Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Embedding - A Great Way of Bringing Your Other Channels Into Your Blogging Hub

At present there's a bewildering array of Web 2.0 applications, social networks and social bookmarks available on the web, everything from Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook to Odeo, Digg, Basecamp and YouTube. I sometimes wonder how some people keep track of where they're at or where they should be throughout the day.

The way that things are tending to go is that companies have their social side and then they have their business side. At its most simplistic level, the social side builds community and develops loyalty - it often is the area that creates the leads; and the business side is just that - the place where people go to buy, view products, learn and enquire, etc. The social side is the one that interests me and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that companies need to firstly develop a blogging hub and then create social experiences which can be plugged into the blog. These experiences are basically a way of taking the conversation over to another neighbourhood, whilst still keeping a close eye on it.

Quite often it's possible to create a conversation (or borrow a conversation) and embed it straight into your blog - thus offering visitors a media experience which differs from the usual text and photos. Here are some examples of embedding that you may want to consider for your blog:

YouTube
Most bloggers when they experiment with embedded media will generally start by using YouTube.  Take a look at what Blendtec did to demonstrate the durability and quality of their products.

Flickr
More and more people (and businesses) are starting to appreciate the reach and power of Flickr. Here's a selection of images from a Flickr set (http://flickr.com/groups/11604231@N00/pool/tags/sixnations) which are displayed as a slideshow:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Odeo
If you'd like to create a link to your favourite podcast, then why not consider Odeo, which also allows you to customise your Odeo player.

powered by ODEO

SlideShare
If you would like to share your business or personal presentations online, it may be worth considering SlideShare. The presentation below is a favourite of mine as it combines both pictures and sound.

| View | Upload your own

Google Maps
And what list would be complete without Google? (Here's a map of my hometown!).

View Larger Map

Some Reasons Why Businesses Should Blog

The Headline TypePad Customers In The News just caught my attention as I was about to open my TypePad account to write another article. The folks over there have come up with a brief list of weblogs that have hit the headlines over the past week.

Here are some good reasons why businesses should blog:

"BusinessWeek highlighted Dover Canyon Winery in an article about small businesses that blog. The article mentions that the winery's "Mail-order sales have almost doubled in the past year, and the blog is an inexpensive way to reach the growing number of online buyers."

and

The LA Times also ran a couple of articles featuring TypePad blogs. One, an article about food blogging (requires login) and how food critics blog their critiques rather than use print publications, includes the TypePad blog Restaurant Girl."

whilst

The New York Times ran a story about how small businesses are starting their online presence with blogs rather than Websites. The article includes an interview with Jody DeVere, the president of AskPatty.com, about her TypePad blog of the same name. In the article, DeVere says, “Our blog has been the driving force of our branding effort and become the way we find our readers and our customers.”

It's always good to find new examples which reinforce why businesses should blog.

Have You Considered a Hybrid Blog?

Over the past few works I have been working with my colleagues at EMCOE (eMarketing Centre of Excellence) to put the finishing touches to the new website. My main responsibility has been the creation of all the content, page titles, headers and links for the site. The site has been built using a WordPress theme and we have used a couple of iStockPhotos for the images. The site only went live about 10 days' or so ago but has already had 11 pages indexed by Google - most of them our 'services pages', though 1 or 2 blog articles have already been picked up.

We like to call the site a 'hybrid blog' - it isn't a standard corporate website simply detailing company information, though neither is it a 'pure blog'. It sits in-between with the home page highlighting recent blog articles and most sub-pages featuring what the organisation has to offer. It was very important for us to build a site which presented information on our services to new, and existing clients - from 4 day courses and workshops to consultancy  - whilst also offering Internet Marketing information and resources to those who had used our services.

The really interesting (exciting?) thing is that at this very early stage Google has indexed the site on both its main search engine and on its blog search engine. Doing a search for an article I wrote on the Wales Marketing Innovation Forum on Google displays this listing on page 1:

When you move over to Google's Blog Search, the same search places not the Emcoe home page (www.emcoe.co.uk) but the Emcoe blog article (http://www.emcoe.co.uk/index.php/2007/09/13/wales-marketing-innovation-forum/) number 1 of its blog results for the phrase: Wales Marketing Innovation Forum

The curious thing is that the above article has not even been spidered by Google's main search engine yet!

