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Bag your clients with the conference bags. While advertising is extremely vital for each and every organization, the medium of advertising is more important. Many business houses suffer because of wrongly planned advertising campaigns. The bes... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)
Promotional Conference Folders... Show off your colors. The gift items that you hand out to your staff and clients represent you and your company. Would you like the reputation of your company to suffer just for a few dollars? Every company worth its s... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)
Printed Conference Folders... your silent and effective salesman. Corporate and business houses now the value of promotional gifts. It is one thing to say `Thanks' but saying the same along with a gift holds more value. Not only will your clients and staff remember ... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)
The success of the iPhone has rendered the iPod irrelevant. .
With the success of its new iPhone, Apple is seeing something of a backlash in terms of sales of its iPod ? although these once accounted for nearly 50% of its yearly revenue, early this year sales plummeted sharply.

Apple upcoming press conference on September 9th has give rise to a frenzy of speculation among the media and Apple aficionados alike ? most believe that Jobs will attempt to reignite interest in the iPod by releasing a new version of the nano and a modified iPod touch.
(09/05/08 09:00 PM)
Metaphors and Defrag.
Eric Norlin - who runs the Defrag Conference - has a good post up today titled The metaphors we've outgrown. He riffs off of the Google Chrome announcement. At the end of it, he answers "what makes Defrag different."

People ask me all of the time what makes Defrag different? I kind of giggle and tell them that I’m proud that we’re not a conference loaded with case studies. Don’t get me wrong, that has a very useful place (in a nearly mature market). We’re just nowhere near that place. Defrag is about gathering to explore, imagine and build these new metaphors. The web should be getting smarter, more implicit, more enabling.

Let the rest of the world get mired down in economic uncertainty, productivity enhancement and cost reduction. There’s plenty of time for you to do that (trust me). Come to defrag and help us grow out of these metaphors. And then watch as the supposedly “pie in the sky” things you find at Defrag are suddenly “real world” things that you’re using and implementing everyday. Kinda cool, huh?

For all those interested, I'm still using Chrome - mostly enjoying it a lot but starting to notice the things it is missing, especially all those fun implicit web plugins I've been using.

(09/03/08 09:01 AM)
Consumer Confidence Improves in August. The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which improved moderately in July, made more gains in August and now stands at 56.9 (1985=100), up from 51.9 in July, The Conference Board announced...
(08/27/08 09:00 PM)
Gluing EventVue and Twitter Together.
At Foundry Group, one of our investment themes is Glue. We've done a handful of investments in this area, including Gnip. Since Gnip's launch last month, it's been put into production in a number of cases - some obvious, some subtle. Part of the fun is watching the adoption of it evolve rapidly as we continue to build out the core capabilities of the what Gnip can do.

I had a long conversation with a VC I work closely with about the value Gnip ultimately provides to its various constituencies (data providers, data consumers, and end users) and how / where it expects to get paid in the long term. During the conversation, we covered a number of different potential areas, but I realized that my thinking could be much crisper. That's normal for this stage of a startup as Gnip is still very early stage (we've done one seed round of investment and are gearing up for the next financing) but the exercise of defining a clear business endgame (vs. just a technology endgame) is extremely helpful and self referential, as it creates more focus on what we should actually be building.

There is nothing quite like an example. Yesterday, we had the TechStars 2008 Investor and Demo Day. EventVue - one of the TechStars 2007 companies - provided the online community infrastructure for the event. They automatically extracted all the data from the registration system and build an online community. As part of this, members of the community could add their twitter account and - if they had already been a member of another EventVue conference community - like me - would automatically have all their information already in EventVue and wouldn't have to do anything.

The then created a techstars08 twitter account. This rebroadcast all the tweets from anyone at the event that had a twitter account set up in their EventVue profile. However, rather than writing the polling software to Twitter to continually check for updates in the twitter stream, the used Gnip for this.

EventVue had a data set (I don't know the number - but lets say it was 100 userids) of twitters at the conference. They wrote a tiny piece of code that monitored Gnip's twitter notification stream. Whenever someone in the set of 100 usersids appeared in the twitter notification stream, EventVue's handler then queried twitter for that one discrete piece of data and then rebroadcast it on techstars08.

This took a huge load off of Twitter. It was much easier code to write for EventVue. It created a virtually real time twitter rebroadcast stream. I'm sure I'm missing at least one of the technical nuances - hopefully the guys at EventVue will write up a deeper post on what they did, how they did it, and why it was valuable to them.

Look for plenty of more thinking out loud from me on our Glue theme as we bring some of the investments we've made into sharper focus.

(08/21/08 09:01 AM)
How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my Son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice. Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old Son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience what I do at work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter at colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I of course, still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! Fortunately I make a little bit more than that. In the video below I compiled some video that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself.... (08/17/08 09:00 PM)
The Priorities of a Venture Capitalist.
I'm baffled whenever I hear from a CEO that he's having trouble getting a response from one of his VC investors. Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence in VC-backed company land.

After noticing this during the Internet bubble around the turn of the century (doesn't that make it seem like so very long ago), I'm starting to notice this again more frequently. As I pondered this the other day, I tried to discern a pattern, but I just think it's just the way the universe works for some people.

I've always thought that my "priority hierarchy" was very straightforward. In order:
1. Amy (my wife)
2. My extended family
3. My partners
4. Our employees
5. The investors in our funds
6. The CEO's of the companies I've invested in
7. Other board members of the companies I've invested in
8. Employees of the companies I've invested in
9. Everyone else
If you've spent any time with me, you know that I handle #1 pretty easily since I love being with Amy. #2 is also easy - fortunately - as my family is pretty functional (yeah - we have our issues like every family, but they are more "entertainment" than "problems.")

Once you get into the work hierarchy, it just seems painfully obvious to me that my partners, our employees, and our investors are the next chunk. Without them, we don't have a business.

Then comes the CEO's of the companies I've invested in. Notice that there is no "noise" before them. No new deals. No potential investments. No conferences. No baseball or golf games. No boondoggles. No hanging out with other VCs. No ... (random other thing goes here.)

All of the CEO's I work with are excellent on email. As a result, the tempo of our initial communication is immediate. They send me something; I respond almost immediately (worst case - a typical "catch up on email cycle time" which is rarely more than 12 hours for me.) If it requires a phone call, that happens "next" (immediately after whatever I'm doing, as long as I don't have 1 ... 5 scheduled "next". If it requires a face to face interaction, that happens as soon as we can get together.

This seems so simple to me. Maybe I'm missing something but I'm always kind of amazed to hear CEO's talk about how difficult it is for them to get a response from some of their VC investors.

(08/15/08 09:00 AM)
Enterprise 2.0 and Defrag.
Eric Norlin has a good post up titled Enterprise 2.0 as part of a larger theme. In it he addresses the question "Is enterprise 2.0 bullshit?" Eric doesn't think it is, nor do I. However, there is still a lot of difficultly getting real alignment on what it means, what is unique about the enterprise characteristics, and why anyone should really care.

I've seeing an interesting and predictable phenomenon occurring. Corporate IT has gotten energized about implementing "social computing" and "all that Web 2.0 stuff." The analyst crowd is writing about all the different Enterprise 2.0 categories and starting to extensively position products in pretty matrices. Several big software companies, including Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle are making major pushes into this "category." Loads of startups are emerging in every segment. TechCrunch even has an a new property called TechCrunchIT.

Early adopters are doing what they always do - pilots, proof of concepts, workgroup deployments. White papers are appearing. Web conferences are happening. Inevitably an "Enterprise 2.0 Conference" (or several derivatives) will appear.

But Eric and I think something is missing. What is going round and round as Enterprise 2.0 is a subset of something bigger. For example, we are in the beginning phase of new issues surrounding the entirety of identity computing and the web. We are now in a land where people have multiple online personas - their "work self", their "home friend self", their "secret second life self", their "hidden porn login self", and their "this is what I wish I was like self". While "identity management" has been an endless "IT problem to solve", this isn't really "identity management" anymore - it's "I consume and generate a shitload of data in different contexts that are persistently stored out in the open for all to see - how do I deal with that?"

I could give another dozen examples of the subset issues contained in what we are trying to explore with Defrag. I expect Eric will keep banging away on them on his blog. And - more importantly - I hope you'll come join us at Defrag on November 3rd and 4th in Denver as a group of really interesting and smart people attack some of these issues and try to make sense of them. If you register this month, use the code "brad1" and get $100 off your registration fee.

(08/07/08 09:00 PM)
Why You Should Have Your Next Business Meeting in Second Life.
Second Life, the virtual reality site, is reaching out to a new audience: businesses. SL is seeing an uptick in traffic for business meetings, conference calls and classes -- and that's welcome news for a site that has long struggled to retain users.

How much of your traffic is business and education users?
(08/05/08 09:01 PM)
Must Have iPhone Trick for Bloggers. When I go around the country to blog related conferences I find that the majority of bloggers I meet are Mac folks and iPhone nuts. With that in mind I give you the ultimate iPhone blogger trick. Basically this is a way to create your own little glassy iPhone application icon and put it on your phone’s [...]
(08/01/08 09:01 PM)
Glue and Comments.
Since last summer I've been talking about comments as the Dark Matter of the Blogosphere. I use Intense Debate* for the comment system on my blog and have learned a lot by experimenting with it.

