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9 Ways People Respond to Online Content

2009-06-03T14:22:06Z

Rajesh Setty has a great guest post over at Lateral Action that could have easily appeared on Copyblogger, so today I’ll send you over there. It’s called 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online and it presents a response scale that demonstrates that the more creative your content, the greater overall return you get for your efforts.

It’s good stuff, so check it out. And make sure to leave Raj an exquisite, meaningful comment.

49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing

2009-04-22T14:39:30Z

Maybe you think “content marketing” means having a blog that makes money. Or that it’s about producing content for sites like ezinearticles and Squidoo. Or having an email autoresponder.

Content marketing is bigger than that.

The whole idea behind content marketing is that you can use your creativity and know-how to make something cool, then take that cool thing and use it to market a product. It’s often associated with Seth Godin’s notion of permission marketing, but content marketing can be a part of any promotion or selling you might do.

To jog your creativity, I’ve come up with 49 content marketing tactics you can start using right away. Some of these are ideas about making any form of content more interesting, some are attention-getting strategies, some will be useful for lead generation, some for prospect conversion.

1. “Content” isn’t just about being online. I had a conversation with Bill Glazer recently (he’s Dan Kennedy’s business partner), and he believes passionately that every business needs to send a paper newsletter to existing customers, to build loyalty and better repeat business.

I don’t know about “every,” but I think he’s on to something for many businesses. Incidentally, businesses usually find that customer newsletters work better when they don’t get too fancy in their format or printing. Four-color printing on glossy paper looks like an ad. A simple photocopy on plain paper looks like valuable inside information.

2. You’d be surprised at some of the well-known internet marketing gurus who are experimenting with direct mail, especially as pay-per-click gets more and more expensive. The same techniques that make your online content marketing work will do beautifully offline.

3. Write a special report or white paper that addresses a thorny problem in an interesting way.

4. Create a free course delivered by email autoresponder. I’ve used this quite a bit in my own business and for clients, and it’s a great way to build trust and rapport. (In fact, here’s a free e-course on how to do it.)

5. Write an educational series of blog posts designed to attract traffic for a competitive keyword phrase. (Like this one on the fundamentals of copywriting, for example.)

6. Offer a free teleclass to build interest in your business. You can do all the talking yourself, or work with a partner in an interview format. Remember to record the class—the recording will also be valuable content that you can use in future marketing.

7. Offer a paid teleclass that takes your content further and provides additional value. Again, the call can be recorded and sold as a product for as long as the content remains relevant.

8. Build a membership web site that is a profitable business in and of itself.

9. Put together one or more Squidoo lenses to attract and focus Google traffic.

10. Create a wiki on a free site like WetPaint to allow your audience to collaborate and contribute to your vision.

11. Build a Facebook page (separate from your personal profile) that gives you another platform for interaction with your customers.

12. Compile your best 100 blog posts into a physical book. It worked for Godin, and it can work for you.

13. When you contribute to an online forum in your topic, remember that your answers are content. Make sure this content reflects well on you.

14. Take your most popular blog post, add some really good images and translate it into PowerPoint, then record it with Camtasia for a YouTube video.

15. Use Wordpress to efficiently create mini niche sites. Since you’re a student of quality content, your sites will tower above the usual fare. Use these niche sites to sell products from affiliate marketplaces like Commission Junction.

(Commission Junction offers “real world” products as well as digital ones. So if you want to sell coffee, movie posters or collectible figurines on your niche site, you can.)

16. Most of us know that Twitter is an exceptional tool for building relationships with prospects and customers. To use Twitter most effectively, make your tweets entertaining, funny, and/or personal. The right balance on Twitter is generally 95% relationship-building, 5% selling.

17. Use any content vehicle to talk about how you’ve overcome a difficult problem related to your topic. Don’t try to be an infallible guru. Instead, be a smart, real person who has solved problems that your readers will find relevant.

18. Write a yellow pages ad that looks like a blog post. Make it interesting, informative, funny, and compelling.

For bonus points, in addition to the usual contact information, provide information in your yellow pages ad about how to sign up for your email autoresponder or get your free white paper.

19. Take your 10-15 best podcasts, get them transcribed and edited, and sell them as an ebook.

20. Bring 5 or 6 of the strongest people in your topic together and create a virtual conference, with each presenter giving an audio or video workshop. This is a relatively simple way to create a very marketable product. Again, the recordings can be sold as long as the content remains relevant.

21. Hold a Tweetathon for your favorite charity. Consider creating a piece of valuable content (a special report, etc.) as a reward for donations over some specified amount.

