Part 2 of a series on common business blogging mistakes. Part 1 is here. Blogs are a new form of communications medium but many marketers are still stuck in the old one-way mode. To really appreciate the value of blogging, you have to approach it as a conversation. That means listening as well as talking. […]
Customer-Generated Advertising – A PRSA Webinar “Crowdsourcing” is an appealing new option for marketers who want to spread their advertising messages through low-cost peer-to-peer channels. Enthusiasts can be recruited to become brand advocates for products that they love, spreading the word through their social networks, Facebook friendships and Twitter streams. Contests are an increasingly popular […]
Your last entry is dated April 17. Most of your entries are press releases. Your headlines are dull as dirt. Your articles are devoid of links. And you wonder why no one comes to your blog. I’ve done many content audits of clients’ blogs over the last two years and found the same shortcomings cropping […]
By now, most companies have gotten a pretty good handle on what happens on their website. At the very least, they use a tool like Google Analytics or the simple and easy StatCounter to track total visits, referring URLs, visitor paths and time spent on site. It’s intriguing and fun to see where people are […]
I was chatting recently with Sam Decker, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice, about his company’s somewhat counterintuitive business. Its customers use Bazaarvoice to enable their customers to post product reviews and ratings right on their own websites. I asked why would a company invite visitors to publicly criticize its products this way. He told the […]
If you noticed that I’ve missed a couple of newsletters this month, it’s because my wife, Dana and I were wrapping up an 82,000-word manuscript for a new book, The Joy Of Geocaching. Everything came together in the last few weeks on this project, and we had to scramble to meet a tight deadline. The […]
Dave Balter knows a thing or two about brand advocacy, and his experience may turn some of your assumptions about brand relationships on their head. Balter is the founder of BzzAgent, a Boston-based agency that specializes in generating word-of-mouth awareness for products and brands. Over the past eight years, the company has recruited more than […]
If you’ve signed up for more than a couple of social networks, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the syndrome of seeing your mailbox fill up each morning with notifications about messages, invitations or comments you’ve received from other members. This deluge can become so annoying that you may simply choose to relegate many of these notices to […]
Here is an audio-annotated version of my presentation “World Without Media: What Will Fill the Void?” which was prepared for the Society of New Communication Research’s New Communications Forum in April, 2009. The presentation was featured on the News & Politics home page of SlideShare.net the day after it was posted. Description follows: We are […]
Ask a room full of college students and a room full of business professionals “Who belongs to LinkedIn?” and the results will be almost a mirror opposite of each other. Facebook is the social network for after-hours fun. In contrast, LinkedIn is for business professionals. It’s a buttoned-down, no-nonsense business destination with a two-color, text-heavy […]