TypePad and iPhone - Already On My Amazon Christmas Wishlist

As many people who visit this site know, this blog is created using the TypePad blogging software. I have long been a fan of TypePad and have built, and helped create, a number of sites using this platform. The company is truly at the forefront of social networking and always comes up with new and innovative additions to make the service even better. From tagging, to simple sidebar add-ons, CAPTCHA technology and easy-to-create html pages they are always pushing the boundaries.

Since the beginning (I think they started in 2004) their technology has allowed bloggers to 'moblog' but now, they've made it even better by creating a TypePad interface for the iPhone. With the advanced technology of the iPhone it looks (I have seen but not touched!) like blogging on a phone couldn't be easier. The screenshots from the TyepPad website look great and the YouTube video demonstration below makes this a must-have product for Christmas for blogging on the move!

PR and The New Influencers

Yesterday, like every morning, I was listening to the BBC's Today programme. One article grabbed my attention - it was an interview with Miranda July, filmmaker, performing artist and writer. She disclosed how she was using her blog to generate buzz about her book, No One Belongs Here More Than You. The blog is quite odd in that it is made up of a series of thoughts, written down on the top a fridge (yes, a fridge!) with a felt-tip pen. Miranda said that the site had generated a phenomenal amount of traffic and she was using it as the main PR tool to get publicity out about her book.

Over the past year a number of authors, and their publicity companies, have approached me to review books or to interview their clients. On my other weblog I have even invited some authors to share some inside knowledge on best places to eat, drink and be merry in Madrid - take a look at this article with Candy Lee Laballe and this one with Beverley Fearis for examples. People are obviously taking note of the power, and spread of blogs, and seeing them as important elements in their PR strategies.

It would appear that the trend is that both authors, and business leaders, are becoming far easier to communicate with. They are not so far removed from the rest of us 'mere mortals' as they were some years back. I can identify with this - only the other day I was communicating with a well-known journalist and carrying out a Skype interview with the founder of a leading Web 2.0 company (if you're reading this Phil, the article will go live shortly!).

Last night I received an email from Phil Gillin, whose book the New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media seems to be get some excellent reviews from Web 2.0's leading lights. What was great to see here was not just an invite to review, or the dedicated website, but the following invitation from Phil:

What's your take? Tell me how you see social media affecting the markets you cover and I'll add your comments to a new section on the book website.

Web 2.0 and its tools are certainly changing the way that companies do business and I suppose the key is to identify the most suitable tools to get your message out to your target market.

How Small Tweaks To Your Weblog Can Make Big Differences To Visitor Numbers

For about a year now, I have been toying with the idea of improving the page titles on this site and my other site - Mad About Madrid. Well, last month I finally took the plunge and changed page titles across both sites. I work with TypePad Advanced templates and, not being a coder myself, was daunted by the prospect of having to do it myself. I had identified a company that could do it - for a price - but decided to dig a little deeper to find a free solution.

I spend a great deal of time advising clients on how to create well tuned page titles and now thanks to Wal Mart Files I have now managed to change the page titles on individual blog articles, category pages and archives.  The process outlined by these guys was idiot-proof and took little time to implement. In the past a blog post would have had a page title like this:

Marketing Tom - Google Adwords Seminars USA

the new page title reads like this:

Google Adwords Seminars USA (click to see for yourself)

This may seem like a small change but just try a Google search for the terms "Google Adwords Seminars of "Google Seminars" and see where this page appears. Google did take a little while to spider most pages on the sites but the effect is still clear - increased traffic. Just to give you an idea of how effective this has been, here are the stats on both Google Analytics and StatCounter for the last 5 month - notice the increase from April.

