Archive for September, 2007
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 30th, 2007
This month’s reasons to be cheerful were brought to my attention by TechCrunch, a group of expert panelists and bloggers that review innumerable entries to shortlist a few of the most innovative startup companies of the year.
This years TechCrunch list featured 40 of the neatest Web 2.0 offerings. Here are my faves:
Wixi - promises all your photo, video and music in one place accessible anywhere simply by logging in.
Teach The People – is an online social network based on sharing knowledge and educating others.
Ceedo – aims to allow people to virtualise their Windows desktop and makes this portable via USB or even phones – don’t ask me how!
Kerpoof – is a site aimed at encouraging kids to get creative. It allows kids to create art, stories and animation and share their masterpieces with their friends.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 25th, 2007
Our friends over at FM Walsh and Associates are offering the popular “Business Marketing for Women Business Owners” again this Saturday morning. If you want to learn innovative ways to improve your bottom line you should definitely consider signing up. Find out more here.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 24th, 2007
Given my frustrations with Second Life I was very skeptical to learn that both IBM and Sony have distinct but similar plans to develop virtual stores where avatars can stroll the shopping aisles and interact with sales people and customers to make the shopping experience more “real”.
First of all, you should know that I do enjoy a bit of shopping now and then (especially if shoes are on the list!) and I love the idea that shopping on-line from the comfort of my home could more closely equate to the real thing but even in real life patience isn’t exactly one of my virtues (I have been known to dump those “perfect” shoes because I can’t stand long line ups). If these environments are anything like Second Life which I find to be slow, sporadic and cumbersome to manoeuvre then there’s absolutely no chance of me getting getting my shoes (or any other item for that matter) in a virtual store until there’s a vast improvement in performance.
I see that Sony has delayed the release of its virtual PS3 environment Home and I wonder if that could be the very reason. Home is described as “a real-time interactive online world” – perhaps they are delaying the launch until the can truly put the “real” in real time!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 19th, 2007
I just got back from a great trip to Jamaica. On the eve of my departure from the resort I received a letter giving my departure details. Item 6 on the list informed us that they would send an evaluation survey by email. “DO NOT DELETE FROM YOUR INBOX” was highlighted (the only capitalized words screaming from the page I may add) along with the justification – “We use this as a management tool to improve our services”. What baloney! They don’t want you delete it for one reason and one reason only – so they don’t get caught up in the spam filter. When the email comes in I will therefore be even more likely to simply hit delete.
To obtain email buy in, the company should have:
1) been completely transparent up front giving customers the real justification for keeping the email and
2) they should have offered the customer an incentive to add them to contacts or subscribe (they took enough photos – perhaps a thumbnail or 2 would have been appropriate).
With all the spam lurking in people’s inboxes, companies need to become more creative and upstanding if they have any hope of being whitelisted otherwise their communications could have the opposite of the desired effect.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 17th, 2007
The next Third Tuesday event is scheduled for the Tuesday 25th September. Following the success of last month’s inaugural event which attracted over 40 attendees including myself, the group is getting together to share new developments in social media and online community building. Next week’s session features the CBC tech head Tod Maffin as guest speaker and the forum. For more information and to sign up go here.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 14th, 2007
At a time when technologists can barely agree on the definition of Web 2.0, when many members of the public are simply unaware of it’s existince, it seems too soon to be talking about Web 3.0 but I am going to anyway because its always good to know what’s coming.
Web 1.0 was a one way street: websites posted information and visitors would come along to read – that was about it. Web 2.0 saw the advent of the two way relationship where visitors could read, collaborate and interact on the web on their own terms. Web 3.0 is described as the semantic web and is associated with the ability to integrate all of the information available to us on-line using machines to read, sort and act and thus make it easier for us to cope with the daily chaos.
You may have heard the example of your “wired” fridge automatically notifying you by e-mail, text or other device to alert you that the milk has been finished you need to buy some on the way home or even notifying your supplier automatically to send it on. Well that’s a great example of how Web 3.0 will work.
However, considering how long it’s taking for many to catch on to Web 2.0, and the fact that the technology just isn’t quite there yet, I don’t believe we should be worrying Web 3.0 business strategies quite yet but it is important to realize that technology is improving at an amazing rate and that Web 3.0 will be a reality one day in the not too distant future. In the meantime, the continued convergence of existing Web 2.0 technologies further enhances collaboration and is streamline both communications and work flow so you really should be considering how your company can harness these.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 12th, 2007
1. Understand your prospective customer: who they are, why they buy, when and so on – do they buy on-line or use the Internet to research product information?
