Cautions about corporate blogging

Check out B.L. Ochman's "10 Reasons Your Company Shouldn't Blog." Very good points, indeed!
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4346

Here are some suggestions for building your personal presence online --
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=128151

This Advertising Age post talks about the "Summize" product to which a link was provided on my previous post. http://adage.com/article?article_id=128169

Want to find out what people are saying about your organization or brand on Twitter? Go to this website and put in your key word(s): http://summize.com/

NBC Universal and Neilsen are attempting to take media convergence into account with Neilsen's new "fusion" measurement product --
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127470

Companies are using "branded entertainment" to combat some of the problems that are plaguing traditional media.

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127312

According to this case study, Sephora and Popular Media teamed up to find a creative way to identify opinion leaders/influencers.
http://www.popularmedia.com/docs/Pop%20Commerce%20Case%20Study%20Sephora.pdf

This paper discusses the idea of "engagement mapping."

http://www.atlassolutions.com/uploadedFiles/Atlas/Atlas_Institute/Engagement_Mapping/eMapping-TP.pdf

This article suggests "engagement" an a new marketing metric.

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,42124,00.html

This blog post (Jim Calhoun, CEO of Popular Media) identifies some good social media metrics and provides interesting guidelines for social media marketing. One particularly interesting point he makes pertains to the idea that people put their social capital at risk when they share something with their friends.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/behavioral_insider/?p=276

Here is some interesting evidence about the power of traditional social networks to influence behavior -- in this case, getting people to quit smoking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/26/ST2008052600601.html

Here are some excellent statistics from Universal McCann about the social media habits of those who constitute the "Active Internet Universe."

http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/UM%20Wave%203%20Final_20080505110444.pdf

This is an interesting article about how Coors is using social media --

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/business/media/28adco.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

It looks like Electronic Arts is open to selling more product placements in its video games --

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/business/media/29adco.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Check out page 3 of this report which talks about the "Media World Order"--http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Courses/StratTech07/Lectures/Google/Articles/summary-user-revolution.pdf

This is in interesting update on the declining television ratings -- http://www.variety.com/VR1117986172.html

This is interesting. It looks like the United Kingdom is insisting on complete transparency in terms of marketing and social media.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126667

Check out Jason Falls' blog post about "How to Get Placement on Blogs." He alludes to an interesting question -- how does your strategy for getting placed differ from one type of blog to another?
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/04/28/how-do-i-get-placement-on-blogs/

This is an interesting twist. Miller Brewing Company has an employee who maintains the "Brew Blog." He blogs about, what else, beer. While his posts cover a number of beer-related topics, this Wall Street Journal article suggests that one of his favorite pastimes is scooping Anheuser-Bush's PR releases. The blog indicates "BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MILLER BREWING COMPANY," so transparency appears to be in play.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120829767153417401.html?mod=djemMM

This is sort of the ultimate in involving/engaging one's customers. Radiohead is making stems of its music (bass, drums, vocals, etc.) available so fans can remix it as they see fit. I wonder how many artists or marketers would be willing to take a risk like that?
http://blogs.mediapost.com/social_media_insider/?p=12

Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer for Doe-Anderson Advertising Agency in Louisville, offers some excellent guidelines for starting a corporate blog --
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

Barack Obama has effectively employed new media in his campaign -- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/the-brand-called-obama.html

Ford is redesigning its F-Series trucks in a way that is likely to generate word-of-mouth and word-of-keyboard communication:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=80126&Nid=41298&p=911887

Here are some great guidelines (from Google) about how to improve your site's Google rankings:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34432

This provides a good overview of meta tags:

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931

It looks like a lot of social media users are affluent --
http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1668

Toyota, General Mills, Hewlett-Packard, and H&R Block are finding creative ways to reach customers through YouTube --

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485739329518557.html?mod=djem_jiewr_MK

This is a good primer on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) from CNET --

http://search-engine-marketing.classes.cnet.com/

Could it be that "the wisdom of crowds" is starting to wane?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/119091?GT1=43002

Note the topics that are being covered in the "Search Engine Strategies 2008 Conference & Expo":

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/glance.html
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/agenda.html
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/agenda2.html
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/agenda3.html
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/agenda4.html
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/training.html

This Adweek article suggests that traditional advertising agencies may not be doing a good job of incorporating consumer-generated media into the promotional mix. Could there be some career opportunities here for those who are able to get ahead of the knowledge curve?
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3id13cf7c770b633b60456549756b829bc

This company uses "crowdsourcing" to develop new products --
http://adage.com/article?article_id=125285

Online chatter alone doesn't necessarily lead to increased sales --
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=125340

In this video, the speakers talk about the "three screens" of your digital life -- PC, TV, and cell phone. The idea is to integrate the three. http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/23642

This classical music artist is putting her music on the Internet for all to hear. The hope is that more people will become interested in classical music in general, and her classical music in particular. She is also performing in nontraditional venues to, again, expose more people to her work. Sounds like a "market expansion" strategy to me (if you remember your Principles of Marketing class).
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19352442&sc=emaf

It looks like many of the music industry's magazines will have to go to an "online only" format if they are to survive. This seems to be particularly true for those having a relatively narrow readership as opposed to a Rolling Stone type of magazine with a broader readership.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19357366&sc=emaf

Here is a list of 6 ways to identify the top blogs in a given area --
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/identify_top_blogs.php
On the other hand, going to Google's Blog Search and typing in your subject also seems to work well. Technorati.com's "Blogger Central" also seems to return a good list of highly rated blogs.

Check out Neilsen's "Brand Pulse" product -- http://nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/brandpulse

Thanks to Sarah Wells for submitting this excellent overview of CGM --

http://www.designdepot.com.sg/newsletter/interact_jan07.pdf

I particularly like one of the statements near the end "Ultimately awareness (talk) leads to enquiry (traffic) which leads to sales (profits)."

Could it be that social networking sites are peaking?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_07/b4071054390809.htm

This post discusses placing advertisements in video games.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=75970&Nid=39127&p=911887

This post discusses companies that used new media successfully, companies that used it unsuccessfully, and at least one possible ethical breach.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=75975&Nid=39127&p=911887

This post discusses the use of social media as an alternative to advertising during times of recession.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=75979&Nid=39127&p=911887

This blog post addresses an ethical breach of which ValueClick is accused:

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=75900&Nid=39078&p=911887

This link takes you to a tool that will grade a website. It evaluates things like metadata tags, headings used, and images used.

http://www.websitegrader.com/

By the way, this "Marketing And The New Media" blog scored 50 out of a possible 100 points.

This note comes from Devin Wilber -- "Here is a site that uses 'crowdsourcing' to work on projects submitted by users. A user submits their idea, the 'crowd' builds and tests the ideas, and the original submitter reaps the rewards. Web 2.0 and consumer generated media in action!

http://www.cambrianhouse.com/

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Devin!

This post has some great web-related and blog-related stats:

http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1626

Bloggers seem to be having a greater impact on the sale of beauty products.

http://www.wwd.com/issue/article/today/121770?page=0

This article talks about ad spending and economic growth. As a point of note, it points out that marketing organizations spend about 7.5% of their marketing budgets (I presume they mean "advertising" budgets) on the internet even though people devote about 20% of their media consumption to internet-based media.

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=348963&story_id=10567459#top

This blog post explains how Care2 <http://www.care2.com/> uses "behavioral targeting" to identify people who are concerned about various social issues and link them with their causes. According to the post, there are 8 million people in the network.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/behavioral_insider/?p=239