Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 09th, 2007
Did you know that the Forrester Group estimates that there will be 100 million bloggers worldwide this year and that there are a further 200 million ex bloggers who got bored and gave up the ghost? Did you also know that around 40% of people who write on-line have had their work published in other media?
Its true there is a lot of opinions out there in the blogosphere jostling for attention. Many of them are intelligently presented and many seem to be pure drivel (I guess thats purely subjective) but if you are patient and consistent in your blogging and you have something unique and interesting to say – your blog will draw attention and it will have the added benefit of keeping your customers and prospects up to date with what’s happening at your organisation.
Remember, the key is consistency – if you can’t consistently post a valuable peice (minimum 2 per week) then you may as well not to bother. If that’s a struggle for you then get creative – ask colleagues, customers and employees to write for you or simply link back to articles you’ve found on the web yourself that are relevant and appropriate and introduce them by summarising why you found them interesting.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 08th, 2007
I came upon a good article by Ryan Whelton called Selling With a Blog that discusses the benefits to corporate blogging in terms of increased sales, enhanced market exposure and improved search engine positioning. It gives examples of companies that have implemented this technology and describes the measurable benefits they have seen.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 03rd, 2007
I’ve been exploring Second Life recently to find out if it really has any potential as a marketing vehicle and I have to say, I can’t fathom what all the fuss is about.
Firstly, it took a new computer to actually have the capacity required to run the damn thing and secondly even with a souped up super computer I still find it slow, sporadic and painful to manoeuvre through.
I managed to graduate from the orientation island quite easily and was set free in the Second Life world. The look and feel is pretty cool but so far there seems to be no one out there. Nobody at the church I came upon (even although it was Sunday!), no-one at Club Wildebeast the crazy dance place and no-one at the Second Life Telus store (where are you Sparkle Dale? – where’s the phone for my avatar?).
The most disappointing Second Life aspect of all is that beyond the cool images and environment, Second Life is senseless and by that I mean: you can’t feel, smell, hear etc. Each time I visit I come away with the feeling I have just been wasting my time……
I’ll be keeping a close eye on Second Life but right now the barriers to entry and the time wasted lead me to deduce that it will be a while before Second Life can be considered as a viable medium for effective marketing. And by then the fad crowds may have moved on to the next big thing – or maybe they have already.
It seems I am not the only one with this sentiment read this post from Darren Barefoot for more.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 01st, 2007
Here are some great sites that are currently using new media technologies to expand their reach:
http://www.hawaii-aloha.com – uses regular blog posts to provide useful tips and suggestions to help subsribers plan a trip to Hawaii. They also use podcast technology HawaiiVacationConnection to allow vacationers to listen to regular commentaries on hawaii vacation experiences. Its great way to add value for holiday makers and set themselves apart from the competition.
Another great example of companies using new media technologies is Honey Dew Day Spa here in Vancouver which uses the MySpace social networking platform as a forum to promote their spa services. They network and extend their reach by adding MySpace friends in the Vancouver area who meet their typical spa client demographic. That’s how they found me and next time I am thinking about pampering myself, I am going to go there and find out just how successful their MySpace strategy is whilst I am at it.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 27th, 2007
The secret to sales and marketing success is in understanding your customer, their needs and aspirations. If companies take the time do this effectively and implement processes that reflect this, their sales will grow and they will retain more customers at lower cost.
I don’t know about you but a constant frustration for me is the fact that few organisations seem to realise this far less take it into account in their day to day processes – especially when dealing with women. It would appear I am not the only one. Fiona Walsh highlights this issue in her article Sales Pitch: A Car dealership for women? Its about time. In the article Fiona talks about her negative buying experiences and how some companies are rethinking their sales processes to meet the needs of women more effectively. She highlights local firm Clutch and their innovations in this area.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 26th, 2007
In the post for Bluelime Media – RSS- not so simple after all, I looked at RSS from the user perspective in an effort simplify and explain how RSS works and how you can get set up to receive the articles and feeds you’re interested in.
A recent blog post by Darren Barefoot has both a great description of RSS as well as a link to a video clip that really simplifies RSS for the neophyte. Both are must views for everyone using the Internet as a source of information as they explain in very simple terms how RSS feeds can benefit you and save you time.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 23rd, 2007
One of the keys to a successful marketing campaign is to come up with a unique idea that will grab the attention of your intended audience and make them want to act and follow up. However, if you dont do the legwork and planning in advance any great idea can fall flat on its face and end up wasting your organisation time and money – not to mention credibility.
Ive recently been exposed to two such marketing campaigns that failed in exactly this way. Each example really highlights the importance of planning and timing when executing marketing campaigns:
Last week I began to receive a national newspaper delivered along with my regular local Vancouver one (which I subscribe to mainly for local content). Obviously, the marketing folks at the newspaper in question had singled my household out for a trial of the national paper in the hope that their promotion would result in me becoming a subscriber. I didnt order the paper and dont necessarily need it but on receipt, I was open to evaluating it: especially from a work perspective as I am always interested in new sources of information to give me ideas for this blog. On the second day of delivery, being a hockey fan, I opened the sports section in anticipation of reading about the Vancouver Canucks play-off game the previous night only to see a great big splashy headline and article about the Calgary game instead.
