BLOG ROLL
ARCHIVES
6/30/2005 16:12
One of our fabulous colleagues, Meryl (content maven for hire), has sent over a resource to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers. It's a fact-filled site that provides FAQs on legal issues for bloggers in the US. You can click on the fabulously patriotic graphic below to go there.
(It's cool because they provided the HTML to do so, and all I had to do is copy and paste it in! I'm such a geek, yet so HTML challenged, that was easy!)
Bookmark it.
6/30/2005 11:32
Effective July 1, there are new state laws in Michigan and Utah protecting minors against 'adult' e-mail SPAM that might have a larger effect on e-mail marketers than you think: like those who offer financial services, matchmaking services, alcohol & tobacco, grown-up content, etc. B2B marketers who offer whitepapers are likely to be ok. There's a great article on the new laws at Marketing Sherpa - it will be posted publically until July 10, so hop on over and have a look. The nice folks there have even linked to the state laws so you can see for yourself.
6/27/2005 17:04
We just posted it online with our other whitepapers. Of course, we couldn't resist asking for at least a little information from folks before they download it, so I apologize in advance to anyone who finds that annoying. Janet and I try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum but hey, we're marketers!
6/27/2005 8:48
I wonder how many people remember hypercard from Apple? It was launched in the late 80's and no one I knew then could ever really make a case for using it then. But it was cool. You could link words to pages of information and skip around reading the linked information.
"HyperCard organizes information into easy-to-use "stacks" of cards through which users can navigate and search for the information they need. Simply by clicking on a button, they can view related text, see a graphic, hear a sound, watch a QuickTime movie, or listen to text spoken out loud."I ran across an article in Wired this morning that talked about 'folksonomies' and reminded me a little bit of hypercard - a great idea leading to eventual power in the hands of regular people.
"It's very much people tagging information so that they can come back to it themselves or so that others with the same vocabulary can find it," said Thomas Vander Wal, the information architect credited with coining the term "folksonomy."If people take the time to tag photos, blogs, articles, etc. And software is out there (like TagCloud) that can read tags in RSS feeds, the percentage of our lives spent searching for specific information will be cut dramatically. According to the TagCloud web site:
"TagCloud lets you create and manage clouds with content you are interested in, and let's you publish them on your own website."Might have to check it our for our marketing communications vehicles. Sounds like a fabulous service - making information more accessible and manageable for people looking for it. IonZoft is responsible for TagCloud. Innovative. Cool. And useful.
6/24/2005 14:39
Q: Do any of the hosts offer automatic email to your client list when you update your blog? A: I'll have to look into this with regard to e-mail notifications directly from the blog programs themselves... many provide RSS feeds to automatically send your latest blog to your subscribers. We're lucky here at Marqui, because our own tool allows automatic e-mail notifications to our subscribers, based on their preferences when they sign up with us. So using Marqui, we have the ability to notify people who've subscribed to our Newsroom to get automatic notifications when our blog is updated, because we post it to our newsroom automatically. Q: How would you work with various technologies to create an integrated communication vehicle: webcasts / podcasts / blogs / RSS feeds? A: We have been very lucky to work with various vendors like Corvent (for webcasts) and to have our own tool that helps us manage our online communications more effectively. If you're interested in talking more specifically about managing integrated campaigns where technology is involved, let us know. We might be able to brainstorm with you. Q: Please give an example of a RSS reader that integrates with Outlook. A: I'm pretty biased toward the fine folks at You Software (http://www.yousoftware.com/), having worked with several of them in a distant past life. Craig Barnes and Eric Hayes have always developed elegant solutions that work the way you do. You can download their reader, You Subscribe, here. Q: If time only permits posting on a weekly basis, is it not worth it? A: As we noted, it's best to post 2-3 times / week, but if you want to ‘warm up' to blogging and start, go for it! We think you'll find it fun, and that you'll soon be blogging more than once a week. There's just so much to talk about! Q: Please comment about how corporate bloggers deal with the lawyers (re Sarbanes-Oxley, financial information disclaimers) so they can still keep to the spirit of the blogosphere. A: I think the best thing to do is have a clearly defined set of guidelines for what you can and cannot say, and have it agreed upon by all parties involved. And (as my good friend Lisa says) when in doubt, don't. Q: DOOC'ED ??? A: Being fired for posting something on a blog or the web – thanks for asking – the blogosphere has a bit of slang all its own... Q. Is blogging a global thing or more US-based? A: It's a truly global phenomenon. That's