Add to that the convenience of being able to very easily add books to your collection (I went on a $50 spree in about five minutes when I first got it), and it makes for a nice little package.

Some of the other features I like about it are the ability to quickly search through the text. Although this isn’t a mind-blowing feature, I can definitely see myself using this when it comes to writing a blog post on a few books I’ve read recently, and I want to find key passages. Similarly, you can very easily add notes to yourself and browse them later, a feature that may come in handy for those doing reviews or research and not wanting to do all their reading on a computer screen or with a notebook in hand.

As a very avid Blackberry user, I find the keys on the Kindle are spaced a little bit too far apart, making the keypad difficult to use. Since the Kindle is mostly for reading and note taking for me is rare, this is a minor gripe.

The lack of other flashy features that something like the iPad might have is something of a feature in itself. With the Kindle, I’m able to focus on the book I’m reading without being tempted to switch into other programs, or check something else.

I’ve also been letting my roommate Annie borrow it now and then. Annie’s job is making clothing for the puppets on the TV show Glenn Martin, DDS. She also makes leather purses, and although she always buys the latest issue of Wired Magazine (normally the UK edition), she rarely reads it online. She never wants to own a Blackberry, and when I told her what I did for work, she asked me if I was a spin doctor.

Annie takes the Kindle for a quick rip

Her thoughts on the Kindle? She feels self-conscious using an expensive piece of electronics in public (even after I pointed that the Kindle probably isn’t high up on the must-have list for thieves).

The two of us also agree that until everyone has a device that can handle e-books, sharing books is a pain the ass. She has a few books downloaded on the device, and so do I. With one device, it means only one of us can read our books at the same time. I’ve been pretty good at sharing with her, but I know there are sometimes when she wishes she could read it on the train on the way to work while I’m already out of the house with it, having a coffee and reading my favourite book.

“I think there will always be a place for paper books and magazines”, Annie said when I told her I was writing this blog post. “They’ll just be a lot more special, like those Phaidon art books.”

I tend to agree with her when she says that, and I said as much in a blog post about the magazine industry a while ago. Just as MP3 players have made it easier to share and enjoy music while increasing the demand for box sets and live music, I think e-readers will do the same for literature. While everyone will have freely available articles and books on their devices everywhere they go, true collectors will spend hundreds of dollars on super-glossy, limited edition runs of books and magazines.

But that’s really all an aside… at the end of the day, the Kindle is a great device.

How long until we read everything on e-readers? Have you got one? Will there still be a place for books and magazines?

-Parker

This means more than just slotting them into easily identifiable title segments: managers are X, VPs are Y, and so on and so forth. When you’re building the skeleton of any proposal, consider asking the following questions about your audience:

1. What are their goals and objectives? What are their needs? By segmenting your audience by their needs, instead of their title, you are speaking directly to their pain points. You will end up with marketing collateral (be it digital or otherwise) that helps them find answers to their problems quickly. For example, a lot of companies now include “I Want To” sections on their websites.

2. How does your product or service fit with their goals? Now that you’ve identified what you believe to be your audience’s needs and objectives, you can tailor your marketing efforts toward them. Ask yourself: what do I have to offer that would solve that problem? Then fit the answer into place.

3. Where do they go for their information? Before spending too much money or effort on any particular channel, spend some time listening and doing some minor engagement on a variety of channels. Figure out where your audience is most active. There is an endless amount of tools available that let you search through Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and any other social site. I always review any current and past analytics as well to determine which referral sites are already working. This should give you a well rounded view of where your audience is hanging out and talking shop. You will also expose more of their needs and pain points, which you can feed back into your marketing plan.

4. How do they digest their information? It’s also worth some time figuring out how your audience prefers to be reached. Do they respond well to e-mail over RSS? Would they prefer video to audio? Before sinking too much of your budget into any one medium, consider doing some initial split testing to figure out how your audience digests their content.

What kind of audience profiling do you find most helpful? What questions do you ask yourself?

Torys LLP was among the firms I interviewed. They weren’t afraid to take some risks and try new things before other law firms. They positioned themselves as a leading firm in online marketing and communications, and they are still at it.

This week, Torys launched a free iPhone app for their firm, marking the first time a Canadian firm has taken this step. It certainly won’t go unnoticed.