22. Create a treasure hunt with some blogging friends. Each person hides a clue somewhere in the content on their blog, and readers are invited to find all the clues and put them together for a prize. (The prize, of course, is another piece of valuable content.)

23. Your comments on other people’s blogs are content. Treat them that way. Be original, relevant and interesting.

24. Use your own content to sing the praises of others in your topic. Partnerships, both formal and informal, can exponentially multiply your success in the content world.

25. Create a buyer’s guide. Use it to frame purchasing questions on your terms. Let buyers know what to look for and what to watch out for. Tell them what questions they should be asking.

Don’t make this too self-serving. If you make it real (and let other vendors win some of the business, especially for customers who aren’t truly suited to you), it will get used.

26. Write an editorial for a dead-tree newspaper or magazine. Yes, lots and lots of people still read these.

27. If the newspaper/magazine doesn’t print your editorial, buy ad space and run it as an advertorial instead.

28. Collect weird stories from sources your readers don’t usually see. If your audience is made of particle physicists, gets stories from The Enquirer. Sift through and find the metaphors and analogies in these stories that will relate back to your topic.

Quirky, oddball stories make any content more compelling. And you can’t get results from content that doesn’t get read.

29. Write an industry report on a hot topic. You’ll be surprised at how many high-profile folks will agree to a recorded Skype/phone interview for an industry report.

30. If you’ve got a piece of content that is too weird, rude, vanilla, sentimental. rated-R, rated-G, etc. for your own site, run it as a guest post on someone else’s. Be true to yourself, but show your different facets too.

31. You don’t have to call it a blog just because you created it in Wordpress. Maybe it’s an Online Coffee Shop, a Web-Based Self-Coaching Site, a Virtual Concierge, a Tutorial, an E-School, a Directory or a Dictionary. Use a label that resonates with your readers.

32. Build a collection of Squidoo lenses that are optimized to sell goods around a particular holiday, like Halloween costumes or Christmas lights. There are a good number of these now, so find an underserved niche within those broader subjects.

33. Have a good ranting voice and something interesting to say? Write a manifesto! Send readers to your blog or email list if they want to know more. These tend to work better if you don’t require an email opt-in to receive them—the idea is to spread your ideas (and name) far and wide.

34. Review everything. Books, blogs, newsletters, tools, physical products, information products.

35. Take a topic that’s subject to information overload (maybe it’s “the coolest apps for your iPhone”) and make it manageable. Create a “10 Best” post that’s simple, user-friendly and gets the reader out of information fog.

36. Compare your product or service to the weirdest celebrity story that people are currently talking about. Look hard enough and you’ll find 7 things your business has in common with Paris Hilton’s addiction to World of Warcraft.

37. If you’re stuck for content ideas, find a story on the Digg front page that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Then rewrite the story so it does. (You might keep nothing other than the headline. That’s fine. In fact, it’s probably ideal.)

38. Use headlines swiped from popular magazines. I’ve found Cosmo to be the most effective, but anything will work if it’s designed to jump off the newsstands. Like the previous tip, this works best when the magazine has nothing to do with your topic. I wrote one of my most enduringly popular posts using this technique.

39. Use your content to address every objection you’ve ever faced when trying to sell your product. Write interesting articles that show your product or service getting around these objections.

40. Record a session with a client (with their permission, of course) and offer it as a “test drive” to people who are thinking about working with you.

41. Create a useful tool (a checklist, spreadsheet-based calculator, cheat sheet, planning worksheet, etc.) that can be distributed to your blog subscribers or email list. These make great “thank yous” for subscribing to your site or autoresponder.

42. Create special “gratitude content” for subscribers. For example, I send special subscriber-only content on both Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving, to thank my readers for their attention and business. I try to take it beyond a simple message of thanks, and make the content itself a small gift for my readers.

43. Use a blog post series or an email autoresponder to create a sideways sales letter.

44. Write a series or a regular column “authored” by your two-year-old, your dog, your cat, your parrot, or your guinea pig. Think it’s too cutesy to work with your audience? Try it and see.

45. Make an absurd comparison. The farther you have to reach, the better it will work. “101 Ways LOLCats Can Improve Your Arc Welding” is just about guaranteed to capture some attention. Among arc welders, anyway.

46. Create a monthly paid newsletter, delivered electronically or by physical mail, in addition to your free content. Include more detailed how-to and reference information than you would on your free site.

You don’t have to sell all that many subscriptions, and they don’t have to be very pricy, to add up to significant income.

47. Make a monthly recording, either audio or using a Flip camera for video. Keep it casual, like a standing date with a friend to grab coffee together. Each month, discuss a single pressing issue facing your audience, and give three or four techniques that will let your audience thrive in whatever the current environment might be.

