I love entrepreneurial passion and how both Jason Calacanis and Mark Cuban’s blog posts ‘tell it like it is’. In the process, there has been quite a bit of controversy from Jason’s blog post “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)” that got picked up by TechCrunch and the TechCrunch blog comments were charged statements of brutal opposition or strongly in favor of Jason’s tips, especially #11: “Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.” Jason goes onto give advice of where to spend money and where to cut back. I have to admit that I disagreed with a lot of Jason’s perspective, especially expecting all employees to work as hard and long as a founder/owner when there is much less upside for that employee. Jason - 16 hours a day, 7 days a week is not sustainable. Startups are marathons, not sprints. Make sure you got some honest perspective from your employees, your spouse, your family, and their spouses and families to see if everyone is enjoying the creative process of starting your startup when they are burnt out. Mark Cuban had some good advice on his blog post “A Couple of My Rules for Startups” - very opinionated - but surprisingly mature comments. You can tell he really knows what he’s talking about. I think Cuban is a hot-head, wannabe cool guy, but he is hell of a sales guy from his past success in startups and growing $billion companies. Here are a few key excerpts: “1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. 2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession. 3. Hire people who you think will love working there. 4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales. 5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap 6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.” (more…)
I took the train in from Princeton, New Jersey this morning (spent the night at my childhood friend’s house in Princeton, after recovering from a huge night out at TGI Fridays - with him, his wife, and adorable 2-year-old son, followed by an intense game of Scrabble where his British wife crushed us with words like “cheque” and other non-American, English words). I digress. It’s a balmy 55 degree, overcast day in Manhattan and I’m loving the freedom of walking everywhere in this town.
I connected w/ Chris Masagatani, our NYC Director, at my hotel near Madison Square Garden and we walked to his interim office at ReturnPath - an awesome partner of ours. It’s amazing what you can get done in just a few hours when you have uninterrupted time in person with someone. Chris and I went over updates on all of our NY region clients - roughly 40 of them. We made travel arrangements for him to come back to see us in April in P’town. We also went over a NYC-specific grassroots marketing campaign of reaching out to other bloggers in NYC in the marketing, interactive, and advertising industries.
Chris’s blog is www.CrossPixelNation.com. It’s barebones from a design perspective, but it will soon be a key asset to our NYC office.
We treated ReturnPath Exec Stephanie Miller out to a tasty lunch of Southern cooking nearby and caught up on the happenings within the email and interactive industry. Huge thanks again to Matt, Stephanie, and the ReturnPath team to making our entry into the NYC market so much more enjoyable than scrapping away and learning the hard way.
Another update. We hired an awesome NYC-dedicated account coordinator, Donald Law, in our Portland office and he’s hitting the ground floor running this week.
If you still haven’t clicked through to Chris’s blog, here is Episode II of his video talents and impressions of the Big Apple after living here for the past 6 weeks:
User-Generated content will be an ingredient in most business website launches (and nearly all consumer sites). In 2006, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook got all of the press. Wait, they still do. But, legions of major consumer brands launched their own primary sites or campaign micro-sites with clever concepts that drove consumers to feel a sense of ownership of the future of those brands. Notable examples include HBO’s Justin Timberlake show FutureSexLove, ABC/Disney’s 13 Nights of Halloween, and Doritos user-generated Super-Bowl ads.
In 2008, B2B companies will follow suit, but it won’t be easy. User-Generated content needs to be used in a way that accomplishes specific marketing objectives, and oftentimes B2B companies meet those objectives through Resource Centers (whitepaper, case study, and guide downloads), web forms, giveaways, or surveys. None of these online marketing tactics allow for community building, commenting, rating, “digging”, or creating profiles.
Extending this to what we do as an online marketing company that works with other businesses (not consumers), we just launched our own site, eroi.com, and there simply aren’t any social networking tools built into our primary site. We have done a tremendous amount of Web 2.0 tactics outside of our main site - four distinct blogs with built-in RSS feeds, Pageflakes, delicious, and digg capabilities, our own Facebook Group page, MySpace page, YouTube Channel, and Flickr feeds, but we haven’t pulled them all together and integrated social networking tools into our primary site. As a self-fulfilling prophecy, we could look at implementing some of these tools into our site or, even better, our products. Online support can leverage the wisdom of other customers and allow searchable discussion threads for product support issues between multiple customers. B2B technology companies can learn from Salesforce, Google and Facebook and open the API to their products to allow for anyone to build modules that easily integrate into their online products.
For the past month, this Blog - Email Days and our other eROI blogs, The Email Wars and Return on Subscriber all had a few errors on them due to the challenging server upgrade of Movable Type 3.1 to the insanely powerful and feature-rich Movable Type 4.0. We weren’t able to display our Category pages, Permalinks, and Comment pages on all pre-transition postings which there numbered in the thousands of blog postings. All that is fixed as of this afternoon and we can let out our inner-geek spirit in celebration!
