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8/31/2005 16:30
Tara and I are both on vacation for a few days. You'll find her romping about Whistler this week while I hold down the fort, and I'm heading for the mountains of Colorado tomorrow for a week. I'm pretty sure we'll both come back rejuvinated and rested, and (of course) ready to blog and blog some more. In the meanwhile, I wish our readers a wonderful Labor Day weekend, and all of us at Marqui wish those dealing with the devastation in the South our very best. Here's to resting mind body and soul, as we can.
8/30/2005 11:41
I took a three day weekend and returned to a ton of comment spam - 455 of them to be exact. Learned something new this morning. Just because you see a familiar, trusted name authoring comments doesn't mean they're not slimy, opportunistic sheep in wolf's clothing. We're lucky enough to have a good relationship with DL Byron, of Clip-n-Seal and Textura Design fame. So when I got a comment from Byron, I left it in, deleting pretty much everything around it. Curious, though, I read the comment at the end of the tedious process, and found this well written gem:
"You are absolutely right. They are always like that. Probably you are right."Now, this could be a voice in my head any day of the week, but it's not something Byron would ever write on our blog. I deleted it in disgust. So be careful when cleansing. Comments on your blog are not always from whom they appear.
8/24/2005 15:22
I've been neglecting Marqui's World for days now, and it's especially weighing on me since we just got back from the Blog Business Summit last week. One would think I'd be prolific about blogging as a result of being immersed in the blogosphere last week. Sadly, (and we are experiencing / hearing this more often) blogging takes time. So do web site redesigns and board meetings and management team meetings... So this lame little guilty post will at least let me partially off the hook. Hmph.
8/19/2005 13:46
Interesting. Movable Type is following in Marqui's footsteps by encouraging people to blog...in exchange for some sort of compensation. I don't know what the "reward" is yet, but I'm intrigued and will take the bait. So, for the folks at Six Apart, here it is. My blog about Movable Type in response to your demo of the new Movable Type 3.2 at the Blog BUsiness Summit.
8/19/2005 12:17
Darren Barefoot and Molly Holschlag are talking in the most current Blog Business Summit about the most critical and essential thing about blogging: writing well. Yep. I keep saying your words are now your brand - so here we go! Your blog is a conversation with the customers you serve. So editing problems, like misspellings, bad grammar, etc. will reflect on your company. Edit your materials before posting… If you re-edit posts that you've already posted, you'll not be able to get your final thoughts through your RSS feed, because the feed will go out with your original post, but (depending on how your feeds are configured) your feed may not go out again. Or, your subscribers may get the same post over and over again, as you continue to edit. An RSS SPAM – ugh. Authenticity and transparency are keys to blogging. Make corrections in a transparent way. Like UPDATE: correct the errors. Err on the conservative side when blogging about people and naming them. Don't meme people on your blog unless they're in the public space, and have made a public statement. For example, if someone sends you an enticing e-mail, it's probably not good to blog about it or the person who sent you the juicy story. (Unless they do this – which is a very cool idea.) Read before you write… but write! Determine your style and voice by reading what you like, and finding out what entertains you. Then find your voice. It'll take time – but read a lot and practice. Practice, practice and practice. Set up an internal blog first, or one on a non-public area. Write to it – it might have the additional benefit of making marketing, legal, and executives more comfortable about what you're blogging. Individuals in companies blog – your company should not blog. Passionate, compelling people should be blogging. Readers will respond much better to passionate human beings blogging than a corporation blogging. I really (for example) love the way Tara writes. She has a subtle irony that makes me smile. I personally think that bodes well for Marqui. You want a human relationship – blogs are about telling stories, and about conversations. Controversy is interesting. Controversial blogs inspire conversations, which results in inbound links. Yeah, we get that one. Risky business, but good Google juice.
8/19/2005 10:43
This is kind of weird to do, but it's a 'Hi' to folks back at the office. Tara and I are both here in San Francisco at the Blog Business Summit - as you know. And strangely, we are having real trouble getting e-mail. We can only hope that those of you who subscribe to our feeds will get this post and it'll explain our relative silence. Hey, but this is a great opportunity for us to meet lots of people interesting in blogging. We got some nice coverage in Internet News yesterday, as a result of participating here. See you in Portland on Monday!