the beauty of the internet, isn't it? In fact, here's a blog called Global Voices Online that exists to bring people together globally through blogs. The idea for the project grew out of an international bloggers' meeting held at Harvard in December 2004. You'll find very interesting conversations there about things like the Microsoft flap with Chinese bloggers about acquiescing to the government's demands to censor blogs (they can't use words like ‘freedom' or ‘democracy' and must register to become bloggers) – including workarounds! Q: Isn't there automated "spam-comment-remover" software you can install on your blog admin? A: If there isn't already, there likely will be. I am able to prevent additional comments from certain IP addresses that generate spam comments (sorry for the technical talk) using Movable Type, but I still think its important to look at all comments to see whether or not the questionable ones might be real. Q. What is irrelevant comment or something like a poem that someone wrote, that has nothing to do with the post? A. If it isn't offensive or obvious spam, I wouldn't delete it. Q. What's the key difference between newsgroups and blogs other than ownership? A. You've hit on one key difference – ownership. But I guess the other would be that newsgroups (click here to go to Learn the Net for more information on newsgroups) were originally set up for people to ask- and answer- questions. A blog is more journalistic in style – people commenting on their lives, their industries, their interests. And if others want to comment on their musings, so be it. Q. Is there any way to know how many people have subscribed to your blogs RSS feed? A. Feedburner (www.feedburner.com) has a new API (application programmer's interface) that allows people to ‘read' how many people have subscribed to an RSS feed. As RSS becomes more standard, you can bet there will be many new tools to use to analyze the frequency and reach of feeds.
June 24, 2005
The questions keep coming! And I'm working to post answers as quickly as possible. One thing that's nice, we're generating plenty of RSS feeds to Our Dear Subscribers!
I'm going to post this in the "extended entry" format again, just for fun. Who said you can't mix things up as you go along?
6/23/2005 18:44
Q. How can a company start a conversation outside of the IT industry, if they wish to reach CEOs, CFOs, etc. to consider their telecom product as a productivity tool? A. Tara and I both attended a blogging event last January called the Blog Business Summit. Go here for more info – there's one coming up in August in SFO. We'll be there! One of the most interesting things that I gleaned from the summit was that you can get a long way by ‘influencing the influencers.' For example: If you have a particular group of people you'd like to recommend your product (an influential analyst in telecom, for example), find out who blogs about the industry, and read their posts. Then use Technorati and others to find out who they comment on, and who they like. Start talking to the people they like, by commenting on their posts, asking questions, etc. Once they start talking with you, they might start talking about you. It's likely then, that the analyst will recognize you when you start commenting on her blog. By then, you'll have an enhanced knowledge of the issues surrounding your market, relationships (we hope) with industry influencers, and the confidence that you can speak not only to them but to the CEOs and CFOs themselves. It's pretty standard practice, but much easier - through blogs - to learn more quickly what's resonating with people who are talking about your industry. Q: What are RSS feeds, and how are they used? A: We hope our presentation gave you an intro to RSS. We gave another presentation this month that talked about RSS and the other “alphabet soup� technologies available for marketers. We'll post a link to it here in case you'd like to check it out. At Marqui, we're happy that RSS extends the reach of our blog, our announcements, our news. We can tell it works, because sometimes we'll blog, and then within moments we'll have people commenting on our posts. It's pretty cool. There are many great resources for RSS online – I'd recommend looking at Chris Prillo's summary here. Chris is an entertaining guy who's very much into technology. Go forth and be enlightened. Q: If you already have an email newsletter, are you saying that you can also post that on your blog? A: I think we'd suggest that rather than posting a newsletter in your blog, post a link to your blog in your newsletter. The blog should augment the newsletter, not restate it. And use your blog to explain the stories behind the things you've talked about in your newsletter. Put a human being or two from your company and their stories (with permission, of course) behind your company's accomplishments. That's the kind of thing we'd like to see you do with your blog. Q: Is your blog part of your corporate Web site or is it reached through a separate entry point? A: We have a link to our blog on the home page of our web site. And we have a link to our web site from our blog. Of course, your readers (both web and blog) can bookmark either place and go there directly (or subscribe using RSS) but you should make it convenient to go to either place from the other. We're rolling through the questions as we have time. I suspect we'll be finished with them by noon (PST) tomorrow (Friday, June 24). Cheers!
