Topic: marketing

Applying the right technology solutions to enhance business growth is something Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, is passionate about. As a growth company itself, Infopia delivers a SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform for businesses who need to manage the common operational challenges that growth creates. Things like inventory management and merchandising, order management, and shipping and fulfillment all work together in a seamless online system.

Infopia is the "next step" for many of the savviest online sellers looking to grow their business. Titanium and Platinum PowerSellers on eBay not to mention multi-million dollar merchants have dramatically improved revenues with Infopia.

Espenes sits down with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and shares the Infopia story and highlights the business problems Infopia solves. Espense shows why he was recognized as one of Utah’s "Top 40 Executives Under 40" and a member of vSpring Capital’s v100 Entrepreneurs.

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A few days ago, I wrote about the commoditization of social networks or rather the social networking feature sets that currently make Myspace and Facebook so unique and neat. Pioneers in social networking like Friendster and Myspace introduced a new data and software architecture that, at the same time clumsily and elegantly, met Internet users’ desire to interact and share content with each other. Finding old friends, connecting with new friends, sharing music and videos, playing collaborative games, and expressing oneself to virtual audiences of thousands all were groundbreaking features or functions that captivated a whole new generation of Web users.

These features generated higher levels of engagement (or stickiness) many times greater than traditional web properties. This stickiness in turn attracted marketers and advertisers who wanted to be where the people were. This stickiness premium netted the founders of social networking startups wealth reminiscent of the dotcom bubble. Myspace sold for nearly $600 million in a buyout by News Corporation (NWS-A), Facebook was valued at $15 billion by Microsoft (MSFT), and Bebo’s owners sold out to AOL (TWX) for $850 million.

With great rewards come hordes of wannabes and copycats. Many people are staking their future on social networking. Some are attempting to create me-too social networks. Others are pimping themselves as “experts” in social networking and offering their “consulting” services. I did the same with my SocialOptimize startup. Although my now defunct startup was able to deliver good social networking applications to prominent venture-funded startups, I soon realized that social networking would become a game with few winners and many losers. I argued that once Web 2.0 methodologies become widely adopted and social networks become a feature set rather than destinations, those same Web 2.0 methods will become standardized commodities.

That march to commoditization may occur faster than anticipated. Google (GOOG) recently announced its Friend Connect program, which allows virtually any website to plug in a turnkey social networking suite. Owners of websites can, like Google’s AdSense product, embed a snippet of code in their webpages and immediately enjoy the benefits of offering social networking features to their site customers or visitors. Think of Google Friend Connect as a more powerful Google AdSense, but instead of offering relevant text ads it offers your site visitors the ability to connect with their friends, connect with new friends, interact with each other with messages, and share content.

Here are the search engine giant’s stated high-order benefits of Google Friend Connect (GFC):

• Anyone with a basic understanding of the Web can implement GFC, no need to hire an expensive programmer or self-branded “social media guru.”
• Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
• Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
• Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.

That last point is key. Google doesn’t want more “social networks” per se - it just wants more websites to have social features. A while ago, it signed a deal with Myspace to serve Google ads. At the time, Google paid a huge premium and there are reports that claim the Mountain View, CA behemoth has not recouped its cost. Signing advertising deals with mass market social networks can be expensive. Helping mom and pop sites to have social networking features will, in the long run, give Google a cheaper alternative. Google is simply facilitating the creation of more web pages (places to serve its ubiquitous ads), pageviews, and advertising inventory.

The message is clear. You don’t need to become a social network; social networking features are a commodity. Here, have a few social networking features for free.

A client asked me to put this together so they could understand exactly what I do as a consultant.  I think often times we make it look way too easy.  People say they want it to be easy and they don’t want to think about it but often times if they don’t understand what is going into the process they will think it is easy.  Maybe that is why so many people when pressed about the website suggest they have a neighbor or a nephew who could do it.

So this is my advice for the day.  Let your clients know how involved it is and that you are saving them tons of time by knowing the answers to these questions.  Maybe you could present them with this list and have them fill out everything they know or at least what they are thinking.  Spend a little bit of time educating your clients and they won’t try to tell you how to do your job.

Why are you building a website?

• Recruiting
• Awareness
• Retention
• Cost savings efficiency
• Commerce
• Partnering
• Generating leads
• Launch a new product
• Sales
• Promote industry

Personas/Audience Segments
Who will be using the website and what will they search for?
What will your visitors want to do immediately once they get to the website? (let them pee) How will they go about doing that?
Should you be using the web to build community?

• Blog
• Forum
• Newsletter
• Podcasts

If you could only communicate one thing from your website what would that be?

Marketing strategy/launch plan
Where does the website fit into the marketing mix?
How will people find you on the web?

• Brandable URL?
• Web Marketing
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Pay-per-click
  • Buzz building
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Banner ads = waste of money (usually)
  • PR
• Offline Marketing
  • Print
  • Radio
  • Flyers
  • Direct Mail
  • Television
  • Billboards
  • Trade Shows

How will you get people to stay on the website and then comeback later?

• Newsletter
• Email opt-in list
• RSS feeds
• Frequently updated content

Where does this website fit within it’s web ecosystem?

Measurement
How do you define success? How will we measure that? What are the metrics that matter?

• Analytics?
• Call Tracking?

Do you know what your acceptable customer acquisition costs are?

Operations
Who will create/update the content?
How will the website be kept current who will be updating it? How often? CMS?
Who will answer the email?
Who will answer the phone?
Who will maintain the website?

Constraints
Are there any Imperatives

• Creative
  • Colors?
  • Images?
• Platform
  • Windows
  • Linux - This is what I prefer
  • Unix
• Hosting
  • Who is the current host and what do they support? Can they scale? Are they reliable?
  • I like Media Temple
  • (more) I need a reliable link that isn’t just a bunch of affiliate marketers
• Web Programming Languages
  • ASP
  • PHP
  • xHTML
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • Flash
  • (more)
• Database
  • MySQL
  • ColdFusion
  • Microsoft SQL server
  • PostgreSQL
  • (more)

What is the budget?
What is the timeline?
How long do you need this website to exist before it is redesigned?
Who are the stakeholders in this process and the key decision makers?
What is the approval process?

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Chris Anderson, a writer at Wired Magazine and author of the influential The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, makes some good points about the insanity of Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, the inadequacy of current approaches to social networking, and the implications of an over-reliance on advertising as a business model. His arguments are useful because entrepreneurs can use them to make concrete business or strategic decisions. He doesn’t use namby pamby qualifications to hedge his bets and predictions. I do have a huge doubt about Anderson’s conclusions though.

