Web Ink Now

Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae – buy a copy for your boss*

When I deliver keynote speeches and run seminars at companies, I am often asked for advice on how to convince the bosses that the new rules of marketing really work. Frequently people say something like: "My bosses make me prove ROI before I can do this online thought leadership and viral marketing stuff."

My cynical answer is: "What’s the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?"

But then I suggest that people to ask their boss if in the past few months, they've made a product or service decision based on a direct mail piece they received or a based on a TV advertisement. (Almost no bosses have). Then they should ask their boss if in the past few months they've used Google or another search engine to make a product or service decision. (Virtually all bosses have).

Well now I have something else to suggest. Buy a copy of Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? for your bosses.* Tell them it is an important book. Meatball Sundae will be your tool to help others in your organization to understand what you already get and what you are eager to implement. It will help you to get the buy-in to do the new rules of marketing that you know makes sense.

But first your bosses may need to transform your company.

Seth kindly sent me an advance copy of the book (it is expected to ship on December 27, 2007). He has put the "new marketing" stuff that I talk about into great perspective for the skeptics in the big companies and also for the bosses who demand to know "what the ROI of this new fangled stuff."

Meatball Sundae lays out in a convincing manner the transformations that are taking place in business today. These transformations mean that everything needs to be looked at carefully, including marketing. But to just toss new marketing onto the top of obsolete business models is like putting whipped cream and a cherry onto meatballs to make a sundae. (Yuk).

Godin tells a story I really like. Josiah Wedgewood, a potter in England in the 1800's at the start of the Industrial Revolution, was the first to create a factory with a production line and job specialization. He built a showroom and shipped product around the world. And he sold bespoke pieces to royalty but first displayed those fantastic and expensive creations for several months so all could see. (Wedgewood was a marketing genius AND a business pioneer.)

Josiah Wedgewood took advantage of changes in society and technology and changed the way business is done, made millions, and founded a company still famous today. But his brother Thomas Wedgewood stuck to the ways that all potters have worked in the past, barely made a living, and is forgotten today.

Godin says fourteen trends are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer. And while these trends are transforming organizations that have the right approaches, they are crippling the organizations that are stuck with nothing but meatballs. Once again, marketing is transforming what we make and how we make it.

For more information on the book, check out Meatball Sundae on Squidoo.

On Monday December 17 you can learn more about Meatball Sundae as Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now interviews Seth Godin on WebmasterRadio.FM. The show is called Meeting of the Marketing Titans. Bryan is a co-author of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? I’ve spoken with Bryan several times and he is a great choice to lead the discussion on Seth’s new book.

* > If you are the boss, you should buy copies for your board members and investors...

Optimizing Social Networking sites as a tool to reach your buyers

Social Networking sites are an excellent way to deliver information to people who might want to do business with your organization. Particularly if you use a thought leadership based approach, sites like MySpace, Squidoo, and the other social networking sites reaches your buyers and helps you to achieve your goals.

Although social networking sites certainly aren't advertising, you can still use the sites to lead people into your buying process. For example, The Alternate Routes' MySpace page has links to the band's latest album, touring schedule, and online ticket purchasing tools; Volkswagen's Miss Helga MySpace page links to the automaker's other sites; Vince Ciulla’s Squidoo page links to his extensive set of content pages; and John Edwards links to a place where visitors can make online donations from his MySpace page.

OPTIMIZING SOCIAL NETWORKING PAGES

Here are some ideas to get the most out of using social networking sites for marketing:

> Target a specific audience. Create a page that reaches an audience that is important to your organization. It is usually better to be thinking a small niche market to target (for example, people who want to do their own car repairs but don't know how to discover what’s wrong).

> Be a thought leader. Provide valuable and interesting information that people want to check out. It is better to show your expertise in a market or a buyer's problems than to blather on about your product.

> Be authentic and transparent. Don't try to impersonate someone else. It is sleazy, and if you get caught you can do irreparable harm to your company’s reputation. If your mother would say it is wrong, it probably is.

> Create lots of links. Link to your own sites and blog, and those of others in your industry and network. Everybody loves links—it makes the Web what it is. You should certainly ink to your own stuff from social networking site (like your blog), but also link to other people’s sites and content in your own market.

> Encourage people to contact you. Make it easy for people to reach you online, and be sure to follow up personally on your fan mail.

> Participate. Create groups and participate in online discussions. Become an online leader and organizer.

> Make it easy to find you. Tag your page and add your page into the subject directories. Encourage others to bookmark your page with del.icio.us and DIGG.

> Experiment. These sites are great because you can try new things. If it isn't working, tweak it. Or abandon the effort and try something new.

And remember, there is no such thing as an "expert" in marketing using social networking—we're all learning as we go!

I want to learn from you too. Let me know if you're doing something cool or that is working for you.

Do You Squidoo?

The popularity of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Xanga is phenomenal. Social networking sites make it easy for people to create a profile about themselves and use it to create a virtual network of their offline friends and to make new friends online.

