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March 5, 2008

The Widget Bell Curve

by: Josh Hawkins

No matter how you slice it, the numbers are compelling. MySpace now has over 110 million users and Facebook just passed 65 million. And the demographic profile is prime with the majority of users falling into the 18-35 bucket.

Continue reading "The Widget Bell Curve" »

February 24, 2008

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

by: danah boyd

When I was last in DC, I had lunch with Daniel Solove and we were talking about book publishing. He had been thinking of making his book downloadable under Creative Commons and I was like DO IT DO IT! This is the kind of book that is sooo relevant so many different audiences who would never hear about it through traditional advertising. My thought is that if it were available online, it could whet folks appetite before buying it (cuz printing it out is painful and reading it online is not wonderful either and your Kindle doesn't support PDFs). Introducing...

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February 14, 2008

Changing Your Marketing Mindset: 12 Steps to the Interactive Future

by: Christian Smagg

Marketing_to_social_web_bookWe recently touched on the subjects of the many forms of web marketing tactics that could potentially be utilised as part of your digital marketing arsenal as well as the effectiveness and increased use of these online tools. So while we are on the topic of integrating innovative techniques into your marketing plan, let's consider this from a broader, more strategic perspective, rather than a pure tactical point of view.

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February 6, 2008

Our Prejudiced Brains

by: Roger Dooley

Years ago, I worked with a group of field representatives selling industrial equipment, and found that many had interesting adaptations to local culture in different parts of the U.S. One based in Texas always kept a Western-cut sheepskin jacket in his car. If he was visiting a plant in a remote location, he'd shed the suit coat he wore in Dallas and put on the rugged-looking jacket.

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January 3, 2008

New Year's top resolution: Managing your online reputation!

by: Christian Smagg

Well, 2008 has arrived, along with the New Year's resolutions and the ever-present pundit predictions. Now that we're on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies' top priorities - and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.

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December 13, 2007

Word of Mouth Versus Key Influencers

by: Guy Kawasaki

This summary of an article from the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (good luck finding the issue online because I couldn’t) says that common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than “key influencers.” Which is to say that sucking up to A-list bloggers may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. It seems like it’s bad day for celebrity endorsements.

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December 2, 2007

Must see video: "We Think" vs."The Cult of the Amateur"

by: Alain Thys

Have you ever wondered what would happen if  We Think's Charles Leadbeater would meet Silicon Valley's self-proclaimed anti-christ Andrew Keen who's written The Cult of the Amateur ?

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November 16, 2007

A Little Less Conversation ... (slideshow)

by: Alain Thys

A few weeks ago I spoke in the Netherlands at a Marktplein 2.0: A Little Less Action, A Little More Conversation, a conference, which essentially wanted to encourage (direct) marketers to engage in conversations with the consumer, rather than just shout at him.   Confronted with the hyperbolic language of the conference brochure indicating the "'newness" fo the conversation phenomenon, I couldn't resist the jab of inverting the title of the conference for my keynote.  In stead of talking about conversations with customers, I think it's time marketers got out of their office and actually had them.

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Gluttonous Texting

by: danah boyd

For peculiar historical business reasons, Americans and Canadians pay to receive text messages. This creates a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 (or use up a precious token msg in your plan) simply by deciding to send you something. You have no choice. There's no blocking, no opt-out. Direct to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

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November 15, 2007

The Purpose Driven Blog

by: David Armano

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question. Should digital agencies be blogging? I mean, we are out there advising clients on "social media" and how it's evolving the way we interact with brands and each other. Some folks felt that the question was silly. Isn't this a no brainer? Well, not exactly. The best part of the post came in the comments (no surprise) and the post itself got picked up by several agencies who use internal blogs to discuss issues like this. This means that they are having conversations in private vs. publicly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But wouldn't you like to be fly on that agency's wall? I would.

Continue reading "The Purpose Driven Blog" »

Conference Highlight: Marketing3 in the Netherlands

by: Alain Thys

If you've ever wondered what would happen if CGM pessimist Andrew Keen (Cult of the amateur) would encounter a collaborative creativity evangelist like Charles Leadbeater, you can find out for yourself on November 28 at Marketing3 in the Netherlands.