This makes a nice add-on to a paid newsletter.

48. If your customers aren’t particular web savvy (or sometimes even if they are), think about producing your content on CDs and DVDs. There are many businesses that can handle this for you inexpensively, and the perceived value is much higher than purely online content.

49. To come up with your own ideas, combine your most generous self with your most creative self. Think about how to create content that makes your customers’ lives better, and dream up exciting new ways to get that content in front of them.

This isn’t meant to be the last word on the subject—it’s really just the beginning. If you don’t see your favorite technique on this list, let us know about it in the comments!

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

British Car Designer Talks About Secret New T25

2009-01-05T16:23:57Z

In December 2001, I wrote a newspaper article about a mysterious invention by Dean Kamen that was about to be revealed the next day. The hype was intense and articles in anticipation of Kamen's announcement made front page news all over the world. The news all focused on the same thing: his device was going to change the world or so reporters were told by the few who had seen the invention.

Fast forward a few years and the Segway hasn't changed the world. In fact, it's likely that the Segway will be little more than a footnote when we look back one day at the evolution of vehicles. So anything that promises to be a revolutionary new kind of car deserves some skepticism. Still, Gordon Murray is known in driving circles for having had extraordinary success. He's the guy behind the McLaren F1 and he has now designed a new type of car that is decidedly different than his super sports car.

The T25 is a tightly-guarded secret, but what has been publicly known is that the four-seater will be smaller than a Mini and has a capability of 80 mpg. It will not be a hybrid nor use an electric motor.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Murray has given more hints about what the T25—so named because it's Murray's 25th car design--could look like and why he thinks it will be a success. For starters, Professor Murray is using regular fuel and every day materials to make his car. He won't be relying on hybrids or biofuels.

Three Rules For Search Marketing With Franchise Organizations

2008-09-29T21:21:23Z

I always think of an armada of ships when I look at a franchised company. You've got a large battleship, directing the path of the smaller craft—yet the smaller craft must navigate on their own, especially when the instructions from the battleship don't make sense. And oftentimes, because the franchisees are busy navigating their own murky waterways, they can fail to see the logic behind the battleship's directions and forge their own paths, sometimes to disastrous effect.

Creating search engine marketing strategies for franchised companies is some of the most challenging work I've done in my career—and also some of the most rewarding. In this column, I'll outline some lessons learned when working with franchisees and at the corporate level of the franchise itself.

Click to continue reading...

The 3 Secrets to Massive Online Marketing Success

2008-08-14T17:45:18Z

If you’re trying to sell products and services online, you’re probably looking for that one magic key to make your business work.

You buy CDs and DVDs that will tell you the secret.

You subscribe to sites like Copyblogger to study the secret.

You look at mega-successful sites in your market and try to reverse engineer the secret.

After all of this searching, you may be tempted to believe there is no secret. But the secret is real.

Actually, there are three secrets that work together. To be blunt, these three magic success secrets separate the winners from the losers. Master them and you’ll start to move forward. Slowly at first, then you’ll pick up momentum and things will start to move amazingly quickly. No baloney, no tricks. These three secrets are . . .

Success secret #1: Take action

Every year, hopeful entrepreneurs buy millions of dollars’ worth of “how to succeed” or “how to start a business” products. The market isn’t limited to doing business online, but the idea of working at a computer making “six-figure incomes in our pajamas” is especially irresistible.

95% of the customers for these products will spend thousands of dollars, then turn around looking for the next magic pill before their credit card gets a chance to cool off. So are online marketing products all garbage? Are they just hype and spin?

There are some junky products out there, but the truth is that many of them are excellent. The “gurus,” as they’re (not always affectionately) called, have a lot of sound advice to give. Their advice can make you lots of money, if you know the success secret:

You actually have to do something with the advice.

Most customers for “business opportunity” products value the dream more than they do the result. They want to get out of the cubicle, out of their crummy apartment, out of credit card debt. They might even want it desperately. But they don’t take action.

I’m not saying this to be flippant or harsh. It’s not actually all that easy to go from advice to action. If you don’t have a good track record for that, if you’ve spent a lot of time or money on how-to products but never really done anything with it, you may believe you’ll never master it.

That’s BS.

Your new productivity methodology

Get a little notebook. This is your to-do list for your project.

If you’re a content marketer, most of your actions will revolve around creating content, creating products, or delivering services. Be sure and maintain a long list of content ideas, so you’re never at a loss when it’s time to knock out a post or a podcast.

Write down all the actions you must take to get you to the next step. Add more actions as you think of them. Cross them off when you’re done. When the list is a mess, rewrite it.