First, Anderson argues that social networking should be a feature, not a destination. I agree wholeheartedly. The ability to interact with friends, share content, and engage in self-expression should be standard features on most websites. The unique methods of encouraging creative online behaviors known as Web 2.0 will filter through the rest of the Internet and, soon, your grandfather’s favorite website will allow him to engage in “social networking.”

Second, Anderson cites stats regarding advertising revenues or costs from Myspace (NWS-A), Facebook, and Ning. He shows that monolithic social networks like Myspace and Facebook, which attempt to be all things to all people, are having immense struggles with selling advertising at worthwhile rates. He also implies that Ning’s niche vertical social networks built by customers command higher advertising rates. Some marketers happily pay the higher rates because the engagement level is greater on these niche vertical networks. Advertisers also prefer the more intelligent targeting of relevant audiences. Myspace, Facebook, Bebo (TWX), and other undifferentiated mass networks are actively trying to improve their targeting abilities so it will be interesting to watch this competition evolve.

Finally, Anderson asks a pointed question about Facebook’s implied $15 billion valuation when Microsoft (MSFT) bought a small percentage of the company a few months ago. If Facebook is struggling to target its advertising and improve its advertising revenues, does its gargantuan valuation make sense? I think Zuckerberg should take the money and run. I also think that Lee Lorenzen, a venture capitalist, and his prediction that Facebook is worth $100 billion is a case of shrewd exaggeration. What I think is most funny is the fact that all of Lorenzen’s fanboys, the self-branded “social app gurus” and developers of tiny Facebook apps are all eagerly drinking the spiked punch. There are few better examples of confirmation bias in action.

My main problem with Anderson’s analysis is his implied assumption that the currently high advertising rates the niche vertical social networks enjoy will stay relatively high. Based on his personal experience, he concludes that Ning’s advertising rates are greater than Facebook’s and Myspace by at least a factor of ten. I don’t think this will last. Web 2.0 methods are precisely that, methods. They can be products, but they are also methods or general, conceptual best practices. As such, the ability to create robust social networks for different verticals will diffuse to a critical mass of software engineers. As that process accelerates, social networks and features of social networking will become commonplace or commoditized. I’ve alluded to the commoditization of social networking applications, which is a related problem. When this process nears its peak, advertising rates for all social networks will have diminished drastically. Self-proclaimed “social app gurus” and “social network gurus” who have staked their futures on social networking will ultimately prove themselves as less than prudent.

I can only get Google Analytics to work about half the time these days (I get an messagewhen trying to login that says “An Error Has Been Detected”).

This is happening for every site I monitor (which is significant). I don’t know if this is just a problem for me or if other people are seeing it as well but it’s really frustrating.

I can only get Google Analytics to work about half the time these days (I get an messagewhen trying to login that says “An Error Has Been Detected”).

This is happening for every site I monitor (which is significant). I don’t know if this is just a problem for me or if other people are seeing it as well but it’s really frustrating.

Post written by: Russ Page The media markets Seth Godin said it better than I’ve been trying to say for months. “The media markets. The product they sell is drama.” He continues . . . There isn’t media bias in favor of Hillary (my friend Jeff is the first to point that out). Nor is there media bias [...]

The technology sector gets a big surprise with Microsoft (MSFT) announcing that it will cease to pursue the acquisition of Yahoo! (YHOO). Most analysts and market pundits expected Jerry Yang & Company would ultimately accept a deal, albeit at a higher price than Microsoft’s initial offer. Expect Yahoo! stock to take a precipitous plunge at the market open and the announcement of class action lawsuits from its larger shareholders. While this saga of two tech giants unwinds, plenty of news in the rest of the tech sector deserves attention.

The Nasdaq Composite continues to roar back from the recent market slide with a strong 2.2% gain last week. This makes my tech market bifurcation thesis look increasingly faulty. The bellwether technology issues have performed well as predicted, but so has the middle tier and even the bottom tier. International growth accounts for much of the resilience and strong performance. Technology companies reporting satisfactory or better results included Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a business processing outsourcing and information technology services firm, Ansys (ANSS), a provider of engineering simulation software, Expedia (EXPE), the online travel e-commerce company, TeleCommunication Systems (TSYS), a provider of carrier-class wireless technology, Concur Technologies (CNQR), a maker of expense management software, LoopNet (LOOP), a website for commercial real estate listings, and Symantec (SYMC), the security software giant.

What about the rest of the market? Hallelujah! The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, has openly stated that the worst of the recent credit crisis has passed. Many value lemmings and growth copycats will take this as reason to dive back into the market with enthusiasm. Indeed, we are an eager shareholder society and investing is both pastime and profession. Investing might very well be religion. It is so for the pilgrims that never miss the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) annual pow-wow to join in the proceedings presided over by high priests Buffett and Munger. The event occurred just this past week and, as usual, Buffett warned shareholders of smaller future returns for Berkshire. This warning is coming from the greatest investor alive, the prophet of profit, and the diminishing returns doctrine is probably the one part of the gospel the congregation finds hard to believe. We’ve all grown accustomed to his ability to outperform and deliver us from the evil of poor returns.

Macro

American taxpayers should be receiving their economic stimulus checks in the coming weeks. Will this provide the country with a sudden explosion of consumer spending? The bureaucrats in Washington believe that the increased spending will pull us out of the recent economic slump. But what will we probably do with our returned tax dollars? For the legions of homeowners who have seen the value of their most significant asset plummet in price, will they put the check towards a mortgage payment? Robert Shiller, the economist and father of the Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller housing price index, predicts that housing declines have not come to an end and further declines could exceed the damage suffered during the Great Depression. In that scenario, homeowners on the brink of mortgage default would just walk away and spend their stimulus checks elsewhere instead of holding onto homes with values underwater.

Micro

Interactive Intelligence profit drops, sales rise - Confirmation bias, the cognitive error whereby investors search only for evidence that confirms their beliefs, is a very common mistake. With the second paragraph of this post, I run the risk of committing the more surreal non-confirmation bias, whereby I cite only evidence that refutes my tech market bifurcation thesis. So I best avoid this masochistic foible by pointing to Interactive Intelligence’s (ININ) somewhat disappointing earnings report. The company’s call center management software generated record sales but profits actually declined from the year ago quarter. There has been much debate about where corporations cut back expenditures in recessionary or slowing economic environments. The consensus is that advertising is the first thing cut. I don’t think so; I believe that short-sighted corporations tend to cut customer service functions and budgets. If true, ININ remains in trouble. Full Disclosure: I currently have a long or short position in ININ in one or more of my private investment partnerships.