We will roll out new features in the upcoming weeks for this blog including digg and de.li.cious links, Captcha code for Comments to reduce blog comment spam, create some widgets, and play around with a variety of other MT 4.0 features that I’m just learning about.
I admit it. I’m guilty of NOT blogging in over two weeks. I was on vacation for 8 days and loved every minute of it. I went white water rafting, climbed a couple mountains in Central Oregon, made a fort in our vacation house backyard with my daughters, nephews, and neices. The crazy thing is that I was relaxed, checked in on my email, but somehow blogging was not a priority while on vacation.
Just writing this blog post is making me feel a whole lot better about my BLOG GUILT. Cathartic, indeed! A bunch of relevant online marketing stuff has happened while on vacation - I am now a part-owner in a new building in Old Town, Portland and eROI will move to 505 NW Couch Street on December 1 of this year. In the past couple weeks, we’ve launched some high profile websites that I will blog about once we get clearance from our clients (I try to learn from past mistakes where we mention a client that doesn’t want certain press).
So, my blog guilt is absolved. Now, I’m off to write a dozen blog posts with video and pics from our party. Lots of entertainment there. Cheers!
If you haven’t read any of Seth Godin’s books or his blog, you probably aren’t in the eMarketing, online marketing, interactive marketing, viral marketing or just plain old marketing world. He’s phenomenal, he’s candid, and the insight you learn from each of his books and blog posts is power-packed with solid, proven ways to improve your marketing and steadily grow your company by doing lots of little things remarkably well.
I just finished his book “Small is the New Big” which is a compilation of hundreds of his blog posts over the past 4 years. On a local level, I find that I learn from some small, entrepreneurial companies that specialize in a certain niche and share their learning with the world through their blog and with me at lunch or happy hour. Stephen Landau with Substance is one of those people. He and his business partner David have one of the best blogs I’ve seen on Flash and user experiences. Their idealism in truly changing the world is infectious and they are already making a difference. Check out their blog >>
Another blog that provides some creative inspiration as one of the smallest of the “big guys” (although they are the largest independent advertising agency in the country) is Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland blog and their London blog. Both of these blogs are either inspiring or so insanely obscure that it’s pretty funny.
In my previous blog post, I reflected on my talk in New Orleans at the annual conference for the IABC on the importance of blogging and social networking. The following day after the speaking engagement, I flew back to spend a couple days with my parents and extended family on a quick vacation. I was telling my Dad about how well the whole event went and some of the key points I made in my speech.
One main point is the notion that: Customers Own Your Brand, NOT YOU (the marketer). The case study I showed was Kettle Foods People’s Choice Awards where the company allowed its customers to name the next flavor of potato chips (Doritos is now copying this campaign 2.5 years later). My Dad understood my point that customers have a huge influence on your brand, but vehemently denied that customers truly owned any consumer brands that were near and dear to their hearts. Those brands controlled their own strategic decisions and at the end of the day, legally and financially owned their own organizations.
Of all the people in the world that I hate to admit he may be right, it’s my Dad (I respect him so much that I’d rather the roles were reversed with me giving the counter-point to his argument). But, the truth is - I need to choose more specific words that don’t exagerate the concept that Customers Must Co-Create Your Brand with You (instead of being talked at).
If you’re trying to get your head around terms like search engine marketing, blogosphere, podcasting, RSS and social media, this is the session for you. This presentation will provide an overview of effective e-marketing strategies and tactics as well as case studies and helpful resources you can use to develop and implement your own e-marketing program.
In this session, you will learn:
The definition and proper applications of e-marketing
Effective e-marketing strategies and tactics
How do develop your own e-marketing program
There were roughly 1,100 people at the overall event and 250-ish at our session. There was a lot of great dialogue between us (the speakers) and the audience on the importance of the blogosphere and social networking. Search marketing and email marketing were known entities as must-haves in any marketing mix.
The debate around whether or not a blog is worth the effort reminded me of a worldwide Intel conference for employees 10 years ago when then Intel CEO Andy Grove said that every company would be a “web company” (meaning every company would have a website) within 5 years. Guess what - he was right. I think the same thing will happen with corporate blogs in the next 5 years. It is not a question of “if” - it’s a question of when your company will support the 1 hour per week required for maintaining a good blog.
Here is our presentation if you didn’t get a chance to see it at the event: (the file is a bit big, so I need to upload it to the server when I talk to my tech guys at the office - sorry about that).