8/19/2005 10:24
Here are my notes from this morning's keynote at the Blog Business Summit - pretty much in outline form, but there are some good basics here, so I'd rather post them than refine them. If anyone wants clarification, there's likely to be someone else blogging about the keynote this morning in full. Check out the BBS 05 site. Dean Hachamovich and Robert Scoble – MSFT is betting big on blogs and RSS Top three takeaways for corporate communicators: 1) Start blogging – what makes a good blogger? A little bit of a salesman A little bit of a writer A little bit of a PR person A little bit of a legal expert - Especially on IP issues 2) Your blog is step 1 of N Technology will make things like feeds mainstream for all takers 3) Not all the rules are known History of activities on the web: Browse Search Subscribe Subscribe to feeds: • RSS is just like TCP IP - innovative uses of technology will abound • Will become mainstream in the browser – showed ie on Vista and GUI • BBC's subscription rates gaining 30% month/month Blogs- Industry thought leadership – establish the ‘unvarnished truth' - Relationship builder with industry information - WIKI's as community engagement – instead of forums? - Get Robert's manifesto (and any guidelines for contributing to channel 9.) Feeds with content - Podcasting – blogging with audio - Photos - Video - Calendar events – integrated into your Outlook - Contacts - Documents Lists (MSFT makes extensions available in Creative Commons license. Grab it for your solution) - Music, playlists - Event calendars - Document libraries - Wish lists - To-do lists - Top 10 lists
8/18/2005 13:56
I'm impressed with the engagement of the attendees here at the Blog Business Summit. One in particular who really showcases the notion of 'passion' is Seth Mazow, blogger and evangelist from Interplast. Lest you think Interplast is some geeky tech company, here's their tagline (a small warning, some photos here can be hard to bear): Healing Bodies, Changing Lives. He's evangelizing marketers moving away from traditional advertising and toward making differences in people's lives. Hmmm... Maybe companies with products that doctors use to help children around the world aren't the only ones who should consider that concept. I'm recommending he evangelize through the blogosphere. That kind of passion is infectuous. Watch for Seth. He's looking to change the world.
8/18/2005 11:50
Dave Taylor and Robert Scoble are still sharing their wealth of knowledge at BBS 05. Their latest nugget: As you blog, it's important to think about what people will search for down the road, in order to find your post. Then put appropriate keywords in your title so your "find-ability" is raised. Tara and I actually noticed a spike in traffic the day I posted about speaking with Robert Scoble and used his name in the title: "Robert Scoble and me." So pay attention to your headlines. And make them interesting. Have some fun with them, too. Dry and boring will never keep you relevant. Dave and Robert are such a great speakers! It's like they're having a relaxed, easy conversation with 200 people in the room - they're so comfortable. I want some of that ju ju.
8/18/2005 11:27
Finally, after seven posts from the Blog Business Summit yesterday in error, I'm able to amend my errant link to Dave Taylor's site. He was kind enough to comment on a post yesterday that I'd totally gotten it wrong. So here it is: Go to www.askdavetaylor.com to find his excellent advice on technology questions. Or you can go here to his Intuitive Life Business Blog to read his thoughts on business. Whew. I'm feeling so much lighter now. Fact checking in the blogosphere. Extremely important. And the blogosphere is self-cleansing. It really is.
8/18/2005 11:15
Can't help but laugh that Byron just highlighted Jason Calacanis' blog as one of the worst examples of blog design. Why? Because of all the ads, of course. Kind of ironic considering how much grief Calacanis gave Marqui about our PayBloggers program.
8/18/2005 10:33
Byron is still talking about great design. And it does matter - because content is back to being king. But to complicate things - with convergence - people are reading blogs from many different devices and platforms. Standards-based design (XHTML) is specifically coded to go across any platform and to any device - including phones and PDAs. Complicated, "crappy code" will break when sent out in XML or RSS. Standards-based design is becoming more important, and it's starting to be easier to do. My eyes admittedly glaze over when talking a ton of these technology acronyms. And it makes me happy that there are resources out there for good design at my disposal. I know it when I see it, but I have no idea what it takes to get there. Art + science. (Convergence strikes again.)
