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
So says Voodo VC, Rick Segal from Canada. He claims his blog has given him:
Here are a few of his recommendations: "Despite all the “new new” things, don’t forget the basics. A wiki may be nice, but answer the phone. Podcast the company meeting, but respect my privacy. Blog your deep thoughts but offer good value to your customers. The only thing that has, for sure, changed is your customer is a single click away from your competition. Keep the faith with them and let the rest of this evolve as it will."
I will have to admit that product placement works for companies selling to me. BMW used their 745i in the first Transporter movie and just before my M5 fell out of warranty I traded it for a new 7 series. Jason Statham trades his BMW for an Audi in the second installment of the Transporter and I it has caused me to start considering the Audi for my next ride. So what? Audi figured out a way to get ‘way’ more bang for their buck by using blogs to get their message out.
Brian Clark, CEO of GMD Studios (Audi’s ad agency), indicated that almost a third of the traffic to Audi most recent A3 compaign was generated by advertising on various blogs. The most interesting thing Brian revealed was that these advertisments only took one half of one percent of the budget. McKinney + Silver and Adrants indicated:
"The media cost of the entire blog ad buy was less than the cost for one ad on a mainstream site such as Yahoo!" Of course "one banner ad on a mainstream site such as Yahoo" is a nebulous statement at best, however, again 29 percent of traffic to an A3 promotional website came from one half of one percent of the budget. Shall we say it again?
Josh Hallett (I really enjoy his blog, this is the second post in a row I have blogged about) posted an interesting post about tagging. His point? The truth is, it difficult for novices (who barely understand the concept of tagging) to tag their posts in TypePad or Blogger. Obviously, WordPress and Movable Type make it easy as pie to tag (we typically launch client blogs on WordPress). Why tag? Here is Josh’s thought:
"I know that tagging my posts has led to increased traffic from Technorati and other search tools that support tags. Granted it is very easy for me include them in my posts."
Your dishwasher has its own podcast, check it out here.
A survey indicates that 42% of PR professionals indicated that they pitched their ideas to bloggers. Almost 60% of them realized that bloggers represent a clear and present danger to companies who ignore them. Business Week points out that the it will be interesting to do this survey again in six months to see the trend.
Quite a few folks have bashed the Juicy Fruit Blog for various reasons including those found in posts here, here, here, here, here, here, and not to be outdone we bashed it here.
It is interesting how ‘we of the Web 2.0′ are so quick to define everything. If it does not fit in our neat little boxes we reject it. I suspect that we were not the target audience of the Juicy Fruit website. Maybe the Juicy Fruit ‘blog’ was a parody of a blog? Certainly none of us confused it for a real blog - it seems more like advergaming or other form of interactive marketing. Wrigley is not attempting to fool or confuse its customers - it is clearly making a joke (one that we are unlikely to enjoy). Why are we so concerned? Because they call it a blog? Perhaps we should lighten up. When was the last time you chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum…
In our recent post here, we detailed the migration of M | Ventures corporate website to WordPress. Lots of folks have commented on the migration including Matt Mullenweg (who happens to be lucky in love) who posted about it here. Matt reminds us that it was a Texan who developed WordPress (i.e. him).
NewsForge has an interesting article about using WordPress for your website. Here is their conclusion:
"WordPress is a powerful tool, and in many ways exemplifies open source at its best. It gives any user an array of features with minimal technical effort, and its extensibility and versatility are displayed by the large pool of user-designed plugins. This power and versatility extends beyond WordPress’s traditional use of blogging into more traditional Web design, and — as our new AmSteg.org site displays — makes WordPress a powerful tool for many kinds of Web sites. Our site would not have many of the features it has, nor would it be as easy to administer, if it were not for WordPress and its plugins."
The IMC’s Management Consultant’s Forum chapter meeting scheduled on Monday, September 19th is titled: Blogging - Learn about this new tool and how to harness its potential. The IMC D/FW Chapter is a professional organization comprised of management consultants from a broad range of consulting disciplines and firm sizes.
