Web Ink Now

This Year in Marketing Blogs: GrokDotCom's list of Definitive Posts of 2007

GrokDotCom has created a list of the definitive marketing posts of 2007.

They say: “Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.”

This is an absolutely terrific list. I've read about a dozen of the 39 posts and all are stellar. Good thing there is some holiday downtime coming up so I can read the rest.

Authors and musicians - link your blog to your Amazon product pages!

I am constantly amazed by the ability of Amazon.com to push into new ground. I've always said that Amazon is successful because they run the company as a content site that happens to sell stuff. Everything on the site is focused on creating important content that surrounds each product – things like editorial reviews, customer reviews, similar books, search inside and whatnot. There's even the cool statistically improbably phrase feature.

Amazon now allows bloggers to link their blog posts to their product page on Amazon in a program called AmazonConnect. What a cool way to add content to your page. Potential buyers see what you are passionate about by reading a few of your posts. You can even post with a podcast or a YouTube video embedded in your post which appears on Amazon.

So far very few authors and musicians are taking advantage of it.

Here is what it looks like on The New Rules of Marketing & PR product page. Scroll down below the product information and you will see my three most recent blog posts followed by customer reviews.

Kind of cool don’t you think?

Linking your blog to Amazon is very easy to set up. The best part is that after the one time set up procedure is complete, you don't have to do anything else. Your blog posts automatically appear on your product pages.

Here are the steps required:

1. First, you need an Amazon profile. If you've ever written a book review, then you've already got one. Here is what mine looks like.

2. Then you create an Amazon blog on your profile page. If you want to, you can manually update your Amazon blog, but I think most people will just want to link their existing blog.

3. Once the blog is set up, you link your existing blog's RSS feed to your new Amazon blog.

4. The final step is to link your Amazon blog to your product pages (your books, CDs, and other products). To do this, Amazon needs to verify you are who you say you are so they have a form to fill out so your agent or publisher can verify.

Here is a list of authors who have participated in this AmazonConnect program.

All blogger/authors and blogger/musicians should consider setting this up.

Steve Chazin, former Apple Marketing executive, releases MarketingApple blog and ebook: Secrets of the World's Best Marketing Machine

My friend Steve Chazin just launched a really cool new blog called MarketingApple. He also a released an ebook today called Marketing Apple: 5 Secrets of the World’s Best Marketing Machine. Steve's blog and ebook are definitely worth a look for two important reasons.

Steve understand how Apple markets products and he does it from the position of an insider. His five secrets, which are both interesting and relevant for marketing professionals, are packaged to make it easy to learn how Apple operates.

The other reason to check out Steve’s blog and ebook is to see how he put together the content. This is a nice crisp design that shows off the text content with stunning clarity. If Apple were to do a blog and ebook to share the secrets of marketing, this is what it would look like.

Steve spent nearly a decade at Apple where he managed a New England sales territory, drove a strategic partnership with the Harvard Business School, and worked with Steve Jobs to rebuild Apple's marketing efforts which helped return the company to profitability in the late 1990s.

MarketingApple.com is a new site open to anyone who wants to learn and implement some of the techniques that has made Apple, Inc. the world’s best marketing machine. Steve’s first-hand knowledge of how Apple turned the company around by better marketing is a must read.

These days, Steve is a source for reporters looking for insights into Apple’s marketing and he also speaks about the topic at conferences. Steve is also Vice President of Marketing at TubesNow.com, a Web company that makes sharing, publishing, and subscribing to content easy, manageable and fun.

I spoke with Steve early this week and he shared with me why he’s doing this. "Apple is a perfect example of what good design and good marketing can do when you tie them both together. My background and my love for the company puts me in a unique position to help others embrace a similar approach. And I love helping other fellow marketers look good!"

Check out Steve's MarketingApple blog and download his ebook.

Disclosures: Steve Chazin is my friend and I helped him with the strategy to get his MarketingApple ideas into the marketplace. I have done work for Steve's current company TubesNow.com.

Here's why I don't have my own podcast!

Readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of using online thought leadership and viral marketing strategies as marketing tools. Online media such as blogs, content rich websites, ebooks, podcasts, YouTube video, and social networking sites all have a power to tell a story and to brand any organization as real and authentic and one worth of doing business with. Organizations that use this form of marketing do not interrupt people with "messages." Instead they deliver information that people want to consume.

Alas, we've only got so many hours in a day. I don't do all of the things that I write about in my book and on this blog. (OK, I admit it...) Yes, I blog and it is very important to me. But I've only ventured into Second Life a handful of times. I work hard on producing an ebook every now and then because my first one The New Rules of PR ebook (released in early 2006) has been downloaded 250,000 times, moving my business forward significantly.