New Typepad Tool Allows you to Blog from Word

At the risk of sounding biased (this blog uses their software!), the folks at TypePad are constantly coming up with new widgets and improvements to their software tools which make blogging far easier for users. They always seem to be second-guessing, or should that read interpreting correctly, the needs of their customer base. This time they have come up with a way that you can blog directly from Word (2007) to your Typepad account. Here´s what their Everything TypePad site has to say:

The Word Blogging Tool – included in the new Microsoft Word as part of Microsoft Office 2007 – lets you publish to your blog from inside the familiar Word environment with a single click. TypePad is a default option in Microsoft Word, which makes it simple and straightforward; all you'll need is your username and password. Better yet, the HTML the tool writes to your blog is in a simple, blog-friendly format.

And for those who´ve experienced problems cutting and pasting from Word:

If you’ve ever found yourselves cleaning up complex HTML after copying and pasting from Word, you’ll be sure to appreciate this!

It´s for reasons such as this that Typepad is my preferred blogging tool for my business blogging workshops.

Six Apart To Host A Series of Business Blogging Seminars

Looks like Six Apart, makers of Typepad, will be presenting a series of Business Blogging Seminars over the next few months. They will be held in cities across the US (wish they could do a couple in the UK!), including New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago and will be headed up by Anil Dash, the company's Chief Evangelist - or should that read Brother Dash!

Here are some of the topics that will be covered:

• Learn how to create effective blogging strategies and policies
• Hear dynamic use cases from specific industries
• See the latest blogging technologies demonstrated, including RSS and podcasting
• Have your specific business blogging questions addressed in our Q&A sessions

How to Build Your Weblog Presence

Shel Israel, over at Naked Conversations, does a neat interview with Kami Wilson Huyse, a PR Consultant and blogger (Communication Overtones), where he asks her about blogging and PR. If you look to the start of the post you will see how Shel first became aware of her:

She started dropping comments onto my blog when I wrote on marketing and PR-related subjects. Sometimes she agreed with me and other times not. But each time, she added something of value to the conversation.

Now and then, she took the conversation over to her own blog where she took it in new directions. That started me reading her other posts and I was impressed. When I thought she had something useful or interesting, I started pointing my readers to it as a service to them.

Whether you're new to blogging or an experienced professional, this is a very simlple technique of building your community and getting other bloggers to your site. And I think the two critical words that he uses here are added value. Whether you're blogging or contributing to a forum, you should always add value - if they like what you say they will come visit.

Coming back to the actual inerview she has someting interresting to say about the impact blogs have had on her business:

It has had an immediate impact. My business has already expanded by 30 percent this year alone as a direct result of the blog, and I have contracts in hand that show at least a 50 percent increase next year. I have also been able to sufficiently grow my network to implement the virtual agency concept that I envisioned when I launched My PR Pro. I am now working with a number of talented independent practitioners and agencies across the U.S. and the world. The Internet and social media tools have made possible a distributed workgroup of specialists that stretches across geographic boundaries.

WOW!

And she only started blogging last Novermber.

Blogs of Note - Innocent Drinks

If you live in the UK, you will probably have heard of Innocent Drinks - the company that makes delicious juice and smothies. From their weblog, which is now featured on Typepad, you can read about their humble origins:

In the summer of 1998 when we had developed our first smoothie recipes but were still nervous about giving up our proper jobs, we bought £500 worth of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a little music festival in London. We put up a big sign saying 'Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?' and put out a bin saying 'YES' and a bin saying 'NO' and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the 'YES' bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned.

The weblog offers an interesting insight into life in the business, its ethics, the people in the company, some of their thoughts and a lot more. This is what corporate blogging is all about - taking the lid of the company and letting customers and other interested parties have a peek inside. Corporate blogs can help businesses display their true personality in a way that sometimes can't be seen through their products and also advertising. Here are some good examples of personality from Innocent Drinks:
Free Lunch Thursday
Unit 6 Here We Come
Building a Festival
Rainforest 1 Burgers 0
Milk, Two Sugars
Please Keep off the Grass

Boy! I think I'll try to find out how to work for these guys.

Blogs of Note - Girl Solo in Arabia

Typepad, the blogging tool that powers this site, often features websites that Typepad users have developed - it's a way of showing the wide diversity of blogs that are out in the 'blogosphere' (or are blogs so mainstream that we can say they belong in cyberspace!). Well, I came across an abs olutely fascinating site today called Girl Solo in Arabia.