You don’t need an elaborate system that wastes more time than it frees up. Your system only needs to help you know what to do next.

Work every day (7 days a week, no exceptions), even if some days you only have 15 minutes. Working every day will increase your productivity by spurring your unconscious mind to come up with more ideas. This is helpful for entrepreneurs, and critical for content marketers.

Make a daily habit of one hour of action on your biggest goal. You’ll be astonished at how quickly you start to make progress. Ready, Fire, Aim author Michael Masterson recommends an hour of work on your dream goal every morning, as a way to start your day with a terrific rush of productivity. I’ve been doing just that for the past few months, and I’m starting to get used to the “whooshing” sound as the pieces fall into place. Not only does it work, it feels great too.

You can spend that hour all at once, or divide it into two or three pieces. Make it work for you. And once you develop the hour-a-day habit, you’ll actually find yourself making excuses to do more work on your project.

Success is built on lots of small steps. Start taking them. You’ve built this up in your head to be 1,000 times harder than it is. The fact that you have historically been terrible at getting stuff done is not relevant at all.

Just start taking action. It honestly is that simple.

Success secret #2: Have a plan

The down side of “just taking action” is that if you do a lot of random tasks, you tend to get a lot of random results.

You need to put together a simple, reasonably logical plan. If you want notoriety and attention for its own sake, put together a Paris Hilton sort of plan. If you want credibility and trust from your customers, make it more of a Copyblogger kind of plan.

There’s an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail. Fight that kind of thinking as much as you can. Your plan may call for expertise you don’t have, or actions you aren’t very good at. So make some room in your plan to partner with someone else. If you’re great at connecting with customers but lousy at technology, find a partner whose strengths and weaknesses perfectly complement yours. Believe me, that person is out there and wants desperately to work with you.

Making too many plans can be the enemy of success secret #1. Be sure your plan has plenty of room for “actions I will take.”

For most of us, grandiose plans don’t get implemented. It’s great to have spectacular goals, if that inspires you. But put together plans for relatively simple, manageable projects. A dumb, simple little project that gets done is infinitely more valuable than an impressive one that gets 99% done.

The reason “back-of-the-napkin” project planning is a cliché is because simple, compact plans tend to get put into action, while 1,000-page strategies to create business empires tend to gather dust.

Keep your project plan in your little notebook. If your plan doesn’t fit into a small notebook, make a smaller plan.

If you want to make a million dollars online, start with a project to make $10. Figure that out, then scale it. It sounds simplistic and even silly, but it works.

Success secret #3: Your secret sauce is you

This is the one that’s going to take #1 and #2 to a completely new level. Success secrets #1 and #2 can make you a decent living. Add #3 to those and you’ll start to create an extraordinary business that supports a meaningful life.

As a content marketer, you’re going to need to create interesting, useful and compelling content pretty much every day you’re in this business. Your blog posts, free reports and email newsletters all contribute to one goal: to establish you as a trusted authority on your topic.

If you’re just going to regurgitate the usual stuff in a lame me-too blog, you’re not going to find too many customers. You’re betting off spending your time surfing or skateboarding—at least with those, you’ll get some exercise and you might meet somebody cute.

You have a unique view of your market’s problems. You have a unique set of techniques and approaches to solve those problems. You have a unique set of experiences to put the problems in a fresh light. Share those unique perspectives in your content.

If you need more expertise to establish yourself as a credible authority, get out and start asking questions. Be a reporter. Look for case studies. Look for real-life examples, even if they’re tiny. Look for lessons in your own life. Make connections no one’s made yet. Bring someone else’s expertise to light in a new way.

If you’re a Franciscan monk, write about the Franciscan monk’s guide to brewing better beer. If you’re a doting parent, write about the toddler’s guide to success. If you’re an indentured servant for a big corporation, write about how to avoid doing all the really dumb stuff your company does.

There will always be people—often thousands of people—who know more than you do. Acknowledge that so you stay humble and open. Then put it to one side and speak up anyway.

Keep whittling down your topic until you’re speaking with an authentic voice about something you genuinely know and care about. Stay curious and you’ll find the path that works for you and only for you.

The real secret

Nearly everyone will read this, feel inspired for about 45 seconds, then go off to hit Starbucks and check out what the hottie on the 2nd floor is wearing today.

But you’re going out at lunch today to pick up your small notebook. As soon as you get back, you’re going to scribble a simple plan and a good handful of actions that will make the plan happen. You’re going to put some thought into how you can execute this plan in your own inimitable way.

You’ll make 10 minutes and take an action today, even if it’s small. Tomorrow morning, you’ll start working for an hour every day, 7 days a week, toward your biggest goal. And just like that, you’ll be on your way to true, meaningful success, however you define it.