MicroStrategy 1Q profit declines as operating expenses rise - Here is another case of a technology company that was able to grow sales while seeing profits decline. Are second-tier technology companies losing pricing and negotiation power? Are large corporate customers taking advantage of the slowing economy as an opportunity to demand better terms from technology suppliers? I remember when MicroStrategy (MSTR) generated as much hype as Salesforce.com (CRM); the promise of business intelligence software was as big as sales management software. Michael Saylor’s company took investors on an 18.6% dip last Friday.

Sohu 1Q profit soars with rising brand ad, online game sales - Last week, I profiled Sohu.com (SOHU), a Chinese Internet portal and online gaming company. Since then, the company reported record results and the stock rose an astonishing 25.6% in the space of five trading days. Sohu.com’s TianLong Babu massive multiplayer online game has become a best seller. The long term prospects for this company should be extremely bright and so are the long term prospects for the gaming industry in Asia. However, buyers of the stock now would be paying premium prices.

Perfect World Collaborates with Intel and Haier - Perfect World (PWRD) is another online gaming company based in China. The new alliances with Intel (INTC) and Haier give it some serious marketing muscle to push its massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs). They’re usually called “massively multiplayer online role playing games” (MMORPGs) but I’m going to keep it short and sweet. I’m also going to assume that future large scale games will not all be role playing game formats. Someone is going to produce a smash hit with a massive scale first person shooter like Halo.

Dolby posts higher Q2 profit; raises 2008 view - I used to take the public bus to high school in the ghetto and pass by the red brick building that houses Dolby Laboratories (DLB). San Francisco was an interesting place to grow up. One minute I’m riding the bus through the South of Market neighborhood and checking out the shingles of creative technology companies and the next minute I’m riding through the ghetto looking at beat up cars and pit bulls loosely chained behind chain link fences. Unlike in the digital video space, where scores of competing codecs vie for dominance, the digital audio space is in fact dominated by Dolby technology.

AgFeed Industries Completes Previously Announced Acquisition - China’s economy is bound to slow down just a bit as global macro factors diminish the competitive advantage of its low cost labor force. Nevertheless, population growth is unlikely to slow much and all those billions of hungry mouths to feed bode well for food companies. AgFeed Industries (FEED) produces hog feed and chicken feed. The company is aggressively expanding into hog raising and turning itself into a vertically integrated food producer.

Many economists think we are already n the middle of a recession, or we’re quickly heading into one. I’m no economist, but it’s obvious that things are definitely tightening up. Gas prices are sky high. The housing crisis and credit crunch have people worried. Many companies are cutting back on their marketing spending, just as a precaution.

In uncertain times, you’ve got to tighten up the marketing budget, right? Actually, no. The smart marketers understand that this is the time to crank up your marketing efforts. Why? If there is a smaller pie, you’ve got to fight harder for your share. Secondly, if you do it right, you can swoop in and grab up market share while your competitors are huddled in the corner in the fetal position.

I’m not telling you to spend like it’s 1999. You’ve got to be smart about where you spend your marketing dollars. Your specific marketing/media plan will depend on your target market and your specific objectives, but generally, you should focus on measurable, direct impact marketing media. Start with the stuff that will bring in actual sales now, not feel-good branding campaigns that might yield sales at some future date.

Here are a few tried and true marketing tactics that you can use to succeed in good times or bad:

Search Engine Optimization
If your website shows up on the first page of results for your keywords, you will get a constant flow of customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Aside from the increased traffic and sales, owning the organic search listings builds your reputation as a leader in your industry.

PPC Search Marketing
Pay per click search advertising offers a lot more targeting control than organic search. Sure, you have to pay for every click, but you’re only paying for the clicks you want. Plus you can limit your campaign to specific geographic regions or time of day. Have a professional set up and manage your campaign and you’ll see a huge difference in results. Make sure you’re using the right match types, including applicable negative matches to weed out the junk.

PPC Contextual Advertising
Many people assume that content network ads don’t perform as well as search. This is true some of the time, but not always. Average cost per click is often lower with contextual ads, so you can achieve comparable results to your search ads even if the conversion rate is lower. However, just because you can display your search ads in the content network doesn’t mean you should. Since people seeing these ads didn’t necessarily search on your keywords, you need to use an ad that matches their frame of mind.

Affiliate Marketing
Get 1000’s of websites to promote your wares and only pay for completed sales. That’s the allure of affiliate marketing. It’s a lot harder than it sounds to get it right, but if you are generous with your payouts and treat your affiliates right, this channel can make a huge impact to your company’s sales numbers.

Email Marketing
Build a list of customers and prospects and send them valuable information, and good offers. Customize your offers to their specific needs and let them know how you can help them. This is a good time to maximize your house list and nurture your relationships with existing customers. They say it costs 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing customer, so it’s a no brainer.

Joint Ventures
It’s smart to use your own customer list to its fullest, and it’s also smart to leverage the loyal customer base of partner companies. Pay your partner a commission for sales they generate, or cross-promote their products to your customer list.

Direct Mail
Response rates for direct mail campaigns are way down, and non-targeted campaigns are usually a waste, but if you target the right list with the right message and the right offer, DM can be golden. If all your competitors are sending email, a personalized letter in the mail will stand out.

Customize your marketing plan to meet your objectives. Test EVERYTHING. Ditch the stuff that doesn’t work and increase spending on the stuff that works. Don’t let the stupid recession get in the way or reaching your success!

“@kevinrose how do I get you to follow me back???” - anonymous self-proclaimed “social app guru”

This is Part 2 of a series that explores the science of Social Media Measurement. Let me preface this post by saying that this is a lighthearted post trying to come up with a simple measurement regarding a hugely successful social web service.

Previously, I explored the measurement of popularity, novelty, and attention on the very popular crowdsourcing news aggregation site Digg. My post was based on an arcane academic study involving the half-life of popularly “dugg” items. It turns out that stories frantically “dugg” by Digg members that make it to the coveted front page have a half-life of only 69 minutes. That’s a lot of work for a relatively short period of attention. Having that knowledge should prove useful to some marketers.

Why do we want to be able to measure social media? Why should we attempt to develop metrics? The ability to measure our efforts gives us valuable information to guide changes or course adjustments. It gives us baseline comparisons to measure against. It allows us to set measurable goals. It also helps us to make decisions when considering outside consulting help. In the social media space, there is a preponderance of self-styled “social media gurus” or “social app gurus” who try to trade off of non-existent influence. Like snake oil salesmen, they make grand claims about their reputation and expertise but their products or services are essentially worthless. Perhaps a few hard measurements could help marketers and advertisers identify the frauds from the really reputable experts.