2. Your company – what resources are in place or will be made available, also consider existing web presence, company culture, mission, goals and policies etc?
3. Competition – check out what your competition is doing on line, track blog and RSS feeds that mention them as well as comments on their products or service from users.
4. The market – is the overall market experiencing and up turn / down turn or is it in a state of flux? These will all impact the approach you take.
5. Integration to overall marketing and advertising strategy is imperative. Each must complement and support the other by conveying the same brand image and messages.
6. If you don’t have web savvy resources in house then don’t worry – get guidance from people who do this.
7. Positioning – find out where you stand in the web rankings in comparison to others in your field.
8. Traffic – who visits your site right now, how often and how long do they stay.
9. Pricing – if your offering is considered “prestige” then your web strategy will be different than if your its aimed at the masses.
10. Consider all tools at your disposal to promote your web presence and don’t forget to consider newer technologies such as wikis, social computing for effective Internet marketing.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 10th, 2007
As you may well know, back in June I was excited to participate in the mini book expo for bloggers.
I signed up and was sent the audio book Guerrilla PR Wired by David Levine. After the set back of discovering that the Iofy chip only worked on my MAC and not my iPod or phone as I had hoped, it took me some time to actually listen (after all, when I am at my desk I am usually working and its hard to find desk time to listen too!). Unfortunately, you can’t just stop the narrative wherever you like to review or recap which was a problem when the application crashed and I had to start again at the beginning of a chapter.
The narrative itself is easy to listen to and well laid out but I am not the target audience for this type of publication. The intended reader is a business person who is a beginner when it come to using the Internet – you know, one of those people that look like a dear caught in the headlights at the mere mention of the web marketing and for those people I would highly recommend it.
However, I did find some gems in the book pertaining to PR that will help Out-Smarts plan, set up and maintain a PR campaign. The book includes great tips on writing a PR piece (layout and format) and how to approach promoting them to the right publications and people. It covers guidance on your website design to support your campaign; learning how to understand the “media gatekeeper”; tactics to get your website publicized; strategies to help you continue to attract attention without becoming stale or overpowering as well as how to follow up on and maintain success; pitfalls you should be aware of and how to deal with negative P.R.. I did learn a thing or 2 about PR but overall this wasn’t the best publication for me. Thanks to the mini book expo for allowing us to participate though.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 06th, 2007
It seems that everyone is flocking to Facebook these days. The social networking site has over 39 millions active users and according to the Facebook page, is growing at a rate of 3% per week. The social networking site has seen a major increase because it is relatively intuitive and easy to use, more interactive and sticky than other networks such as LinkedIn; and integrates photos, voice, video and messaging easily. This trend seems to be getting a few companies worried with some banning their employees from using it according to a recent post by IT World Canada.
Instead of worrying about the impact this has in terms of downtime, companies should be considering how this trend can be used to their advantage. Businesses are slowly beginning to catch on to the capabilities of Facebook. In Canada I see Telus, TD Canada Trust and Molson all testing the waters with either applications that users can add to their profiles or unique profiles users can befriend. For the company, it entrenches the brand, increases public awareness and can extend its reach to a new audience.
For more interesting reasons why businesses should be considering Facebook, check out Are You On FacebookYet?
Are you on Facebook yet? – visit my profile or tell me about your experiences here.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 05th, 2007
At a time when buyers have limitless amounts of product information available on the Internet and are taking longer to come to a decision than ever before, it is vital to use every tool at your company’s disposal to speed up the sales process if possible.
Email can be a make or break medium in terms of facilitating the sales process. Today’s article in the Marketing Profs Blog describes how to use email segmentation to shorten the sales cycle. The article points out that email campaigns should be targeted rather than blanket making the message more appropriate for the intended audience; that an effective email strategy should take into account where in the sales cycle the recipient is (i.e. send different emails to customers than you send to prospects and so on) and the message should be appropriate and compelling. The article also reminds that no-one will appreciate being inundated with mail and that that only serves to hinder the process.
Used right, email is a vital and effective component of your sales and marketing strategy.