The weblog is written by Carolyn McIntyre, an experienced guide to the Middle East for Geographic Expeditions, and charts her journeys in the footsteps of Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, which took more place than 680 years ago. So far she has travelled through Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Here's what Typepad has to say about it:

Her blog has become an informal guide for travelers planning on going to the Middle East and inspiring verse for those who are afflicted with neverending wanderlust. The most rewarding side effect of following her adventure is discovering more facets to the Islamic world than what we glimpse on nightly news broadcasts.

It really is a fascinating read and, given the current political climate, quite a journey to undertake, too. The information about the places she visits is quite detailed and the pictures really lend to the experience. Some of the pictures and detail which interested me related to the Roman ruins in Tipaza:

Remarkably intact aqueduct which fed the Roman cities of Cherchell and Tipaza. I have no more information - tourism is in its infancy in Algeria and there is a dearth of written material about the sites.

and the

marble courtyard of Al-Azhar Mosque. Built in 969AD by the Fatimids and named for the Prophet's daughter, Fatima al-Zahra, it is the oldest university in the world and is still a center of Islamic theology with students attending from all over the world. The marble courtyard is original...

Well worth a read and will certainly offer good tips if you're planning on visiting any one of these places.

 

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Blogging Book - A Case of Open Source Book Writing?

Over the past week Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book Naked Conversations has hit the bookshelves and they have been busy at book signings and the like across the States. According to the publishers:

"If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers. They consider the darker aspects of blogging as well—including the possibility of getting fired by an unsympathetic employer.

What's different about this book is that much of it has been out in the public domain for quite some time, in draft format. Robert and Shel have allowed drafts of each chapter of the book to be posted on their weblog - Red Couch Naked Conversations - and then allowed people to add their own comments. They have invited people to submit their own case studies and observations:

Of all the things we need from bloggers are examples of how companies have been helped or hurt by blogs.

The weblog first came into life in December, 2004, when Shel Israel pronounced:

Welcome to our book blog. This is where Shel Israel and Robert Scoble will create a book. Really. An entire book will be done interactively right in front of you and WITH you. So, subscribe to the RSS feed here. Welcome.

The final chapter was posted on the 14th August, 2005 and it went into print a short time after the pair even aired their thoughts on the selection of the publisher online.

Though not an Open Source project in its purest sense, of allowing the public to completely write the book, it still has many elements of co-creation. And why shouldn't a book about blogging have some important input from bloggers through a blog. The truly wonderful thing about the blog is that it has developed a devoted following over the past year, many of whom are well regarded in their own fields - PR, search engine optimisation, advertisng, blogging - and who are acting as unpaid evangelists for the book. Throw in the thousands of 'ordinary folk' out there who will each influence their smaller circles and you have quite a powerful marketing campaign, run on a miniscule budget. Absolutely, brilliant.

The other interesting thing to note is that even though many thousands of people have read the book online, the same thousands of people will BUY the book online and offline.

I look forward to seeing how Shel Israel and Robert Scoble develop the blog once the book launches and parties have died down. I also look forward to seeing my book arrive from Amazon UK!

Taking the Corporate Blogging Plunge

There's an interesting article on the Harvard Business School website, entitled Does Your Company Belong in the Blogosphere? Written by Katherine Heires, it looks at how "skillful blogging can boost your company's credibility and help it connect with customers".

Heires identifies how corporate blogs can achieve the following:

• Influence the public "conversation" about your company: Make it easy for journalists to find the latest, most accurate information about new products or ventures. In the case of a crisis, a blog allows you to shape the conversation about it.

• Enhance brand visibility and credibility: Appear higher in search engine rankings, establish expertise in industry or subject area, and personalize one's company by giving it a human voice.

• Achieve customer intimacy: Speak directly to consumers and have them come right back with suggestions or complaints—or kudos.