In the past six months comments have moved to the forefront of the discussion around user generated content. While the various new commenting systems that have emerged have played a part in this, I think the broad activity around systems that enable small bursts of user generated content (Twitter, BrightKite*) and systems that aggregate a wide variety of user generated content (FriendFeed, SocialThing*) are playing a huge role in this and more "comment-like" data is being generated all over the Web.

One of the investment themes I'm most fascinated with right now is the one we call "Glue". We've made a handful of investments in the Glue theme at Foundry Group including Gnip, AdMeld, and Topspin. We've also been working with our good friend Eric Norlin - the creator of the Defrag Conference - on a Glue Conference.

I'm always looking for great, simple examples of Glue and I found one accidentally the other day. I put up a blog post titled Brilliant Op-Ed Crushing McCain On The Economy. I posted it on Sunday morning and then went out for a two hour run. I came back to about 20 comments on it in my inbox. Even though the post was done on my blog, I noticed the comments were from FriendFeed accounts being emailed to me by Intense Debate.

Here's what happened. My blog is one of my FriendFeed services. A vigorous debate broke out on FriendFeed between a couple of people. I wouldn't have noticed it until Monday when I checked my FriendFeed ego feed (I only do this once a day.) However, Intense Debate is "glued" to my FriendFeed account so any comments that show up on a blog post of mine on FriendFeed automatically show up in Intense Debate on my blog. It's a small feature, but a brilliant one, as it brings the overall conversation associated with my blog post back to my blog where I actually want it.

There are now 46 comments on this particular blog post (unexpected - I don't write that much about politics and it was a Sunday post.) Most of them are from the FriendFeed discussion, but some are from my blog readers. They are intermixed where I want them - on my blog. Even though they are coming from multiple sources, they persist permanently on my blog due to a tiny feature in Intense Debate.

Now - this is all much too complex still, but it's why the Glue is so interesting to us. We are continually looking for unnecessary complexity in the metaverse and ways to build really large companies that (a) take advantage of the complexity, (b) simplify the complexity, or (c) both. If you make glue, email me!

* Yes - I'm aware that each of Intense Debate, BrightKite, and SocialThing are TechStars companies from 2007 - and I'm immensely proud of the progress each has made and the fact they are in the midst of what I consider to be a very interesting and vigorous segment of our little tech universe

(07/22/08 09:01 AM)
Running and Conferences.
I've got some fun things for you to do this Monday morning (or at least to put on your schedule to do.)

Want to learn how to run? How to Go From Sedentary to Running in Five Steps.

If you are already running, join the Gyminee Running Challenge or Gyminee Weight Loss Challenge. Or - join me on Gyminee in my Lifehacker inspired six week program to do One Hundred Pushups.

Developing software for your iPhone? Check out iPhoneDevCamp Colorado on 8/1 - 8/3.

Like 37 Signals? Jason Fried is talking at the Oriental Theater in Denver on July 31st.

Defrag is starting to heat up. Eric has a post up in response to the "tech has gotten boring" meme that is making the rounds. That that he says "bah" and talks more about his thoughts in Anything but ho-hum.

(07/21/08 09:01 PM)
Beyond YouTube: Getting Started With Video for Marketing and Sales. Do you want to record a video message for on-demand access? Do you want to do live video from a large meeting, conference, or other event? Or do you have completely different objectives? For marketers truly interested in putting video communication to good use, the key to getting the job done is finding the right tools. Here's a great place to start. (07/15/08 09:01 AM)
I've Been Gnipped.
Earlier this year we made a seed investment in a new company called Gnip. Yesterday, Gnip launched their first service - a free centralized callback server that notifies data consumers (such as Plaxo) in real-time when there is new data about their users on various data producing sites (such as Flickr and Digg). I've written my version of the overview on the Foundry Group blog in my post titled Gnip is Ping Spelled Backwards, there are a couple of posts up already on the Gnip blog, and a number of people have already written about Gnip including TechCrunch, TechCrunchIT, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Dave Winer, and Joe Smarr (Plaxo's Chief Platform Architect). Rather than repeat what Gnip is here, I'm going to tell you how this investment came about.

It started in 2004. I got an IM out of the blue from someone named bpm140 (my IM addresses are easy to find - AIM/Y!: bfeld; Skype: bradfeld; MSN: brad@feld.com.) bpm140 asked me if I'd be willing to take a quick look at a business plan he had. I IM'ed back that he should email it to me - I got it 30 seconds later.

I took a look and scheduled a call. It was a plan for an educational game thing that I didn't really get but I was intrigued by some of the stuff in it. I talked to bpm140 (Eric Marcoullier) and gave him some feedback. After talking for a little while I told him it wasn't my thing, but he should feel free to holler if he thought I could be helpful.

Over the next few months I periodically got IMs from Eric. We'd have quick interactions - usually around a specific question - and he shared with me a new idea he was working on. He and his partner Todd Sampson (who I only knew through Eric's references to him) had this idea for a thingy (this was before little lines of javascript that you put on a blog were called widgets). You put this thingy on your blog and it gave you statistics of how many times someone clicked on a link. I'm a stats junky so I loved it. Eric said it would cost $3 / month. I told him it was stupid to charge for it, but I'd prepay for a year for $25. He took my money.

Over the next few months I gave him plenty of feedback on this new thing he was calling MyBlogLog. The UI of the stats service was hideous, but the popup link data on my blog was awesome and the stats were killer. By this point I had invested in FeedBurner, so I introduced Eric to Dick Costolo - FeedBurner's CEO. More feedback ensued.

One day, I got a familiar bpm140 IM saying something like "we came up this amazing idea to turn your blog into a social network." All I needed to do was put a little different piece of javascript on my blog. I did and the old version of the MyBlogLog widget - with names only and a really yucky font appeared on my blog. For those of you that remember it, it was one of those amazing widgets that you suddenly couldn't ever remember living without. Names were great, but soon little images appeared and the idea of seeing who had recently been on my blog was incredibly satisfying. MyBlogLog took off like a rocket.

Up to this point, Eric and his partner Todd hadn't raised any money. I remember the first "are you interested in investing call" happening in May 2006. Amy and I had rented and apartment in Paris for the month and I can remember the conference call with Eric and this new guy Scott Rafer who Eric and Todd had brought in to be CEO. They were considering putting together an angel round with the idea of going for a venture round in three or four months. I committed $25k on the spot, although I remember Scott saying he really didn't want investments of less than $50k.

MyBlogLog continued its torrid growth over the summer, appearing on virtually every blog I read. Fred Wilson - one of my co-investors in FeedBurner and another fan of MyBlogLog - and I started talking about doing a VC round. We came close to do a deal (the documents were a few days away from being signed) when Yahoo! acquired MyBlogLog shortly after getting excited about them after seeing them at the Web 2.0 conference in 2006. I had one awkward conversation with Eric where I quickly told him that while I was disappointed that I wouldn't be investing in MyBlogLog, I was psyched for him, Todd, and Scott and wished him luck. I also told him that I'd love to stay in touch and have another chance to work with him in the future.

I didn't expect Eric to stay at Yahoo! very long (he lasted about six months, although Todd is still there trying hard to keep the MyBlogLog flame alive.) True to my invitation, Eric and I stayed in touch, he and Todd were a big help at TechStars in 2007, and Eric started making occasional trips out to Boulder to see me.

I spent most of 2007 raising our first Foundry Group fund. By the fall we had finished raising our fund and had turned our focus towards making investments. It was in this context that Eric and I sat down on one of his trips in the fall of 2007. Over a couple of hours, Eric ran me through a half dozen ideas he had for a new business. He was hedging a little - struggling with whether to go deep on one business or try to start a few. I strongly encouraged him to focus on one. I told him that four of the six ideas were stupid, one wasn't for me, but one was awesome. It was the seed of what turned into Gnip.

During that trip, I dragged my partners Ryan and Seth into a conference room to sit with Eric and sketch out Gnip more. Eric was originally calling the idea Pingery but somewhere along the way Gnip popped out and it stuck ("meta-ping server" was a little awkward). Gnip fit perfectly in a new theme that Ryan, Seth, and my other Foundry partners were calling Glue and we told Eric that if he wanted to do Gnip as the exclusive thing he worked on, we'd be game to go after it with him.

I got a call from Eric a few weeks later that he'd decided to go all in with Gnip. We'd recently made an investment in Zynga and Eric had spent some time with Mark Pincus, the founder/CEO of Zynga. I think Mark's single-minded obsession with the business he was creating made a deep impression on Eric, especially since Mark is a multi-time successful entrepreneur who also has plenty of angel investments and can basically spend his time wherever he wants.

