Blake Burris (of CocoaRadio fame) did a podcast interview with us at Barcamp Dallas. We talk about why we think it’s important to do things like Barcamp, what Weblogs Work is about, and where we might take all this from here.
Listen to the podcast. (4.5 MB mp3)
Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampdallas, blake burris, brian oberkirch, cocoaradio, Weblogs Work
I totally dug hanging out at Joe T. Garcia’s yesterday at the Fort Worth Ad Club Luncheon. Here is a clickstream for the talk I gave — a little social media jumpstart link kit:
Blogging Buzz/Confusion
BusinessWeek story — "Blogs Will Change Your Business"
Forbes paranoia — "Attack of the Blogs"
Blogging Delivered
Blogging Not Exactly Delivered
The Situation: Attention Scarcity
Long Tail blog on Mainstream Media Meltdown
John Moore on the influence of word of mouth
Brand Hijack manifesto
Sifry’s latest state of the blogosphere
Wrong! NY Times on tv-style ads on mobile devices. (Note: don’t try this at home)
Extinction Management
Tools
SixApart (Typepad, MovableType)
Wordpress (hosted option as well)
About RSS
Bloglines
NetNewsWire
(Example of syndicated headlines at Architel site)
Technorati
IceRocket
Delicious
Digg
tech.memeorandum
flickr
Odeo
iTunes podcast support
Robert Scoble
Jonathan Schwartz
English Cut
Stormhoek blog sampling
The Bad
Dell Hell
Dude, You’re Getting Dell’d
The Ugly
Essential Reading
Cluetrain Manifesto
Naked Conversations (check out the blog, too)
Small Pieces, Loosely Joined
Useful Marketing Stuff
MicroPersuasion
GapingVoid
BrandAutopsy
What’s Your Brand Mantra?
Church of the Customer
Media Orchard
New PR Wiki
Marketing Begins at Home
HorsePigCow
Like It Matters
PDF of my slides. (9.67 MB)
Technorati Tags: ad club fort worth, social media, Weblogs Work
Who knew?
AT&T billboard on I-35 (Stemmons Freeway across from the INFOMART) in Dallas, Texas.
We’ll be talking about the new marketing — telling compelling stories in the age of do-it-yourself media — tomorrow at a luncheon put on by the Advertising Club of Fort Worth. Thanks much to Lynne Swihart, of Blanchard Schaefer Advertising & PR, for inviting us. It’s at Joe T. Garcia’s at around 11:45. Google Map. I’ll be posting up the clickstream for the talk as well.
Technorati Tags: ad+club+fort+worth, brian oberkirch, blanchard+schaefer, lynne+swihart, weblogs+work
The Architel corporate web/blog site has been launched. The open source WordPress architecture allows the company to launch the site and make continious changes to it over time. So you can never say a site is ‘done.’ Kudos go to Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits for the xhtml/css design (as well as the new Architel logo). Weblogs Work integrated the xhtml/css into WordPress (actually three WordPress installs).
Architel is a boutique IT support company located in Dallas, Texas that supports small businesses (20-100) employees. Their unique IT service delivery model (one flat-monthly-fee for all-you-can-eat support) aligns the interests of the small business owner and Architel. The company was a pioneer in this space and is now a pioneer in the ‘blog as corporate website’ meme. Here are screenshots or just visit the site yourself here @ architel.com.
The site was entered in the website design contest at SXSW conference and we are crossing our fingers that the judges will enjoy the tight integration between the blog CMS and Dan’s xhtml and css. What do you think about our work?
Folks like BL Ochman and Hugh Macleod bet their careers on blogging. BL and Hugh used to chat on the phone and ask one another,
"Should we get jobs? Are we nuts? Will anyone ever hire us as bloggers?"