She further goes on to say that corporate blogs can deliver benefits, providing they:

1. Have a distinct focus and goal
2. Feature an authentic voice
3. Are open to comment
4. Are update regularly

This article should trigger some thoughts, and stimulate discussion, for both those thinking about developing corporate blogs and even those who have already gone down that path.

Technorati Tags: corporate blogging | harvard

Blog Adoption Rates

Clickz, the marketing site, reports on findings by Guidewire Group about the adoption rates among companies for blogs. The survey represented a cross-section of industries including aerospace, banking, communications, consumer package goods, educations, energy, and insurance. Within these industries. It reckons that the biggest adopters - 89% - were smaller companies. In brief, here are some of the findings:

"58% of corporate blogs represent companies with less than 100 employees,
companies with over 1,000 employees take up 16% of the blogosphere's corporate segment."

And in terms of revenue:

"companies with under $100 million in revenues account for 45 percent of corporate blogs."

Interestingly, the study also found that companies were using blogs as both internal and external forms of communication:

"91.4 percent use the channel for internal employee communications, and 96.6 percent for external dialog"

Of those who used blogs as an internal tool:

• 63% cited knowledge sharing as a key advantage.
• 44 % used it for Internal communications
• 30% used blogs for project management.
• 23% used blogs to share personal knowledge management
• 23 percent for event logging.
• 20 percent say it's an effective tool for team management.

And barriers to the creation of a blog:

• 42% of respondents cite maintaining enthusiasm for the blog project as a top barrier
• 36% find encouraging adoption a hindrance
• 30% of respondents admit technological problems are a concern
• 14% said establishing an editorial policy is an issue
• 18% said enlisting management support is a problem

Ogilvy PR's "Executive Blogger’s Guide to Building a Nest of Blogs, Wikis & RSS"

Yesterday, on reviewing the Ogilvy PR website I came across The Executive Blogger’s Guide to Building a Nest of Blogs, Wikis & RSS (pdf) a very readable, 17-page guide to blogging. Here are the issues that they cover:

• Welcome to the Blogosphere: The End of Top-Down Talk What are Blogs?
• How Powerful Have Blogs Become?
• The Unique Characteristics of Blogs
• Business Blog Examples
• How To Use RSS Newsreaders
• Searching and Monitoring Blogs
• Launching Your Blog
• Corporate Policies and Blogging
• Blog Backfires
• Moblogs & Vblogs
• Wikis
• Conclusion:Your Game Plan

Corporate Blogging - To Blog or Not to Blog

This is an interesting PDF document on corporate blogging:

The Content Factor has developed To Blog or Not to Blog, a white paper that provides the basics – and more – on corporate blogging. To receive your free copy, simply enter your name and email address below, and click DOWNLOAD. The paper will then be available for download to your hard drive.

Why Corporate Blogs Work

According to Hugh Macleod at Gaping Void, it's as simple as that! For a complete break down of what the above represents, read his interesting article the porous membrane: why corporate blogging works.

Macromedia Dives into Coporate Blogs

Macromedia, responsible for Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks, has posted a quarterly loss, made people redundant yet many are saying that the future looks rosy for the company. This is due to the fact that the company has embraced blogging totally - introducing it into their software and even setting up their own blogs.

Recently, the company released new versions of its main products - Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Cold Fusion - and needed a way to respond to the expected questions from users and developers. According to Wired:

"...although some at Macromedia thought about creating a blog on Macromedia's site to address customers' questions, "we decided to experiment with the (third-party) blogs," Hale said.

Macromedia had five of its "community managers" create their own weblogs using Radio and Blogger, two of the most popular blog publishers. (The bloggers are John Dowdell, Mike Chambers, Matt Brown, Vernon Viehe and Bob Tartar.)

The blogs would provide a forum for the managers to discuss the new products, show developers how to use some of the new features and answer questions. Most importantly, the community managers would write like bloggers, with that casual, this-great-idea-just-occurred-to-me tone which sometimes makes weblogs so addictive."

The new blogs offer advice and tips and provide a forum for people to ask questions on the latest products. From what I have seen there is certainly a lot of interaction through comments and the sites provide a bundle of links to other bloggers and Macromedia tools. Macromedia are certainly pointing the way forward for corporate blogging and I'm sure that many companies will be very interested in their Blog Strategy.