Part of Eric's success in MyBlogLog was his partnership with his technical co-founder Todd. I told Eric he needed either Todd, or a technical co-founder like Todd, as part of Gnip. Todd wasn't available as he was committed to staying at Yahoo! so we introduced Eric to a few people, including Jud Valeski. We'd known Jud for several years as he was a Netscape/AOL refugee that had settled in Boulder. Jud had recently left Me.dium and was working out of our offices as he contemplated his next gig. Jud and Eric hit it off immediately and started working together remotely (Eric in the bay area; Jud in Boulder) to both flesh out the idea behind Gnip as well as see if they could work together.

A few weeks later Eric and Jud gave their formal pitch to us for Gnip. It was a 10 page PowerPoint presentation that outlined the idea, opportunity, and how they would go about it. We committed to leading a seed investment of $1m on the spot - either by ourselves or with another VC firm. A few weeks later we closed a $1.1m round with SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) and First Round Capital (Josh Kopelman) and were off to the races (BTW - Josh has written a really clever post about Gnip titled The Story of Francis Bates.)

Eric, Jud, and Gnip have surpassed all of our expectations from our seed investment at the beginning of the year. They've totally nailed the concept we were kicking around when we first started talking about Gnip, have built a superb initial service in a remarkably short period of time with the help of Pivotal Labs, and have added a handful of awesome technical people to their team. They've managed to do this while still being split between the bay area (Eric, Tiffany, and Pivotal) and Boulder (Jud and the rest of the team).

It took a three year courtship, but Eric and I are now working together as partners. As my grandmother used to say, "My Gnip Runneth Over."

(07/03/08 09:00 AM)
TransPromo Is Born. What's this new buzzword "TransPromo" all about? The term is heard more and more frequently in industry circles today, at conferences, trade shows, and even in boardrooms. So just what is TransPromo? (06/17/08 09:00 AM)
Off to the ALI Social Media Summit in Chicago.
If you're in Chicago between Monday and Wednesday, drop me a line!

I'll be presenting at the ALI Social Media Summit in a pre-conference workshop. Check it out:

How To Use Social Media To Enhance And Improve Your Internal Communications Efforts - And 7 Steps To Take Your Internal Social Media Program To An External Marketing Program

Some people may think that social and emerging media tools are just for customers. However, they can greatly improve your internal communication, peer networking and knowledge sharing and management initiatives if used properly. This workshop will show you how to leverage the most prominent social media tools to strengthen your internal communications processes and improve the effectiveness of any customer-focused organization. If you're considering social media for customer/external communications, this workshop will also give you specific insights and help you to 'eat your own dogfood' before going headlong into social and emerging media & marketing with your customers and prospects.

Each attendee will take away:
- A comprehensive understanding of each and every internal social media tool available to their organization
- Concrete examples of organizations that are employing these tools
- A roadmap of where to start and how to progress in your internal social media endeavor
- Develop the business case to sell internal social media based communication tools to management
- The seven steps to taking social media from an internal endeavor to an external marketing program
- A comprehensive workbook which explains how to learn more about each of the tools discussed
(06/09/08 09:00 AM)
How Marketing Can Go Beyond the 'Make It Pretty' Syndrome. At a recent conference, Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo, asked, "When did Marketing become the make-it-pretty department?" Reynolds then reminded conference participants that the fundamental role of Marketing has always been about the customer. Essentially, Marketing's role is to find, keep, and grow the value of customers. So what does that mean, and how does a marketer get beyond the "make it pretty" syndrome? (05/13/08 09:01 AM)
The Gap in Customer Engagement. Late post from the Forrester Marketing Forum Conference I attended a couple weeks ago. The topic was “Customer Engagement”, which is heralded by many publications as the new marketing buzzword. I love buzzwords…they get buzz! Which gets people talking, which gets people trying things, which causes failures, which creates learning, which (hopefully) creates better companies. I digress. The primary research and paper behind customer engagement was conducted by Brian Haven, who’s a great Forrester Analyst. I’ve known him for years and spoken in his workshops on Social networking and UGC. I’m a big believer in the idea of customer engagement. But I have 2 cents to add on where customer engagement comes from and where the gap is in achieving this goal in organizations. The conference was a balance of ideas to measure customer engagement, with tools, principles and experiences that result in more engaged customers. During the show I posted to Facebook “Customer Engagement is a more measured way of defining Customer Experience”. Said another way, Customer Engagement is an outcome…and outcomes (as well as inputs) are measurable. There are a lot of metrics that can point to engaged customers. I don’t think the absolute figures of these measures matter as much as trending to understand if you’re winning or losing customer engagement. But what is a point of customer engagement worth in revenue, margin or saved costs? Some of the metrics for customer engagement – such as time on site, Net Promoter, or Brand awareness -- could track... (04/23/08 09:01 PM)
Posting from the NCMPR conference at the NCMPR blog.
I've spent the last few days in beautiful Savannah, GA at the NCMPR conference (NCMPR, for those of you not familiar, is the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations) where 500 of the best & brightest marketers from 2-year colleges and educational organizations from the US & Canada are gathered to discuss the latest in greatest in college marketing trends tactics.

For a few days I'm posting on behalf of Mark Little of the Central Piedmont Community College at his blog for NCMPR.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)
B2B 2.0 marketing expo by MarketingProfs . The gang at MarketingProfs put together conference that's worth checking out. Now here's the best part... no conference travel required. The B2B 2.0 Marketing Expo is March 5, 2008 and you can register here. (03/03/08 09:01 AM)
Round and Round.
My computer-adverse client called yesterday to say she would be coming by my office to work with me on the proposal and that she would be bringing "a big round diskette" that had some material on it that we could use. I got a little panicky because I had no idea what a big round diskette was. Could she have been referring to the old 5" floppy disks that don't exist any more? Finally I realized that she was probably bringing a CD with files on it. And that's what it was.

When she got here, we worked on the proposal for a bit, and then she dropped a bombshell, telling me that she did not need to submit a cost proposal. She said that she had gotten this information at the bidder's conference. I told her that this did not make sense, and she pointed to a section in the RFP that said that bidders would not need to submit a financial statements or details on their burdened rate until just prior to contract execution. Plus, she thought that the evaluation criteria related to cost was confusing. I tried to explain, but she was convinced that the Contracting Officer had said no cost proposal.

So she decided to call the Contracting Officer. Except she dialed the wrong number and got hold of the Technical Officer (COTR) instead. The COTR could not find the page in the RFP that my client was referring to and insisted that there was no such page. They went round and round on this:

COTR - what page is that?

Client - it is page 54.

COTR - there is no page 54.

Client - yes, on page 54 it gives the evaluation criteria for cost

COTR - the evaluation criteria ends on page 53

Client - no, there is another page

COTR - I have the RFP right in front of me and the page after page 53 is this one (reads the first sentence).

Client - no, that it not it.

COTR - I will have to check with the procurement office because it is not in my copy. Oh, wait a minute, here it is. The pages in my copy are out of order. At any rate, you need to talk to the Contracting Officer about this because I don't know the answer to your question.

So my client gets hold of the Contracting Officer and asks the question about submitting the cost proposal. He said yes, we have to submit a cost proposal, but not price. As for an explanation of the evaluation criteria related to cost, he cannot tell my client what it means. She has to interpret it for herself the best she can. They go round and round on this for a while, but my client finally hangs up and says to me:

"I better get started on my cost proposal."

(03/01/08 09:01 AM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(03/01/08 09:01 AM)
Keeping Up (Not).
I'm behind with everything, and this blog seems to get pushed down on my priority list. I don't want it to, but even so, I just can't seem to find the time to get the blogging done. Still, people keep reading it and signing up for my subscription notification form. So now I feel guilty for not writing anything here for a while.

I have been bogged down with work and more work. First, I finished the little sole source proposal that I wrote about earlier. My client submitted it to the federal agency, which liked the proposal but didn't like the cost. So my client is having to revise his numbers and re-submit. One of my colleagues, a CPA who specializes in government costing, is working with him on this. My client is certain to get the contract, but not before the feds make him jump through a few more hoops.

Second, I've been working on a USAID proposal. Somehow, I got assigned to prepare the largest section of that proposal and it took longer than I anticipated (no surprise there). As soon as I finished it, USAID issued a one-week extension. My client is happy to have this extension, but I'm not because it means that I might have to do more work. I'm waiting to hear from them maybe today. In the meantime...

I've moved on to starting yet another assignment that I put off because I had to finished the USAID stuff. This is what I am behind on now. It is a very large proposal for NIH -- a services project, not a research project. The technical section consists of 5 separate volumes: Personnel, Technical Approach, Management Plan, Past Performance and Work Samples. I'm almost done with the Management Plan and it is about 50 pages in length. My client is working on the Personnel Section, and I am going to have to move on to the Technical Approach section probably beginning tomorrow. NIH wants lots and lots of details about everything, and there are no page limits to any of the volumes.

So, I just continue to plod along here in my little world of proposals. Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought that this would be a good career. A lot of people think it is, but frankly I'm not sure. It's a good career if you want to be under a lot of stress all the time and if you like having one deadline after another -- deadlines that rarely slip. Ugh, I can't really even think about it right now because I have to get back to my writing. I have a conference call with my NIH client later this morning.