This time around, I’d like to keep it a little lighter with a simple measurement I came up with to measure that amorphous quality called influence. This is a light-hearted attempt and nothing nearing the scientific exactitude I cited in my previous post. I consider influence as much more important than popularity, novelty, or attention. Indeed, influence implies popularity and attention. More specifically, I’m measuring influence on the hugely popular Web service known as Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging or mobile blogging service that essentially asks the question, “What are you doing right now?” When used correctly, it can be a helpful service for networking, sharing ideas, and staying abreast of buzz.

Twitter’s format is conducive to understanding and measuring influence because of its reciprocal structure of “follows” that makes for easy measurement. You can elect to “follow” other members of the Twitter service. Every time someone you are following “tweets” about something, you will get that update on your cell phone. People who elect to follow you are “followers.” Your followers get an update every time you twitter about what you’re doing or thinking.

Initially, most people “follow” their friends and family but eventually move to following other people on the Twitter network. Implicitly, people follow each other because they find each other interesting. I wouldn’t want to be following someone who is telling me and the whole world, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

There is a small group of highly influential members of Twitter that are so interesting and have such important thoughts to share that they quickly draw a whole army of “followers.” Their follower bases grow organically, naturally, and virally because they add a lot of value to the network and their followers. They don’t need to actively campaign for followers. Not surprisingly, their follower base is much larger than the number of people they follow.

There is also a larger group of sycophantic, self-branded “social media gurus” or “social app gurus” that have very little actual influence. We all know a few of these “leaches” and if they weren’t so spammy, they’d actually be mildly amusing. They are actively trying to get more followers. They spend a lot of time in self-promotion mode. They kiss your butt and play nice so that you might decide to follow them. They trade “follows” like high schoolers in a popularity contest. So instead of “I’ll vote you for best looking if you vote me for most popular,” they say “I’m following you so will you please follow me too?”

Not all “social media gurus” are frauds. However, you can spot the ones that are frauds when they try to build their follower base by asking truly influential Twitter members questions like this, “@kevinrose how do I get you to follow me back???” This is one case of a self-proclaimed “social app guru” asking Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and a member of Twitter, to follow him. How inane is this? Please get a life.

So let’s get right into the Twitter Influence Ratio. It’s very simple really and very similar to the price to earnings or PE Ratio found in stock investing. In the financial PE Ratio - you get an idea of how much in earnings you getting for every dollar you pay for the stock. It’s a nice, convenient measure of how much value you’re getting or your bang for the buck.

Stock Price / Earnings = PE Ratio

EMC Corporation: 15.56 / 0.77 = 20.21

In the above example, EMC Corporation (EMC), a data storage company, saw its stock close at a price of $15.56 for the day. During the last twelve months, EMC earned $0.77 per share. Dividing $15.56 by 77 cents gets you a PE Ratio of about 20.21 - pretty simple right? Essentially, what the PE Ratio tells you is that for EMC Corporation stock, you are paying approximately $20.21 for every one dollar of earnings. Like I said, bang for your buck.

With the Twitter Influence Ratio, we’re going to try and get a read on someone’s true influence level. It stands to reason that if you are interesting, have neat thoughts, and add value to the network, people will naturally gravitate to you and “follow you.” Some of the most influential members of Twitter have many more followers than people they follow. So the Twitter Influence Ratio will attempt to express this relationship as;

Followers / Following = Twitter Influence Ratio

Example: 533 / 609 = 0.875

In the above example, one such self-branded “social app guru” has 533 followers and is following 609 others. This gives him a Twitter Influence Ratio of only 0.875 which means this person is not very influential. Intuitively, you ought to have more followers interested in what you have to say than the number of people you’re following. One might say that 533 followers is nothing to sneeze at. I agree, but the fact that this person has so many followers and is following so many more makes it highly probable that he is what is known as a “friend whore” or “follow whore.” Like the desperate high schooler, he’s just trading votes. Someone with a TI Ratio of less than 1 but is only following 30 others is probably not out there actively trading votes or follows. If I were looking for a consultant, I would run away from this guy and find someone more influential.

Let’s take a look at some folks who are truly influential. The aforementioned Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, is one of the most influential members of Twitter. As of this writing, he has a Twitter Influence Ratio of:

18,416 / 72 = 255.77

The Twitter Influence Ratio attempts to give you a sense of how influential someone is. In Kevin Rose’s case, for every one person he follows, he has just over 255 persons following him.

Justine Ezarik, or iJustine, a talented web designer is another influential member of Twitter:

12,652 / 1,047 = 12.084 Twitter Influence Ratio for iJustine

Of course, the TI Ratio doesn’t always work. If I claimed that it did always work, you could peg me as one of those phony, self-branded “social media gurus.” In the case of Robert Scoble, one of the most influential journalists and bloggers in the technology industry, he actually has a really low TI Ratio:

20,939 /21,243 = 0.985

Scoble’s a journalist so he has to follow as many people as possible to get the scoop. He is basically following as many people as he has followers. His Twitter Influence Ratio is almost a ratio of 1.

Well, there you go, the Twitter Influence Ratio is not a perfect measure of influence. But it does give you a sense of who is truly influential and who is just pretending. OK, this will probably be the last time you here me talk about the Twitter Influence Ratio. Tell that “social media guru” or “social app guru” you know to stop his Twitter spam before you “unfollow” him!

Update: I just found someone, Andreas Gohr, who wrote a script to tell you if someone on Twitter is likely to be a spammer. It’s based on the same principles as the Twitter Influence Ratio and is very well thought out. It helps classify users on Twitter in these categories: Newbie or Social Climber, Twitter Spammer, Twitter Caster, Notable, and Socially Healthy. Good stuff. My friend, the “social app guru” is definitely a Twitter Spammer.

Post written by: Russ Page Jazz fans unite Obviously somebody made this before the Jazz went up 2-0 on the Rockets… poor sap.

Post written by: Russ Page Dear Zappos: A letter of concern Dear Zappos.com: I recently visited your website to look at a new pair of dress shoes. I’m a particular fan of Ben Sherman shoes, so I did a search and found this page. To my surprise there was a great marketing photo next to the results showing [...]

A few months ago I posted about the horrible UI experience when trying to buy a printer on the HP website.

Here is another example.  But instead of coming from a big company that you would expect to be clueless it is from sphinn a forum on internet marketing

Not only do they make you go back and try to remember some math problem from fifth grade.  They also make you decrypt a secret code.  I tried to make it through the registration 5 times before I realized my encrypted code was actually case sensitive-it seems like that would be an important detail to include.

