Author Archives: Paul

TripIt Travel Management Service is a Winner

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For the past couple of months I’ve been using a travel management service that has some nice features to make life easier for the frequent traveler. It’s called TripIt, and if you travel a lot, I recommend you give it a look.

TripIt aggregates all information about your travel in a single place and allows you to share itineraries with anyone you choose. It uses that most prosaic form of communication – e-mail – to update information. When you make a flight, hotel or car rental reservation, you forward the confirmation e-mail to TripIt, which automatically adds the information to your itinerary. The service is very good at parsing e-mail confirmations from most major airlines and hotel chains.

It doesn’t get everything right – it couldn’t figure out a message from JetBlue in my case – but the service is new and developers are constantly updating it. In nearly every case I encountered, TripIt was able to seamlessly integrate messages from a variety of travel providers into a single itinerary. It’s then easy to share that information with anyone via e-mail. You can also integrate your itinerary into popular calendar programs and have updates sent to you via SMS.

TripIt adds information you don’t request but which is nevertheless useful. For example, if you’re flying into SFO and staying at the Hotel Palomar, it will include Google Maps directions to your destination. It also has nice touches like weather forecasts that are built right into the itinerary.

TripIt is trying to build social networking features into the service, though I’m not sure that’s a winning strategy. I don’t see much value in sharing my travel plans with people who don’t care about them, but if the service can figure out how to integrate recommendations via third-party services like Yelp, it could have a winner. In short, there are a lot of promising directions the company could follow if it builds a critical mass of users. I, for one, am sold. I expect I’ll be using TripIt for a long time to come. The service adds real value and efficiency to my busy schedule.

Daily reading 04/06/2008

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Who Do You Love? How Some Brands Achieve True Authenticity

tags: daily_reading, advertising, marketing

It’s ease to praise the value of authenticity but a lot harder to achieve it. Many companies have stumbled badly in marketing campaigns because their efforts to sound genuine didn’t jive with the public’s perception of the brand. This Fast Company article from December looks at authenticity, insincerity and how even some big and successful brands manage to cultivate a distinct image.

Getting Engaged: Advertisers Search for Their Voices on YouTube  Annotated

tags: daily_reading, youtube, advertising

Advertisers are already showing lack of creativity on YouTube, defaulting to the “safe” choice of pre-roll ads and sponsored contests. As this article notes, many of those campaigns underperform. To be successful on YouTube, you need to step outside your comfort zone and design content for the young audience.

Century 21 Real Estate, based in Parsippany, N.J., launched a video-contest channel on YouTube in mid-March. The idea is for home-sellers and their agents to collaborate on a video tour of the for-sale property “using humor and creativity.” The winner, to be announced in May, will take home $21,000 and an HDTV. Although the company raised expectations by touting the contest as the “Housing Industry’s First Branded YouTube Channel,” its introductory video hasn’t seemed to inspire much reaction: The contest channel currently features only four submissions. A viewer’s comment on one sample video posted by Century 21 itself stated: “This is an excellent way not to sell this home.”
    When Bell’s firm launched a new anti-aging lotion for Johnson & Johnson’s Aveeno brand, it built on the work of 3-D British chalk artist Julian Beever. A time-lapse video of Beever creating one of his trademark trompe-l’oeil drawings in New York’s Union Square, which included the Aveeno logo, has resulted in more than 1.2 million views on multiple video channels, says Bell. “We listened to an existing conversation among fans of the artists and gave them something of value. That’s what got them talking and sharing.”  

      17 SEO Experts Debate the Details

      tags: daily_reading, search_engines

      The author polled 17 search engine optimization experts about the factors that count most in search rankings. The experts discuss 39 issues ranging from anchor text to page relevance to the age of inbound links. While they disagree in a lot of areas, some clear consensus does come through. The author has done a nice job of representing this consensus visually. His English isn’t great, but you can make out what he’s saying. This long document is a must-read if you’re interested in SEO.

      Tickets to Five Red Sox Games Available

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      If you live near Boston and you’re as big a Red Sox fan as I am, read this.

      This is my fifth year as a Red Sox season ticket holder. I typically attend 18-20 games a year and sell the rest of the tickets at cost to friends and colleagues. The photo at right is a view from the seats, which are in section 7. The yellow pole at the right of the photo is the famous Pesky Pole in right field.

      I still have tickets for the following games at Fenway Park:

      Date Time
      		 Opponent
      4/10/2008 7:05 PM Tigers
      4/30/2008 7:05 PM Blue Jays
      5/21/2008 7:05 PM Royals
      9/8/2008 7:05 PM Rays
      9/9/2008 7:05 PM Rays

      If you want them, the cost is $94/pair (which is six bucks less than you’d pay at the Sox ticket office). Thanks to a new Red Sox program, I can now e-mail tickets, so even the April 10 game is in play. First come, first served, so e-mail me ASAP.

      Draft Chapters of My Next Book Available For Review

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      If I’ve been kind of quiet on this blog lately, it’s because I’ve been devoting most of my writing time to Secrets of Social Media Marketing, a new book to be published by Quill Driver Books this fall. At roughly 73,000 words, my work is nearly complete now and I’d like your opinion.

      I’ve posted chapters 1-8 on a wiki at www.ssmmbook.com. Another four chapters and a few sidebars have yet to be posted. You’re welcome to make any changes you wish and I’ll consider them all. Please sign up for a WetPaint account and log in before editing. It’s a lot easier to contact you if I know who you are!

