It's a question marketers are still grappling with years after the first waves of corporate blogging flooded the web. But for better or worse, it seems corporate blogging -- and the title of chief blogger -- is beginning to hit its stride. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Marriott and Kodak all have recently recruited chief bloggers, with or without the actual title, to tell their stories and engage consumers.
These days, online consumers and companies are collaborating on a range of activities, including R&D, marketing and after-sales support. Here are a few examples of how brands and consumers are working together online.
Yahoo's resistance to a takeover by Microsoft looks foolhardy to some investors and Wall Street analysts. But the push-back may prove effective in the end—at least by forcing the suitor to cough up a few more bucks a share. Executives from Yahoo (YHOO) on Apr. 7 reiterated the reasons for their opposition. The $31-a-share offer, made public Feb. 1, "substantially undervalues" Yahoo, and its stock component is even less attractive in light of Microsoft's (MSFT) slumping share price. "We have continued to launch new products and to take actions which leverage our scale, technology, people, and platforms as we execute on the strategy we publicly articulated," Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock wrote.
Microsoft (MSFT) just dropped the bomb on Yahoo (YHOO). Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Apr. 5 sent a letter giving Yahoo's board three weeks before it initiates a proxy fight, including nomination of a new slate of directors likely to approve the deal.
Is it just me or has Google gone into overdrive? As a professional full-time online marketer I have to keep my mind firmly placed on what Google is doing. As much as I try not to because Google has probably driven more people around the bend than Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz put together. Like any professional marketer, I monitor my numerous keywords on a daily basis - especially my major targeted keyword phrases that bring in the most sales and subscribers. For years now, I have had top rankings in Google for my chosen phrases; they move up and down, but mostly they don't leave the first page.
Recognizing that it is not much fun to watch movies on a tiny cell phone, a number of companies are racing to develop gadgets that project what's playing on the small screen onto walls, table cloths and other handy surfaces. ''Pico projectors'' that are small enough to carry around in a shirt pocket are expected on the market later this year. Eventually, the technology will be tiny enough to be built into phones and portable media players, the companies say.
Of the many blogs born last May, Patent Troll Tracker seemed as innocuous as any. Its focus: the obscure but controversial subject of "patent trolls," a derogatory term used to describe businesses that make money by purchasing patents and then suing big companies for infringement. The author was clearly no fan of the practice, but his or her identity was a mystery. The "about me" section of the blog noted that the writer was simply "a patent lawyer trying to gather and organize information about patent litigation." Through regular, copious posts, Troll Tracker quickly drew a devoted following in patent law circles, even among those who disagreed with its point of view. What readers didn't know, however, was that the blogger was Rick Frenkel, in-house patent counsel at Cisco Systems (CSCO), the Internet infrastructure giant.
Ad spending on newspaper Web sites increased to $3.2 billion in 2007, up 18.8% over 2006, according to preliminary estimates released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in late March. The trade group said that online ad spending accounted for 7.5% of all newspaper ad spending in 2007, up from 5.7% in 2006.
The Washington and Baltimore region was the nation's fifth fastest-growing area for venture capital funding in the last decade, according to a report released Tuesday. In 2007, 180 Washington and Baltimore companies received nearly $1.3 billion in venture capital backing, the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Financial and the National Venture Capital Association said. That number is up 130 percent from $558.24 million put into 105 companies in 1997. The report lists Timonium, Md.-based Grotech Capital Group and Chevy Chase-based New Enterprise Associates as the most active investors in the region. The top industries for investments around the region were software, life sciences and telecommunications.
The rate of affluent US Internet user participation in online social networks increased dramatically to 60% in January 2008, from 27% in January 2007, according to The Luxury Institute's latest WealthSurvey "The Wealthy and Web 2.0." "While some in the luxury industry are still debating e-commerce, search and banner ads, the majority of their customers have leaped into the online dialogue," said Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute. "Luxury needs to catch up quickly."
A woman who claims the recording industry's anti-music piracy campaign threatens and intimidates innocent people has filed a new complaint accusing record companies of racketeering, fraud and illegal spying.