Main features of the app include: Twitter updates, legal bulletins, lawyer and admin staff profiles, lawyer and student videos and a GPS office locator. I played around with some of the features and also got some feedback from a lawyer friend of mine.

Overall, the app is an impressive first step, especially in an industry that is generally a little bit behind the times when it comes to digital marketing. As with most first generation apps, there is always room for improvement. Torys might consider tailoring content and breaking down feeds to specific practice areas and also making the publications mobile friendly (they are currently web formatted PDFs).

If you are in the legal industry or just looking for a good lawyer, check out their app and leave some feedback!

Like most brain busters it began simply enough. My friend told a story of how she had been in the car with her dad watching him manoeuvre between his cellphone, blackberry, MP3 player, and the steering wheel. “He was like a zombie”, she said, “doing a million virtual things at once”, barely even conscious of the conversation he was supposedly having with her. In that instant, almost all of her dad’s faculties were fulfilling virtual obligations over a variety of virtual networks.

Envision a matrix, each technology filling a virtual space around us, connecting slowly but surely with other virtual spaces until we are in fact living most of our conscious lives in a virtual realm. Kinda scary, but not that far-fetched.

This brings in the discussion of augmented reality, the real-time intrusion of technology into our physical environment. However, I am not talking about overlaying our environment with technical or digital information. I’m speaking more about disconnecting from our physical environment altogether.

Forget the notions of Second Life, where users are still quite present in the physical realm. The reality of our current situation mirrors science fiction, whereby our physical selves are not necessarily needed for much of our day-to-day lives. The matrix of different networks is definitely starting to fill out, taking more and more of our consciousness with it.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We put so many hours of energy into virtual worlds and networks every day—tuned to our laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries so as not to miss a single nanosecond of social networking, emails, video games, online shopping, or music. If the law above holds true (and it does), where does this energy go? Does it flow out the other side in the form of new creations, products, events, and innovations? Or does it get trapped behind the screens in a virtual space awaiting our next visit? If we are engaging in three or four or five different mediums at a time, giving small pieces of ourselves to each one, how much of our conscious minds are “here”, and how much is already residing in virtual space? And more importantly, what end are we all working towards?

We need to ground ourselves and remember that at least for the time being we are existing in the physical realm. It is important to turn yourself off of social networks, cellphones, and other virtual devices every day. Spend some time and energy with your feet rooted in the soil.

What do you think? Have you found yourself having this same conversation? Did you get any further in your discussion than we did?

To recapitulate what technicity means: it is an “aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g., rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters” (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006).

Technicity comes to stand for identities that are formed around and through technological differentiation. This is even more true for the confusing 21st century where these new allegiances—based on attitudes towards or adoption of technology—seem to offer more critical purchase in representations of technoculture than the old more fixed sureties of class, ethnic or gender identities (ibid.).

Gamers in different countries might have more in common with each other than with other groups in their own country. This is because being a gamer is associated with certain skills and styles:

“The significant aspect of the term of ‘technicity’ is to encapsulate, in conceptual terms, the connections between an identity based on certain types of attitude, practices, preferences and so on and the importance of technology as a critical aspect of the construction of that identity. To be subjects within the privileged twenty-first-century first world is to be increasingly caught up in a network of technically and mechanically mediated relationships with others who share, to varying degrees, the same attitudes/ tastes, pleasures and preferences” (ibid.).

To make this notion a bit more palpable, the aforementioned mods and rockers make a very good example. Mods rode scooters; rockers motorbikes; and they were dead serious about it. To the outsider, both seem like a mode of transportation that will get you from A to B; just like to the outsider there is not much of a difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation. However, as everyone who has seen Quadrophenia can testify to, scooters and motorbikes were serious business. They were an extension of one’s personality.

Within a dominant frame—e.g., youth culture, digital culture—different forms of technicity clash. This clash is not about which mode of transportation is better or which graphics are prettier. It’s something personal, it’s about one’s identity expressed by one’s gadget choices.

Additionally, and this is something that makes the arguments surrounding game platforms even more intense, games force you to invest much more of your personality. You need skills, you need to decode a game’s structure or system—of levels, architectural organization, scoring systems, timing of events, non-player characters’ actions and interactions, etc. Without you, there is no game.