Later...
(03/01/08 09:01 AM)
Hour by Hour?.
I'm plugging along on the NIH proposal. I would say that I have about 75% of the Management Plan done so far and will hopefully complete the first draft by the end of the week.

In a conference call with my client yesterday we discussed the other sections. My client is basically handling the entire Personnel section. In addition to having to recruit Key Personnel, my client will have to fill out a lot of different personnel and staffing-related forms that are contained in the RFP. One look at these forms and you would almost want to run away from this bid. The forms require lots and lots of detailed info.

My client is going to start sending me some material and information that I can use in preparing the Technical Approach section. If the Management Plan alone is going to be 50+ pages, then the Technical section is likely to be 100+ pages. Details, details, details.

Here's an example of the extent of the detail required. I have never seen this before in an RFP. One of the subsections of the Technical Approach is a phase-in plan, where we have to discuss how my client will take over parts of project from an incumbent contractor. That's OK -- I have written quite a few phase-in plans. But in addition to the normal stuff we have to address in that subsection, the RFP says that we have to "detail every hour of proposed Government assistance as completely as possible."

Wha? Are they kidding? I can't even detail what I do every hour of my own day much less what the Government would do. What would they do? Stand around? Have meetings? Talk on the phone? Take coffee breaks? Nap? Have lunch? This is nuts.

I've just got to wonder who in NIH thought this one up. See what I mean by wanting to run away? Looks like there will be more than the usual amount of fictional writing here.
(03/01/08 09:01 AM)
Learn Word of Mouth Marketing -- WOMM-U, May 8-9. This year the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is doing something completely different (disclosure: I'm on the board). It will be WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University), the first training-based conference full of case studies, operational cookbooks, and practical advice to make Word of Mouth Marketing work in your organization. The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO ...and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. (02/28/08 09:01 PM)
Round and Round.
My computer-adverse client called yesterday to say she would be coming by my office to work with me on the proposal and that she would be bringing "a big round diskette" that had some material on it that we could use. I got a little panicky because I had no idea what a big round diskette was. Could she have been referring to the old 5" floppy disks that don't exist any more? Finally I realized that she was probably bringing a CD with files on it. And that's what it was.

When she got here, we worked on the proposal for a bit, and then she dropped a bombshell, telling me that she did not need to submit a cost proposal. She said that she had gotten this information at the bidder's conference. I told her that this did not make sense, and she pointed to a section in the RFP that said that bidders would not need to submit a financial statements or details on their burdened rate until just prior to contract execution. Plus, she thought that the evaluation criteria related to cost was confusing. I tried to explain, but she was convinced that the Contracting Officer had said no cost proposal.

So she decided to call the Contracting Officer. Except she dialed the wrong number and got hold of the Technical Officer (COTR) instead. The COTR could not find the page in the RFP that my client was referring to and insisted that there was no such page. They went round and round on this:

COTR - what page is that?

Client - it is page 54.

COTR - there is no page 54.

Client - yes, on page 54 it gives the evaluation criteria for cost

COTR - the evaluation criteria ends on page 53

Client - no, there is another page

COTR - I have the RFP right in front of me and the page after page 53 is this one (reads the first sentence).

Client - no, that it not it.

COTR - I will have to check with the procurement office because it is not in my copy. Oh, wait a minute, here it is. The pages in my copy are out of order. At any rate, you need to talk to the Contracting Officer about this because I don't know the answer to your question.

So my client gets hold of the Contracting Officer and asks the question about submitting the cost proposal. He said yes, we have to submit a cost proposal, but not price. As for an explanation of the evaluation criteria related to cost, he cannot tell my client what it means. She has to interpret it for herself the best she can. They go round and round on this for a while, but my client finally hangs up and says to me:

"I better get started on my cost proposal."

(02/27/08 09:01 AM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
Hour by Hour?.
I'm plugging along on the NIH proposal. I would say that I have about 75% of the Management Plan done so far and will hopefully complete the first draft by the end of the week.

In a conference call with my client yesterday we discussed the other sections. My client is basically handling the entire Personnel section. In addition to having to recruit Key Personnel, my client will have to fill out a lot of different personnel and staffing-related forms that are contained in the RFP. One look at these forms and you would almost want to run away from this bid. The forms require lots and lots of detailed info.

My client is going to start sending me some material and information that I can use in preparing the Technical Approach section. If the Management Plan alone is going to be 50+ pages, then the Technical section is likely to be 100+ pages. Details, details, details.

Here's an example of the extent of the detail required. I have never seen this before in an RFP. One of the subsections of the Technical Approach is a phase-in plan, where we have to discuss how my client will take over parts of project from an incumbent contractor. That's OK -- I have written quite a few phase-in plans. But in addition to the normal stuff we have to address in that subsection, the RFP says that we have to "detail every hour of proposed Government assistance as completely as possible."

Wha? Are they kidding? I can't even detail what I do every hour of my own day much less what the Government would do. What would they do? Stand around? Have meetings? Talk on the phone? Take coffee breaks? Nap? Have lunch? This is nuts.

I've just got to wonder who in NIH thought this one up. See what I mean by wanting to run away? Looks like there will be more than the usual amount of fictional writing here.
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
Keeping Up (Not).
I'm behind with everything, and this blog seems to get pushed down on my priority list. I don't want it to, but even so, I just can't seem to find the time to get the blogging done. Still, people keep reading it and signing up for my subscription notification form. So now I feel guilty for not writing anything here for a while.

I have been bogged down with work and more work. First, I finished the little sole source proposal that I wrote about earlier. My client submitted it to the federal agency, which liked the proposal but didn't like the cost. So my client is having to revise his numbers and re-submit. One of my colleagues, a CPA who specializes in government costing, is working with him on this. My client is certain to get the contract, but not before the feds make him jump through a few more hoops.

Second, I've been working on a USAID proposal. Somehow, I got assigned to prepare the largest section of that proposal and it took longer than I anticipated (no surprise there). As soon as I finished it, USAID issued a one-week extension. My client is happy to have this extension, but I'm not because it means that I might have to do more work. I'm waiting to hear from them maybe today. In the meantime...

I've moved on to starting yet another assignment that I put off because I had to finished the USAID stuff. This is what I am behind on now. It is a very large proposal for NIH -- a services project, not a research project. The technical section consists of 5 separate volumes: Personnel, Technical Approach, Management Plan, Past Performance and Work Samples. I'm almost done with the Management Plan and it is about 50 pages in length. My client is working on the Personnel Section, and I am going to have to move on to the Technical Approach section probably beginning tomorrow. NIH wants lots and lots of details about everything, and there are no page limits to any of the volumes.

So, I just continue to plod along here in my little world of proposals. Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought that this would be a good career. A lot of people think it is, but frankly I'm not sure. It's a good career if you want to be under a lot of stress all the time and if you like having one deadline after another -- deadlines that rarely slip. Ugh, I can't really even think about it right now because I have to get back to my writing. I have a conference call with my NIH client later this morning.

Later...
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
Red Teams.
I never heard the term "red team" until several years after I began my proposal writing career. My employers never used them and it wasn't until I started working on my own that I encountered organizations that used red teams on certain proposal efforts.

Basically, a red team is a team of outside reviewers that a company brings in to review a proposal once the final draft is completed. Many organizations don't incorporate a red team review process because: (a) it can be expensive; (b) they can't spare the time; and (c) the idea has not occured to them. But if you are preparing a proposal that is very important to your firm, using a red team can be a valuable and worthwhile activity.

In a nutshell, the process works like this:
- Your company identifies people (perhaps 4 or more) to serve as red team reviewers. These people should not have been involved in the proposal in any way, and in fact it's best if they are outside your organization. You will probably need to pay these reviewers a consulting fee for their time. Depending upon the size and complexity of the proposal, the red team review can take from one to several days.
- Before the red team begins their work, you'll need to prepare for them. They will need a packet of materials, including the RFP, your final proposal draft, the proposal outline, checklists, instructions, and other relevant materials. These can be put in binders that are distributed to each reviewer. The red team will also need a conference room or other space where they can read and meet.
- Once the red team assembles, the Proposal Manager or another member of your proposal team may give a verbal presentation on the proposal: what it is about, some background on the issues, what problems have been encountered in developing the proposal, etc. The Proposal Manager also goes over the instructions with the review team. These instructions should be as specific as possible -- they should tell the red team reviewers what you want them to look for. For example: Is the proposal theme clear and consistent? Are the benefits of your approach desirable and clearly stated? Does the proposal address all of the RFP requirements? Is it convicing? How can specific problem areas be fixed? How could the overall proposal be improved? Etc., etc.
- The red team begins its review, first working individually to read the materials and document their comments and impressions. Once this is done, they meet as a group to discuss their findings and to prepare a set of recommendations. When the review is completed, the red team presents its comments and recommendations to the proposal team, which then incorporates the reviewers' suggested improvements.
Besides red team reviews, there are also pink team reviews. But that's a topic for another day.
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
It's Done.
I finished my book proposal. Actually, it's not totally "my" proposal, since the book (if it ever comes about) will be written by me and a long-time colleague and friend. So we worked on it together and sent it off yesterday. We thought it looked pretty good, but what do we know? Neither of us has ever written a book proposal. It will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect it will be a while before we hear anything

This is a really busy time of year for us proposal people. The government's fiscal year ends on September 30, so agencies are often in a rush to spend their money. Thus, the release of many RFPs. I am getting numerous e-mails every day from people who need proposal help and, as usual, they are waiting until the last minute to get that help. I am already swamped with work, so I'm taking on very few new projects. In addition, I'm still waiting for three RFPs from two clients that I've committed time to. Plus, in a couple of weeks I'll be starting on the next phase of my workplan project. In the middle of all this, I'll be taking a few days off to go to Maine with my husband who will be attending a conference there. Lobster!!

