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.
Even as some marketers rein in spending to hedge against further economic problems, search engine marketing (SEM) is in great shape—at least for the moment. Search engine advertisers and agencies surveyed for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)-sponsored "2007 State of the Market" survey listed multiple reasons for the SEM spending growth, including advertiser demand, rising keyword and pay-per-click campaign costs, small-to-midsized business SEM use and increased behavioral and demographic targeting. The study was conducted by Radar Research online using an IntelliSurvey panel.
Many job seekers are blithely unaware that their former employers all too often say things that can damage or halt their career prospects. Most of this is due to the erroneous belief that it's somehow illegal to ask about things other than title and dates of employment during a reference check. This is simply not true. Today's courts have literally invented a whole new body of law called "Employment Law." Bundled in this tangle of law is employment pre-screening, otherwise known as reference checking.
At buySAFE, our web site is one of our greatest assets. It is the main avenue by which we communicate with prospective buyer and merchant customers, partners, the media, and investors. It is the main tool we have for defining buySAFE for the rest of the world. It is the vehicle we use for creating action with respect to our unique eCommerce trust and safety and advertising services.
I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about how to better leverage this asset, and then working with my team to improve upon its utility.
Tell readers why they should perform a task. If your site is full of passive suggestions, toughen it up. People are trained to follow a request, as long as you give them a good reason to do it.
Convey a sense of trust. If you're experiencing skepticism, offer social proof like testimonials or risk-mitigating offers like a free trial.
Stress benefits. Ensure that your copy always shows users exactly how your site will benefit them.
Make headlines meaningful. Be sure to change any vague or cutesy headlines to something more up-front and meaningful.
Repeat yourself. Check over your copy to make sure that you're really driving the point home by making it in a number of ways.
Tell visitors what to do. Revise your site to ensure that people know exactly what the next step is. If you want a visitor to click a link, tell them
Keep the reader engaged. Make sure that your current content gives visitors a reason to keep reading throughout the entire piece; otherwise, you need to spice things up a bit.
Stay consistent. Check your copy for consistency, or else your site may be seen as unstable or flighty.
Stay simple. Simplify your message simply to avoid confusing visitors, while at the same time improving conversion rates.
I have discovered the hard way that blogging is not an easy endeavor, and this is especially true for folks that have real jobs during the day. At a minimum, it takes time, dedication, and creativity. I have often wondered how to others do such a great job with their blogs while still maintaining excellence in their day jobs. To that point, I thought this article was very interesting, and it included a number of practical tips for all of us aspiring bloggers. I hope you find this useful as well.
MARK CUBAN, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a full plate. Besides his basketball team, the busy billionaire also owns part of a media company, and serves as chairman of the TV channel HDNet. He recently competed for five weeks on “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. How on earth does he find time to blog?
Yet his site, blogmaverick.com, is one of the top 1,000 Weblogs, according to the search engine Technorati. Thousands read Mr. Cuban’s posts every single day. If he can do it, why can’t you?
Regions of the West Coast and Midwest moved ahead of Washington as top destinations for venture capital in recent years, as the local venture economy grew more slowly than the national average, a Washington Post analysis shows. In 2001, the year the technology bubble popped, Washington ranked sixth among top destinations for venture capital, after Silicon Valley, New England, the New York metro area, Texas and the Southeast. Last year, it was ranked 10th, overtaken by the Northwest, San Diego, the Midwest and Los Angeles/Orange County.
Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you'll encounter the Internet's richest corporate players -- names like Yahoo, Amazon.com, News Corp., Microsoft and Google. Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation. With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia ''anyone can edit'' stormed the Web's top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.
US direct marketers may reduce their media budgets this year, judging by Target Marketing's "Media Usage Forecast" report. Nearly one-quarter of respondents surveyed in January 2008 said they would reduce their media budgets compared with last year. The n
Yahoo Inc, still fending off a $41 billion takeover bid by Microsoft Corp, unveiled a cell phone tool on Tuesday that lets users keep up with their favorite topics using dynamic bookmarks. OnePlace, to be launched in the second quarter, allows users to ma
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,
The other day, a friend who runs a small business lamented that his Web site wasn't worth the trickle of business it brought in. Something told me he's not alone. In fact, some estimates have found the majority of small-business Web sites fail to generate revenue. Which is too bad, because I think that entrepreneurs like my friend make a mistake by blaming the site itself, or even the medium of the Web. The problem, in my view, is not the site—it's the lack of trust in the company behind the site. Trust is an elusive concept, of course; the sort of term bandied about freely in Marketing 101 but rarely defined adequately since any of us found ourselves in that class. Building trust is important. Building trust via your Web site is essential. Now here comes the biggie: How?
I am a professional board member. I've been sitting on boards for almost 20 years and I've seen a lot. I've seen some of the best board members in action and have tried to copy them. I've seen some of the worst board members in action and have tried hard to forget them. Here are some thoughts on choosing board members. This advice is for everyone, but it's of particular use when you are a bigger company, maybe public, and need to fill your board with good people.
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