Accordingly, by questioning the purchase of a console you question someone’s self in two ways: not only is the person’s choice an expression of a “wrong” technicity, and therefore a “wrong” personality, but also the person’s investment his or her self in the games is a waste of time. Their practices, their preferences, their skills, their decoding abilities, they themselves are doubted. And they don’t take too kindly to it.

This also explains the clashes over platform exclusivity, and the accompanying notions of superiority and disappointment when a title is made available on other platforms. It also accounts for the tendency to compare titles which have been released on several platforms to the very last details. “Yes, it may be the same game, but my technicity is still superior to yours!”—Uh, I mean, “Yo gaylord this game iz much better on PS3, faggotbox cant do shit cuz its de gheyz!”

Kinda makes you long for some good old bank holiday clashes, doesn’t it?

-Jens

A few weeks ago, my friend asked me if I could help him build a website for his band, A Northern Drawl. They’ve already got a MySpace page and a Twitter account, but they wanted another presence on the web that they had more control over.

Rather than just setting them up with a blog and saying “have fun”, I wanted to make sure it would be something useful. My friend and I went out for coffee, and talked about what they’d be using it for and what they wanted.

Some of the initial things that we agreed the site needed were a way to advertise their upcoming shows and a way for people to contact them for bookings.

My roommate Micker (“a sustainable designer”) gave me some ideas on how it should look, and I used Artisteer to put it together (well worth the $50 if you ever design Wordpress or Joomla sites).

I also convinced them that it would be great for them to post any tracks they record and make them available as a free download. As a band that is still building up a fan base, giving away MP3s for free is a great way for people to easily learn about the band without having to put down any money. Its also a great way for existing fans to share the music with their friends, potentially growing their fan base.

A newsletter plugin (via Satollo) was also added, and I’ve encouraged the band to tell people to sign up for this newsletter. Rather than just sending all their posts like Feedburner might, a news letter plugin like this instead allows them to capture the names and email addresses of their fans so that they can send them more personalized, relevant updates later on.

While all you social media types that read BlogCampaigning might be hip to the RSS scene, I don’t think the average music fan is, and I think a newsletter like this will be a good way to reach their potential fans. Later on, I’d like to expand this newsletter function so that it captures which city the subscriber is in, as well as their name and email address. That way, the band can reach out to fans in different regions when they go on tour.

They asked me if I could set the site up so that any updates they made on the blog would be posted to their Twitter account and MySpace page, but I advised against this. It isn’t because I didn’t feel like doing it (setting up a feed to Twitter is easy, one to MySpace a pain in the ass), but because I think they’ll have different audiences on each of the different sites. As a new band, they’ve got a huge opportunity to start connecting with fans, and automated messages across different social networks isn’t the way to do this.

I also added a plugin that would enable users to vote on the comments. In my discussions with the band, one idea we came up with was that before a show they could ask their fans which song they should cover. Fans would be able to make suggestions via the comments, and then vote on the suggestions that they wanted to hear. Its a great way for the band to get feedback about what kind of music their fans want to hear. I think it is also a great way to draw people to shows, as people might be more interested in going if they think that the band is going to play one of their favourite songs.

Once the band makes merchandise, I’d like to add some sort of system so that people can order it from their site. I’m sure that as the band’s needs change, so will the site, and I look forward to working on it with them for the next little while.

If you’ve got a few minutes, check out ANorthernDrawl.com, and let me know what you think of the design. I’m particularly interested in hearing what you think of how the background image shows up on your monitor. I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a “web designer”, but I do like making and designing sites like this.

They haven’t started posting anything yet, but if you like Pearl Jam-inspired alternative music, it might be worth your while to subscribe their RSS feed or follow A Northern Drawl on Twitter to get updates from the guys. They frequently play shows in Toronto, and are worth checking out.

What sort of things do you expect your favourite artists to have on their websites?

-Parker

Earlier this week I participated as a mentor at Humber College’s Personal Brand Camp. During the event, I heard many students express that they were apprehensive about, if not confused by, building an online presence.