Corporate Blogging Tips from Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

Robert Scoble, of Scobleizer and Microsoft fame, is currently working on a book with Shel Israel, a PR consultant. The book will be published by Wiley, is due out in January, and will focus on business blogging. Much of their thoughts on the book's content and direction is actually being shared with visitors online, through their Red Couch blog - hell!, you can actually help contribute to it  by adding  your own comments on the site. For companies looking to develop their own blog presence, the corporate blogging tips may be of some interest:

Corporate Blog Tip #1 (improving the title tag) - features some neat thoughts on how to come up with a title for your blog. Spend time doing this as, in essence, you will be creating your own Blog Brand.
Corporate Blog Tip #2 (read a bunch of blogs before you start) - the blog search engines are a good start for searching for something specific. For random blogs just go to Typepad and take a look at their featured weblogs or Recently Updated weblogs.
Corporate Blog Tip #3 (write in a granular style) - try to keep to one idea per posting.
Corporate Blog Tip #4 and #5 (demonstrate your passion and authority) - Robert Scoble actually says in his own corporate blog manifesto: "You should know more about your product than anyone else alive, if you're writing a weblog about it. If there's someone alive who knows more, you damn well better have links to them (and you should send some goodies to them to thank them for being such great advocates.)"
Corporate Blog Tip #6 (add comments) - I would just like to add to this - you should always aim to add value to the author's article by leaving thoughtful comments. Don't spam!
Corporate Blog Tip #7 (make yourself accessible) - I just love Robert Scoble's thoughts on leaving his cell phone number on his site so that anyone can call him!

Add this blog to your RSS feed list to find out the latest news and tips from Red Couch.

Related Article
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Blogging Book - A Case of Open Source Book Writing?

PR Agency to Develop Practice Focused on Blogs

Carat Interactive, a media agency, has decided to develop a new practice that will offer clients blog media and monitoring. According to John Cate, vice president and national media director at Carat Interactive:

"We see it as the fastest growing area of the Internet. We're interested in it, our clients are interested in it. We see it as a great opportunity for two-way communication between our clients and their consumers."

The Click website reports that the new venture will focus on: blog advertising, blog creation, and blog monitoring and reckons that, though other players in the PR industry have created practices that focus on blogs Carat Interactive may be the first media buying agency to go down this route.

Interview with John Zagula of Marketing Playbook (Part 2)

Here is the second (and final) part of an interview that I held with John Zagula of Marketing Playbook. As mentioned in the first part, John Zagula is a highly successful businessman who, with his business partner Richard Tong, has written a book on marketing, called the Marketing Playbook and set up a great business blog with the same name.  Like the first part the questions focus on the importance of the blog to building both awarenesss of their book and blog.

I'm sure that you have developed a whole new network of friends and colleagues – are there any stories you can share?
This really is true.  There are a lot of examples of folks I feel I really know because of blog interactions.  So I'll just highlight a few. As mentioned it has been great to get to know Hugh MacLeod.  What a great attitude.  Also, Ignition invests in consumer and media technology stuff amongst other things so having blogs (Geek Fishing , Tong Family , The Ludwigs) as a firm has been great for finding and vetting stuff of interest.  Mark Ramsey is a very cool guy who knows volumes about radio and what is happening in the wild, wooly world of digital music.  We did an interview with him  I think even before the book came out and then he reciprocated.  A lot of fun.  Also, even though we used to work in the same company it was great to finally meet Robert Scoble at our book launch party.  Great guy doing great things for Microsoft's image with his blog - [see Economist article].

Has the blog taking you down any new paths which you may otherwise not have envisaged?
My first girlfriend from college recently found me on my blog.  Really nice to hear from her.  There may be some others I would rather not hear from though.

How different is the blog today to when you first started?
Quite different actually and much the same. A lot less about the book I guess, we have already outlined a lot of the core concepts and promoted the book a lot.  Now it's mostly about interesting stuff we see happening or folks writing about.