So the point of this is that with any transaction the risk must be shared.  If consumers are carrying too much of the risk they will sense that and go away.  Traditionally companies pass on the risk to the consumer with restrictive return policies, expensive warranties, etc.  Typically the lower the price the more of the risk you will inherit.

In this transaction they obviously don’t want to pay somebody to go through every account and moderate them and make sure they are legit.  So they are passing on the pain in the transaction to real users.  I pay the price because they don’t want to pay another forum moderator.

I tried to create an account 5 times before I cracked the code.  How many times would you try?

How are you frustrating your customers and making your job easier? how long do they have to wait at your call center?  How many questions on your contact us form are for you and not them?  What are you charging for that you should be giving away?  Just because a few people abuse a service that is offered doesn’t mean you need to make a policy about it. You should be finding ways to make it easier for your customers every step of the way.

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Talk of a recession is not going unnoticed by the average American. We already seem to be staying home, driving less and cutting back on things like entertainment, food and travel. The government’s effort to curb this prediction is to offer the individual economic stimulus package, giving about $1,200 per couple. While exciting on the receiving end, I am interested to see if this one time “gift” is really going to get us out there buying any of the great new products marketers are ready to launch.

When consumers are pinching their pennies, what is the best way to introduce a product they don’t really need? The answer maybe found in a simple marketing strategy that has fallen by the way side in the last 10 years.

Coupons. Coupons, Coupons, Coupons.

A recent study from ICOM Information and Communications says that of the more than 1,500 survey respondents, 67 percent said they were much more likely or somewhat more likely to use coupons during a recession.

Picture this, Suzie Homemaker is frustrated with her broom and dustpan. She has seen several commercials for the brand new Swifter Vac, II. She wants to try it but an additional $25 or $30 to her grocery bill will put her over her tight budget. Next, factor in a $5 off coupon sent to Suzie because she opted in to receive weekly emails from P&G. You now have a much better chance of getting Suzie to invest in your new product. Also, you can track every step the coupon makes, evaluating along the way if the strategy is working.

Bottom line, let’s mobilize the penny pinchers. Let’s give them a reason to buy our new product or service. There is no need for manufacturers to send out more coupons. They do however, need to focus on sending them to the right individuals and maybe consider extending expiration dates.

The use of Internet search engines has become so pervasive, so matter-of-fact, that top public relations and communications professionals are blending Search Engine Optimization strategies and tactics with PR efforts.

Successfully deployed, these SEO PR tactics help create greater relevance for a product, service and/or company within the proprietary algorithms used by search engines (Google and Yahoo! being the most prominent) and produce a higher “organic” ranking for the particular words, terms and/topics. (In this context, organic ranking refers to a non-paid ranking or listing that occurs naturally.)

Hence, the savvy PR pro will sprinkle critical SEO terms and words within news releases and other PR materials. And just to be clear about this, this concept is just one SEO PR tactic that will help increase one’s results/rankings on the Internet.

Does it work? You bet.

How do I know?

Well . . . we got a call just the other day from a marketing communications exec working for a medical products company in the Midwest. We had never spoken before nor had we ever attempted to contact this person or company.

How did she find us? Obviously, with an online search.

Her search term (in Google) was “medical products PR agencies.” And if you try out the same search right now (please open another browser window to do this), you’ll find that the fourth (4th) organic link on the first page is about Politis Communications. (And you’ll get the same results if you change the word “agencies” to “agency.”)

Interestingly, this marcom person didn’t even visit our Website first; she apparently found the agency phone number within the release (801/523-3730) and called right away.

Does it mean that we’ve won the account? No. But she is going to send us a formal RFP (Request for Proposal).

Yup, all from a single news release published nearly 5-1/2  years ago.

This is just one example, but the truth is that if you are NOT crafting news releases and other marketing communications materials that are (or might be) published on the Web with SEO strategies and tactics in mind (and Search Engine Marketing strategies/tactics as well), you are doing yourself, your company and/or your clients a HUGE DISSERVICE!

TIP:

Selectively look for opportunities to weave SEO-friendly words, terms and phrases into all of your PR and marketing materials.

This will increase the chance that you will naturally boost your rankings within the various search engines when people search for your type of products/services on the Internet.

And that’s a very good thing.  

In catching up on other industry-related blogs, I’ve neglected to update The Betty Factor. My sincerest apologies; a real update is coming soon!

So! In the meantime, I want to highlight a blog post I recently read written by Jennifer Patterson over at Small Agency Diary that really taps into small agency culture through a story about — of all things — a squishy carpet.  It’s a testament to the career path many  us have chosen and I just wanted to share! I’ll check back in soon.

There was a time at the agency when the floor squished as you walked from reception into the kitchen. The squish eventually migrated from reception to one of the offices and soon became a sort of character in the office. People would come in and ask “What’s the squish-factor today?”

When the squish was vacuumed out, we lost more than a water-logged floor. We lost a part of our culture.

This sounds absurd, but anyone who works at a small agency will know this to be true. At a small agency, we’re used to communing with the elements. Those little inconveniences are part of day-to-day work life. At a large agency, these inconveniences are efficiently handled — there are plans, there is a person whose job it is to deal with the squish. At a small agency, you just keep squishing along.

We never really mentioned the squish to outsiders. After all, no client wants to hire a (literally or figuratively) sinking agency.

But I am here to say the squish is worth something.

Small-agency culture is all about creativity and spontaneity. On a given day you deal with the highest altitude issues of client’s brand and business and the lowest altitude issues like what kind of coffee to buy. But getting your hands dirty with the in’s and out’s of your own business is a great reminder that your client’s business is also about the elements.

Good PR gets Robert Scoble to break news for Cemaphore product. 22 Finalists named for the Utah Innovation Awards. Solera raises $5m from Canopy Group and the MWCN entrepreneur of the year for 2008 award goes to Amy Rees Anderson of Mediconnect Global, Inc.

Jared Youtsey a senior developer from Configuresoft and Warren Wilbee, a Microsoft Architect Evangelist sit down and discuss how to utilize Microsoft’s WorkFlow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation for building workflow enabled service oriented solutions. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications. WF enhances a developer’s ability to model and support business processes. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.

Microsoft ISV Architect Evangelist John Wiese sat down recently with Karl Treier, Chief Technology Architect for Bluespring Software, to talk about building a solution on Microsoft Office Open XML, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows Workflow Foundation, and other Microsoft .NET 3.x Framework technologies. They also had a chance to discuss the benefits of Microsoft Early Adopter Program for ISVs and the ISV Concierge site.