Yesterday, a client who I haven't heard from for about 5 years called. In fact, she called four times. I wasn't answering the phone because I was working on the book proposal and didn't want to be interrupted. But she left messages. Apparently she needs a proposal done for a local government agency here in Maryland -- pretty much the same kind of thing that I've helped her with before. But she is somewhat difficult to work with, and with my current workload I don't know if I will really have the time. Still, I hate saying "no" to existing clients, although I'm not sure I would consider her an existing client after a gap of 5 years.

I just need to have more hours in a day.
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/20/08 09:01 AM)
10 Elements of Sustained Greatness. Last week I attended and spoke at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit hosted by WOMMA in Las Vegas (get the presentations here). The conference this year had great energy. Keynotes by Richard Tait of Cranium and Jeff Bell of Microsoft Xbox were inspirational. And it was much more executional-focused than previous years’, perhaps because of the focus on social technologies / online. Many conversations -- which I get very interested in -- were around the cultural aspects of word of mouth. What does it take to succeed years beyond ‘the launch’? One night, in the Rio hotel room, I watched a documentary on Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini (boxer), a champion boxer. He said, “It is very hard to get to the top, but it is even harder to stay there.” I would assert that the hype of ‘being on top’ or the ‘coolest new thing’ for a person, topic or company usually lasts no more than 2 years. Toys is the best example. Think of Cabbage Patch Dolls, Pet Rock, Tickle Me Elmo…the hype for these lasted less than two years. It is the rare entity that can sustain greatness. But it happens for companies like USAA and Costco who keep a watchful eye on customer satisfaction. Or for entertainers, like Madonna, who sustain their visibility and music through reinvention every two to three years. Or books like Blink and Good to Great stay on the best sellers list because of their timeless wisdom and application. The ingredients to... (11/19/07 09:01 PM)
10 Rules to Live By (Deborah Schultz). I was at the Forrrester Consumer Forum last week. The topic of the conference was social technologies. At a place like that you meet people that have blogs. I try to check out blogs of people I meet, I scan them, and see if something pops out. I met Deborah Schultz, a consultant in the Social Media / Interactive Design, and this post popped out to me where she outlined 10 things she tries to live by. In a busy, transparent world these rules are relevant for a consultant or corporation...they are salient for management and marketing...and some are useful to remember when living your life! Do not ignore your customers, it WILL come back to haunt you Constant iteration is NECESSARY - build in flexibility so you can respond quickly Don't LIE - you can't HIDE the truth anymore Build LISTENING into your DNA (Put it in customer service, marketing, product management - just PUT IT SOMEWHERE) Learn to BALANCE the listening with PERSPECTIVE so you are not constantly in REACTIVE mode. DESIGN matters - Make it EASY (iPhone anyone?) Be CLEAR & CONCISE - who has time for long winded-ness Be EMOTIONAL - tell a story [read this to learn the basics] Be HUMAN - talk like one, act like one. Sounds like a big DUH but it is amazing how easy it is to get lost in complexities when we forget this one. Take a BREAK - and step back to think BIG thoughts Great stuff Deborah! (10/13/07 09:00 PM)
Focus Word of Mouth Marketing on Influencers or the Network?. At the WOMMA conference in Las Vegas (Nov. 14, 15) one of the primary topics on the table is the debate and implications to the marketer focusing on the influencer or the network. The influencer model suggests you should focus on the few (say 15%) who are disporportionately influential. Malcom Gladwell called these the Connectors and Mavens. The netowrk model suggests that the importance is having many connections is more important. I'm not fully versed on both of these equally. I'm looking forward to learning more at WOMMA Summit. However, in my experience and in practice, I don't think a word of mouth marketing strategy is complete without a consideration and strategy for both. The breadth of the network is like reach. Your message can carry throughout a broad set of diverse influencers...some more influential than others. However, I believe there are personas that are more likely to share word of mouth. In my experience these people spend more and more frequently, in a retail example. For example Jupiter found the online 'Super Communicators" represent less than 20% of user generated content but over 30% of spend.Bigger mouths = bigger wallets! I think frequency and reach are still relevant concepts, but more relevant when applied to word of mouth. If I see a brand in facebook, in a review, in an online review, in a forum post, and then perhaps I see it in advertising as well then I will be more predisposed to buy. Along that journey perhaps one... (10/07/07 08:58 AM)
3 More Dates Added for the AMA HotTopic Series | Beyond Marketing 2.0.

Thanks again to all of your who were in New York on the 20th! Due, in large part, to the super-positive feedback that we received from the event, Toby, Bill and I will be doing a total of six events, with the three in 2008 as the latest additions to the mix.

But, before we get to the dates, don't take our word for it, look at what one of the attendees from New York had to say:

I wanted to thank you, Toby, Bill and Dana for a fabulous conference. It was truly the most valuable professional development conference I have ever attended. I really appreciated the thoughtful presentations, specific case studies and valuable insights that all the presentors had to share. And the small group setting really allowed for dynamic and interactive discussion that made it possible to apply the learnings to your own work.
Please keep me on the list for any future web 2.0 professional development conferences that you give, and similarly I hope that Toby, Bill and Dana will keep me in mind if they are ever doing conferences (especially in the washington, dc area).

Thanks to everybody,

Kim Callinan
Senior Vice President
- Friday, October 26th in Chicago
- Friday, November 9th in Las Vegas
- Friday, January 11th in Miami
- Friday, February 22nd in San Diego
- Friday, March 28th in Chicago
You can learn more about Beyond Marketing 2.0: Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Marketing Campaign Results by visiting the AMA website. Here's a brief rundown of the event agenda.

7:30 ... 8:15 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:15 ... 8:30 a.m. Setting the Stage

8:30 ... 9:00 a.m. Social Media Defined

9:00 ... 10:00 a.m. The State of the Industry: Where Do You Stand?

10:00 ... 10:15 a.m. Break

10:15 ... 11:15 a.m. The Social Media Landscape

11:15 ... 12:15 p.m. RSS, Widgets and Social Syndication

12:15 ... 1:15 p.m. Lunch

1:15 ... 2:30 p.m. How Do We Measure This Thing? Social Media Metrics & ROI

2:30 ... 2:45 p.m. Break

2:45 ... 3:45 p.m. The Social Media Marketing Plan & Social Media Process

3:45 ... 4:45 Marketing Makeover: Applying Social Media in Two Parts

After several hours of exploring the ins and outs of Social Media and Web 2.0, now it's time to put our education into action!

Finally, we'll conduct a series of 'marketing makeovers' with willing participating companies in the audience. We'll dive deep into specific, emerging or hypothetical marketing challenges where Social Media tools and tactics will provide a competitive marketing edge, illustrating precisely how the Social Media tools discussed throughout the day can be applied to your individual marketing challenge.

(10/04/07 09:01 PM)
Upcoming Event | Emerging Marketing Technologies Workshop | May 24-25.
Hi Folks,

There's an upcoming sales & marketing workshop that you or someone you know might be interested it.

What: Emerging Marketing Technologies Workshop
When: May 24-25, 2007
Where: St. Norbert College, Bemis International Conference Center

For more information:
http://www.snc.edu/continuinged/emergingmarketing.html

For companies in Wisconsin, as well as around the nation, marketing and the tools that marketers use to reach their customers have changed dramatically in the past several years. The challenges marketers face today are often compounded by the sheer volume of new media channels and the depth of expertise required to execute well in each channel.

The Emerging Marketing Technologies workshop is much more than using a few of the newest technology tools to improve your marketing. Attendees will have ample opportunity to apply the specifics of the technologies and trends covered to the realities of their business.

What Will You Learn?
- Increase knowledge of terminology surrounding the newest technology-centric marketing tools.
- Acquire a full understanding of the most popular technology-driven marketing vehicles currently in use and on the horizon.
- Identify which technology-centric marketing vehicles will work for your customer base and pair those up with your existing marketing strategy.
- Gain the knowledge to execute a marketing campaign using the tools and techniques outlined in the course.
Who Should Attend?
- Sales and marketing executives of any size organization.
- Marketing directors responsible for digital or integrated marketing strategy.
- Anyone involved in customer-facing internet initiatives with their company or clients.
- Ad agency media directors looking for a competitive edge for clients.
- Small to medium business owners with marketing accountability.
For more information:
http://www.snc.edu/continuinged/emergingmarketing.html

Please forward this to anyone who you feel might be interested.