Send me a postcard when you’ve reached your dream. I’ll be very jazzed to hear from you.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Wonderbra

2008-08-13T14:36:06Z

Agency: Publicis, Frankfurt

New deal makes “invisible” Flash content visible to search

2008-07-01T04:00:17Z

Adobe, Google and Yahoo are about to make it easier to build rich multimedia websites in the Flash file format (SWF) without sacrificing any “Google juice” (and, um, whatever the Yahoo equivalent is). Both search engines have been developing ways to fully index Flash content without requiring any extra effort from a website owner.

Previously, search engines indexed the “static” text and links on a site, falling far short of capturing all the content.

“It’s like reading the index of a book, rather than the book itself,” says Justin Everett-Church, a senior product manager for Flash.

Now, Google and Yahoo will read the whole darn book — namely, they’ll use web crawlers to play through all of a Flash website’s possible “states,” and make that content available through their search results. The previous “invisibility” of much Flash content to search engines has been a complaint from Flash developers and site owners, Everett-Church says.

Bill Hunt of advertising company Ogilvy tells me this move will particularly benefit “big brand” companies like jewelery maker Tiffany & Co., which has built a fancy shopping website in Flash. Until now, much of the site’s content, such as individual product pages, was invisible to search engines — they could only be seen by navigating the site itself, and wouldn’t turn up in Google searches. For example, it’s less-than-ideal that the top Google result when you search for “Tiffany gold ring” is overstockjeweler.com, rather than the Tiffany website.

This may be an even more significant announcement for businesses that have considered building Flash websites, but didn’t want to sacrifice their search rankings — now, if Google and Yahoo live up to their promises, no one will have to make that choice, removing one of Flash’s big drawbacks.

Everett-Church says that Google has already started tweaking its search results, while Yahoo’s development is a little further behind. Both companies are seriously pursuing this integration, he says, but I can’t help noticing that for now, this is yet another advantage that Google has over Yahoo. It’s hardly a huge setback, but it’s not like Yahoo has much ground left to lose.

Cool Stuff Monday

2008-06-30T05:54:28Z

A buddy of mine found three cool inventions to share with readers of my blog. These inventions can change the world and illustrate how much can be done with innovative thinking.

Pot-in-pot. This is the invention of Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigeria. He is from a family of pot makers and discovered a way to preserve food despite in the country's high temperatures. One earthenware pot is place within another, and the space between the two is filled with sand. Users add water to the sand, and when this water evaporates, the inside pot is cooled.

Q-Drum. Hans Hendrikse invented this apparatus to enable people in Africa to transport fifty liters of water in a safer, easier, and more hygienic way. Rather than carrying water on their heads, now they roll it along in a drum made of low-density linear polyethylene.

Eco-nightclub. An eco-nightclub opened in London near King's Cross. It contains a dance floor that converts the up and down motion of dancers to electricity. The process is called piezoelectricity, and it's the same concept that make toddler's shoes flash when they run.

I hope that these ideas inspire you to create inventions like this too. Thanks to Thomas Kang for the idea to do this blog entry.

Kathy Kruse also pointed out the "Lessons of the Square Watermelon." You'd probably find this interesting too.

Bravery and Wall-e

2008-06-30T15:43:00Z

At every turn, Pixar messed up the marketing of their new movie. It has a hard to spell name, no furry characters, not nearly enough dialogue (the first 45 minutes is almost silent), no nasty (but ultimately ridiculous) bad guy, hardly any violence and very little slapstick. Wall-e didn't get a huge Hollywood PR campaign or even a lot of promotion, it doesn't feature any hot stars and as far as I can tell, the merchandising options are quite limited.

Can you imagine the meetings?

Can you imagine the yelling?

Pixar, recently purchased by Disney, could crank out multi-billion dollar confections. They know all the moves, they have the chops to create merchandising powerhouses. And with just one movie a year, they certainly must have been under huge pressure to do just that.

And yet, instead, they make a great movie. A movie for the ages. A film, not 90 minutes of commerce.

The irony, of course, is that they'll make plenty of money. Bravery often pays off, even if paying off is not your goal. Especially if that's not your goal.

Marketing isn't always about pandering to the masses and shooting for the quick payoff. Often, the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing at all.

Wind charges phones at Glastonbury Festival

2008-06-23T10:57:35Z

When revellers at the UK's Glastonbury Festival 2008 later this week need to recharge their mobile phones, they'll have a free and green way to do that thanks to a charging station being set up at the festival by Orange.

Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. It's actually the next iteration of a portable wind charger Orange tested out at last year's festival through a partnership with Gotwind, and will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. Orange expects the recharge pod will charge thousands of mobile phones over the course of the three-day festival, furnishing power equivalent to what would be needed to power a DJ booth for Groove Armada for 88 hours. The recharge pod will be stationed within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Glastonbury throughout the weekend of June 27–29, when the event takes place.

Free love is hard to beat, especially if it happens to be *green* free love at a summer music festival. One to emulate as often as possible! (Related: Jeans brand offers hot showers and clean undies.)

Website: www.rechargepod.com
Contact: info@gotwind.org

Spotted by: RK

Ready Salad

2008-06-23T15:38:19Z

Agency: Industria Nacional & Dialogo Design, Rio de Janeiro
Creative Director: Bruno Bertani, Ricardo Saint-Clair
Product Designer: Paulo Ferreira, Paulo Neto

Sponsored By: Make some Cash from Your Site! Text-Link-Ads have been working great for adgoodness, so why not try them out!

Do you own trees?

2008-06-02T19:48:00Z

Today's New York Times reports an astonishing fact: Book publishers wholesale their ebooks to Amazon for precisely the same price as their paper books. Amazon loses money on every ebook for the Kindle they sell because publishers don't discount zero-cost ebooks.

Apparently, the publishers don't count the paper, storage, inventory, shredding and shipping expenses in their cost calculations.

Either that, or they own a tree plantation or a printing plant.

And of course, they own neither.

Many businesses act as if they have a stake in their suppliers and other vendors. Instead of scaling the part of their business that can move quickly and well, they defend the part they don't even own.

Jason wrote in to ask why I thought that the newspaper industry was in a Dip. In my book, I point out that with classified ads disappearing and the web thriving, the days of newspapers as we know them are clearly over. That shouldn't mean the industry is in trouble. In fact, there are more people reading more news every day than ever before--without the cost of printing and distributing a costly piece of newsprint every day. Happy days...

But (many of) the people in the industry have built their lives around the trees. As a result, the industry is over. A new industry is being built in its place, often with new people doing work that might be done far better by the old hands, the ones who are stuck defending the wholesale slaughter of trees.

If you think your job is to keep the printers busy, then you see the world differently. You focus on per issue sales, you worry about people sharing a paper (!), you don't count online readers as valuable (even though they're more valuable). You focus on one edition, not a thousand different versions. You focus on having one front page, not dozens based on who is reading.

If you work for a newspaper that feels this way, every day you stay is a day wasted.

I worry about my esteemed friends in the book publishing industry as well. The amazing thing about the Times story today was the report that the mood at BEA was 'unease' about ebooks. The fastest-growing, lowest cost segment of the business, the one that offers the most promise, the best possible outcome and has the best results... is causing unease! All because of the trees.

Of course, there are trees in your business too. There are trees in the photography business (chemicals) and in the music business (plastic) and even in the personal computer business (computers). They may not be called trees, but they're there.

Transparency tyranny hits the workplace

2008-06-20T12:59:26Z

For those seeking a new job, honest information about salaries and workplaces can be near impossible to find. Taking a "give to get" approach to the problem, Glassdoor is a new site that aims to provide a thorough insider's look at what it's really like to work at a company, both financially and otherwise.

Launched into beta last week by two friends who worked together at Microsoft and Expedia (one of whom went on to found Zillow, which we've written about before), Glassdoor's operating philosophy is "You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine" as it gathers real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs in specific companies. Users begin by anonymously contributing a review and/or salary survey for their current employer or any position they've held within the last three years. (All users must provide a verified email account, and all reviews are hand-inspected for authenticity by Glassdoor, it says.) In exchange, Glassdoor gives them free access to nearly 32,000 reviews and salary reports for more than 7,000 companies representing more than 80 countries around the world—and counting. Users providing feedback are asked to take a balanced approach—providing both pros and cons along with advice to senior management—as well as rating companies on a range of workplace culture factors, including work-life balance, fairness and respect, employee morale, and senior leadership. And unlike most salary services that report just aggregated information, Glassdoor provides details of salary, bonuses and other compensation for actual positions and titles at specific companies, letting users compare the earnings package paid to a software engineer at Google with that earned by one at Microsoft, for example. Glassdoor also aims to involve employers through an employer advisory panel, periodic surveys and focus groups for the site.

Glassdoor hopes to become the TripAdvisor of the workplace, it says, and it's currently allowing visitors to preview all available data for four “sneak peek” companies: Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Robert Hohman, cofounder and CEO for the California-based site, explains: "We've built Glassdoor to make it easier for anyone to peek inside the walls of a prospective employer—or even the next cubicle—to get information that will foster more productive conversations and lead to better career decisions. Glassdoor's employee-generated content provides a level of transparency in the two key drivers of employee motivation—compensation and culture—that is not available from any other source.”

