programs, but they could have done it more actively through their existing members - such as letting them extend free memberships to some friends, and then sell those friends extensions. /span/li lispan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”strongLaunch a last ditch effort. /strongPart of conversation about FlyClear’s demise was how sudden it seemed. Surely they would have known about this financial trouble before today - and assuming they did, they could have taken any number of steps to try and get the people who loved the service to help make sure it would stay around. Some might have renewed, while others may have more actively gone out to their networks. /span/li /ol pspan style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS;”Like many of the FlyClear fans, I was sorry to hear it’s gone and will definitely miss the convenience. The worst part is, I would bet that as soon as travel volume (and airport crowds) pick back up again, the other people who might have signed up will be sorry its gone./span/p/divdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:qj6IDK7rITs”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?d=qj6IDK7rITs” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?a=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:gIN9vFwOqvQ”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rohitbhargava?i=EggooI1WbSo:CId1YbqfUFk:gIN9vFwOqvQ” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~4/EggooI1WbSo” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Web 2.0 has seen an emergence of a plethora of affiliates and social media websites. With the people understanding the nuances of affiliate marketing programs, the importance of social media is quite a big consideration. Promoting your affiliate system The obvious question for affiliates marketers is – how do we promote our affiliate programs to generate more revenue? The answer lays in Social Media circles. Social Media has outgrown almost every possible source of digital advertising

Tonight, I attended the Third Thursday: Social Media in Marketing & PR meetup at SAP in Palo Alto. Jeremiah Owyang spent about 30 minutes explaining the new Forrester Report that examines the social web, tools & collaboration, and – what I found the most astounding, the era of colonization. Here is a quick glimpse or you can buy the full report here .

If you found value in this post, please consider subscribing to this blog or following me on twitter . I usually follow back, unless you are

pOver at the American Express Open Forum I posted an interview with Lee Aase. He manages syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic. In this interview he explains the history of Mayo Clinic’s use of social media and how effective this effort has been. If you’re considering social media for your organization, it’s a worthwhile read. Click a href=”http://blogs.openforum.com/2009/06/23/how-to-use-social-media-an-interview-with-lee-aase-of-mayo-clinic/”here/a to read it. /p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aY6iwTMx-LWC-OdRn8u2yCYWOa4/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aY6iwTMx-LWC-OdRn8u2yCYWOa4/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aY6iwTMx-LWC-OdRn8u2yCYWOa4/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aY6iwTMx-LWC-OdRn8u2yCYWOa4/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:7Q72WNTAKBA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=7Q72WNTAKBA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?a=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:PrVW8wqipF8″img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/guykawasaki/Gypm?i=bert3q-IzsM:3DnsN-rvIhY:PrVW8wqipF8″ border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/guykawasaki/Gypm/~4/bert3q-IzsM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Oh, I’m sorry…is 50 too much? GROW A PAIR! This is a down-economy and social sites are free. All you have to worry about is weather you’re wasting time or not. In the case of these 50 sites, if you have aren’t on at least 10 of them, then you’re business can use a little innovation. Sorry to be so harsh, but given the fact that Social Networking Sites provide the most information about potential leads, why would a business ever pass that up? There’s no longer an excuse to miss-informed. This l