(10/03/07 09:00 PM)
3 More Dates Added for the AMA HotTopic Series | Beyond Marketing 2.0.

Thanks again to all of your who were in New York on the 20th! Due, in large part, to the super-positive feedback that we received from the event, Toby, Bill and I will be doing a total of six events, with the three in 2008 as the latest additions to the mix.

But, before we get to the dates, don't take our word for it, look at what one of the attendees from New York had to say:

I wanted to thank you, Toby, Bill and Dana for a fabulous conference. It was truly the most valuable professional development conference I have ever attended. I really appreciated the thoughtful presentations, specific case studies and valuable insights that all the presentors had to share. And the small group setting really allowed for dynamic and interactive discussion that made it possible to apply the learnings to your own work.
Please keep me on the list for any future web 2.0 professional development conferences that you give, and similarly I hope that Toby, Bill and Dana will keep me in mind if they are ever doing conferences (especially in the washington, dc area).

Thanks to everybody,

Kim Callinan
Senior Vice President
- Friday, October 26th in Chicago
- Friday, November 9th in Las Vegas
- Friday, January 11th in Miami
- Friday, February 22nd in San Diego
- Friday, March 28th in Chicago
You can learn more about Beyond Marketing 2.0: Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Marketing Campaign Results by visiting the AMA website. Here's a brief rundown of the event agenda.

7:30 ... 8:15 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:15 ... 8:30 a.m. Setting the Stage

8:30 ... 9:00 a.m. Social Media Defined

9:00 ... 10:00 a.m. The State of the Industry: Where Do You Stand?

10:00 ... 10:15 a.m. Break

10:15 ... 11:15 a.m. The Social Media Landscape

11:15 ... 12:15 p.m. RSS, Widgets and Social Syndication

12:15 ... 1:15 p.m. Lunch

1:15 ... 2:30 p.m. How Do We Measure This Thing? Social Media Metrics & ROI

2:30 ... 2:45 p.m. Break

2:45 ... 3:45 p.m. The Social Media Marketing Plan & Social Media Process

3:45 ... 4:45 Marketing Makeover: Applying Social Media in Two Parts

After several hours of exploring the ins and outs of Social Media and Web 2.0, now it's time to put our education into action!

Finally, we'll conduct a series of 'marketing makeovers' with willing participating companies in the audience. We'll dive deep into specific, emerging or hypothetical marketing challenges where Social Media tools and tactics will provide a competitive marketing edge, illustrating precisely how the Social Media tools discussed throughout the day can be applied to your individual marketing challenge.

(10/03/07 09:00 PM)
Liveblogging TechCrunch 40: Day 2. Here are some highlights from Day 2 of TechCrunch 40 (in reverse-order of appearance): Kaltura: This startup was voted on-stage from the demo pit by the conference attendees. Slick, collaborative video editing software. It's all Web-based. Lets you collectively create a video with your friends. A wiki/peer production platform for making videos. Zivity: User-generated porn. The site shares revenues with the "models"who upload photos. Just what the world needs: a company that is lowering the bar on porn. One of the presenters had this weird handlebar mustache. What's with that? WooMe: Speed dating site where you spend a minute meeting potential mates via Webcam. Real-time social networking. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom is a backer. Metaplace: Build your own virtual world that can appear on any site as a 3D virtual-world widget. The big idea is that every object in the world can be linked to. "Metaplace is trying to Facebook Second Life," says panelist Loic Le Meur. Yahoo's Brad Garlinghouse argues Second Life has too much traction to be displaced. BeFunky: Turns photos and videos into cartoons. Sort of makes everything look like A Scanner Darkly. Also lets you create "uvatars" that look exactly like you. (They are hand-drawn now, but will soon use the same "Cartoonizer" technology you can already apply to photos and videos). Startup is from Turkey. Cool FX. Panelist MC Hammer thinks its funky. Wixi: Yet another file sharing site. As panelist Loic Le Meur says, "Everybody is doing that." mEgo: Have too many social networks... (09/18/07 09:00 PM)
Breaking: Facebook's Zuckerberg Announces FB Fund. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just announced on stage at the TechCrunch 40 conference that he is creating a $10 million fund, to be called the FB Fund, to give $25,000 to $250,000 grants to software developers creating applications on Facebook. He is doing this with Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund and Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. These will be no-strings-attached grants. Founders and Accel won't get a stake in the companies, but they will get first rights of refusal to invest later if any of the startups raise a more sizable venture round. The money will be doled out by an advisory board to consist of Thiel, Breyer, Zuckerberg, Josh Koppelman, and Reid Hoffman. Says Zuckerberg:Any developer can submit their app. If we think the project is good we will give a grant.Zuckerberg clearly wants to create as many incentives as he can for developers to create cool apps on Facebook, as do Thiel and Breyer (who are investors in Facebook). (09/17/07 09:00 PM)
Liveblogging TechCrunch 40. I'm at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco today and will be liveblogging the event. Forty startups are launching new Websites/products. Here are the standouts (in the reverse-order that they are giving their demos on-stage): AOL launches Bluestring: It's nice to see some creativity coming out of AOL. Bluestring is a Web-based application that lets you create a slide show easily by mixing photos, music, and video. You can then send those sldie shows to your friends and family, and they can add their own photos, music, etc. if you allow it. Once you are happy with the finished product, you can take an embed code and post it to your blog, MySpace page, or whatnot. The site just launched a few today. 8080 Publishing: From the makers of JPG magazine (a crowd-sourced photo magazine), this startup is launching a new travel magazine called Everywhere. Everyday travelers submittheir photos and short travel write-ups online, and the best stuff gets printed on paper. I like this concept—building a community that creates the magazine—because it is really pushing the bounds of professional-amateur content. (Disclosure: My former Business 2.0 colleague Todd Lappin is the editor). MusicShake: The crowd really liked this one. It's from South Korea, a sophisticated Webtop app that lets you put together a song from over 170,000 tracks that the startup has created—everything from backbeats to vocals sound effects. A 9-year-old in South Korea ended up creating one of the most popular songs on Cyworld using this app. There is... (09/17/07 09:00 PM)
Disruptors Cover Story. For the September cover story of Business 2.0, I put together our second annual list of some of the most disruptive startups on the planet. This really brings things full-circle for me. I started out with a Disruptors cover story last year, which led to a conference series, which spawned a Web video show, which (naturally) gave rise to this second magazine cover story. The companies that made it on this year's list are: 1. Blinkx (video search)2. Raydiance (ultra-short pulse lasers)3. Expensr (Web-based Quicken)4. Zipcar (car-sharing done right)5. MFG.com (an eBay for manufacturers)6. Virgin Charter (Expedia for air taxis)7. PatientsLikeMe (patient-to-patient intelligence)8. Bloom Energy (distributed power)9. Vanu (software-defined 10. Zink (inkless, mobile printing) And for good measure, I threw in five more: —A123Systems (hybrid-car batteries)—Renewable Energy Group (biodiesel)—Desktop Factory (3-D printing for the masses)—Cree (LED powerhouse)—One Laptop Per Child (the greenest, and cheapest, laptop on the planet)... (08/22/07 09:00 AM)
Imeem is Rocking. Dalton Caldwell is finally finding his groove. His Sequoia-backed social network, Imeem, started out a couple years ago as a standalone, instant-messaging application. He soon scrapped that in favor of a Web-based social music site. But then, a victim of his own success, Imeem was banned from MySpace and threatened with a lawsuit from the Warner Music Group. Caldwell, though, has turned all of that around, and made Imeem into a legitimate, ad-supported music streaming site. He won over Warner Music, which dropped its lawsuit and licensed its entire catalog of songs to Imeem in return for a share of the advertising revenues associated with its music. In fact, Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. found the relationship with Imeem important enough to highlight in Warner Music's most recent earnings conference call. Now, not only can you listen to songs from indie groups like The Essex Green (and embed them on your blog): But you can also also listen to Warner Music acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and embed (30-second samples of) those as well: Imeem claims 16 million unique visitors in July, 10 million registered users and more than one million unique logins a day. Third-party measurement site Compete.com puts the number of unique visitors at 4.6 million, but shows that U.S. traffic is growing and beating both Last.fm and Bebo (see graph above). Comscore shows Bebo slightly ahead of Imeem in the U.S., with 4.4 million visitors in July versus 3.9 million for Imeem (and 1.8... (08/20/07 09:00 AM)
Collaboration Huddles and 35 Other Ways to Improve Sales and Marketing Teamwork . I just got back from speaking at the New Marketing Summit and it was great. But it seems that I can’t attend a marketing conference with out hearing marketers swap complaints about their sales teams. I don’t know about you... (05/18/07 09:00 PM)
Building a Better Conference Badge. http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/04/building-a-better-conference-badge (05/09/07 09:01 AM)
Let's meet at WOMMA, April 17, New Orleans. I'm speaking at WOMMA's Word of Mouth Basic Training, April 17, 18 in New Orleans. My topic will be aquiring, amplifying and measuring online word of mouth. Cost for the conference is $795, but that's a bargain compared to most conferences that are closer to $2,000. I've been to a few of these now and they are great events. The association has exploded and you will learn a lot and meet some great people who are focused on how to drive word of mouth to drive business results. Drop me an email if you plan to come!... (03/02/07 09:00 AM)
15 Ideas to Create a Great Conference. I may have attended 20 events and conferences this year. I've been to conferences all my career my life, but it was especially concentrated this year as an exhibitor, speaker and attendee. So, I've seen conferences, events and symposiums from multiple perspectives at events such as Internet Retail, eTail, Shop.org, SuperNova, WOMMA, iCitizen Symposium, adTech, SES, eMetrics, Creative Good, Forrester Consumer Forum, eComXpo (virtual conference), and others. iPods are great because they do so many little things right -- software, packaging, itunes, advertising. It's a whole experience. The goal is to create an iPod-like experience for conferences. Attendees, exhibitors and speakers have limited time and money. Some can only attend one or two conferences a year. So excellent logistics, attendees and speakers make a conference stand out like iPod stands out among MP3 players. A great conference experience has great topics, ample networking, and a bunch of little things that just go right. So, in the interest of creating an excellent event experience for exhibitors, speakers and attendees, here are some of my tips (some big, some small) for creating a great conference experience! Send a Countdown to Hotel Sell Out -- Every conference has a preferred hotel with reserved room. Most attendees are procrastinators on booking the hotel. With a regular email tell them how many rooms are left. Send a To Bring Reminder to Attendees and Speakers -- No one does this. But why not send an email a couple days before the show reminding attendees to bring... (12/21/06 09:00 AM)
Craigslist Meets the Capitalists. "Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in 'monetizing' his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates -- and not so much to make money." (12/18/06 09:00 AM)
Red Teams.
I never heard the term "red team" until several years after I began my proposal writing career. My employers never used them and it wasn't until I started working on my own that I encountered organizations that used red teams on certain proposal efforts.

