Out-Smarts Internet Marketing

The Internet and especially the blogosphere is a breeding ground for plagiarism. People like the idea of blogging but can’t come up with good content so they steal from others. Now that’s usually okay as long as you credit the source and link back but in some cases that simply doesn’t happen.

I witnessed exactly such an event this week when Monica Hamburg’s posting Behold the Power of Facebook for Business appeared on another site on 1st February. How did I find this out? Every time another site links back to mine it shows up both in Wordpress (if they link to this blog) and in other sites like Technorati. I noticed the new link, clicked to read and follow up in true blog etiquette form only to discover no mention of the true author.

On alerting her, Monica immediately went into action with a great email she offered up on her site that others can use in dealing with situations like this:

I can see that you “added” my name, but this most certainly does not make it clear that the content is mine, nor that I wrote it. Please remove the post immediately - unless you are prepared to do the following:

1) Begin the post by CLEARLY STATING that it was written by me

2) Giving a link to the actual postIn this exact manner: “This article was written by Monica Hamburg on her blog, Me Like the Interweb, http://monicahamburg.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/behold-the-power-of-facebook-for-business/

I will be taking appropriate action if this is not performed in 2hrs.
Monica Hamburg

It worked and the piece has since been removed but it just goes to show how blatant plagiarism on the Internet has become. The good news is that due to the transparency of the web, its hard to avoid being caught out - so copycats beware get with the programme and write your own material or at the very least have the decency to link back to the rightful author!

Here’s a quandary: you have something valuable to say, you set up a blog and set about sharing your ruminations. The blog begins to attract visitors and subscribers but they trickle in at best. What do you do to attract a larger audience? Check out how other bloggers do it thats how! Here are some great success stories with vital tips you can take advantage of:
ProBlogger has a really detailed post from the writer of ThinkSimpleNow sharing the detailed strategies they used to go from zero to 2000 visitors in the space of 3 months.

Dosh Dosh celebrated 10,00 subscribers by sharing the reasons why people subscribe to that blog.

Entrepreneur Magazine featured an article from John Chow a local boy who makes huge amounts of money from his blog.

Out-Smarts has already started to implement some of the ideas these bloggers were kind enough to share and our visitor count has gone up by about 50% in just a few days. I guess the results speak for themselves.

Thanks guys!

Local new media aficionado and funny girl Monica Hamburg known for her hilarious “Your Dose of Lunacy” posts and the more serious “Me Like the Interweb” blog, wrote a great piece recently on Facebook for business. Here it is in it’s entirety - you can’t fail to learn from it:

Behold the Power of Facebook For Business

With Facebook’s more than 55 million active users, it would be a tragic oversight for a company not to have a public presence on the site in some capacity. Facebook offers more than a way to keep up with friends – it has the ability to keep you in touch with your clients, gain attention for your brand and provide a more personal face for your business.

The nature of Facebook is entirely viral, and users can garner information from their friends and their interactions. Facebook can be an unintrusive way of making people aware of your business.

Recently, the social networking website has allowed businesses to create profiles for free, and innovative companies are fast employing the tool. Kris Krug, President of Raincity Studios, added the “fan page” application for his company, commenting that such an option “means companies can have a place of their own in the FB empire allowing them to send out announcements to “fans” and build up yet another presence to promote their projects, give details and promote events.”

Mhairi Petrovic uses the profile page for her company, Out-Smarts, to “extend our brand reach and reinforce it. When people become a fan, our logo appears on their website and in turn is seen by more people. Having a page and encouraging fans to join establishes Out-Smart as an innovator in social marketing (one of the services we provide).”

Utilizing this particular tool to its full capacity is the Palo Alto restaurant, Junnoon,
whose page contains essential information such as hours of operation, payment options and parking and further entices customers by prominently displaying pictures of the interior of the establishment, the food and posting its culinary philosophy, accolades and reviews.
(more…)

Here for your Friday enjoyment is a funny little clip found on YouTube all about the social networking tech bubble.  Blog in the womb indeed!

The new Wired magazine arrived today and in it (p132) is a great map of “The Secret Life of a Blog Post” - a cartographic view of what happens between hitting publish and your post reaching its audience. Apparently when you post, your musing goes through several scrapes, pings, indexes and crawls automatically before reaching the reader.

Well that might be the case for blogs hosted in a blog service like Wordpress but I have found that for corporate branded blogs that are an extension of a companies web site that this is not the case at all: you have to do the legwork yourself if you want your blog to be picked up by all the right creepers.