The meeting promises to help management consultants "understand how blogging, and other on-line tactics, can build their brand communities and extend their reach." It is quite interesting that we are starting to see more and more of these sort of events - especially here in Dallas.
We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Business Disputes Law blog, the personal blog of Bill Garrison, of Dallas firm Scheef & Stone. Bill is using the blog to discuss one of his areas of specialization, litigation that occurs with disputes over business ownership and the steps that can prevent the need for such litigation.
As we’ve been reviewing in our series of interviews of blogging lawyers, weblogs are a natural marketing and communication mechanism for lawyers. Research, writing and networking are integral parts of everyday legal practice. Blogging just turbocharges these habits, makes great thinking more accessible and sharable, and ultimately helps lawyers attract the right kind of people that matter to their practice. Here’s what some of our veteran law bloggers had to say about their blogging experiences:
It has greatly added to my credibility and bone fides with potential clients, existing clients and referral sources. As an example, several weeks ago an investment advisor who has referred many clients over the years emailed me about a recent court decision that appeared to have a chilling effect on planning strategies he often uses. Instead of calling or emailing him, I blogged on the issue and then sent him and other financial advisors I know a link to my post. The effect was great: I was able to answer my referral sources concern directly, leverage my research time to educate many and enhance my stature as an expert on the topic.
I started the blog in April 2005 to provide a forum to publish articles more frequently that I customarily would publish about once a month in other publications, and to share my knowledge and familiarity in my practice areas with more people. I have given seminars and written articles on corporate law and ethics for many years, and I thought a blog would be a forum that would allow me to provide similar content and reach a broader audience.
Staying on top of new developments in construction law is one of my strengths as an attorney. The blog gives me a way to pass those developments on to others who might be interested and to archive them for my own use later.
I started blogging approximately a year ago. After five years of working in the federal court, I had a great deal of specialized, “insider” knowledge about how the courts worked and I was trying to reestablish my complex, commercial litigation practice. The idea was to provide a resource for litigants and lawyers practicing in the federal courts in western Pa.
Directly, the blog has resulted in many contacts from those needing legal assistance in my own area of expertise or in an area where colleagues at my firm are well suited to help. Indirectly, reading weblogs and participating in the conversations they engender keep me very well informed about current developments pertinent to my practice and the needs of the firm’s clients and potential clients.
I believe, but cannot prove, that the blog will help our practice by continuing to reinforce our reputation as a law firm that stays current with the law and technology, is willing to share what it knows with fellow lawyers, and has the experience and expertise to handle complicated personal injury and wrongful death cases. In fact, we are so confident with the potential of blogging that we have rolled out three additional blogs in the past couple months.
Case Study: Consolidation of an existing corporate website and blog into a WordPress blog/website.
The M | Ventures website was designed completely in flash and was considered a very good site in 2003. The site had two big problems, (1) it did not rank well in search engines (Google hates flash) and (2) it was very difficult to update. A screenshot of the site can be found to the right.
The general partner started blogging in 2005 with a blog titled Texas Venture Capital Blog. He took to the blog format quickly and asked one of his IT guy to create a simple theme to replace his default Kubrick design. The simple theme can be see to the left. Notice that it included a simple header and Google ads.
Soon the general partner realized how easy it was to update his blog through the WordPress CMS and how well it ranked in Google and other search engines. He asked this simple question: "Why can’t my blog and website be one in the same, housed entirely in a WordPress site?" The answer was simple, "There is none."
Weblogs Work took the assignment of consolidating the two. First our designer worked with the general partner to come up with a new look and feel. The concept was to create something with a Texas feel - perhaps cows, spurs, horses and cowboys. The designer took these ideas and came up with a very subtle ‘Texas’ design that can be seen below. The Google ads were removed. And the interior pages were kept very basic. The new site is a work in progress, but each aspect can easily be edited by the general partner without assistance from anyone else. Visitor statistics are built right in and he is generating dealflow from the site today (something his old site NEVER did).
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