6/23/2005 12:47
We'll be posting our Gross Blog Anatomy whitepaper tomorrow (Friday, June 24). Meanwhile, if you'd like to download our whitepaper The Marketer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, you'll find it here.
June 23, 2005
Tara and I had fun in our Gross Anatomy of a Blog presentation this morning. We promised to post the answers to the questions we couldn't get to during the presentation here, so here's our first attempt to answer them.
Because this is a longer than usual post, I'm going to take advantage of an 'extended entry' which will link Our Dear Readers to the actual Q&A on another page. This is a personal preference kind of thing. Many people hate extended entries, and many people hate long posts. We'll offer this up as an example, and let you decide.
6/20/2005 13:41
Thanks to everyone who attended our seminar this morning. As promised, the resources we referred to in the seminar are listed here. And we'll post answers to any questions we were unable to answer here this week. www.marketingvox.com www.marketingsherpa.com www.marketingprofs.com www.thenewpr.com www.sethgodin.com www.micropersuasion.com bloombergmarketing.blogs.com www.blogbusinesssummit.com As we mentioned in the presentation, we'd really enjoy hearing your comments on the presentation and our blog. How often do you get to present to a bunch of smart marketers and then have the opportunity to engage in conversations with them? Now THAT's the power of the blog.
6/20/2005 13:01
I'm preparing to give a presentation on Thursday this week: Gross Anatomy of a Blog - Dissecting Blogs from a Marketer's Point of View. It's in conjunction with Corvent, and you can find out more about it here. Anyway, in preparing for it, I'm looking around for blogs with great designs. (Remember, I'm the one who had trouble picking out a template on blogger.com?) My google search on Blog Designs turned up a plethora of web design firms who are now web + blog design firms. That was inevitable, wasn't it? One promising result was the 2004 Weblog Awards - Best Design. Alas, it yielded little of consequence in terms of innovative results. Of the top four 'vote-getters,' three were nicely put together personal blogs (see second, third, and fourth place winners), without breakthrough designs. The winner was (well, it was only 2004 before there were so many web + blog design firms out there) underwhelming to me. I guess if bloggers would simply adapt to the norms of the 'blog design standard' that exists today, we'd be way ahead of the game. In terms of corporate blogging, I think we're all exploring new ground with our blogs. And most marketers (myself included) can only hope their blog represents their brand well. Improving the blog experience while delivering the brand experience will come. In fact, we're about to redesign our blog. I hope Our Dear Readers will enjoy the result. I'm certain we will. Beyond anything else, a great blog design should make a marketer proud.
6/20/2005 13:01
I'm preparing to give a presentation on Thursday this week: Gross Anatomy of a Blog - Dissecting Blogs from a Marketer's Point of View. It's in conjunction with Corvent, and you can find out more about it here. Anyway, in preparing for it, I'm looking around for blogs with great designs. (Remember, I'm the one who had trouble picking out a template on blogger.com?) My google search on Blog Designs turned up a plethora of web design firms who are now web + blog design firms. That was inevitable, wasn't it? One promising result was the 2004 Weblog Awards - Best Design. Alas, it yielded little of consequence in terms of innovative results. Of the top four 'vote-getters,' three were nicely put together personal blogs (see second, third, and fourth place winners), without breakthrough designs. The winner was (well, it was only 2004 before there were so many web + blog designers out there) underwhelming to me. I guess if bloggers would simply adapt to the norms of the 'blog design standard' that exists today, we'd be way ahead of the game. (Is it me, or aren't there some really ugly blogs out there?) In terms of corporate blogging, I think we're all exploring new ground with our blogs. And most marketers (myself included) can only hope their blog represents their brand well. Improving the blog experience while delivering the brand experience will come. In fact, at Marqui, we're working on a blog module that will help do just that. Stay tuned for more information about it. We'll announce the details on our site and in this blog.