I don't have my own podcast. Not enough time, I’m afraid.

But I have something that I think is much better: friends and colleagues with terrific podcasts who I am flattered have invited me to chat with them on their shows. I'm fortunate to have appeared on some of the best marketing podcasts around. For me, being an interloping guest is more fun than hosting a regular show anyway.

Check out these podcasts. You don't need to listen to the show I'm on (yikes – how boring to hear much of the same stuff over and over again). But do check out these podcasts. They are worth your time.

Jennifer Jones is the host of Marketing Voices, a PodTech.net social media show. Jennifer and I discuss what it takes to make it in PR and marketing today. According to Jennifer, this show has "Lots of good tips." And thanks to Robert Scoble for introducing me to Jennifer.

In the GrokDotCom GrokCast, I speak with Robert Gorell about how marketing and public relations have become more conversational than ever, and how to not let these new opportunities to relate to customers slip by your company's radar. We had so much fun that we did a part two where we discuss how marketing and public relations needs to be a real interaction with not only your customers, but the people who move your industry.

Carmine Gallo interviews me in his show Useful Commute: The New Rules of Marketing and PR on BNET (a CNET podcast channel). Carmine is a real pro, having worked in radio and TV, so if you want to hear what a well-produced podcast sounds like, check this one out.

On the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I speak with John Jantsch about online marketing. We take a close look at the use of blogs, podcasts, RSS, wikis, press releases and the like in promoting products and services directly to the end user. I've followed John's blog for a while, so it was fun to speak with him on the show.

In Tech PR War Stories, Paul Gillin (author of The New Influencers) and David Strom speak with me about I used the ideas in my books to win election to MarketingSherpa's Viral Hall of Fame two years running. We also discuss the importance of search engine strategies to public relations and wonder why more PR professionals don't consider the techniques that buyers use to find products and services when they create their press releases. We kept the machine running and in part two we discussed how marketing folks have to reach out to ordinary people (and potential customers) for their press sections of their Web sites. These pages get the most traffic and show how everyone is now a publisher and can go directly to their audiences.

In Online Marketing with RSS Ray, I discuss the New The New Rules of Marketing & PR and using online content to grow your business. This show is distributed on the very popular wsRadio.com network.

John Wall, the host of The M Show and co-host (with Christopher Penn) of the Marketing Over Coffee show, helped me write the podcasting chapter in my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR (thanks John). We try to connect for lunch about once a quarter to compare notes about online marketing, and this time we just recorded the chat which John put onto his show.

In my conversation with The Blog Squad (Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff) we try to answer the following questions: What does it take to get your business online? How do you leverage the Internet to attract more clients, expand your network, and make more money? What are the different tools you need to master? This one is particularly cool because they produced a transcript!

My friend Brian Carroll (author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale) caught up several months ago just as my new book was coming out. I like speaking with Brian because he is a B2B sales expert and we always end up comparing notes about how marketing and sales can work better together.

In the Communication Steroids Podcast, co-hosts Tim 'Gonzo' Gordon and Roger Pike look deeper into Communication Best Practices, Communication in the Workplace, Communication Strategies, Communications Training, Fear of Public Speaking, Assertive Communication Skills and Public Speaking Tips. We discussed speaking at tradeshows and conferences.

Thank you to all of you for having me on your shows. Keep it up! You are doing a service to marketers who want to learn more.

(And you also give me an opportunity to get my voice out there without the need for my own show!)

My 250th post

I've been writing this blog since late 2004 and this is my 250th post.

Yeah, it's just a number. But it is also a milestone that gives me a moment to pause and reflect on how far these pages have taken me. I've met many amazing people. I've learned a great deal.

My blog has given me a platform that has allowed me to take my business into areas that I could never have imagined just three short years ago. Quite simply, my blog is the best thing I've ever done in business.

GrokDotCom and the future of Web content

I've been reading the GrokDotCom site regularly for a while now and find the way that the smart Web site conversion experts at Future Now Inc., the producers of GrokDotCom, put this site together. GrokDotCom represents the future of a content rich marketing site and provides a model for marketers in other industries to aspire to. In fact, this site is better organized than most "content company" sites such as magazines and newspapers.

On the GrokDotCom site you find featured content by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-founders of Future Now and authors of the bestselling book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? This is good stuff and well worth a read, but not that unusual in the world of blogs and content rich web sites.