8/18/2005 10:01
We're just starting to listen to Byron and Chris Brownrigg (Boeing ) speaaking about design at the Blog Business Summit. When you're down - go here: Byron's Pug Blog. It will make you happy. It went to #1 on Google within seven days.
8/18/2005 9:31
I was happy to discover that Evelyn has posted her BBS 05 presentation notes here - along with the gorgeous photos that were on her slides.
8/18/2005 9:12
Evelyn Rodriguez is speaking now at the Blog Business Summit about the similarities between the blogosphere and markets around the world. Markets have, for years, been the gathering places in the hearts of towns and cities. Around the fringes of the market, you'll find 'fascinating gossip, enthralling performance art and nifty goods.' But human nature is to go to the center of the market first, walking right by the activities on the edges. Evelyn advocates searching beyond your own company name (on sites like Technorati or BlogPulse) and find out who's talking about your market - get out on the fringes, and you'll learn so much. Anyone who takes the time to build a stall, write a letter, pose questions is not an island. As people find each other and start conversations, links of humanity are made. Nice ideas, especially from a woman in a world of cowboys. Check out her other blog, Crossroads Dispatches. She has a lot to say.
8/18/2005 8:23
And it's off to a good start -- the event's coordinators have finally wised up and provided power strips at every table. Of course, no one was expecting to have power readily available, so it's been funny to watch people as they come into the main ballroom...60 minutes early...immediately scanning the room for the nearest outlet. Some even came prepared with their own powerstrips. Me? I was part of the early crowd. Here before 8 AM, just in case I needed to stake a claim to an outlet. More to come once the keynote starts...
8/17/2005 16:12
Dave Taylor believes tagging is a short-lived phenomenon. In this afternoon session, he said so. Because when you have an unconstrained keyword space, they explode. Constraints (in this case) are good. He points out that libraries have few categories, so if you write about Thomas Jefferson, you'll probably show up in "biography" or "history." You won't end up "un-findable" under Tommy Jefferson. Or, if there are too many options (is it HP or H-P?) writers might not choose the correct one. For example, I've been saying BBS (as text in my posts, but if I were to tag them I would have used the same acronym), and he said they chose Blog Business Summit or BBS 05 for their tags. So will the search engines miss my posts about BBS? Prolly. Most bloggers Dave reads don't use tags. Text should show up in the article, not in tags. Also, people can inappropriately tag because they're spamming. Yep. I am certain spammers would be all over that - categories be damned.
8/17/2005 15:22
As an aside, we're totally getting blocked off the AirFree Wireless internet connection here. I've been watching over the shoulder of a guy ahead of me who's totally given up, and has tuned out a little – he's struggled to get online, and stopped listening to Dave. I guess we're all just jaded – expectations of a rock solid connection in order to blog the summit might be just too much to ask. Oh, well. We've all gotten back online, and Tara, frustrated guy and I are all happily blogging away again. Whew.
8/17/2005 15:22
So Dave Taylor started off the second segment of his Blogging 101 session with the statements "PR is dead" and "press releases are dead." This does not bode well for the rest of this particular session. Don't people ever get tired of saying this? Can't they at least make an effort to understand PR before they start touting its death? But at least he admitted right away that one of the reasons he said this was to be confrontational. Wonder how WaggEd feels about this session ...after all, the company is a Gold Sponsor. Of course, the amusing thing is that Dave went on to stress the value of the blogosphere in terms of an early warning system for customer issues and a great tool for damage control/crisis communications. Sounds a bit like PR to me...