How have your traditional PR activities rated alongside the blog?
Really well actually.  We got some terrific traditional reviews.  And I have to admit, as much as I like the whole new realm of virtual relationships, I actually like being around real people.  So speaking and workshops have been great.

Any negatives associated with the blog?
Sure, the biggest is time.  Hard enough writing a book when you have a full time job, a spouse and kids, but add blogging to that and, well. Blogging is highly addictive.  I have got to believe there are a lot of blogging widows/widowers and orphans out there. Also, don't do it if you are private or brittle person.  People are incredibly vocal.  And you are totally exposed to whatever they think – about you, your book, what you say on your site and what you do. And they can be sensitive too.  I learned a lot early on about blogging etiquette.

What would you say are the key elements in writing articles for blogs?
Boy it seems like there are all different kinds of blogs that all have different characterstics and points of interest.  It depends on what you are writing it for.  But whether for business purposes, for journaling, or whatever, it seems to me that the best blogs have a real voice of their own.  They reflect the real perspective and personality of the author.  They are different and fun and have a unique perspective. But if you are trying to reach people and persuade them or market to them in your blog I guess I would stick the core concepts in the playbook.  Look at the playing field.  What are the gaps, in the market, in what is covered already, and in what people like and don't. Then try to target someone and be distinctive.  Do your XYZs (the only X that does/has Y in Z unique way).  Be something, fit in a category X.  Know your audience Y.  And have content that matters to them and is diffentiated Z.  Don't be overbearing though.  If a blog is just one big ad it gets boring pretty fast. Finally, keep it going and read lots of other blogs.

How do you see blogs evolving?
It is already happening, further and further encroachment on traditional media. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of podcasting.  Now anyone can become a DJ, announcer nationally and internationally.

Any advice to would-be bloggers? Be yourself.  Have fun.  Be open.  Go for it.  Don't worry too much about the critics.  But keep your life in balance.

Read Part 1 of the Marketing Playbook Interview

Interview with John Zagula of Marketing Playbook

The Marketing Playbook is one blog that I keep coming back to - probably since its launch last year. It offers a good mixture of interesting, marketing-related articles but there's more to the blog as the Marketing Playbook is also a widely read marketing book – both are written by two very successful and very readable, marketing guys: John Zagula and Richard Tong. Here is an overview of the book (in their words):

"Every company needs to figure out the best way to beat the competition. What do you do if the other guy is already dominating the market? Should you challenge them head on or lie low for a while? Should you offer your customers high-end features or a low-end price? Or both?

During their years at Microsoft, John Zagula and Rich Tong answered such questions so effectively that they helped Microsoft Office and Windows grow from a 10 percent market share to 90 percent market share. As venture capitalists, Zagula and Tong have continued to test and perfect their system with hundreds of companies of all sizes and at all stages"

Their blog is a great example of how blogs can evolve: initially, it was used as a brilliant PR tool – giving people details on the book, John and Richard’s signings, interviews and even information on the book’s ranking on Amazon; whereas now it discusses a multitude of business issues.

I was so interested to see how the closely linked the blog and the book were, that last month I emailed John Zagula and invited him to take part in a question-and-answer session for Marketing Tom. John kindly agreed and I think that people will find his answers very illuminating and educative. Let me know what you think.

How did you get the idea of building a blog?
From people much smarter than me. Being a blogger started before we wrote the book.  I was turned on to blogging by my colleague and co-author Rich Tong and colleague John Ludwig.  They both have very cool blogs in their own rights The Ludwigs and Tong Family They also created a blog called Geek Fishing .  This is an informal site for the people in our company, Ignition Partners,to share interesting technical things they are finding out about.  The name of that blog came about because another colleague Adrian Smith built his own wireless web camera to check his crab pots from the shore.

My first blog was actually just an ongoing pile of stuff that interests me www.zagula.com It was only after we discovered not only that we were getting addicted to blogs as sources for our info but also that all of a sudden we had become recognized web authorities on topics like bike sprockets and the obscure German designers that we thought maybe we ought to use a blog in concert with our upcoming book.