What is unique and highly valuable is over on the right of the homepage -- aggregated blog and site content from other marketing and communications authors, categorized as "A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect".

I had a chance to speak with Bryan Eisenberg about how Future Now puts this site together. "We go through and hand select some of the best blog feeds out there related to marketing, advertising, web technology, word of mouth – everything that a persuasion architect would be interested in," he says. "We work on a publishing schedule with best of the week stories that are brought back by a proprietary scoring algorithm. This content levels the playing field and helps people sort out the signal to noise ratio with blogs."

On The Future Today page, you can see the best of the week and best of the month articles. I really like that GrokDotCom links to other bloggers who write about similar topics. This form of cooperation among content creators is great. Many bloggers and site owners resist linking to others that they see as potential competition.

You can also sign up for GrokDotCom content as an email newsletter (my preferred method of receiving this valuable content, especially when I am on the road and pressed for time).

Thanks Bryan, Jeffrey and team – keep up the good work.

Brand Journalism (or Branded Communications)

Heidi Cohen has written a terrific overview of what she's calling Branded Communications in her column on ClickZ. It is well worth a read. I've used a similar term Brand Journalism because my panelists Ben Edwards, Director, New Media Communications at IBM and Colleen DeCourcy, chief experience officer at JWT from the Advertising and PR for Everyone session I moderated at the recent SIIA Information Industry Summit used that term.

In her ClickZ column, Cohen says: "Branded journalism is marketers' intentional, selective use of the conversation that surrounds a brand. The idea is to make use of the viewpoint set by the brand guardians and tap into UGC created both in- and outside of the company."

On the speaking circuit I always start my presentations with some variation on this basic riff: "Before the Web, the old rules of marketing and PR were that you only had two choices to get noticed—buy expensive advertising or convince the media to write about you. Now, the new rules of marketing and PR are simple: On the Web you are what you publish (and what others publish about you). The Web has made public relations public again after exclusive focus on the media and the Web has made marketing more than just advertising."

Whatever you call it -- Branded Communications, Brand Journalism, content marketing, Social Media marketing -- the rules have changed. On the Web you can tell your story directly and create reasons for others to tell it for you.

For free.

Grading the Super Bowl 2007 TV commercial Web site tie ins = Taco Bell A+ but others mixed

Yes, like many others, I enjoy the Super Bowl TV adfest each year. Many others write about the ads such as Jim Nail from Cymfony so I prefer to take a look at the Web site tie ins – you know those little URLs at the bottom of the screen as the TV ad ends. I'm only interested in the unique ones created just for the Super Bowl. Almost nobody looks at these things (except me). I think they are very telling of brands.

My fascination with this little known part of the adfest started in 2005 when I viewed the McDonald’s Lincoln Fry Super Bowl ad Web tie in and learned it was a bogus blog. This kind of fake ad is just too oily for me. McDonald’s got an F that year.

The best site tie in this year? By far for me it is the Taco Bell site thebun.com Why? Because the site does not exist! How freakin’ cool is it that Taco Bell ran a URL at the bottom of the "Lion ad" was thebun.com and when you go there… nothing. It took me a moment to get it. Unlike McDonald’s, Taco Bell has no bun. (Note: Maybe my browser just didn’t work. But I don’t think so. I think Taco Bell snuck this one in. Viral Marketing greatness. I will be using this example on the speaking circuit for years). Nice job guys!! Grade A+

Taco Bell also has another site fourthmeal.com "a meal between dinner and breakfast." I like thebun.com too much so no grade for this one from Taco Bell.

++++++++++++++++++
UPDATE at 1:30 EST Monday February 5, 2007

My mistake.

Now I realize that the URL at the very end of the ad is the entire phase thinkoutsidethebun.com (which does work) and my eye saw just the bottom part -- thebun.com

It is written like this

think
outside
the bun.com

And I watched it ten times to make sure too!

Damn, I thought Taco Bell had come up with a hot viral thing, but it was just my error.

They still get an A+ because I've spent an hour thinking about and writing about the Taco Bell brand.