8/17/2005 15:16
More Blog Business Summit fodder: from Blogging 101. What is the difference between marketing and sales? When Dave tries to tell someone the difference, he thinks of a car dealership. The balloons and ads are marketing, and once you walk in the door, it's all sales. Now that (to me) sounds like an allegory from someone who does neither. Do you (dear readers) agree with me? I know Tara is steaming a bit right now because Dave uttered the words she hates the most: “PR is Dead!� Once again, huge generality, obvious bait? However, he qualified the statement by saying content is critical for people finding your company/your products. I'm frustrated because I'm typing offline now – keep getting kicked off the wireless network... At least I have power. (I kind of wish I had the floor!) Anyway, back to Dave: How can you be maximally nimble? How can you scoop your competitors? There is a time and energy commitment. But that's what it means to be in business. Interesting descriptor: he said people get jazzed by “the communicative cool� of having a conversation with you. You can leverage that – they'll sell for you, and they'll tell you what you should do. Talk about an online focus group. You can leave your attitude behind, listen to your customers (or your competitors) and leverage what they say. Contact the people who are opinion leaders in your space, and offer them free stuff. (Now, this begs the question – why did Marqui get hammered by transparently paying bloggers to blog?) It's not that always that simple, Dave. But you've got people thinking.
8/17/2005 15:14
At the BBS break, Tara pointed out one of my sentences in the last post could be misleading. And since more than five seconds have passed since I hit Post, I'm blogging more about it, rather than just refining the post. (I'm no longer on the network. Might be five hours before I'll get to hit Post again. Arrgh.) Here you go: The sentence in question should have had quotes from Dave -
"Here's a good reason to convert your website into a blog."He was saying that because of pings, RSS search engines are going to pick you up way faster than traditional search engines. They're all going to search RSS in the near future. As Tara noted, I'm not ready to advocate turning websites into blog sites. I think there are ways to leverage both - as long as you're keeping your web content really fresh.
8/17/2005 13:55
Pings are something that blogs do that almost make it worth blogging, says Dave. Pings solve the search problem. Most search engines won't see your site for weeks. It's a fundamental problem with lags or latency. They're indexing based on old versions of your site. Pings solve that fundamental problem. You want instant visibility. Not wait for two weeks to get results in a search engine. Pinging automatically notifies other RSS search engine sites (like Technorati) that you have fresh content. In fact, you can subscribe via RSS to search results (in tools like Technorati). You have an active tool that helps your news get out into the blogosphere. Here's a good reason to convert your website into a blog. (I'd suggest implementing Marqui. Man, I feel like I'm back in sales again. People are going to be afraid of my BBS presentation tomorrow if they're reading our blog today! No worries… it won't be a sales pitch at all.)
8/17/2005 13:50
More Blog Business Summit Blogging 101 coverage…
How do you measure RSS feeds?Feedburner has a master subscribe system – and it'll calculate statistics on the fly. Basic service is free…
How do you add RSS to your web site?Marqui will do deliver RSS automatically, but Dave says you can reinvent your site as a blog.
What are a couple of tips that will help me get content picked up by search engines?More to come, but you can get lots of tips in our Gross Blog Anatomy white paper. Download it here.
8/17/2005 13:42
Dave says: More people read my blog using RSS than by going to my site. (Your words are increasingly your brand, marketers!) While companies like Yahoo are allowing you to customize your ‘home page' (My Yahoo), people are more likely to bookmark your site if they stumble across it… but months might pass before they remember why they originally bookmarked your site. You need to get people to “Sign Up� to get information from you on a regular basis. Use RSS to do so. RSS solves a lot of problems in a neat way. Then he shows the RSS button at the top of his Safari browser (lots of bloggers use Apple – it's a hoot.) Everyone's building them into their browsers. "I want fresh information, fast." RSS will allow you to track hundreds of sites. RSS and blogs are only coincidentally related. But bloggers are especially interested in RSS, for some reason. Look for intelligent software (RSS readers) that will allow you to recognize ‘hey! I can easily subscribe to this site!' Then he showed how well Safari in Tiger showed feeds and you were able to easily select how much of a feed you'd like to see - by using a slider. It was a wow moment. I hope Attensa pays attention.