Another social networking site called Squidoo is based not on personal profiles of individuals but on people's expertise in a niche subject. Squidoo is another way for marketers to build an online presence easily and for free. Squidoo, headed up by "original squid" Seth Godin—the founder of Yoyodyne (which he sold to Yahoo! in 1998), creator of "Permission Marketing," and best-selling business author of Purple Cow and Small is the New Big—is built around online lenses, which are a way to filter a person’s expertise on a subject onto a single page.

With Squidoo, interested people check out a lens on a topic and quickly get pointed to useful Web sites. A person who makes a lens is a lensmaster, and he or she uses a lens to provide context. "Everyone is an expert," the Squidoo site says, and Squidoo helps everyone share that expertise with the world.

A lens is not a destination, but rather like a guide that sends visitors to other places. The Squidoo FAQ says, "It's a place to start, not finish." Lenses provide detail on a topic and point to other content such as blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, or Amazon books. I've created (at this writing) five lenses and for a lensmaster like me, the effort is minimal (each lens, such as the one I created on Web Content only took an hour or two to create), yet my lenses are consistently one of the top ten referring sites to my blog and Web site—only the search engines such as Google and the magazine and marketing sites I write for generate more traffic for me.

Auto Repair on Squidoo

Vince Ciulla, a professional automotive technician with over 30 years' experience, has created a popular Squidoo lens called Auto Repair – Trouble Shooting that points to content on his main site. A part of the All Info About network, this main site offers over 20,000 pages of auto repair content, including some 9,000 questions and answers. "A lot of people want to do their own repairs, and finding information about specific vehicles on the Web is difficult," Ciulla says. "Fixing your car is easy, the hard part is figuring out what's wrong. My Web site and links from my Squidoo lens is how people can get the information they need for free, such as how to replace a brake master cylinder. I also explain things like how the cruise control works."

Most of the traffic to Ciulla's site comes through search engines, but visitors also come from Squidoo. "The last time I checked, there were 210,000 search terms pointing to my pages," he says. Ciulla makes money from advertising on his site and also from telephone consultations with people who want to discuss specific auto repair issues with him. He's conducted some 2,500 paid telephone consultations as a result of people finding him online and wanting to tap his expertise. "To get more exposure for my content, I do a regular guest appearance on America's Car Show syndicated radio show and I have the Squidoo lens, which I use to funnel people to my All Info About site. There's not much maintenance required in Squidoo, and it drives traffic, so it is worth doing. I also started a Squidoo group with other people who have auto repair lenses, and we’ve got some people who provide information on hybrid cars."

Squidoo is not just for companies and independent consultants. Consider Global Action Foundation (GAF), a nonprofit organization started by a group of young professionals who work to eradicate extreme poverty. The GAF promotes their efforts (such as a project the group has begun in Sierra Leone to support amputees and their families) via the organization’s Squidoo lens. The GAF lens includes photos depicting the extreme poverty conditions that GAF helps to eradicate, links to the blog written by young American medical student John Daniel Kelly (who is a driving force behind GAF), and links for making online donations. This lens successfully portrays GAF work via the comprehensive content, and it encourages people to contribute.

Pimp out your blog

My daughter entered eighth grade this September and for the week before classes began she enjoyed pimping out her school binder. All the cool girls do it. A standard plastic three-ring binder is transformed with photos, stickers, song lyrics, and other bits and bobs on the outside. She's even got a spot for a quote of the day which she updates each morning. Inside, the binder has page dividers she’s customized, and pocket folders with pens and protractors and whatnot.

I got to thinking that the same is true of good blogs. A pimped out blog shows the blogger's personality.

I've pimped out my blog with lots of cool stuff. On the top is a masthead that I had a designer friend create. In TypePad which I use for my Web Ink Now blog, you just have someone design something that's 770 pixels wide and drop it in. Presumably you can do the same with other blog software.

On the right and left columns, I've implemented TypePad widgets. For example, I have links from the cover images of my books to Amazon. Because it is part of my Amazon Associates program account, I'm even paid a small commission. It's not much money, but every quarter I can take my family out for a decent dinner on the proceeds.

I've got links to pages on my site and to my other content on the Web such as my Squidoo lens and a Technorati a list of blogs that link to mine. There’s a link to the articles I've written for EContent Magazine, a link to the Newstex Blogs On Demand network that syndicates my blog and links to the associations that I'm affiliated with. There are RSS subscription widgets from Feedburner and an email subscription option with FeedBlitz.

Pimping out your blog is easy with TypePad using widgets "bling for your blog." If you devote a few hours to it, you can make a very cool looking blog that even my teenage daughter would approve of.

Sure, the standard templates offered by the blog software providers are great to get started, but once you are into the blogging thing, it is important to make your blog personality shine through based on the links, images, masthead and other widgets.