Read more
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 18th, 2007
The subject of wikis came up at a recent meeting so I thought I would repost this gem from last year explaining what wikis are and how they are being used today.
In a recent post I talked about new media marketing and the plethora of tools it brings to marketers. In that article I promised more articles looking at new technologies that can be used by marketers to more effectively serve their customers and spread the word. Today I am going to focus on wikis.
A wiki is a website application that allows users to collaborate. They can update and change content very easily. Wikis are simple to use and easy to set up and best of all, costs aren’t excessive.
Until recently, I hadn’t realised the marketing potential that wikis provide. I attended the most recent Case Camp Vancouver where a local Vancouver organisation called Open Road Communications showcased a successful implementation of its Thought Farmer intranet portal – a wiki based platform that allows employees to post/make changes, interact and setup discussion groups that in turn build strong corporate identities and cultures. If you want to be successful marketing your product to the external community, you must first and foremost believe in your offering by successfully marketing internally to build brand identity and corporate culture within the organisation and wiki based tools help you do do this.
Wikis are not just useful as internal portals. They also present a great way to enhance customer service. An online wiki that allows both internal and external users of your product/service to share tips/improvements and to generally help them get the most from your offering can only serve to enhance the user experience.
I was talking about wiki applications to Julie Anderson, Director of Marketing at Peoplemaps a client in Scotland that provides on-line pyschometric analysis for employers and job seekers and she brought to my attention some of the neat wiki applications they use. They take advantage of software from PBwiki to allow online partner collaboration as well as to provide a media centre that is easily updated by employees and gives all the information potential clients, media and folk like me need to know about the organisation. People maps is also using wikis internally to allow easy and cost effective collaboration on new software projects (their developers are in the Ukraine and its saving them a ton on phone calls) and to provide an internal portal for their staff (similar to the Open Road application). For more information, check out the Peoplemaps blog On the map: Easy as making a sandwich?
In addition to the customer service enhancements and internal marketing applications, wikis can also be used to reduce the load on e-mail servers by collaborating via wiki rather than sending large documents via e-mail; they have great potential to improve CRM applications by allowing remote teams to share client information and they can act as a great central repository for file sharing.
If you want to check out some of the enterprise wiki solutions out there, go to:
www.socialtext.com
www.jotspot.com- now owned by Google
www.pbwiki.com
www.atlasian.com
www.twiki.com
Good collaborating!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 17th, 2007
I wrote an article recently for Bluelime Media called “RSS not so simple after all!” that talked about RSS from the user perspective. Now I want to look at RSS from the corporate perspective.
Incase you didn’t read the article, RSS is a means by which information can be easily be published and made available to subscribers in a central on-line repository.
From a corporate standpoint, their are many reasons to take advantage of RSS both to publish information and for research:
- RSS makes it easier for prospects to find your articles;
- subscribers get the latest and greatest information;
- helps establish connections to your web site and drive traffic;
- gives you the ability to research multiple sources at once;
- great tools for disseminating information throughout the organisation.
So as an organisation, how would you set up an RSS Feed? The first thing you have to do is contact your web designer and find out if your site is set up to support a syndication feed (if you have a blog you may already have a feed set up). If not, its easy to set one up by entering a few lines of code – check out O’Reilly for help to do this.
Once the feed is set up, you should let people who visit your site know by adding the RSS Feed button which usually looks something like this:
I created the graphic for free by signing up with Feedburner but I am told you can do the same with FeedForAll. Having the button on your site in a prominent place will allow people to easily click to set up a feed that brings your article directly to them as its updated.
To complete the process, have your web designer add code to your website templates so that the RSS feed readers can find your posts and submit your feed to syndicators and search engines to make it easier for your audience to find you.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 12th, 2007
The next big Internet phenomenon seems to be Twitter . The people at Twitter call it a “global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?â€. You can answer the question by IM, cellphone or online on the Twitter site.
To me, Twitter appears to be simply a paired down instant messaging system that allows bored people to spend some time on whimsy. However Twitter is not to be taken lightly. With an astounding growth rate (in one week in March its traffic increased by over 55%) its definitely taking off with the online community.
I decided to take a closer look for myself to size Twitter up from a marketers perspective:
The Twitter registration process is simple and speedy (I am Outsmarts if you want to look me up). Once you get in, its easy to enter your one liner and read those of others. I made the mistake of adding the BBC to mine and was inundated with million messages about what seemed like every BBC TV show ever produced! So beware who you add.
From a marketing perspective I can see Twitter as being a way to promote a consumer product and it has great potential to enhance communication between remote team members but beyond that I am afraid the Outsmart jury is out. Id like to wait and see on this one.
That said, my favorite Twitter is that of Borat whose satirical one learners have me in stitches. It’s light relief and for now that’s all Twitter means to me. For now.