Here are some tips:

• Always remember to set up auto pings or manual pings with blog engines like: Technorati so that these servers know your blog is out there and crawl it for updates and new posts.
• Remember also to submit the blog URL to search engines and set up auto pings with those too.
• And lastly submit your blog feeds to RSS aggregators or appropriate on-line media mashers.

Once you’ve done that go back to the map, track the process and you should be good.

1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses.

2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word.

3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you - like Skype - the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively - like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website.

4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme.

5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much easier than you think.

6. When you find interesting articles, pages or clips, share them with your others in your field. I Stumble but hear that Magnolia and Deli.cio.us are great for this too.

7. Join Facebook, MySpace or Linked In (or all three) and get networking. You know the old adage about a friend of a friend being your friend too: its so much easier to do business with people you’ve been referred to by a friend or colleague.

8. Use Internet advertising technologies such as AdWords or Facebook Social to reach and promote to the right audience.

9. Forums or chat rooms where your audience collaborate are great ways to get involved, join the conversation and establish expertise with a wider audience.

10. Get wiki with it. Join Wikipedia and share your knowledge (but be careful not to be blatantly corporate or your posts will just get deleted) with the global audience.

After quite a while waiting our XO is finally here and I can only say good things about it so far. Firstly its much smaller than I had expected and not cheap and tacky at all (for a $200 laptop you expect it to be crappy to some degree). Its compact and easy to use - my kids are already making music on it albeit chicken sounds.

The best part is that, after spending hours at CES hunting down the ideal blogging device, it was on its way to me all along. Indeed, I could see using this nifty little machine to blog from practically anywhere: after all it is weather proof so it will endure the rainy season and the battery lasts for ages. Given that for each one you buy another is donated to a needy child, I wish I had bought another so I wouldn’t have to fight my kids for it!

Some times its just easier to watch to garbage truck than to put your thoughts into writing.

I attended a great presentation last night at the Professional Women’s Network meeting here in not so sunny Vancouver. It was all about leadership and it was great to hear that I am not the only one who gets her knickers in a twist (metaphorically speaking off course!) in advance of unknown situations.

The speaker, Tana Heminsley talked about measures that you can take in advance of challenging meetings to make it easier on yourself. I found them particularly interesting as many of these can be applied to new blogosphere participants, nervous about joining the conversation.

Preparation - in advance of a meeting Tana pointed out that its always good to find out as much as you can about the subject matter, research the topic and get a feel for issues. Same goes for the blogosphere: before commenting on blogs or launching your own blog its important to research and find out what people are already saying about your area of interest, find out what the hot topics are and watch and learn about whats appropriate in a blog and whats not.

Formulate - Once you are comfortable with the kind of information flowing in the blogoshere, it is time to contribute. Formulate your opinions on the topic in question - its always good to write them down so that you can reference back if need be. Get ready to join in.

Confidence - when contributing to the blogosphere always believe in your abilitities. You know as much as the next person and probably more and your opinions are valid - always remember that. Have confidence to launch your own blog and/or comment on others especially on a high profile sites that may make you nervous. Feel the fear and get on with it!

Reflection - its always good to reflect on your posts or comments. Don’t just write them and forget. Think about what you said, how you said it and feel proud that you were able to communicate your opinions in the way you did. Consider ways that you can get your points across more effectively next time or how you can improve on your posts to make them more interesting for your audience.

Becoming active in the blogosphere needn’t make you nervous. With a little preparation up front, a pinch of confidence and the ability to reflect and improve your contributions, you will banish blog nerves. Thanks to Tana for the inspiration!

At a session I attended this week at CES questions were posed of 4 panelists on the subject of taking the blogosphere seriously. The panelists consisted of industry experts including “rock star” blogger (the mediator’s title not mine) Ryan Block from Engadget. Here are a couple of the questions posed with my slant on the answers:

Who isn’t taking the blogosphere seriously? Answer - there are 70 million blogs out there and thousands more added daily if corporations aren’t taking it seriously then a heck of a big chunk of their client base is. Simply put there are people who get it and people who don’t. Those who do are reaping the rewards and those who don’t face extinction.

When asked how the panelists would approach convincing a CEO to blog, the general consensus seemed to be that if a company isn’t using the blogosphere (either to listen or to communicate) then they risk losing control of their brand completely.

Judging by the turnout at the session most CESers were more interested in gadgetry than the fine art of blogging - more fool them perhaps. For more ruminations from the panelists:Taking the Blogosphere Seriously, Consumer Generated Media, David La Plante, Really? This is my job.