Basically, a red team is a team of outside reviewers that a company brings in to review a proposal once the final draft is completed. Many organizations don't incorporate a red team review process because: (a) it can be expensive; (b) they can't spare the time; and (c) the idea has not occured to them. But if you are preparing a proposal that is very important to your firm, using a red team can be a valuable and worthwhile activity.

In a nutshell, the process works like this:
- Your company identifies people (perhaps 4 or more) to serve as red team reviewers. These people should not have been involved in the proposal in any way, and in fact it's best if they are outside your organization. You will probably need to pay these reviewers a consulting fee for their time. Depending upon the size and complexity of the proposal, the red team review can take from one to several days.
- Before the red team begins their work, you'll need to prepare for them. They will need a packet of materials, including the RFP, your final proposal draft, the proposal outline, checklists, instructions, and other relevant materials. These can be put in binders that are distributed to each reviewer. The red team will also need a conference room or other space where they can read and meet.
- Once the red team assembles, the Proposal Manager or another member of your proposal team may give a verbal presentation on the proposal: what it is about, some background on the issues, what problems have been encountered in developing the proposal, etc. The Proposal Manager also goes over the instructions with the review team. These instructions should be as specific as possible -- they should tell the red team reviewers what you want them to look for. For example: Is the proposal theme clear and consistent? Are the benefits of your approach desirable and clearly stated? Does the proposal address all of the RFP requirements? Is it convicing? How can specific problem areas be fixed? How could the overall proposal be improved? Etc., etc.
- The red team begins its review, first working individually to read the materials and document their comments and impressions. Once this is done, they meet as a group to discuss their findings and to prepare a set of recommendations. When the review is completed, the red team presents its comments and recommendations to the proposal team, which then incorporates the reviewers' suggested improvements.
Besides red team reviews, there are also pink team reviews. But that's a topic for another day.
(12/12/06 08:42 AM)
Keeping Up (Not).
I'm behind with everything, and this blog seems to get pushed down on my priority list. I don't want it to, but even so, I just can't seem to find the time to get the blogging done. Still, people keep reading it and signing up for my subscription notification form. So now I feel guilty for not writing anything here for a while.

I have been bogged down with work and more work. First, I finished the little sole source proposal that I wrote about earlier. My client submitted it to the federal agency, which liked the proposal but didn't like the cost. So my client is having to revise his numbers and re-submit. One of my colleagues, a CPA who specializes in government costing, is working with him on this. My client is certain to get the contract, but not before the feds make him jump through a few more hoops.

Second, I've been working on a USAID proposal. Somehow, I got assigned to prepare the largest section of that proposal and it took longer than I anticipated (no surprise there). As soon as I finished it, USAID issued a one-week extension. My client is happy to have this extension, but I'm not because it means that I might have to do more work. I'm waiting to hear from them maybe today. In the meantime...

I've moved on to starting yet another assignment that I put off because I had to finished the USAID stuff. This is what I am behind on now. It is a very large proposal for NIH -- a services project, not a research project. The technical section consists of 5 separate volumes: Personnel, Technical Approach, Management Plan, Past Performance and Work Samples. I'm almost done with the Management Plan and it is about 50 pages in length. My client is working on the Personnel Section, and I am going to have to move on to the Technical Approach section probably beginning tomorrow. NIH wants lots and lots of details about everything, and there are no page limits to any of the volumes.

So, I just continue to plod along here in my little world of proposals. Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought that this would be a good career. A lot of people think it is, but frankly I'm not sure. It's a good career if you want to be under a lot of stress all the time and if you like having one deadline after another -- deadlines that rarely slip. Ugh, I can't really even think about it right now because I have to get back to my writing. I have a conference call with my NIH client later this morning.

Later...
(12/12/06 08:42 AM)
It's Done.
I finished my book proposal. Actually, it's not totally "my" proposal, since the book (if it ever comes about) will be written by me and a long-time colleague and friend. So we worked on it together and sent it off yesterday. We thought it looked pretty good, but what do we know? Neither of us has ever written a book proposal. It will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect it will be a while before we hear anything

This is a really busy time of year for us proposal people. The government's fiscal year ends on September 30, so agencies are often in a rush to spend their money. Thus, the release of many RFPs. I am getting numerous e-mails every day from people who need proposal help and, as usual, they are waiting until the last minute to get that help. I am already swamped with work, so I'm taking on very few new projects. In addition, I'm still waiting for three RFPs from two clients that I've committed time to. Plus, in a couple of weeks I'll be starting on the next phase of my workplan project. In the middle of all this, I'll be taking a few days off to go to Maine with my husband who will be attending a conference there. Lobster!!

Yesterday, a client who I haven't heard from for about 5 years called. In fact, she called four times. I wasn't answering the phone because I was working on the book proposal and didn't want to be interrupted. But she left messages. Apparently she needs a proposal done for a local government agency here in Maryland -- pretty much the same kind of thing that I've helped her with before. But she is somewhat difficult to work with, and with my current workload I don't know if I will really have the time. Still, I hate saying "no" to existing clients, although I'm not sure I would consider her an existing client after a gap of 5 years.

I just need to have more hours in a day.
(12/12/06 08:42 AM)
Hour by Hour?.
I'm plugging along on the NIH proposal. I would say that I have about 75% of the Management Plan done so far and will hopefully complete the first draft by the end of the week.

In a conference call with my client yesterday we discussed the other sections. My client is basically handling the entire Personnel section. In addition to having to recruit Key Personnel, my client will have to fill out a lot of different personnel and staffing-related forms that are contained in the RFP. One look at these forms and you would almost want to run away from this bid. The forms require lots and lots of detailed info.

My client is going to start sending me some material and information that I can use in preparing the Technical Approach section. If the Management Plan alone is going to be 50+ pages, then the Technical section is likely to be 100+ pages. Details, details, details.

Here's an example of the extent of the detail required. I have never seen this before in an RFP. One of the subsections of the Technical Approach is a phase-in plan, where we have to discuss how my client will take over parts of project from an incumbent contractor. That's OK -- I have written quite a few phase-in plans. But in addition to the normal stuff we have to address in that subsection, the RFP says that we have to "detail every hour of proposed Government assistance as completely as possible."

Wha? Are they kidding? I can't even detail what I do every hour of my own day much less what the Government would do. What would they do? Stand around? Have meetings? Talk on the phone? Take coffee breaks? Nap? Have lunch? This is nuts.