Small is the New Big

Many say you shouldn't give away your work for free if you wish to sell it. Nonsense. Seth Godin has got a big idea with his new book Small is the New Big. This entire book of riffs already exists for free in places such as on Seth's blog or via his Squidoo lens. I've read most of the stories in the book already. Yet I pre-ordered the book on Amazon for overnight delivery because I wanted the content, again, in the new package. I want to take it to the beach. I want to have it on my desk and pick it up now and then.

"you're smarter than they think"

Readers of this blog know that I'm a Seth Godin fan. Reading his stuff contributed to a life change for me. Back in the late 1990s, I had ideas about how content drives action on Web sites. As the VP Marketing of several reasonably large public companies, I realized that I had "power" and "a good job." In most people's eyes, I was successful. But I just didn't have the right platform to tell the world about my ideas. And I was not fulfilled.

Seth Godin's writing always focuses on getting people like me, those with a fire in the belly to take action. "I've been betting on the intelligence of my readers for almost a decade," Godin writes on the back cover of Small is the new Big, "and that bet keeps paying off. They just don't get it. Now you, you get it… And I'm, betting that once you’re inspired you'll actually make something happen."

For me, the big moment was when my company was acquired by a huge organization and I was shown the door. I chose not to take the "safe" route and find another VP Marketing job, but instead to strike out on my own. To write books and magazine articles. To hit the speaking circuit. To work with organizations that wanted to improve online communications. The "I dare you" messages from Godin were an important part of my life changing decision.

Wow.

I work much harder than before, but fewer hours. I attend very few meetings. I choose the terrific companies I want to work with and tell the idiots to take a hike. I've never missed one of my daughter's swim meets because of work. I have dinner with my family most evenings. I'm helping people make a difference because of my ideas rather than saying "I wish I had…" or "I could, but...".

Read Small is the New Big.

It is an important book. And no matter what you want to do to make a difference, listen to Seth's advice. Just get out there and make it happen.

And when you get your copy, check out page 95. Thanks Seth.

Flipping the Funnel

Flipping the Funnel, is a great new ebook from Seth Godin which was just published today. The ideas Seth presents about using Web content are spot on. And I am flattered that my blog and my Squidoo lens: Web Content that Sells are mentioned in Flipping the Funnel (on page 15) as an example of how bloggers use a Squidoo lens to promote their blogs and ebooks and vice versa. How cool is that?

Download Flipping the Funnel here.

In Flipping the Funnel, Seth says: "Turn strangers into friends. Turn friends into customers. And then… do the most important job: Turn your customers into salespeople." The examples throughout focus on Web content.

And the ebook is published in three slightly versions: one for corporate-types, one if you’re a politician and one for non-profits. Nice positioning for different buyers.

Read it today. Hey, it's free.

Squidoo: Everyone's an expert on something, now you can be too

I was lucky enough to be one of a select few closed beta testers of Seth Godin's new Squidoo. Now the beta test is open to anyone. As the Squidoo folks say "Everyone’s an expert on something." And now that the beta is open you can be to. Just go to Squidoo.com and sign up.

I established three lenses. The one I put the most work into is called Web Content that Sells. A lens is basically an individual's unique way of looking at a particular subject. The best way to get a sense is to check out my lenses as well as other people's.

In classic Seth Godin style, his new company was launched via a blog and an e-book. Check the Squid Blog and read the e-book. Here's some of what’s on the Squidoo site: "For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free e-book, from bestselling author and Squidoo.com founder Seth Godin, proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less." The e-book is classic Seth: well-written, short, funny, provocative.

Creating a lens is easy and quick. What the heck are you waiting for?

Seth Godin’s Squidoo

Seth Godin is innovating again. The founder of Yoyodyne (which he sold to Yahoo in 1998), the creator of “Permission Marketing” and author of “All Marketers are Liars” is launching a new venture called Squidoo. What’s really interesting to Web marketers and bloggers is that Seth is launching his company exclusively through viral marketing from people like me. Hats off to Debbie Weil for alerting me to Seth’s new venture.

Seth has kept this one really quiet. Until now.

I was lucky enough to meet Seth a few weeks ago at Factiva Forum. He was a keynote speaker and I moderated a great panel on blogging. We spoke for a few moments about my book (which he kindly provided a “back of the book blurb” for – thanks Seth). In the short time with him prior to his talk, the speech itself and the Q&A session, he didn’t mention Squidoo at all. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t keep such a secret. But Seth knows that a good viral Web effort relies on a bit of secrecy and intrigue.

Here’s some of what’s on the Squidoo site: “For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free ebook, from bestselling author and Squidoo.com founder Seth Godin, proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less.”

The ebook is classic Seth: well-written, short, funny, provatative. Download it here. Some highlights: Squidoo is about lenses - a way to filter one person’s view onto a single page. By looking at a person’s lens, we can quickly find what we are looking for. A person who makes a lens is a lensmaster and he or she uses a lens to provide context. Everyone is an expert and Squidoo helps them to share with the world.

This venture will be fun to watch. And hopefully I’ll participate when it is launched.