8/17/2005 13:28
What's a blog? Not a diary, not a journal, not something you tell people which movie you went to. It's a content management system. You can use one to free yourself from IT. People look at their web site and think: brochure. It's not good business to treat your website as a brochure, in fact – Dave says it's a “Stupid Strategy.� His future of the internet – if someone is looking for my product or my service, will they find me? Spend time looking at your Google results. Are you on the list of the five best vendors in your market? From Google's perspective, they want to deliver searchers the best content. It can't be about inbound links, or big sites, it's got to be about content. The best content or best results for searches is the goal of every search engine and search engine strategists. You need a great tool that separates the content from how it will be displayed. (I'm smiling now, because that's precisely what Marqui does for marketers.) Currently, blogging tools are really the best applications that separate the content independent of how the content will be displayed. That's where Dave says it differs from a website, unless you're using Marqui. (Sorry about the editorial – but I really can't help myself.) What if we had a tool that would let marketing concentrate on the words, not the technology? I'm not kidding. He really said that. This is going to be a fun week. I'm very happy we're sponsoring this, and that I'm going to be able to speak tomorrow a little about Marqui. A perfect tee up. Thanks Dave!
8/17/2005 13:10
Given that we were able to snag two of the only outlets at the Blog Business Summit, I thought it might be a lucrative little venture to auction "outlet time" to the highest bidder. But Janet wouldn't let me. Very sad.
8/17/2005 13:07
Tara and I are at the Blog Business Summit, in the beautiful Palace Hotel in SFO. We've snagged two of the only outlets so we can blog the Business Blogging 101 Seminar - presented by Dave Taylor - learning how much we don't know. Buckle up for a fun ride - we'll report along the way.
8/16/2005 12:45
First, let me apologize for the slight delay in getting this information posted. The attendees at our August 4 Multicultural Marketing Webinar asked a ton of great questions and some of them took a little extra time to research. We are still working on a few questions, but most of them are posted below. Special thanks once again to the fine folks at viaLanguage for participating in the Webinar and helping us with the answers to many of these. Also, in case you haven't seen it, the Boston Business Journal has an article that relates to some of what we covered in the Webinar in the current edition. The article is called "Sensitivity, Planning Key to Hosting Foreign Clients" and it is available here. Now without further ado, here's the Q&A... Q. Are too many pictures, etc. a factor in speed and localization? A. Although many of us are used to having high speed internet connections, a large part of the world still connects to the internet through a dial-up connection. Of course, while you can't control users' internet connections, you can control the 'weight' of your Web pages. The number and complexity of graphics definitely affects the weight of the page and thus the time it takes to display the page on a user's Web browser. So, try to build pages for speed and keep the weight of the pages as small as possible. (A good example is Google – nice, simple pages.) Also, in the localization process, graphics are internationalized and text is translated as necessary. A good rule is not to embed text in graphics since it has to be extracted to be translated which takes more time and makes localization more costly. Q. I have a market with many different Spanish speaking cultures represented. How do I find a happy middle ground to reach those who hail from Mexico, El Salvador and South American countries? A. With so many native speakers, opinions about the "best" version of Spanish will vary depending on whom you ask. Work with your agency to translate into Spanish using the words most common to all countries. Note that the Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola sets standards for the language for all Spanish-speaking countries. However, the Academia cannot quite keep up with the constantly changing language and therefore, is behind in making decisions about terminology. Your agency should be familiar with this resource. Secondly, establish a glossary and style guide. A good agency will have experience in this area and can prepare these items for you. Both are excellent tools to solve many issues related to terminology, and also serve to settle disagreements between native speakers about how to phrase a given idea. Q. Can you be a little more specific on the issues with double-byte characters? A. The way Western and Far Eastern languages are written is quite distinct. For example, English words are built from only 26 phonetic characters, whereas in Chinese, one unique character usually represents one word. In computing terms, a unique character in English language software is expressed by a single byte (a number from 1 to 256). For Chinese, the computer needs two bytes, as there are so many unique Chinese characters. This is better known as "Double Byte Character Set" (DBCS). Part