I admit it… I’m what they call a lurker. I spend countless hours reading industry blogs and articles. I have more rss feeds than I could read in a lifetime and as the Creative Director of eROI, I build websites on a daily basis that rely on user-generated content. So the question is: Why is this my first blog entry?
Apparently I’m not alone. A recent study published by Forrester Research showed that many people my age (I just turned 30) fall into the lurker category. For those that don’t know the term, a lurker is someone who reads content on the web without participating or adding content themselves. Based on this study, the majority of the creators and participants online fall within the 15-20 year old range. This isn’t a huge surprise based on the success of sites like youtube and myspace, but what does this mean for the future of the web? With this level of adoption and acceptance of social media will virtual environments like Second Life really become a part of our culture? Will adults really interact within one another as if they are in a video game. I don’t think it’s so far fetched to think so.
I recently got an offer from an advertiser to pay for blog ads on this Blog. Here is the email I received:
“Hi,
I’m interested in buying an ad on (http://www.emaildays.com/ ) for a company who offers business email hosting. My budget is about $35. I know you probably don’t do this a lot but I’d love to discuss it further if you’re interested. Let me know what you think. Thanks so much.”
OK - I know it is only $35, but it really got me asking a whole lot of questions:
1) What is the purpose of EmailDays.com?
2) Since the interactive world is in the advertising community in a larger sense, shouldn’t I engage this prospective advertiser to learn more about how blog ads work from a practical standpoint?
3) Since I’m in the advertising community and see so much advertising, isn’t it refreshing to have a blog (and read other blogs) that do NOT have advertising on them?
4) What would be my price that I’d start to entertain the blog ad discussion a lot quicker - $350, $3500?
What would your price be? What are your thoughts on blog ads? Please comment and continue the dialog!
Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in ‘06, impressed the hell out of me with her bold statements and charisma. She talked about consumers longing for authenticity, transparency, and values. “If you can hit upon this, that’s when the magic happens,” she continued.
Huffington strongly declared, “Don’t be stopped by the naysayers. We have to deal with the naysayers - including the inner-critic in our heads. We must break through our own self doubt.”
Mainstream Media has Attention Deficit Disorder! Examples:
1) Anna Nicole Smith is everywhere in U.S. media for an entire month, then it doesn’t exist ever again. (Drop it like it’s hot).
2) Kosovo - does anyone know what’s going on in Kosovo today? No, and we should because lots of bad stuff is happening.
3) Elian Gonzalez - how is he doing in Cuba? Does anyone know?
Key insight on the Blogosphere - bloggers like to take little nuggets, investigate, and make them into stories that get AMPLIFIED in the mainstream media. Many times, blogs are the source of the bigger stories. The Huffington Post is a news aggregator for progressive, political news. 800 bloggers write for free because they want their views out there real-time.
There will always be Print and New Media. Huffington used the analogy of Gilligan’s Island - “it’s not just Ginger OR Mary Ann - let’s have a three-way.” Meaning: there is a need for magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other forms of online media.
Fearlessness is key. You need to experiment (what works today will not work in a few years). Your organization must carry the torch like Google, where they accept an 80%-90% failure rate as a great thing. 10% success on big ideas is HUGE. Don’t be easily discouraged - most people give up way too early.
IF you have no clue how to use RSS, then you can subscribe on the right hand side for weekly email recaps using our new RSS to EmailROI platform. That’s right, you will be using RSS and have no clue how or why, but it powers the emailROI plaform for you automatically. It’s magic like how Santa gets his big can down that skinny little chimney.
5. Most successful companies will become media companies. Microsoft became a media company when it began its blogging program a couple years ago. The lawyers lost and marketers won – revealing the inside scoop at Microsoft was virtually the only thing that has healed the company’s battered reputation. More and more companies are starting their own blogs, helping them to become more relevant and newsworthy to a greater audience within their niche. Blogging has essentially forced companies to step into their customers’ shoes and provide them with more industry knowledge and news, rather than simply ramming products down their throats.
Well what do you know. We were honored this AM to find that we are one of the email marketing blogs up for the ClickZ awards 2006. Please give us your love with a VOTE. (Not fair that 2 out of the 3 blogs are ours!!)
Finalists were selected from reader nominations for the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards 2006 that met eligibility requirements. Voting is open now through the close of business, 5 pm EST, on Wednesday, November 8, 2006. One vote in each subcategory per person (we have our ways of knowing). Winners will be announced on Monday, November 13, 2006.
Word Trends to Avoid for 2009January 7, 2009, 7:44 am - Can you guess what words are going to be the “Marketing’ leading words to avoid in 2009?
Wth the current economic crisis
Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in ‘06, impressed the hell out of me with her bold statements and charisma. She talked about consumers longing for authenticity, transparency, and values. “If you can hit upon this, that’s when the magic happens,” she continued.