How should SmartClient technology integrate with web solutions? VP Development at Vertafore Chris Kinsman talks with Microsoft Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle about how and why SmartClient deployment of Windows Forms deliver the most value to its financial services customers in the AMS 360 product. And he describes how the Software + Services (S+S) company uses Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 in Windows Server 2008 to the update the data center.

Are you trying to produce a fantastic user experience on the Web? Come spend 15 minutes with Kapil Tundwal and Mohan Dhandapani from Quark’s emerging technologies and Warren Wilbee (ISV Architect Evangelist for Microsoft). Their discussion provides a crisp view of the real world experience of a large software company who is leveraging Silverlight for use with their commercial software package

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, released to manufacturing recently is designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments. It enables customers to choose the right deployment model for their specific business and IT needs with flexibility to change deployment models over time. Sanjay Jain sits down with Doug Wofford President & CEO, and Keith Beindorf VP Product Development of 422 Group to discuss their insights into build/buy/partner decision making process as well as share some key learning and experiences on developing with the MS CRM 4.0 platform.

There are ordinary products that, when touched by the right spokesperson, are plucked out of obscurity and land center stage in the average consumer’s mind. Fueled by this hope, many marketers use product placement in reality TV or even “fake” reality TV shows to launch new or existing products into the limelight.

Examples that come to mind for me include the red Coke glasses on the judges table during American Idol, The Office character, Michael Scott’s love for Chili’s or even references to Fragments.com on BRAVO blog post by Alex, one of the new Real Housewives of New York City.

A recent Ad Age article suggests that product placements are “spectacularly average”, often becoming additional clutter the average viewer has learned to tune out. One quoted ad executive said,

“The best opportunities [for product placement] in reality shows are where real people in true-to-life situations are interacting favorably with the product. If the person is an expert and has credibility in the field, the integration is even stronger.”

After attending two baby showers and a book club this week where the majority of the conversations revolved around the budding TLC show Jon and Katie+8, I would say companies jumping on board opportunities with that show are set to make some extraordinary impressions.

Whether the Jon and Kate are headed to Hershey Chocolate World, the American Girl Factory in NY or just putting the DuraBibs on the multiples before each meal, this show is a perfect opportunity for viewers to see an already entertaining family interact favorably with products. Not to mention that any woman who can keep track of that many toddles becomes an “expert” in the field of parenting to me.

Regardless, I am interested to see how many woman are taking notice of the nanny services Kate is using or the restaurant the family chooses for Jon’s surprise birthday party; I know I am!

William Borghetti, founder and CEO of Sendside Networks, is no stranger to big ideas–he sold his last startup, Campus Pipeline, to Sungard after automating inefficient “stand-in-line” processes at Universities. Now, in the same way FedEx® revolutionized traditional mail with overnight delivery, Sendside Networks aims to provide an entirely new way for individuals and organizations to interact and transact electronically. Borghetti and team see a future where businesses replace paper, postage, and delivery time. Instead Borghetti expects businesses to offer an exchange of rich, interactive messages, documents, even full-blown web applications in a trusted messaging environment free of spam, fraud, and phishing scams.

Borghetti’s shares the story with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and explains why Sendside created an entirely new technology offering for sensitive and confidential communication. Sendside believes SMTP and “bolt-on” solutions (like encryption) just can’t extend SMTP’s life. To protect its vision, Sendside created an IP arsenal filing 16 patents.

Want to send or receive secure messages with complete tracking and guaranteed retraction–even after someone opens it? Sendside Networks opens for public sign-up on April 3, 2008.

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I had a very disappointing experience with a business that uses a strong online presence to both add value to and generate leads for its offline business.  I had been using this company's website - they are a public firm that will, for now, remain nameless.  It's one of the best websites in the industry.  I will admit that I am not, currently, a customer of their offline business services.  However, I assumed the typical quid pro quo - I used their online website (which is primarily a search/index function and did not require a lot of server resources on their part) and gave them permission to market to me, which they did very extensively.

Apparently the "real people"(salespeople) monitor users of the website, and one of them contacted me to "move me along" (I suppose).  I explained I was not currently a candidate to be an immediate client and that I was working with a long time business colleague.  This salesperson took great exception to this and told me that she would disable the account so that I could go and use my colleague's website. 

I wrote her back (and her district manager) and expressed real surprise at this.  I know that I'm not the golden customer (at this time), but the very low marginal cost of "my account" compared to both the value delivered to their current customers as well as the marketing value seemed to combine to create the typical web equation.  In addition, nowhere on the website did it say (that I could find, I will keep looking), that if you didn't convert to a paying client in so much time, then your account would be disabled.  If that is the company's policy, then they should say so upfront.

It is possible that this is their unwritten policy.  It seems to me it is more likely that this is a salesperson beset by difficult times who did not understand the Brand value of the web business.  To her, it was a lead generator, and if I wasn't a hot prospect, then I had to go. 

I made mention in my email that I was sure that her CEO would have been surprised by her attitude as well.  After sending my email, I thought that I would see if I could this company's CEO in my network - just to see how hard it would be to make personal contact. 

I started first with the Stanford GSB network - a fantastic online resource that I routinely praise as a key value Stanford provides for its alumni that other schools would be smart to mimic.  However, no entries for this company turned up.  Second I went to my LinkedIn network.  Voila, on the first page, second entry, there was the CEO of the public company - 3 degrees away from me.   Then I thought I would search LinkedIn for both the company name and for Stanford - sometimes alum forget to update their current employers on the Stanford database, even if their personal info is included. 

And there I hit the jackpot.  The Vice President of Business Development, a Stanford GSB alum, right there in my LinkedIn network.  I took his name and looked it up on the Stanford database - there he was again, no company info, but a personal email and personal info. 

This employee insulted what she apparently thought was a useless Utah "window-shopper" who wasn't turning out to be an immediate revenue generating customer.  Instead, she insulted a person who was 3 degrees away from her CEO, and one degree away from a Vice President at her company.   Should I take it to the VP?  To the CEO?  Should I give them a chance to explain or fix their problem - or just put it out to the blogosphere? 

We know that most unhappy customers and potential customers don't give companies a chance to explain or fix - they just take it to the blogosphere (increasingly, the "complainosphere").  And with reason, customers want great service, they want folks who care, and someone who isn't a revenue generator today, may well be a great customer tomorrow.

Remember, remember, remember, EVERY interaction, no matter how small, may be with someone that your company needs or wants, or at least doesn't want to offend.  Every customer has the power of the web at their fingertips.  Every interaction impacts your brand!  Everyone in your team has to have Customer Respect in their DNA.  As Jim Collins reminds us, "get the right people on the bus".  This company clearly had some wrong people on the bus!!!