6/17/2005 14:53
I was perusing Paul Kedrosky's blog earlier today and came across his post about the new Feed Awareness API from the clever folks at Feedburner. According to Feedburner, the Feed Awareness API will "enable any 3rd party to query feed statistics on FeedBurner feeds." Why might this be of interest? It will pave the way for people to get more detailed feed information and metrics, of course. Feedburner says that NewsGator and Rojo already have plans to support it. For those of you who aren't familiar with Feedburner, the company helps people manage their syndicated feeds -- from increasing awareness to tracking circulation/usage to providing a "foundation for monetization." (Isn't that a pleasant way to say it???) There is an impressive amount of techno-babble on Feedburner's web site, but the section explaining RSS is actually pretty helpful.
6/16/2005 10:56
If so, you are not alone. As part of the registration process for our recent Webinar on Marketing Trends, we asked everyone, "What are your top challenges from a marketing and communications perspective?" We gave registrants a number of options and allowed them to check all that applied. Out of the 92 people who registered: 75% checked the box for "demonstrating measurable results" 65% checked the box for "leveraging new tools/technologies" 45% checked "keeping costs low" 42% checked "improving staff/process efficiencies" Other options included "protecting brand integrity" and "ensuring version control on key documents." In terms of demographics, about 30% of the attendees were director-level and above, and another 30% were managers/senior managers. On a somewhat related topic, Janet and I will be participating in another Webinar on June 23 at 9 AM Pacific. This one will focus solely on corporate blogging. To sign up, click here.
6/10/2005 15:09
I feel as if I've been conspicuously quiet lately. Well, at least I'm hoping some of Our Dear Readers are wondering why Tara has been bearing the brunt of our blogging activities... no one would complain, I'm sure, since she seems to write the more useful and interesting blogs! I'm serving my state right now, on jury duty. I'm not allowed to talk about the case at all, until it's over. But I think I can say that serving on my first jury has been (even so far) pretty amazing. We all get so caught up in our own lives - family, friends, work and such - that we lose sight of the systems set up to support our greater community. I have to admit, I did everything possible to avoid serving. I have been able to defer for years. But I finally had to show up and was selected to serve. It couldn't have come at a worse time at work. (Right. We always say that. Which is why we defer.) Now, people who listened to our "Alphabet Soup" presentation with AMI Partners were probably delighted, because Tara did an excellent job. I'm sure the AMA panel discussion in Seattle went along fine without me, too. eMail and voicemail is mounting. But you know what? I've got some new perspective. And that's invaluable. Because it's not about work. And it's certainly not about every-day life. I get to spend time participating in our justice system! In a world where we read too often about bodies being discovered in mass graves, genocide and vigilante justice, it is pretty amazing to participate inside the courtroom. Even if it takes longer than I hoped it would, I think it'll make me a better employee for it. So, Dear Readers, enjoy Tara's posts. If you've tried to connect with me, forgive my tardy responses. I'm learning about the justice system from the inside. And from what I've seen so far, it really works. That's pretty cool for something more than 200+ years old.
6/7/2005 12:46
Okay, maybe not...but it's sure going to seem like it tomorrow! In addition to the Webinar we are hosting with AMI-Partners, we will be featured in the American Marketing Association's luncheon on "Viral Marketing: The Next Strain of E-Marketing" in Seattle. We are also sponsoring the DMA Networking Event tomorrow evening in Seattle. And, since this wasn't quite enough activity for one day, we are also attending the BCTIA's Technology Impact Awards Gala in Vancouver, BC tomorrow night. If you are attending one of these events, be sure to swing by and say hello to your friendly Marqui representatives!
6/6/2005 10:24
In an earlier post, I mentioned the value of running e-mail copy through a spam analyzer prior to any large e-mail campaign. By doing this, marketers can determine the likelihood that e-mails will be flagged as spam and adjust the content accordingly. Since Marqui has been doing some e-mail promotions around our upcoming Web seminar with AMI-Partners, we asked our list broker, Ann McMullen of MediaShark, to do this for us. Our score on the spam test: 1.2. According to Ann, anything over 5.0 would be cause for concern. (Note: The rating system varies depending on the tool you use.) For those interested in reading more on this topic, Ann recommends the following two sites: 1) Email Marketing Best Practices 2) Email Marketing Strategy Tutorials
| Marketing Automation | Web Content Management | Campaign Management Privacy Policy | © 2008 Marqui Inc. |
 |