Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Tom's Cabin Is Open For Business

A couple of weeks' back I  wrote an article about some of the books that I was currently reading. Well, writing the article has spurred me on to complete a task I have been meaning to do for a long while - developing an Amazon aStore. The store, which I have called Tom's Cabin, offers quite a few book categories, from SEO and Usability to Blogging and Advertising. I have even included some of the software that peole building websites or blogs may find of use, such as Macromedia Contribute. If there are any books I have left out and which you will believe should belong on the list, please let me know.

Dylan Thomas' Words, Richard Burton's Voice and the Brilliant Marketing of Volkswagen

This TV advert from Volkswagen came out around two months' back and somehow I have never seen it. Well, for those like me who have not seen it, sit back, hit the play button and enjoy!

If you'd like to, why not buy the Under Milk Wood DVD which features Richard Burton as First Voice or the audio soundtrack from Amazon.

Spread of Web 2.0 Amongst SME's And Singing Stars!

I was just going through some old magazines this morning (February, 2007!) and came across an interesting advert from Ford, which was advertising the Ford Focus. The advert, part of the Ford Focus 'Own the Road' campaign, features a musician Ben Griffith who is "starting out, which means a load of gigs" and therefore, he needs a "decent car as much as a good guitar." Whatever your thoughts on Ford's advertising techniques, the interesting thing is that the artist was able to plug his MySpace page on the ad. Further inspection shows a busy My Space page with a healthy "fan base" and some half-decent music.

Going back about a year the words "Social Networks" and "Web 2.0" used to draw a blank look on the faces of my clients - both those attending workshops and from my consultancy. Well, that has changed very much. Clients are now seeing the importance of trying to engage and interact with their audience on the web and tools like Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and Flickr are becoming their most important tactical tools. Over the past month I have seen 3 of my clients take up the "Web 2.0" challenge - one is a Welsh Langauage Teaching Centre, the other is Record Shop and the third is an Online Bike Retailer.

Back in June a little-known singer called Paul Potts, from Port Talbot, Wales, became a global celebrity when he won the Britain's Got Talent TV show. What was interesting was that social media sites like YouTube and MySPace started to propel him to a global audience. The show was transmitted on the British channel ITV1 over the course of a week - from the 9th to the 17th June. By the time of the grand final the video clips of Paul Potts singing opera on YouTube were hitting the hundreds of thousands of viewers - today just 1 of the clips had received 6.5 million views!

His MySpace site was receiving messages of support from all over the world - I even saw one from a US fighter pilot! Paul has already done the rounds of TV stations in the States and his, yet to released album, is already number 20 in the UK album charts and number 17 in the USA. starting to become a household name - all in 1 month!!!

Looking on Technorati the week after I found that it was a hugely popular search term and hundreds of blogs were discussing either the ITV1 performance or the YouTube videos.

There is huge potential for the use of Social Media tools in a firm's marketing arsenal and the potential to generate revenue and interest is phenomenal but the key for small companies is to identify the most suitable social media platforms. 

Recommended Books for Summer

If what you read, tells others how you think, here is a selection of some of the books I am reading or have recently finished. With the current bout of miserable, summer weather set to continue in the UK, I will probably do another review in a few weeks' time!

Steve Wozniak was the unsung technical hero behind Apple. iWoz lifts the lid on how the company started out and offers some insights into how he helped create one of the truly great companies of the last few decades. Steve Wozniak comes across as a decent guy with a brilliant mind, whose passion was always the technology and not the money. A truly inspiring book!

Mavericks at Work offers a look at some of the business champions who dare to do things differently. In the form of case studies it shows what some of these companies have done and how they have succeeded. There are some interesting takes on open source in this book - I loved the one where a gold mining company offered its data to the community and asked them to come up with the best locations for prospecting!

This is the latest book from Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. Haven't quite got into it yet but have had a quick flick through. It explores how Joe Public is starting to use social media tools, like blogging, podcasting, videocasting, etc to create the message themselves and how this message is changing the way companies do business.

Marketing Plans by Malcolm McDonald is the definitive guide to marketing planning and the book is now in its sixth edition. I am currently reading the book to get some new material to add into an eMarketing course that I run. It's not exactly the sort of book you'd read on the beach! but is an excellent reference book with clear definitions and practical exercises for students.