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November 10, 2007

Yahoo, the "Moral Pygmy" problem and reputation on the Internet

by: Dominic Basulto

Morally_you_are_pygmies One minute you're the CEO of one of the most powerful Internet companies in the world, the next you're a "moral pygmy" being disgraced by media publications all over the world. Reputation on the Internet can be difficult to measure, and even more difficult to protect.

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October 27, 2007

We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes

by: Karl Long

Todd linked to this excellent viral homage to some of the notable viral videos of the last few years. Believe me they list a hell of a lot, but what I found interesting was the number of deliberate commercial “virals” for want of a better word. These are the companies/people that managed to achieve what I believe is quite a feat, to launch a deliberate campaign that “goes viral”.

Continue reading "We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes" »

October 24, 2007

Guinness has hidden an ad online

by: Karl Long

Guinness has added a little twist to its latest advertising campaign and have hidden it online somewhere for someone to find. In good old ARG (alternate reality game) tradition they have started this game off with a couple of clues, in this case a fictional Mayor called Juan Ramon has put a video on youtube and created a pdf letter to share.

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Word-of-Mouth or when the unbiased opinion is trusted around the globe

by: Christian Smagg

You may have come across one of my posts entitled “Which consumer 2.0 are you?” urging marketers to develop a better understanding of their customers’ online behaviour and devise a coherent and adapted social strategy accordingly.

Continue reading "Word-of-Mouth or when the unbiased opinion is trusted around the globe" »

October 18, 2007

Three Traits of Successful Blogs - Focus, Passion, and Originality

by: Karl Long

Someone on LinkedIn just posed this question “How can one make Blogs more enjoyable or What is that you do to maintain the popularity/readership of your blog?“. Here are my thoughts on this, this may not be all that leads to a successful blog, but these are for me pretty essential ingredients: Focus, Passion, and Originality.

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October 13, 2007

My role in a marketer's dream

by: Danah Boyd

This morning, I spoke on a panel at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The day before, a guy from Unilever gave a presentation on what happens when users take up your content and spread it all across the web. He was invited to be on the panel at the last moment because of a cancellation and because his presentation was so well received wrt Web 2.0. Right before we go on, I'm informed that the guy from Unilever was talking about the Dove Evolution campaign that was spread all over YouTube.  This is the moment where I went white.

Continue reading "My role in a marketer's dream" »

September 27, 2007

Firebrand - Extremely Ambitious Advertising as Content Destination

by: Karl Long

If there was a techmeme for marketing Firebrand would be the most talked about story for sure. Even technorati which famously lumps every blog in the world in the same category is listing Firebrand in it’s top ten searched terms. With Rohit, Jaffe (Firebrand is a client of Jaffe’s Crayon), and Steve Hall weighing in it’s generating a lot of buzz in the Marketing O’Sphere.

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September 23, 2007

Taking Care of Your Best Community Members

by: Roger Dooley

Online community builders love to toss around gross numbers - twenty thousand members, two million posts, and so on. Amid all the statistics, it’s important to recognize that all community members aren’t created equal - some are a lot more prolific.

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September 8, 2007

Code Of Ethics For Blogger Outreach Programs

by: Karl Long

In the last couple of years the idea of reaching out to bloggers as a PR/Marketing tactic has started to become a mainstay for companies looking to engage early adopters and technology leaders. I’ve personally been amazed at the sophistication and scale of programs that I have been privy to.

Continue reading "Code Of Ethics For Blogger Outreach Programs" »

August 23, 2007

Social Gestures, Objects, and Equity

by: Karl Long

Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?

Continue reading "Social Gestures, Objects, and Equity" »

August 19, 2007

Pig-in-a-blog for Rexona

By: Marina Natanova

rexonaThe Russian blogosphere (ca. 2 million journals) is going crazy about the recent Rexona ad campaign. A new TV ad (click here to see video) together with a promo-site announced that Russian women... er... were less attentive to themselves than Polish or German ladies.

Continue reading "Pig-in-a-blog for Rexona" »

July 30, 2007

Crowdsourcing Harry Potter?

by: Alain Thys

rowling_400Spoiler alert: This post gives away a key plot point of the final Harry Potter book. So if you've haven't finished the book, do not read on.

Last week Monday (at 1:30 AM) I finished part 7 of the Harry Potter series and after sat through the young man’s wizardry adventures for thousands and thousands of pages, the end of the series felt like losing a friend.

