Back in September, I wrote about my panel proposal for the 2007 SXSW Interactive Festival. I’m pleased to announce my panel “Using RSS for Marketing” was accepted last month. Now that the panel is set with a time and some great speakers, I decided to provide the details for those interested in attending SXSW this […]
Category: Marketing
Online polls with PollDaddy
Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb writes that PollDaddy has launched into public beta. I’ve seen so many of these apps that I’ve largely ignored them. I figured if and when I had a need for a poll, I’d go check them all out. PollDaddy looked simple enough to get started though that I finally tried creating a […]
Squidoo review
I finally had a chance to play around with Squidoo last night and I’m impressed. As Seth Godin’s brainchild, I had been meaning to fully check Squidoo out for some time now. Some have questioned the usefulness of the service, but I have to disagree. Squidoo can’t be evaluated against creating a blog or having […]
New EvolvePoint web site launched
EvolvePoint launched its newly redesigned web site yesterday and I have to say it turned out fantastic. At the same time we were redesigning the EvolvePoint site, our new service, FeedCraft, was also being integrated into the same look and feel as the EvolvePoint corporate site. To do both of these together actually took a […]
Click fraud exposed
The Washington Post has an insightful article on click fraud. To Texas-based Auctions Expert International LLC, it was an easy way to make money on the Internet. Sign up with Google, which functions as a kind of online ad agency, and agree to let the online giant place ads on your Web site. Then, every […]
Importance of RSS
RSS is only going to become more critical to web sites. Robert Scoble (via Ross Mayfield) has a fired up post about marketing of sites using RSS. Or more to the point, those NOT using RSS. From Scoble,
Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired.
Something to keep in mind for all the marketing gurus.
Super Bowl productivity losses?
Earlier this week, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced that the Super Bowl would waste productivity to the tune of over $1 billion. When I saw this news item, I immediately wondered how could this be possibly measured. Especially due to the fact that Sunday evening is not typically a work day for the majority of folks. From reading more into their study and other commentary, I’m still extremely skeptical. The best analysis I can give this study is one word: silly. I suspect they were only trying to get some headlines with the press surrounding the Super Bowl.
The fundamental aspect of their research is that the discussions at work, web surfing, arguments, etc. both prior to and after the game, contribute to a massive loss in productivity. I would counter their arguments with this one of my own – people will waste time regardless of the event or topic of the week (or day or hour). Employees naturally need to to communicate and generally participate in discussions and activities that do not appear to be directly productive to the enterprise. But as anyone who has ever worked a day in the corporate world, an 8 hour day is not 8 solid hours of non-stop work. People will take breaks, chat, and generally waste time just to get through the day. That said, it doesn’t matter what the event is as they will find something to talk about or read up on the web. What’s next? Will Challenger, Gray & Christmas perform a study on the effects of the recent tsunami disaster to worker productivity? Give me a break.
Additional links on the topic:
Gilbane Reports now free of charge
As of January 1, 2005, all the articles from the Gilbane Report are now available free of charge. A popular newsletter of content management technologies, Iâ??ve found their reports to be excellent. The site has a full range of research reports on topics ranging from intranets and portals to knowledge management. In addition, some of the Gilbane team has also started a group weblog.
Replace Google public service ads with Amazon affiliate products
I’m sure many of you have had this problem. Some of the pages on your site have not been indexed by Google yet and the Google AdSense ads are displaying the public service ads. Now not to be miserly or anything, but the whole point of placing ads on the site was to generate revenue. And the last time I checked, free public service ads are driving revenues to neither Google nor my site. Since Google can be notoriously slow to index pages sometimes, especially new sites, I began researching solutions for my other blog, All Climbing. What I found was a free Perl script called AGAR, Amazon/Google Ad Replacement.
AGAR allows you to replace the Google public service ads with Amazon product links using the Amazon Web Services (AWS). The script is simple to modify. You then just upload it to your cgi-bin directory and then tell Google AdSense to replace the public service ads with the URL to the AGAR script. AGAR looks similar to the Google AdSense ads and can also use the same color scheme.
Beginner's Guide to Business Blogging
ChangeThis has just published Debbie Weilâ??s new Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging. If you havenâ??t yet checked out ChangeThis, go there and explore right away. There are manifestos from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Joel Spolsky, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Brad Feld, Mark Cuban, Al Gore, and Robert Scoble just to name a few.
Debbieâ??s guide is a good overview of blogging and the potential for blogs in business. For experienced bloggers, much of this you already know. For those new to blogging (especially business blogging) or for those trying to justify their use in corporate settings, this is a canâ??t miss reference.
Iâ??d advise visiting ChangeThis or Debbie’s site and downloading the guide as it’s free until January 25, 2005. After that itâ??s $29 from her website.