For those who hadn't noticed, the era of transparency tyranny (and transparency triumph) has arrived. Yet another stone turned!

Website: www.glassdoor.com
Contact: info@glassdoor.com

Spotted by: Jeppe Morgenstjerne

Adopt a Maine lobster trap

2008-06-13T07:14:18Z

We've already written about programs to adopt a vineyard or an olive tree, and now two Maine brothers have found a way to offer consumers the chance to adopt a Maine lobster trap.

For USD 2,995, consumers can own a Maine lobster trap and all the lobsters it catches for an entire year through the Premium Trap program from Catch a Piece of Maine. As "partners," as the company calls them, customers of the program are assigned a dedicated lobsterman who will fish their trap throughout the 32-week season. Everything he catches is tracked with a colour-coded band placed on the lobsters' claws, and all data is recorded online so that the partner can view their trap's activity, manage their catch and schedule shipments from anywhere. As lobsters are caught by the trap, the partner's account grows; as lobsters are requested for shipment, it decreases again. Lobsters can be shipped in batches of four as soon as they are caught, or they can be saved for later (in which case the company will substitute one just caught for the original); either way, details are included on when, where and by whom they were obtained. Catch a Piece of Maine guarantees at least 48 1.5 lb lobsters for each partner—totalling over 70bs.—and also 12 lbs. steamer clams, 12 lbs. mussels, and 48 servings of Maine-made desserts over the course of the year. All shipments are sent via FedEx overnight delivery throughout the continental U.S.; shipping costs are included in the fee. Partners are even invited to come aboard the company's lobster boat in Maine if they can, to meet the lobstermen and experience the harvest first-hand. Corporate gifts and single-meal orders are also available, and Catch a Piece of Maine donates 10 percent of its profits to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, educating 5th and 6th grade students about the Maine lobster industry.

At a time when local fishermen are struggling to make a living, Catch a Piece of Maine's partnership program allows lobstermen to receive a premium for their product while also preserving their sustainable fishing methods, the company says. No less significantly, it also gives consumers an active hand in what has typically been a hands-off business. Finally, it dovetails nicely with the still made here trend, giving consumers a geographical connection and a story to tell about the source of their food.

Website: www.catchapieceofmaine.com
Contact: brendan@catchapieceofmaine.com

Spotted by: Andrew Borislow

VW Golf Music

2008-06-06T18:54:10Z

New spot for the Volkswagen Golf. The track for the advert, made up from the sounds recorded in and around the Golf on the shoot was composed and produced by Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.

Found at: FreshCreation

The Art of the Business Card

2008-05-07T16:41:45Z

A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card--which I just loved. For once, a business card that cuts to the chase and is readable. Hallelujah! So I asked him to make business cards for me. Take a look at your business card: Can people really read the 8 point type? If you want Justin to make business cards for you, his site is here.

What do you know?

2008-05-10T20:22:00Z

Three years ago, I published this list, which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. It has held up pretty well. Feel free to reprint or otherwise use, as long as you include a credit line. I've added a few at the bottom...

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
Marketing begins before the product is created.
Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
Products that are remarkable get talked about.
Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
Good marketers tell a story.
People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
Good marketers measure.
Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.

Bruce Lee: Productivity Dragon

2008-05-09T20:33:30Z

The aptly named "Positivity Blog" recently had a rather compelling overview of Bruce Lee, Productivity Guru.

Like our own dear Merlin, Mr. Lee was from the Bay Area and took a lifelong interest in the fundamental rules underlying systems; unlike Mr. Mann, Bruce Lee could break Chuck Norris in half but never once listened to Zen Arcade.

What's more impressive, though, is how much of the Little Dragon's martial arts philosophy can be applied to pretty much everything. I'm especially fond of #4 on Positivity's list (“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”), but probably need to work most on #2:

Quote:

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

If you want to improve your life then it’s tempting to want to add more.

...Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease....

Adding more thoughts and thinking things over for the 111th time may create a sense of security. It’s also a good way to procrastinate and to avoid taking that leap you know you should take. And the more you think, the harder it gets to act.

I'm not going to argue with that.

Reports of the 3G iPhone’s imminent release may be slightly exaggerated

2008-05-11T23:45:59Z

The hype and speculation around the 3G iPhone are mounting quickly. Yesterday, it was uncovered that an “Enable 3G” button was part of the latest beta firmware update for the device. While Apple has yet to officially comment on the rumored-to-be-impending release, this is certainly one of the clearest signs that it is definitely coming soon. But how soon?