Did you start a blog basically to promote the book or was there some other reason? Marketingplaybook.com was definitely started in concert with our book of the same title.  We started it though even before we had finished editing the book.  It was a great way to put down an outline of our basic concepts – the 5 plays, the ABCs of the playing field, and the XYZs of positioning, etc - and then to start tracking how current events related to these. 

One of the most fun things to do was to watch the plays that companies in all kinds of industries were running now and how they were running them. Since then the thing has taken on a life of its own. Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void had a great way of describing this whole process – that the book itself was just the beginning. That all products are conversations. And this was of course true with the book.  One of our fundamental goals is that the whole idea of a marketing playbook is that it is YOURS and that you use the basic principles to build your own playbook for your own playing field. Well, Hugh saw this as:

"a marketing book whose main message is transmitted through the actual marketing of itself… It's not just that the medium becomes the message, it's that the message also becomes the medium… the book project was conceived not primarily as a commercial enterprise, but a way to "spread pollen" and start conversations with all sorts of people. No different than blogging."

How powerful a tool has the blog been in helping to spread word of the book?
Terrifically helpful. It is really cool to see blog entries from places like Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and China talking about the book and its concepts.  Clearly it is a super simple way to give folks a summary of the ideas in the book and keep them up to date on what we are doing, thinking about, and what folks are saying about the book. And it has been great to see all the interesting marketing blogs out there share their opinions. Oh yeah, and it doesn't hurt that having a blog helps lift your rank in search engines either.

I will offer another of instalments of John's answers in the next few days.

Read Part 2 of the Interview with John Zagula

 

Weatherbug uses Blogs to Gather Customer Feedback

I came across an interesting link today from the excellent weblog of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba - Church of the Customer. They relate how the blog of WeatherBug invited its users to let them know how they used the application. For those of you who don't know about WeatherBug here's a brief overview (take from their About Us page):

WeatherBug is the number one weather Internet software application that streams live local neighborhood conditions and severe weather alerts to more than 60 million registered users. WeatherBug is ad supported, which keeps the application free. In addition, an “ad-free” version of WeatherBug, called WeatherBug Plus, is available for users for only $19.95.

On its posting - Why do you use your WeatherBug? - the company asks its users:

Why do you use your WeatherBug?  Is it deciding what to wear in the morning, scheduling your weekend plans, checking on vacation locations.....While you are at it, let us know what else you would like to see in WeatherBug and ask us anything.

It's actually great to go through the posts - 216 at last count - and see how much value the programme is actually giving to people. At the same time it is a fantastic marketing tool for WeatherBug which can be fed straight back into the development, and other relevant, teams at the company.

Harvard Business Review Cites Blogs as a 2005 Breakthrough Idea

Here's another recent article which focuses on how blogs are gaining power and influencing people. The Harvard Business review identifies 20 breakthrough Ideas for 2005 and in at number 10 comes Blog-Trolling in Bitstream. The article is written by Mohanbir Sawhney, from the Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and looks at the grassroots nature of blogs and how the rules of the blogosphere are different to those of traditional media. He eludes to the fact that marketers will find it "difficult to navigate this complex blend of advertising, content, dialogue, and public relations."

He's certainly right there and I believe that it will take tradional PR and Marketing people a while to adjust to this new medium. There are so many of them who are so unsuited to marketing online that they may never grasp, and/or be able to use effectively, this exciting new marketing channel anyway. Much like search engine marketing blogging requires site owners to focus on their target market and speak in their language.

Mohanbir identifies 3 areas which corporate marketers have to deal with:

"First, they must realize that the blogosphere is not just a place in which to advertise; it is a medium in which to participate. Marketers can join the conversation on influential blogs realted to their products or companies -or, even better, they can become bloggers in their own right by hosting blogs for customers.

Second, companies must try to cultivate bloggers rather than control them. Instead of making ham-handed efforts to influence bloggers, marketers should attempt to win them over by sharing information openly with those who write about their companies and by responding to the issues that are raised, even - especially - if they are negative.

Third, the blogosphere is fluid and ever changing. Ad buys will become more dynamic, as new technologies and modifed contract terms let marketers shift rapidly from blog to blog in pursuit of customers' fickle attention."