of the localization process is to double-byte enable your Web site or product – this gives you the ability to accept and display many thousands of characters not only on your Web pages but also on forms and in databases. For starters, you need the right fonts that include these additional characters. You can download them for free from Microsoft. To ensure text displays correctly on a user's browser and is indexed by search engines, you need to include the language code on your pages. Also, keep in mind that Asian fonts are usually much larger because of the significant increase in glyphs. When designing the page be aware that it is difficult to predict exactly how a double-byte translation will affect your page design until the actual translation is in place. Don't assume that English text automatically contracts when translated into a double-byte language. For words in isolation this is often the case; for larger collections of words, however, the opposite tends to be true. Be sure to budget time for adjustments to design, even if you think you've optimized the site for localization. You can find more resources on Asian languages at www.resourcecomputing.com or at www.mandarintools.com. Q. Is this a task a Marketing Project, an IT Project or something an individual business unit should do? A. This will vary depending on the exact nature of your organization, but chances are you'll need representatives from each of these areas to provide some level of input and support. At the very least, make sure everyone is kept in the loop so that nothing is overlooked. Q. What is the best way to easily and cheaply to turn my English-based Website into another language (doing it myself)? A. The best way to do it is by using Marqui and viaLanguage of course! Okay, so maybe we're biased. Seriously though, unless you have true expertise in that language and culture, it's probably best to avoid trying to do this yourself. It may not be as expensive as you think, so consider contacting us. Q. Do you suggest having a copy writer in each country you are targeting and not just translating the U.S. text copy? A. Ideally, you should work with an agency that has translators and copy writers in the target country. The in-country translator would localize your copy for your target market, while the copywriter would focus on key messages, slogans and phrases unique to your product or brand. In addition, we'd recommend an in-country review which allows a native speaker familiar with your industry to tailor the translation to your needs. Q. Texas is a problem for us. Do you default to one Spanish dialect or another? A. Again, with so many native speakers, opinions about the "best" version of Spanish will vary depending on whom you ask. Work with your agency to translate into Spanish using the words most common to all cultures. (Also, see above for information regarding The Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola and the value of establishing a glossary and style guide.) Q. In our experience, Flash has been very easy to localize.... why do you see it as being extremely difficult? We've used XML to drive Flash content; all the content is contained outside the Flash file, allowing the translation company to translate content completely separate from the Flash file. But that's just how we've done it. A. You definitely used the right approach to localize your Flash files by using XML and separating content from the Flash file. Unfortunately, a lot of companies don't use XML to drive Flash content, which was why we wanted to mention it during the Webinar. The key is to have all content separate from the Flash file, which unfortunately is still not common practice. Good localization planning is also necessary to anticipate for different character sets and text expansion, which is even more important for Flash animations, etc. Q. Are there any other Web sites where we can learn more about local (cultural) preferences which would help in marketing universal products? A. There are quite a few, including www.multilingualcomputing.com, www.globalization.com, www.the-dma.org/international and http://ahorre.com/blog/. Our whitepaper lists a few more. Q. Which do you find is the fastest growing market culturally as we all know China is everybody's focus but between Asia overall or Hispanic countries? A. The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that in the United States, it's definitely the Hispanic community. However, on a more global level, it's probably still China. Q. Does the Marqui product just help with managing text or can I change meta tags and search engine optimization aspects as well? A. Honestly, this wasn't a planted question! Marqui can definitely help you on the search engine optimization front, right down to the meta tags. Q. How much of a budget should be allocated to multicultural marketing? 30% of general marketing, 50%, etc.? A. This is going to vary widely depending on your organization. However, if you take a look at the demographics of your existing customer base and factor in the demographics of your target customer base, it might help. For instance, if the Hispanic community represents a large opportunity for your organization, you might want to allocate a significant portion of your marketing budget specifically for this audience.