I've just got to wonder who in NIH thought this one up. See what I mean by wanting to run away? Looks like there will be more than the usual amount of fictional writing here.
(12/12/06 08:42 AM)
[Conference Calls Unlimited] Zane's 10 Rules for Creating EMPLOYEE Evangelists. http://zane.typepad.com/ccuceo/2005/04/zanes_10_rules_.html I loved Guy Kawasaki's 10 Rules for Creating Customer Evangelists. They were crisp, concise; His presentation of these rules at WOMMA Summit was engaging, smart, inspiring. But who carries out your mission to "Make Meaning"? Or who "Localizes... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)
[Church of the Customer] The doctor is in. http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/the_doctor_is_i.html What's one way to stand out at your next industry conference? Don't dress like everyone else... more...... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)
Why the Boo.comeback makes sense. "There has been much discussion lately, most of it negative (you can read more comments on Technorati), about the comeback of boo.com and once again, I find myself on the opposite side of the shared wisdom. Before I go into reasons as to why I think a comeback by Boo.com (a boo.comeback?) makes sense, let me first go into my unique qualifications to make such an assessment: I happen to have worked at Boo.com in the past and I was the insider who exposed some of the challenges the company had faced. I spent a fair amount of my time, in 2000 and 2001, talking at conferences about the lessons learned from this failure and I think that some of those are now fixed." (12/12/06 08:04 AM)
Zappos 10 Rules of Customer-Centricity. 1to1 Magazine published Zappos’ 10 rules for creating a customer-centric culture, via Jane Judd, senior manager of customer loyalty who spoke at the North American Conference on Customer Management (NACCM). (I only got it in email, so maybe they’ll link it from their site soon.). Make customer service a priority for the whole company. Make wow a part of your company' vocabulary. Don't measure call times, and don't force agents to upsell. Empower your customer service team. Don't hide your toll-free number. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Create a culture book. Find people who are passionate about customer service. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors. Make customer service part of everyone's performance reviews. Notice the theme? The Zappos.com mission statement is a simple one: We are a service company that happens to sell _____. How does this translate into revenue, ROI, margin? Best known for selling shoes, Zappos.com doesn't want to be restricted by filling in that blank; during its seven years in business the $600 million company has added apparel, handbags, and accessories to its offerings. Look at these Nielsen NetRatings comparison of traffic. It's fair that these companies are not exactly comparable, but I will assert that Zappos in comparative and absolute terms (almost $1B selling shoes!) is succeeding for the same reason Craigslist, JetBlue, USAA, Southwest Airlines, Costco, and others like them succeed. Focus on customer service drives repeat business and word of mouth (low cost aquisition). There’s not a long list... (12/05/06 09:00 PM)
Future Marketing Thoughts From Forrester's Consumer Form. A couple weeks ago I spoke on a Word of Mouth panel at Forrester's annual Consumer Forum in Chicago. Attendees were senior marketers, online/ecommerce executives, and CMOs. The theme was Humanizing the Digital Experience. The tracks were: Experience-based Differentiation Devices Everwhere Next Generation Branding Social Computing I don't really like Social Computing...but you can pretty much pick the term you like: Long Tail Folksonomy Word of Mouth Crowdsourcing Prosumerism P2P Marketing C2C Marketing Listenomics Social Media Social Computing Social Networking Citizen Marketing Open Source Marketing User Generated Content Customer Created Content Consumer Generated Media To me all these underscore the same theme: Consumers are in more control than ever (their voices are amplified) and they are taking a bigger role in creating the consumer experience and content. As part of Forrester's follow up they posted all of the presentations here, host a blog here (here's the summary of my panel), and are hosting an open Wiki here. Here are some of the themes from the conference, a la their wiki: YouTube things are going to happen. How do you set standards that define your brand as you want? The product must speak for itself. Listen to what’s out there and understanding the negative and positive. Research cost benefits, insight methods. Blogs as a tool for brand analysis. Chance to engage pissed off customers. Chevy Tahoe Apprentice—create your own ad. Environmentalists were creating bad ones. The world didn’t end.It blew over. Most of the discussion about the brand is actually positive... (11/06/06 09:00 AM)
Search marketing works for B2B, too.. Thanks to a reader, I learned that there was a 'B2B Case Study' session at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco. The article reviewing the session, titled, Search marketing works for B2B, too, starts with this gem:

"Most people assume search marketing works only to reach consumers, but it's actually quite effective for businesses wishing to connect with other businesses, as well."

Um, I'd counter that SEM is more effective for B2B, but I think this comment just shows the lack of knowledge of the author--obviously B2B is off the charts for some folks. The article throws up comments about basic SEM for B2B but this bit is probably of interest B2Blog readers:

"Rick Brown, President of NetTrack closed out the session with a discussion of the effectiveness of paid inclusion in vertical aggregator sites like ThomasNet, GlobalSpec and Industrial Quick Search. Brown articulated his endorsement of such aggregators cautiously, saying that they can bring in relevant traffic as well as provide valuable links to a company's homepage but that many of the metrics such websites use to promote their services (such as "reach," "page views," and "brand activity") don't have much impact on a client's bottom line.

He also noted that the value of the links from content aggregators is highest when the landing page can be controlled and there is a one to one relationship between the product category being searched and the landing page on a firm's website. Brown suggested than firms who invest in paid inclusion on a vertical aggregator site have their own analytics like ClickTracks to determine the value of the traffic coming in from sites like Industrial Quick Search. "

Um, get an analytics program? Duh. What most B2B folks don't do is actually look at the data and ponder its meaning.

One thing that Rick Brown said that is innovative, is that he proposes a 1-to-1 relationship between the seller's landing page and the product categories on the directories. I've opined before that part of the problem with directories is that once the user clicks-thru, they have to start their search over again.

BTW: A rather interesting post by Marketing Headhunter Harry Joiner about a SEO specialist looking for a new job. Key fact: $125-150K pay for specialists at SEO agencies. Wow! (08/28/06 09:03 PM)
Understanding OneNote in Office 2003. Microsoft OneNote is designed for taking notes at meetings and conferences and taking notes while you're talking on the telephone. Rather than scribble notes indiscriminately in a Word document, you ...
(08/22/06 09:00 PM)
Marketing Bullseye 7: 12 Steps to use Metrics to Get In the Heart of Your Business. I have spoke at several conferences on 12 principles to put eBusiness into the heart of your business. However, these principles are applicable to bring about any change to the center of your culture – assuming your culture cares about metrics. Tthere is a heart in your business. It is often hard to articulate, but you know the people, meetings, and general culture from which most decisions and actions originate. Your project, program or department may or may not be in on this heart of the business. Often times, eBusiness is not at the heart of a corporation, for example. Usually, change leaders are not at the center of day to day business. They are running the marathon and everyone in the day-to-day around them is running a sprint. So how do you make change happen that hits the marketing bullseye? The best way to get into the heart of the business is to use metrics. Metrics can’t be ignored. They force attention of sprinters who are looking at metrics every day. And, they most importantly, they get the attention of senior management. They give something for people to put on their resume. And they give your overachieving peers something to work towards. The strategy is to create a system around you using metrics to build momentum for the right (bulls eye) projects, programs and initiatives. Here are 12 Steps to use metrics to get to the heart of your business, in a Ready, Aim Fire approach: Ready1. Democratize –... (08/14/06 09:02 PM)
How to get Word of Mouth (internally) for Word of Mouth. Today I presented at WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association), which is growing like a weed. Tivo recently joined which was the 300th member of this toddler association. A couple interesting notes from the conference (I may share more later)... Andy Sernovitz kicked off the conference with a passionate plea to maintain the ethics in the word of mouth industry. I'm very happy WOMMA is pushing this so hard. Although it's not a sexy topic, it is critical to maintain the authenticity of true customer evangelism. Schills will ruin the authenticity and credibility of word of mouth. He also warned that we (those who drive and practice word of mouth marketing) can be seen as Marketing Innovators or Wackos. I think this rang true for me because I always went through a phase of being a wacko before I convinced people that a new program was 'innovative' and impactful. As part of my presentation, I addressed the need to get buy-in from the organization to embrace new forms of marketing. You can assume others won't 'get it', because they are coming from a different perspective. They are buried in their own day to day operational processes and measurements, and they don't see the connection to a word of mouth program. Part of the solution is to connect any new marketing program, including word of mouth, to their objectives. Outline the 'what's in it for me' question -- as relevant for customers as it is for colleagues and employees. It's all... (07/29/06 02:28 PM)
Guy Kawasaki's Thoughts on Blogging. I’ve been blogging for over 3 years. My friend Guy Kawasaki passed my traffic count in three months. His blog, Signum sine tinnitu, was recently listed as #2 marketing blog (Decker Marketing was #21, but who’s counting :-) In an effort to help him get to #1, and share with you his thoughts on blogs and marketing, I posed the following questions to Guy: You are an early leader (father) of customer evangelism, which is accelerated with today's user generated content and social networking movements. What took you so long to join in, and why do you have a blog now?For years I've considering blogging too arrogant. That is, that a blogger is saying, People care that I was in Norway today at a conference, and I had a hangover from last night's dinner part, and this is what I think of innovation and the RIAA. I have a blog now because some friends just hounded me into it. I still think many blogs are arrogant--perhaps even mine! But I view my blog as a way to help make the world a better place by helping people with issues surrounding entrepreneurship, innovation, evangelism, and fonts. One year from now, or a few years from now (take your pick), how do you think your Blog will have impacted your work, wealth, and life?My blog will be, if it isn't already, my primary outward facing broadcast mechanism. People will read my books, hire me to speak, and send me business plans because... (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

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