Before we go any further, let me give you a little background on my online presence. I started writing online in 1997 as a way to connect with other young writers and artists (let’s just say my high school had more sports teams than poetry clubs). After college I realized that the skills I acquired building websites in my parents’ basement were transferable to the real world. My knowledge of and passion for online communication set me apart from other job candidates, and so my personal brand was born.

I started to wonder if the exercise of forcing students to create an online presence was futile. Making them get online isn’t going to do them any good; in fact I think it might even be counter-productive. If students are keen on getting involved in social media, by all means encourage them to do so—in a smart way; it will go a long way in helping them create a personal brand. But if they’re not, don’t force them. If a student doesn’t want to blog, their blog is going to be lame, and how is that going to set them apart in the job market?

Here are a few tips that Rayanne Langdon, my Personal Brand Camp partner-in-crime and I shared with those students who were interested in getting online, but weren’t sure where to start.

Be where you want to be. If you’re not comfortable with being online, don’t be online. What makes the Internet awesome is the passion that drives people to tweet, to blog, to engage in social media. If, to you, being online means tweeting and not blogging, or blogging and not tweeting, go for it!

Be your fabulous, funny, smart, creative, passionate self, and the personal brand stuff will come on its own. Being authentic will set you apart in a job interview and online.  Unfortunately, if yourself is an asshole, you might be in trouble.

Be passionate. While I am certainly passionate about my work, I’ll leave writing about PR to the Dave Fleets and Martin Waxmans of the world. I write about home cooking because that’s what I love; not only am I better at it, my “personal brand” is better for it, too.

Be nice. This one’s easy. If you can help someone online (and in real life), do it. And don’t do it because you think you’ll get something out of it. Do it because being nice is a good thing.

Be smart. I’m all for sharing online, but you’ve got to give yourself some guiding principles. I’m friends with my dad and my boss on Facebook, so I generally don’t post anything I wouldn’t share with them over coffee. And now, as my professional and personal lives blend together, I even give my actions a second thought. I don’t spend too many nights dancing on tables with lampshades on my head anymore. (But man, those were good days.) You never know where those pictures will end up.

A personal brand isn’t a limiting checklist. Sage advice from a wise man. People aren’t one-dimensional, so there is no reason to limit yourself online. Have multiple interests? Have multiple blogs! Contribute guest posts to other blogs or segment your website into sections with posts on various topics. Your online presence is just that: yours. Do it your way.

Amanda Laird is a Communications Specialist at CNW Group, a gig she got through this very blog.  Her personal brand is about home cooking, complaining about the TTC, and the odd smart thought about PR. Find her online at mise en place or @amandalaird.

I see the value of letting friends or acquaintances know where you are at a given time: you can increase the likelihood of “chance” rendez-vous, and it adds an element of hyper-modern fun or adventure to our hyper-tech lives. It tries to put the social back in social networking.

I think of location-awareness as a sort of antidote to the separation that social networking brings on, whether it actually works or not. I’ve mentioned before that I now spend far more time at my computer than ever before, which, besides its other effects, makes me feel like I’m missing out on being social, even when I’m engaging in conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other forum. By letting others on my networks know where I am when I do get away from the new boob tube, I can at least feel like I’m being a bit more “real” social. Well, I don’t precisely do this. At least not via a specific location-aware application. Occasionally I’ll mention on Twitter where I am or where I’m going (usually obliquely), and I guess I’m not sure exactly why I do that.

Anyway, at the moment, I hardly go anywhere except for home and work, so my location posts would be excessively dull!

There’s a dark side to all of this sharing though. Just as identity thieves can mine social networking sites and the world wide web in general for personal information to recreate private identities and do all kinds of bad stuff, enterprising thieves might use personal location information to determine when a person is and is not at home and when she is likely to return: the perfect opportunity—practically an invitation—to steal. That’s kind of the premise of Please Rob Me, a website that uses Foursquare data from Twitter to inform the world when people are away from their homes, and thus supposedly when those homes are ripe for a’robbin’. (Really, their goal is “to raise some awareness on this issue [of privacy] and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because everybody can get this information.”)

I’m not an alarmist when it comes to this sort of thing, but I do believe that identity thieves are out there, and I’m sure that somewhere someone is in fact nefariously collecting information on social networkers’ whereabouts. I don’t think those are necessarily reasons to stop using Twitter or foursquare; just think smart and be safe, okay?