++++++++++++++++++

Some other Web site tie ins:

Doritos snackstrongproductions.com This is where you can check out the top 5 fan produced Super Bowl ads. These are great. The site is well designed and it is easy to check out the ads. Grade A-

FedEx fedexfootball.com This is a site to showcase ads. I don’t like the stuff about pre-game predictions. If the first time I see this site is by entering the URL during the game, the predictions are meaningless. Boomer’s trivia challenge is OK. Grade C+

Pepsi superbowl.com/pepsi This is the Super Can Promotion from Pepsi. Again, my problem with this is that I had no clue about the contest and when I did log in, the contest was already over. C

Snickers afterthekiss.com This one works well. It provides 5 alternative endings to thr ad that they ran and you can vote for your favorite. I like "Motor Oil" the best. Snickers will show the winner during the Daytona 500. I also like that they make the contest to choose the "Most Satisfying Ending" and the Snickers tagline is "Most Satisfying". Nice. Grade A

American Heart Association beatyourrisk.com High Blood Pressure Risk Calculator. Guys, you screwed up. The calculator requires Adobe Flash 9 to be loaded. Yes several other sites required plug ins and they got higher grades than you. That's because of demographics. In my experience, the older generation tends not to have the latest and greatest software loaded and often has difficulty downloading, so to insist on this for a heart risk system is bad. Grade F.

Budweiser bud.tv This site requires registration which I do not understand. Registration should be optional not required. They say that applying for a user name and password by giving up email, date of birth, mobile phone and other data ensures you get “new episodes, shows, and other things.” Bad idea in my opinion. Grade F.

And you may ask yourself: "How did I get here?"

Recently, a bunch of people have asked me how and why I ventured out on my own. Several of these people have a habit of sneaking song lyrics into email subject lines to see if I notice, so as I was thinking of a title for this post, I followed the lead of Bradley and Len. Recognize it? (Read to the bottom if you don't).

I didn't plan on becoming a thought leadership strategist and online marketing expert. I came upon it accidentally.

At the height of the dot-com boom, I was vice president of marketing at NewsEdge Corporation, a NASDAQ-traded online news distributor with $70 million in revenue. My multi-million dollar marketing budget included tens of thousands of dollars a month for a public relations agency, hundreds of thousands a year for print advertising and glossy collateral materials, and expensive participation at a dozen trade shows a year. My team put these things on our marketing to-do list, worked like hell to execute, and paid the big bucks because, well, that’s what one did as marketing and PR people. These efforts made us feel good because we were doing something but the programs were not producing significant, measurable results.

At the same time, drawing on publishing experience I had gained in my prior position as Asia marketing director for the online division of Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the largest newspaper companies in the world, I quietly created content-based, "thought leadership" marketing and PR programs on the Web.

Against the advice of the PR agency professionals we had on retainer (who insisted that news releases were only for journalists), we wrote and sent dozens of releases ourselves. Each time we sent a release, it appeared on dozens of online services such as Yahoo!, resulting in hundreds of sales leads. "Cool!" we'd say.

Even though our advertising agency told us not to put valuable information "somewhere where competitors could steal it," we created a monthly thought leadership newsletter called TheEdge, with articles about the exploding world of digital news. We made it freely available on the home page of our Web site because it generated interest from qualified buyers.

Way back in the 1990s when Web marketing and PR was in its infancy, I ignored the old rules, drawing instead on my experience working at publishing companies, and created thought leadership strategies to reach buyers directly on the Web.

Guess what? The homegrown, do-it-yourself programs we created at virtually no cost consistently generated more interest from qualified buyers than the big bucks programs that the "professionals" were running for us—and resulted in millions of dollars in sales. People we never heard of were finding us through search engines.

Wow. I had stumbled on a better way to reach buyers.

In 2002, after NewsEdge was sold to The Thomson Corporation, I had a choice. Instead of taking another corporate job, I took the advice of Seth Godin and started my own business to refine my ideas, work with select clients, and teach others through writing, speaking at conferences, and conducting seminars for corporate groups. The subject of all this work: Reaching your buyers directly and driving more revenue using online thought leadership.

Since then, many new forms of online media for delivering thought leadership have burst onto the scene, including blogs, podcasts, video, and virtual communities. But what’s the same about all the new Web tools and techniques is that together they are the best way to communicate directly with your marketplace.

The lyrics are from Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads who remain one of my favorite bands. Of the 200 or so concerts I've seen (including classics like Bob Marley, Muddy Waters, The Ramones, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, and The Clash) the August 1982 Talking Heads show at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in NY was one of the best.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

The New Rules of Marketing and PR book cover

Big News. The cover for my newest book The New Rules of Marketing and PR is finalized and I really like it!

Thank you to my friends at Wiley who worked with me to create this cover. I was thrilled that Wiley made me a part of the process.

Many publishers force book covers on authors. One of my friends said that when she first saw her cover and was told that it could not be changed, she was so bummed that she cried.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly will be out in June 2007. Thanks to many of you who have commented on this blog and helped to make the book better.