I went to Josh's lecture on Marketing: Press, Analysts and the Interweb yesterday and, as always, Josh was insightful and entertaining.  If you don't have a chance to take your buddy to lunch and ask them about their experience building and selling their startup, Josh's lectures are the "next best thing"!

A couple of points he made yesterday:

Everything is your Brand (your receptionist, your hold music, your Blog comments, your voicemail, your business card, your lobby, your powerpoint, the ratty magazines on your coffee table, your mis-spellings, and ESPECIALLY your Customer Support are ALL your brand).  He emphasized that your chance to be acquired or get a big partnership opportunity might pass you by because someone had a bad experience with your brand in some small way.

Josh suggests that Google is "it" in terms of organic web presence and that you need to be on the first page of Google!  Get a great SEO team (and they're NOT all great) to help you.  Watch your revenue climb with your Google Ranking.

He reviewed the relationships in the "analyst" industry.  You can get analysts to listen to your story when you're young and NEW (because then you're news and the analysts look smart to know about you!).  Make sure you share your view of your universe with them.  However, once you get to any decent size (and especially if you're venture backed), the "expectation" is that you will also be a research customer (of course everyone understands there is a "chinese wall" between research customers and analysts....)

PR - do it right.  Remember that only two groups read your Press Releases - the press (sometimes) and your competitors.

Josh's formula for a fool proof Press Release

1) Exciting Headline
2) Exciting Sub-Headline
3) First Paragraphs says "what" and answers the "So-What"
4) Second paragraph has a quote from a 3rd party (analyst, customer, partner etc)
5) Third paragraph no one reads but you have to have on anyway - make it sound good
6) Decent boiler plate about your company (read what the big guys say and imitate them!)

Josh suggests identifying cool press writers and subtly finding ways to offer them an exclusive on an upcoming, exciting press release (with real news).  Then lots of other folks will have to write about you as well! 

Josh's formula:  Press Hits = Money
When Walt did the story on Mozy, he saw their revenue BALLOON (because of course everyone else wanted to write about what Walt writes about!)

Finally - Text, Lies and Media-Hype
Don't believe everything you read in the press and don't jerk around your strategy based on what you read - do some due diligence, call your friends and contacts to find the facts behind the hype.

The Governor's Utah Economic Summit was held on March 20th.  The content was organized by the Governor's Office of Economic Development and included presenters from all over Utah's economy.  Most of the event was recorded, including the Entrepreneurship Track that I participated on.  Other great tracks were also recorded.

The master list of audio tracks from many of the tracks can be found at

http://www.utahpulse.com/featured_article/the_governor's_utah_economic_summit_2008


The Create Team at GOED put together a track on entrepreneurship.  I moderated the first panel of the morning on that track Proving The Need For Your Business and the audio track can be found here.

The second panel of the day was moderated by serial entrepreneur Bob Carter. Building Your Business Support Team and the audio track can be found here.

After lunch, we organized a panel on Funding Your Business Without Investors
and the audio track is here.  I also participated on this panel and it includes a discussion of the Federal SBIR/STTR program, the Utah Centers of Excellence Program, as well as the SBA program.

Finally, Jeremy Nielson of the Utah Fund of Funds conducted a panel on Equity Sources of Funding and the audio track is here.

DAZ Productions is a market leader in 3D graphics software and content creation. DAZ may be most well known for its “Victoria” line of articulated 3D figures and their popular and active Artzone.com community, a social marketplace for sharing art and exchanging ideas.

The DAZ Studio software –available as a free download, allows anyone to create their own 3D digital figures and content. The figures can be loaded into 3D posing and rendering applications to be posed or animated and then rendered. In addition, a wide variety of clothing, hair and other accessories are available for purchase which can be applied to the figures to achieve different looks.A variety of other support content is available from DAZ as well including such categories as vehicles, buildings, trees and plants, furniture, weapons, etc.

Christopher Creek, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, describes the business model to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices, and then persuades Baldwin to pose inside a laser scanner that creates a 3D wire-frame model of his own body in 17 seconds.

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Here’s a podcast of this blog post
Or you can listen to it here:

(The audio is different than what I wrote below)

If you’re using Google Adwords, you’ve probably already seen or heard about the change that’s coming on April 1, 2008:

Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads.

I’ve had a few people ask me about how to deal with this so here are a few thoughts:

1. For People Doing Direct Linking
I have 3 solutions for how to deal with this for people who are direct linking to affiliate programs.
First, get better at adwords than your competitors and out rank them. By out rank them, I mean write a better ad that gets a better CTR and hence a higher ranking ad in google’s results. If you do this, you can use the merchants display url with your affiliate link and your ad will be shown above all other affiliates.

If the merchant is advertising for themselves on your keyword…I don’t really have a solution for you. Very often if you outrank the merchant they’ll get really mad at you for being better than they are at selling their product and they’ll kick you out of their affiliate program.

However, if you’re just competing with other affiliates, writing a better ad will usually do the trick to get your ad shown.

One thing you need to realize in this is that while google doesn’t dislike affiliate marketing, it doesn’t help their core business. Affiliates usually fill an inefficiency in a marketplace. Google doesn’t like inefficiencies and if they can take care of them without having an affiliate in the mix, they’ll be more than happy to do so.

As a direct linking affiliate, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Not that it can’t be fought, but over the years google has shown a consistent pattern of making it more and more difficult to do direct linking as an affiliate.

Knowing this, you can either make the choice to continue doing it, fighting the uphill battle, or you can chose to evolve and do something that google isn’t fighting against.

At this point, it’s like the days when adsense died. Google had made it clear that they didn’t like sites that were made for adsense (MFA sites). At one point they made a change where it became very difficult to continue with the page generator/adsense business model. Smart people changed their model. Others continued doing it because it was the easiest path, and today they’re really struggling (at least…I don’t know anyone who is still succeeding with that model. If you do, I want to know them).

Second, set up your own domain. You have a few options in doing this. You can set up a simple iframe landing page where your domain just has a page with an iframe on it. The src= part of the iframe is your affiliate link. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know how google is going to deal with it with their new rules. But, doing this, you can have your display URL be the same as the actual page where the person ends up (because they’re on your website).

Another option for your own landing page is to try and add value to the transaction you’re trying to create. As an affiliate, you’re trying to get person A (buyer) to buy product B. If all you’re doing is providing a link to product B, you’re not adding very much value to that transaction.

However, if you can give person A a reason to buy product B (You give this reason on your website), now you’re adding value to the transaction and now you’re starting to build a business for yourself.

In doing this, you leave the realm of people google is fighting against and join the side of people google likes…information providers.