Continue reading "Crowdsourcing Harry Potter?" »

July 21, 2007

word of mouth is now a public conversation

by: Lynette Webb

453858891_4771d7b861_400This is one of those things that in many ways is so blindingly obvious that it almost doesn’t warrant mentioning. It comes from Chris Anderson, he of Long Tail fame, from chapter 7 of his book. But, perhaps because of it’s apparent obviousness I’ve found it to be a nice conversational jumping-off point to explore other aspects… like what the remit/approach to PR should be in this new era; like the fact that online conversations lives on and on, echoing long after the original ‘speaker’ has moved on, etc…

Image from Flickr CC www.flickr.com/photos/juiceboxgasoline/279544122/ 

Original post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/453858891/

July 16, 2007

Personal Entry: Pre-Alpha

by: C. Sven Johnson

While reading something yesterday concerning marketing in virtual worlds I resisted the urge to comment. Last night and again early this morning, I further resisted the temptation to post something here regarding what I’d read. And I’m now resisting the urge to slip something in. I won’t.

Continue reading "Personal Entry: Pre-Alpha" »

July 10, 2007

Book: The Cult of The Amateur

by: Ilya Vedrashko

When the word about Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur" first got out last winter, I was hopeful. Finally, I thought, we'd have an informed and comprehensive antidote to the poisonous hype around all things two point oh: all those conversationalist wise crowds of long-tailed lonelygirls-15 blogging their ride on the participatory cluetrain.

Continue reading "Book: The Cult of The Amateur" »

July 5, 2007

The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing

by: Guy Kawasaki

Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is her explanation of the top nine types of stories that people like to talk about. If you’re pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees and you don’t use at least one of these story lines, you probably have a problem. And most likely you’re too close to what you’re doing, so you think that you’re uniquely “patent-pending, curve-jumping, and revolutionary.” :-)

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June 16, 2007

What Would Charlie Do?

by: David Armano

I'm a sucker for successful communication whether it be visual, written, or oral. So take a look at this presentation from Scott Gavin titled "What is Enterprise 2.0"?  It uses a persona based approach to tell a story.

Continue reading "What Would Charlie Do?" »

June 12, 2007

Social software is a movement not just a technology

by: Lynette Webb

lynette1206a_400Danah Boyd gave an interesting talk recently at Blog Reloaded about the significance of social software. I really like her writing style and she’s great at picking out key aspects and expressing them in down-to-earth terms. You can read the full transcript of her talk here: www.danah.org/papers/BlogTalkReloaded.pdf

Click image to enlarge 

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June 7, 2007

What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing

by: Jon Miller

I believe social media has an inherent bias against the realities of B2B marketing. This is the topic of my new article "What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing", now available as part of Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column.

Continue reading "What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing" »

June 5, 2007

Consumer-Generated Content: An Underleveraged Opportunity for Green Retailers

by: David Wigder

Online retailers find that consumer-generated content such as product reviews and ratings have a significant influence on consumer purchasing behavior. 

Continue reading "Consumer-Generated Content: An Underleveraged Opportunity for Green Retailers" »

June 4, 2007

By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09

by: Guy Kawasaki

Because of Truemors, I’ve learned a lot about launching a company in these “Web 2.0” times. Here’s quick overview “by the numbers.”

Continue reading "By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09" »

June 3, 2007

Tackling Claims of Greenwashing

by: David Wigder

Today, an increasing number of companies are staking out a competitive position in the green marketplace by attempting to “out-green” their competitors. This tactic, however, is a double-edged sword.  While companies may benefit from being a leader on green - by increasing sales, reducing costs or mitigating risk, they also expose themselves (and their green initiatives) to a higher level of public scrutiny than those with less competitive claims.  In fact, despite good intentions, if these leading companies engage in even simple acts that diverge from their green claims, they risk public charges of “greenwashing”.

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May 31, 2007

web 2.0 is messy way the semantic web is happening

by: Lynette Webb

518396170_8525533d43_400I really like this quote because, to me, it explains in a nutshell how “tagging” - which has emerged as one of the Web 2.0 standard functionalities - is connected to the broader long-term direction of web development.

Click image to enlarge.

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May 30, 2007

DIY PR

by: Guy Kawasaki

Charlemagne-by-Durer.jpg (JPEG Image, 250x554 pixels)-1.jpg My buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote.

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May 25, 2007

The Top Ten Reasons Why PR Doesn't Work

by: Guy Kawasaki

ThePRSite.com.jpg

Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com