Today it is lucrative and all-consuming for more and more marketing folks. Hugh’s so busy he doesn’t have time to answer his own email anymore…
I ran across an old report from Forrester that I thought was interesting to read in hindsight: "Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal? When and How Businesses Should Use Blogs." There is an updated powerpoint you can download for free (after registration) here. Here is the summary:
Although Weblogs (blogs) are currently used by only a small number of online consumers, they’ve garnered a great deal of corporate attention because their readers and writers are highly influential. Forrester believes that blogging will grow in importance, and at a minimum, companies should monitor blogs to learn what is being said about their products and services. Companies that plan to create their own public blogs should already feel comfortable having a close, two-way relationship with users. In this document we recommend best practices, including a blogging code of ethics, and metrics that will show the impact of blogs on business goals.
Related reports include:
Students from Northeastern University describe corporate blogs as:
"Synthetic transparency involves using blogs to give the impression of openness, honesty, and transparency but without really doing so.
This notion is based on Norman Fairclough’s* idea of "synthetic personalization"** which he defines as:
… a compensatory tendency to give the impression of treating each of the people ‘handled’ en masse as an individual. Examples would be air travel (have a nice day!), restaurants (Welcome to Wimpy!) and the simulated conversation (for example, chat shows) and bonhomie which litter the media…"
From Debbie Weil via Fredrik Wacka. Note to Weblogs Work clients - don’t do that…
Shel Israel is on the "Managing the Blogstorm" panel at the Blogging Enterprise conference. A line jumped out — relating the insights of the head of Waggoner Edstrom exec: It’s a smaller, faster world. Where he used to have 10 days to manage a crisis response, now he has about 4 hours.
Marketing in a highly networked world means you have to listen & respond. Or else let the conversation roll on without you.
Check out this podcast (not really since it is a RAM file) from American Public Media’s Markplace radio show. Patrick Hirsch interviews the people behind the English Cut Blog and Stonyfield Farm Blog.
Technorati Tags: podcast, npr, David Parmet, English Cut, Stonyfield Farm, Patrick Hirsch, Marketplace
In a first, Budget Car Rental is using ‘blogadvergaming’ as a marketing tool. Budget is hiding a $10,000 prize in four cities over four weeks giving away $160,000 total. Clues will be delivered on Budget’s blog in cartoon format (featuring our favorite cartoonist Hugh MacLeod). The ‘blogadvergaming’ program was organized by B.L. Ochman. Via Adrants and Business Week.
Technorati Tags: adrants, blogadvergaming, budget, budgetcarrental, hugh MacLeod
Last week I sent my final email to my electronic distribution list and much to my surprise it caused quite a stir. First, several folks were upset that I sent them an email that seemed to be SPAM. Still others were glad to connect in a new way - via RSS. Finally, a few were upset that I declared “email newsletters are dead.”
This final reaction surprised me. I assumed that everyone agreed, boy was I wrong! Clearly I had underestimated the investment various professionals continue to make in their electronic newsletters. Our IT services company, Architel, provides support for various companies that continue use electronic mailing lists. Each time a client sends out a mass-email Architel’s engineers must work with AOL, Yahoo and other ISPs to remove the client from their blacklists. Architel spends hundreds of hours per year to keep their clients’, who insist on using mass-mailing lists, email systems available to all networks.
Why do users of mailing lists get blacklisted? Sometimes a person on the mailing list forgets that he signed up for the list. For example, this guy, an editor of a magazine, slammed me in his blog for sending him SPAM. He could have just as easily reported my email to his ISP as SPAM and our domain would have been blocked from the ISPs servers. This is clearly the most common reason companies get blacklisted. Still other firms use automated software that can detect ‘mass-emails’ and submit them to popular blacklist providers. The recipient will never see the newsletter and the sender’s domain will likely be blocked by various providers.
Finally, professionals put time and effort creating weekly or monthly newsletters. Studies suggest that technology (such as SPAM filters) are blocking more than 50% of recipients and readership is less than 10% of this number (i.e. 5% of the total number addresses on the mailing list). The truth is, very few people are seeing their work. How can you get it to the right people? at the right time? forever (not just on the day you send it out)? Start blogging instead - your blog lives forever - your posts live forever - and those who are interested in your material will read it when they need the information.
Technorati Tags: blog, dallas, dfw, email, newsletters
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