Google knows that the first reason someone goes online is to find information. It’s always super simple to find someone who will sell you something, google knows that. They also know that it’s much more difficult to find someone who will give you good information without selling you something (or even someone who will give you good information before selling you something).

They also know that the first 2 steps in the buying process (browers and then shoppers) are looking for information. If you can be a voice that someone trusts in those first 2 steps, they’re very likely to trust you when they’re ready to whip out their credit card.

So how do you give a person a reason to buy?
Here are a few ideas:

• Write reviews that tell the person which product is the best
• Solve a problem the person has and give them the solution if they buy through your affiliate link
• Give them a free something (report, mp3, video…) that partly solves their problem, and then tell them to buy product B to completely solve their problem
• Write about your personal experience with product B and how it solved your problem and how it will solve their problem too

There are a ton of ways to add value to the transaction. I think most affiliates who are doing direct linking would be surprised to see their conversion rates go up after creating a good landing page.

Third, try cloaking.
You can set up a landing page that just has content on it that’s related to your keywords so that google will give you a high quality score, and then cloak that page (either by a redirect or a straight cloak…there’s software that will do this for you) to go to your affiliate link. This will allow you to pass that visitor on to the final landing page (not your own url) but will have google think that the person actually is landing on your url (so your destination URL is your domain, and google thinks the person is going to end up on your domain (so they’re ok with it for their new rules), but the person actually ends up on the final landing page through your affiliate url).

Just be warned. This can be tricky, it is considered black hat, Google doesn’t like it, and it can get you in trouble.

Lots of people do it.

That’s all I’m going to say about it.

2. For people using adwords for testing
Brian Todd wrote a good piece on how to split test url’s using Adwords even with google’s new rules.

Read it.

3. Go use Yahoo/MSN
Obviously this isn’t a way to deal with Google’s new rules, but I think that most affiliate just blatantly ignore Yahoo/MSN ppc.

Mistake.

While there isn’t as much traffic from either of those as there is from google, and both of their systems are more difficult to use, I consistently find that the traffic I get converts better. Less money spent + more conversions = higher ROI (Yes, I understand that it doesn’t always mean higher profits).

Conclusion
As far as I can tell, what they’ve said is that this will effect “NEW” ads that are created after April 1. It shouldn’t (not yet) affect things you’ve done in the past. But, if google is moving this direction, you better believe that at some point they’ll make this rule retroactive.

This is a good point for affiliate marketers using adwords to make a decision about what they’re going to do in the future with their businesses. As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s time to evolve.

Let me know your thoughts.

I love a good story, and to me a good story can become great when it

*  Involves a real person,

*  Who overcomes adversity and/or long odds, and

*  Achieves success.

Jason Alba fits into the great story category.

Without going into all the details, Jason’s a tech guy with an MBA under his belt who found himself out of work in January 2006. After several months of unsuccessfully looking for ajob to meet his skill-sets and needs, he decided to branch out onto his own by launching JibberJobber.com — a Web-based solution to help others out of work manage their job-seeking efforts.

Picking up on repeated questions he heard about the benefits (if any) of LinkedIn, the social networking site, Jason wrote a book entitled simply enough, I’m on LinkedIn. Now What? Recently he published a second book: I’m On Facebook. Now What?

By themselves, these are positive steps in what sounds like a decent personal turnaround story. But Jason’s taken his entrepreneurial efforts beyond the basic “woe is me” story to the “I’m doing pretty okay now” with his fairly tireless self-promotional efforts.

His most recent hit? A very nice 3-25-08 write-up in U.S. News & World Report entitled: “Boosting Your Sales with Social Networking.”

As proven by the USNWR story (as well as by inclusion in stories from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others), Jason has now transformed himself into a sought-after expert — in essence, a brand unto himself.

Congrats, Jason. That’s good news for you, and for those seeking your advice/assistance as well.

This was my response to a recent profnet on viral marketing for small companies.  I thought it was worth sharing.

The larger your potential audience the harder it is to make something become viral.  The problem is that we all have the same base interests but our higher level interests are weird and varied.  Everyone watches when somebody starts to take their clothes off, but only a few people are interested in bird watching or canoe making.  So as a small business if you are marketing to everyone in America between 20 – 30 and you want to stand out then you are in big trouble.  There are millions of people competing for the attention of the audience and they are all using tactics focused on the base interests of the masses.  But if you narrow that audience to a tiny niche that is made up of your very best customers creating something just for them making something viral becomes very easy.   I like to focus my clients not on building an audience but on building a congregation.  An audience tunes in occasionally but has no loyalty.  A congregation is much smaller but more passionate.  A congregation will evangelize you to their sphere of influence.  A congregation will forgive some of your mistakes.  So if I am a small company with a niche product and I want to create something viral my first step is to build a congregation.  The second step is to give that congregation what they want.  Once you have done this making something spread virally through this congregation and the people they influence will be easy.  It is much better to have a few hundred people who are crazy about your products than a few thousand people who are familiar with them.

I found this page a minute ago while looking for images of canoe’s. “The Strippers Guide to Canoe Building” I thought it was a perfect title.

I thought this picture was just too amazing not to post - brilliant marketing

“Our target market is men who will die someday”

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Footnote.com is adding social media tools to The Vietnam Memorial, one of the most recognized memorials in Washington, D.C. For those who have visited the wall, you know finding names is not easy. Nor does a visit to the wall allow you to learn more about the many people and heros who served.

Footnote.com’s new social media version of The Vietnam Memorial brings The Vietnam Memorial inside the comfort of your own home. By creating a searchable image of The Wall, now it’s easy to find friends, family or names. Once found, Footnote.com allows you to search the details about soldiers, post stories about fallen comrades and even upload pictures of service men and women. By adding social media to The Vietnam Memorial, the conversation about the individuals listed can continue and honor can be extended to those who fell while rendering service.

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Cydni Tetro and Colin Kelly talk about key events this week. Including the release of the Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs from vSpring Capital. It is a peer nominated and peer selected group of individuals that the community predicts will be a CTO or CEO of a high tech company in the next 5 years. This is the 5th year of the program. In addition, the University of Utah was rated 2nd behind only MIT in the number of technology spin-offs based on university research. MIT had 23 and the University of Utah had 20.

As CMO of StoryRock Electronic Publishing, Sharlene Hawkes wants every service man and woman to have a Remember My Service digital yearbook that highlights their military experience. And this former Miss America and one of the first female, on-air, ESPN sportscasters certainly has the energy and passion to make it happen.

As Hawkes points out, the military is capturing hours of video content that isn’t being used. In addition, the tools available today to bring stories to life makes it easy to create a digital publication that i