      You can also download the entire manuscript to date. Here’s a version in Word format.

      I welcome all comments and suggestions. It was comments from people who read the draft chapters of The New Influencers that convinced me to completely reorganize the front of that book. I’m hoping to tap the wisdom of crowds again.

      Daily reading 04/01/2008

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      Gmail Custom Time

      tags: daily_reading

      Have you ever wished you could back-date an e-mail so it looks like you responded to something faster than you really did? Google says now you can – but only 10 times a year. Um, remember what day it is.

      SNCR Vocus 2008

      tags: daily_reading

      The Society for New Communications Research is launching a new research study entitled “Exploring the ROI of Online Press Releases.” It will will explore “how the value of press releases has traditionally been measured, and how that is changing as a result of how press releases are being used by the PR/marketing profession today. It will address the question: What are appropriate measurements of value today? And it will explore the larger question of how the PR profession is evolving.”

      If you’re a PR or marketing professional, please contribute to the research by filling out the survey.

      Dr. Pepper’s Word-of-Mouth Brainstorm: 300 million free cans

      tags: daily_reading

      The soft drink company says it’ll give every person in the U.S. a free can of soda if Guns N’ Roses finishes its next album this year. Fizz blog thinks this is a perfect WOM campaign.

      Twitter: Making Sure You Don’t Miss the Conversation | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog

      tags: daily_reading

      Feel overwhelmed by Twitter? Marketing Profs’ Matt Dickman has tactics and a couple of cool tools for organizing the chaos.

      Five steps to managing a blog writer’s workflow

      tags: daily_reading

      Daniel Pataki has some good advice for using Google Readers and Windows Live Writer to make sense out of a flood of RSS feeds. I’m increasingly addicted to RSS but the sheer volume is overwhelming. Some of these tactics might help.

      Daily reading 03/31/2008

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      Social Media Case Study: Blatantly Advertising … And Getting Away With It

      tags: daily_reading

      H&R Block has figured out a way to openly market itself using social media and to make it work. Its strategy combines an absurd but funny pitchman with videos that poke fun at the stress of tax time.

      10 Downing Street is Twittering

      tags: daily_reading

      The Prime Minister of Great Britain is now on Twitter. He could be the first head of state to embrace the service. Or maybe not. We believe that Stuart Bruce first reported this, but it may have been Dave Briggs. Oh, what the hell. Give them both links. Sometimes blogger courtesy gets confusing.

      20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

      tags: daily_reading

      Here are some great ideas for leveraging WordPress’s “page” function to create static blog pages that aggregate, promote, redirect and solicit.

      Daily reading 03/29/2008

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      Ewww…What’s That Smell? It’s MyStarbucksIdea.com

      tags: daily_reading

      • Starbucks is positioning its new MyStarbucksIdea.com site as a social network, but critics say it’s nothing more than a fancy online suggestion box. A real community, they argue, would encourage interaction between members. This one simply helps Starbucks to run its business better. That’s not bad, but it isn’t a community.
         – post by pgillin

      Just An Online Minute » Blog Archive » Just An Online Minute… Video Action = Candidate Traction?

      tags: daily_reading

      The political candidates (Hillary Clinton in particular) are discovering that their campaign-trail statements are subject to scrutiny by skeptics and foes who are digging up old TV news clips and using them to counter claims made by the candidates.

      Daily reading 03/26/2008

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      How del.icio.us is changing academic research

      tags: social_media_useful

      A Ph.D. student and political activist talks about how she uses social bookmarking services to easily organize her voluminous clip files and to engage in conversations with other people with similar academic interests.

      Sears lets Facebook members share dress designs

      tags: social_media_useful

      Sears may have hit on a good idea for marketing on Facebook: post popular prom dress designs online so girls can solicit feedback from the friends before making a purchase. What I like about this idea is that it leverages the personal relationships that are so important to social networks, adds value to an important decision that members are about to make and doesn’t get the marketer in the middle of a personal conversation.

      Reference Pages: How You Can Use Them to Attract Links and Traffic

      tags: social_media_useful

      DoshDosh has advice on how to reuse content by creating reference pages targeted a specific groups and then promoting those as you would promote new original material. On the Web, remember, publishing is just the beginning. The real fun is mashing up and repackaging what you’ve published to create opportunities for additional promotion.

      The WOMMA Word

      tags: social_media_useful

      This is the single best resource I’ve seen on what’s going on in the world of social media marketing. I get WOMMA’s daily newsletter, and there are always at least two or three items that I want to read in-depth, include the two articles I referenced today. Highly recommended.

      Tips on effective blogging

      tags: social_media_useful

      This New York Times piece addresses some of the most frequently asked questions about blogging, including how to choose a topic, how often to post and how to promote a blog. Concise, sensible advice.

      Do-It-Yourself Logos for Proud Scion Owners – New York Times

      tags: social_media_useful

      Toyota will let owners of its Scion cars choose and design their own window sticker logos, based on a palette created by a graffiti artist. I guess this means graffiti has gone mainstream. It’s certainly an innovative use of social networks.

      Good quote from the executive creative director of the agency that dreamed up the idea: The ‘wrong way’ to engage in social marketing is to “create an artificial social network and try to draw people to it. You have to walk into the conversation, and if they’re talking about Britney Spears, you can’t say, ‘By the way, do you want to hear about my new car?’ ”