On the other hand, I think Blippy is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard of. The site updates your status, like Twitter, with every purchase you make on your credit card. And sane people volunteer to share this information with the world. This seems to me to a shockingly shallow intentional expression of private information. (And I’m not going to provide a hyperlink, because I don’t think you should bother visiting the site.) People used to say that Twitter was narcissistic, but Blippy has no other purpose than to gloat over one’s consumption. There’s little more narcissistic than that. Barbara Kiviat writes in Time Magazine that the idea of posting every credit card purchase might shame people into spending less, but one of the website’s co-founders, Philip Kaplan, points to an opposite trend: spending more so that the world knows all the cool stuff you’re buying and doing. Kiviat herself finds the urge to spend more rising within her after using Blippy for a while. Ugh!

When we look at social networking tools in isolation, it’s difficult to see the harm that they might cause, but these tools don’t exist in isolation, especially not now. I think it should be clear enough that releasing important private information can lead to bad things without the many warnings about doing it, but the warnings are there, and the problems will only get deeper the more information we choose to share.

Where will all of this private disclosure lead? What are the advantages? Do they outweigh the potential pitfalls? I could pretty much talk about this for hours, but I’ll let you chime in for a minute…

—Adam

Last week I met Marjorie Wallens of MJW Communications, a small Toronto-based PR firm. By employing a few basic and smart strategies, Marjorie has managed to out-SEO the biggest PR firms in the city—think Edelman, Fleishman-Hillard, Environics, as well as her smaller counterparts.

Marjorie was really open about discussing how she went about optimizing her website and what changes she saw as a result.

Q: What were the first steps you took to begin optimizing?

A: Research is always the first step. I did this for myself and I do it for all of my clients. First, I checked out my competition in the Toronto PR space—both big and small. I looked at the source page codes to see what key search terms they were using. Then I used the Google Keyword search tool to cross-reference my findings (and confirm the most popular key search words).

My next step was to look at the copy on my competitors’ websites. What key search words were they including in their copy? Surprisingly, I found many companies didn’t include their key words in the headlines or body copy of their web pages. On my website, those keywords are headlines and included in the body copy. This is an important aspect of SEO.

Q: Once you had secured your keywords, what did you look to next?

A: I started to produce more content. This included everything from white papers, optimized news releases, YouTube videos and blogs that all linked back to my website. Being in PR, I issue a number of news releases which all include my web and email addresses. Google recognizes this linking relationship to communications and PR content and me as a “subject matter expert”, increasing my page rank as a result. (**Aside: for those of you not issuing press releases, similar results come from posting your content on other sites that generate high amounts of traffic. For example, YouTube, relevant associations, and LinkedIn groups can all help drive traffic to your site, increase the number of linking relationships (key to SEO success), further elevate you as a thought leader and in turn increase your page rank.)

Q: What are your thoughts/experiences so far with paid search?

A: I do advertise on the paid side of Google, but only with a nominal budget. I use it more for research so that I can continue to monitor which key search words resonate with people looking for PR firms in Toronto.

Q: How long did it take you to see results?

A: I started to see real results after a month, if not a bit sooner. I was getting more hits to my site and calls asking about my company and service.

So there you have it, research, keywords, links, content (and content syndication), and more research and monitoring. Is there anything you’ve found that has made a huge difference in the success of your SEO?

Adam Gorley: Gentleman, Scholar, Blog Editor

Adam Gorley is BlogCampaigning’s copy editor, and the one responsible for scheduling our posts.

Sometime he doesn’t get a chance to edit one of my posts until a few hours after I send it to him.

That’s because he also has another (read: real) job that keeps him busy. Part of this other job involves writing articles for the First Reference blog, a site about “Business, Payroll, Employment Law, Internal Controls & You!”

For an example of one of his recent posts on the First Reference Blog, check out Workplace human rights: Overt racism in the workplace – it’s still here.

A few weeks ago, he also wrote a post about what to do about the problem of employee theft in the workplace that I thought was hilarious, but only because I read it a few hours after finding out that April 15 is Steal From Work Day. (I probably won’t be adding that to my calendar.)

Thanks for your work, Adam.

-Parker