Rumors are flying around the Internet that Apple will launch the device earlier than expected — with some now even pointing to this month. There are a couple reasons behind this.

The first is that iPhone shortages are cropping up. Various parts of the U.S. and U.K. are out of stock (the device is completely sold out in New York City), with seemingly no refreshment in sight. Now, even Apple’s own online store is out of the device.

This, when added to the earlier rumor that Apple would release the 3G iPhone in May and save its WWDC convention in June for the announcement of a different, new device, have some speculating that we may see a very quiet roll-out of a 3G iPhone within the next couple weeks.

But let’s take a step back. We know that AT&T is circulating a memo to employees telling them not to take vacations between June 15th and July 12th. Unless this rumored new device was also utilizing AT&T in some way, it seems a lock that the 3G iPhone will be released in that time frame.

Also, unless Apple considers the 3G compatibility to be an incremental update, would the company really do a low-key Tuesday morning roll-out of the device without some large event? Several supposed first-hand accounts of the device suggest it will not simply be a small upgrade to 3G technology, but that the device will be completely reworked with several new features such as GPS and video capabilities.

Perhaps most telling, however, is that the iPhone 2.0 software is not due until June. Does anyone really think Apple is going to launch the 3G iPhone without the new software to utilize some of its features?

The most likely scenario here is the principle of Occam’s Razor. To paraphrase: All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. The original iPhone is probably nearing the end of its life-cycle. Apple may have slightly miscalculated the number of first generation iPhones it would need prior to the launch of the second iteration, which, if they are to come out in June, are clearly now being manufactured.

If that is true, it would also suggest once again that if AT&T is going subsidize the price of the iPhone down to the rumored $199, it will be the 3G model and not versions of the older ones, which are most likely no longer going to be sold.

The buzz around the 3G iPhone is already pretty amazing. I’ve received no fewer than five emails this week from non-tech friends and family asking for anything I know about the device. With so much rumor and speculation floating around it’s hard to know much of anything for certain. Still, I would stick by the assessment that we won’t see the device in May and that instead it will be unveiled by Steve Jobs during his keynote at the WWDC on June 9. He’ll then probably announce its availability within a few weeks, and the lines outside AT&T and Apple stores will begin to form.

Seth Godin asks: Should human-powered search abandon the Long Tail?

2008-04-30T04:52:11Z

My friend Seth Godin, CEO of human-powered search engine Squidoo, has been reading the press on the search debate between huge range and high quality and wonders if the Long Tail has something to say about it. Along with Squidoo, human-powered search companies include Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, Barnes & Noble's Quamut, the New York Times' About.com, as well as HubPages and many others who are aiming to use a "less is more" approach to competing with Google.

In a sense, they're all proudly leaving the long tail to algorithmic search and seeking success by relentlessly editing down to a human-edited short head. They argue that the search engines reward them for such relentlessly paring down and filtering (they're all at least partly search engine arbitrage plays). And better search results ought to attract better page creators as well...

Seth's question: does this make sense?

My answer:

I'll answer, as I always do, with slogans half-remembered from Econ 101 ;-)

"Every abundance creates a new scarcity"

For instance:

An abundance of information can create a scarcity of context

An abundance of choice can create a scarcity of advice

An abundance of content can create a scarcity of time

An abundance of people competing for your attention can create a scarcity of reputational ways to choose among them.

In the old model, distribution bottlenecks made most of those choices for us--we could only watch what was on and buy what was on the shelf. Now, in a Long Tail world, everything gets out there--choice is abundant. This creates an opportunity for new and better filters to navigate that choice (Chapter 7 of my book!), which I would argue describes the examples below.

How do you compete with the Long Tail? One way is by making the short head more attractive. So when Borders goes from 100,000 books to 80,000 books but turns twice as many of them cover-out on the shelf, they're competing with the Long Tail by making it easier to browse and search and discover new books in a physical setting--doing what a physical store and do best.

So in short, there's a market for both. As I've said many times, the Long Tail doesn't kill the blockbuster, it just kills the monopoly of the blockbuster. And the same is true in reverse: Google's Long Tail success creates demand for more curated search. One size doesn't fit all.

But if you edit the range of entries down too much, are you really a search company anymore? Or are you just a collection of semi-random pages of human-created content, hoping to be noticed (and rewarded with traffic) by real search companies? If it's the latter, you risk getting it wrong on which pages to focus on, and thus losing out to Google's whole-web agnosticm. If so, you're just like every other web media company, trying to anticipate demand and otherwise stand out in a crowded marketplace. Which is fine. Just don't call it "search".