One of the great things about the Internet is the way people post reviews on just about anything you are considering trying, whether it is a movie, a new restaurant or the local florist. This also introduces one of the worst things about the Internet: trying to figure out which reviews to trust. Was that effusive praise written surreptitiously by the merchant? Was that anonymous online slam posted by a devious competitor? The dilemma might be unavoidable in this age of abundant user-generated content, when we have to be smarter about separating signals from noise. But a startup called RatePoint Inc. begs to differ. It wants to play referee, giving consumers more clarity into a business' reputation and protecting the business from unwarranted blights on its credibility.
The U.S. Presidential race has reached a critical juncture. The Republicans have a confirmed nominee in John McCain; as for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has bounced back, while Barack Obama retains a marginal lead in terms of delegates. How the presidential race evolves will be shaped in part by the increasingly worrisome state of the U.S. economy. Consumer prices are rising, oil has crossed $103 a barrel and gold is nudging $1,000 an ounce -- suggesting that the economy could be entering a phase of 1970s-style stagflation. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, however, told Congress last week that he doesn't anticipate stagflation, and he continues to indicate his willingness to keep cutting interest rates. What lies ahead for the U.S. and world economies? Knowledge@Wharton discussed these questions and more with finance professor Jeremy Siegel, author of The Future for Investors.
Last month I talked about blogging platforms and the value blogging can bring to ecommerce sites. When a website makes the decision to begin a blog and decides upon a blogging platform, it will then have to decide who will blog and how often. Time allotted to blogging is also a relative issue, as is subject matter. So why bother at all? Relative to static ecommerce sites, search engines consider blogs more real and trusted because blogs tend to have fresh content and there is a less financial, more informational link between a blog and its readers. An ecommerce site should take advantage of this tendency by adding a blog to augment the overall site.
When a small padlock appears in the corner of your Web browser's address bar or the entire bar turns green, it seems like a powerful signal you're safe to proceed. But experts say the SSL certificates those green lights signify — digital stamps of approval that Web sites buy to prove they're running a legitimate business and can send and receive encrypted data safely — don't provide the safety they seem to. "They instill some sense of security, but that could be a dangerously false sense of security," said Paul Mutton, a researcher with UK-based security firm Netcraft Ltd. The site itself could still be riddled with security holes for hackers to exploit. And the certificate could simply be bogus: Criminals have been forging them to get the padlock icon and dress up fraudulent sites.
During the Web's heyday, a profitable Internet company nearing $100 million in annual sales while luring a million new customers a month would have found itself on the IPO fast track. But that's hardly the case for LinkedIn, a professional networking site that has cleared those hurdles and then some. Instead, LinkedIn is hewing closely to the Web economy's new motto on initial public offerings: Easy does it. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn may not sell shares until some time next year. Likewise, social networking site Facebook, worth $15 billion on paper, may not go public until 2010,
By giving an audience widgets that provide a service and make their lives more interesting or convenient your brand will be on its way to far more free real estate than you ever expected. In helping brands develop widget presences, I can say that for brand managers and agencies alike, the first time through can be an emotional roller coaster. Early in the process, brainstorming sessions are filled with far-flung, fantastic ways to bring enterprise information into the everyday lives of the audience.
Comparison shopping engines are an important part of the e-commerce channel marketing mix, Scot Wingo, CEO of e-commerce channel management services vendor ChannelAdvisor Corp., tells Internet Retailer. But they’re a better spend for some categories than for others, he adds. Wingo says, for example, that comparison shopping engines are strong in categories such as consumer electronics, less so with products such as apparel and jewelry. That disparity is partially a function of how matching on the engines works. Consumer electronics products have a multitude of hard attributes that lend themselves to point-to-point comparison, for example, while jewelry and apparel selection relies more on a shopper’s subjective opinion. That said, ChannelAdvisor customers spend anywhere from 15% to as much as 40% of their online marketing dollars on comparison shopping engines
The recently launched 7 Billion People is an intriguing application to e-commerce of the real-world psychology behind buying behaviors. As CEO Mark Nagaitis tells us, his new Web analytics system tries to discern in a site's audience different "buying personalities" that marketers can talk with in very different ways.
A new study from the Pew Internet Project casts light on the love-hate relationship many Americans have with e-commerce. In response to the survey, 78 percent of U.S. Internet users said that online shopping is convenient, and 68 percent said it saves time. Yet, 75 percent said they don't like giving out personal information like a credit card number over the Internet. The security risks, real or perceived, are hampering the growth of the Internet economy, said John Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project and author of the report.
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