8/15/2005 10:53
Okay, if that question has you stumped, you might want to check out this article from the Associated Press. The piece recaps new research out of Glamorgan University Business School in Wales that suggests "it's not just a Web site's subject or function that determines whether it will draw more men or women. The appearance of the site also might play a subtle role." According to the article, the University had test subjects rate the personal Web pages of 60 people for usability and aesthetics. What did they find? *Male subjects tended to assign higher ratings to pages designed by men, and females preferred sites made by women. *Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. *Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures. *Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. *They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of "self-propelling" rather than stationary objects. Janet and I found this particularly fascinating since we are in the process of re-vamping Marqui's Web site and we both favored a site designed by men. Interestingly enough, the men at our company did not initially care for the new design. Are we abnormal? Is the research bogus? We decided to investigate the matter a little further, and stumbled on a Web site called The Gender Genie. Despite the somewhat creepy name, it's actually a fun -- and harmless -- little site that can supposedly predict the gender of an author using some sort of algorithm. All you do is enter text into a text box and voila! The Genie tells you whether the text was created by a man or a woman. Of course, the disheartening part about this is that Janet and I both entered text that we'd authored, only to find out that The Genie thinks we are both male. However, similar tests on the writings of the men at our company proved that The Genie does, on occasion, work -- it came back with the correct answer in all instances. So as I sit here wondering whether to call a therapist, let me emphasize this: As always, marketers should think carefully about the intended audience while crafting documents, Web sites, etc. It may even be helpful to take into account some of the new research available on gender preferences and so forth...but be sure to take it with a grain of salt. And for the record, The Gender Genie rated this post "Male." Hmph.
8/10/2005 12:59
So next week is the Blog Business Summit. I'm very much looking forward to immersing myself in the conference - including speaking on a panel about "Handling Difficult Bloggers." (Who, me?) It's daunting, though, to be the 'other' panelist with (drumroll please) the poster boy for corporate blogging, Robert Scoble. Thank goodness I've met him before, and have a ton of respect for him. He blogged yesterday about giving the keynote there with Dean Hachamovitch (head of the Microsoft IE team). So I just know everyone's going to wonder "who the heck is Janet Johnson - up there with Robert Scoble?" No pressure there! Or maybe they won't wonder, maybe they won't care. Don't get me wrong. I've been on many panels before, but never with such a celebrity. Will I get a word in edgewise? Will anyone care if I do or not? If anyone has a suggestion for sounding smart and feeling like I can add value on stage pontificating with the guy at the Top of the Corporate Blogger A List, fire away! I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts.
8/4/2005 13:41
As Janet mentioned in an earlier post, we just finished up our latest whitepaper. We decided to focus on Multicultural Marketing this time, so we teamed up with our partner, viaLanguage, to make sure we covered everything correctly. (For those of you who aren't familiar with viaLanguage, they specialize in localization and translation.) Anyone who is interested can download the paper here. This whitepaper complements the Webinar Marqui and viaLanguage hosted this morning, "Multicultural Marketing: Breaking Down the Barriers." More than 200 people signed up for the event and so far the feedback has been very positive, so we are feeling pretty good about it. Similar to the way we handled the Gross Blog Anatomy Webinar, we'll provide a recap of the Q&A section of the presentation over the next few days. We'll also post a link to the recording once it's available. As always, we'd love to hear what people think about the Webinar or the whitepaper so feel free to send us an e-mail or post a comment.
8/1/2005 16:58
Found in an entry on Rick Segal's blog, a link to an excellent post about blogging, subscribing and tagging from Fred Wilson. It explains in simple, straightforward language how they all work together. Two VCs with plenty to teach. I'm subscribed to each.
8/1/2005 13:04
Color is subjective. At best. I was reading a blog entry about color on the Industrial Brand Creative site aptly titled: "That's Not the Colour I Approved!"
8/1/2005 8:51
It's already August. Man. Where has this year gone?
It is going to be a busy month.
Thursday, August 4 at 9:00 a.m. PST, we'll hold our third web seminar on Multicultural Marketing with our partners at ViaLanguage. Feel welcome to join us by signing up here - it's free. Tara is putting the finishing touches on our next white paper on the same subject - it's really quite good, if I do say so. All attendees will receive the white paper.
August 17-19 is the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco. If you're interested in blogging for your business, this is the show for you. It's practical from a business perspective. Not just a bunch of technobabble. Both Tara and I will be there, if you'd like to say hello. You can sign up and get a discount if you do so here.
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