Latest [web2latest] from Web 2.0 Journal

Ulitzer vs. Ning - a Quick Review

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:30:00 EDT

Having used both sites for about two weeks, there is still a great deal I am learning to do with both Ulitzer and Ning, but a reader asked if I would do a quick comparison, so I will.

Social Media Terrorists

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:00:00 EDT

"Mass psychology" scientists study this kind of phenomena and the "mass psychology of fascism" is of course the most famous lab case. The extraordinary experience SYS-CON Media lived through became part of a Forbes Magazine investigative cover story called "Attack of the Blogs" that found that "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo." The lies, libel and invective we are living through today is another such episode. Our partners, readers and the industry in general know the facts and what's going on but in a rare example like the email below, we can't be sure if everyone is on the same page as the rest of us.

Best Read "Content Marketing Today" Posts

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:45:00 EDT

Proving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella. While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things. Here’s the tasty [...]

The Power of the Plan, or Why We Crashed and Burned

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:45:00 EDT

Picture this. A big company has one last chance to rise from a serious downturn. But the company has lots going for it. An unbelievably loyal customer and market following, A game changing innovation, A significant demand for exactly that innovation, A bit of money to back it. I watched customer after customer 'light up' as we told our story....

What if God Texted the Ten Commandments?

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:30:00 EDT

CEOs are known for flawless communication, right? We understand their ideas and can execute on them. Well, maybe...it depends on the communication vehicle they select.

When leaders speak or write, we have the chance to capture the flavor and nuances of their communication: in depth insights. But with Twitter and text messaging, some of that brilliance and subtly can get lost. Corporate mission statements in 140 characters? Hmmm...maybe not a bad idea. But for critical communications, perhaps social media is not the best choice.

In a wonderfully creative post, Jamie Quatro at Mcseeenys posted what a CEO's strategy might look like in text. BTW, the CEO happens to be God.

So how would God communicate his vision and strategy for mankind, i.,e the Ten Commandments, if he had to use text? Here is Jamie's wickedly inventive text version of the Big 10:

1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.
M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. ttyl, JHWH. ps. wwjd?

Note to earthly CEOs: to avoid confusion, maybe you should keep vision and strategy statements off of Twitter!

Convert Your Site Visitors Into Paying Customers

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EDT

The conversion rate of visitors to a website turning into buyers is an extremely important part of a successful Internet marketing campaign. If you’ve decided that you want to test a sales page for your product/service here’s exactly how to do it. The first thing you need to do is you really get inside their headspace. Walk a mile in their shoes. What motivates them? What scares them? Then start with...

Get To The Top of Google in Five Easy Steps

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EDT

Learn how the professionals get their web pages to the top of the search engines for the keywords they target.

Leadership Lessons From the Heart

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:15:00 EDT

CEOs lead by using their brains: they think about how to generate revenues, they ponder company vision and they constantly think about how to advance and grow their organization. Competitive analysis, differentiation, profitability, sustainable growth and innovation. Whew! Heady heads! And that's good stuff going on in the brains of business leaders.

Pick the CEO, Not the Company

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Most organizational experts will tell you that when joining an organization, the company’s culture is the key to determining whether you will thrive or suffer in a given work environment. While this is true for a mid-level manager or individual contributor, the closer you get to the top, the less a culture matters and the more the CEO’s leadership and management style impact your work satisfaction.

Would You Jump Off a Cliff Just Because The Other Guy Did?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Remember your Mom's response to that justification? If your folks were like mine, it probably went something along the lines of "So does that mean you'd jump off a cliff just because the other guy did?" Business is no different - or at least it shouldn't be. Market leadership is not about being just like everyone else. Leadership is about...

“I’m Just Not That into You” – The Buyer

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:45:00 EDT

Long cycles and no end in sight

In any market regardless of the economic conditions, it feels like some buyers will just waste the provider’s time. No one is being evil or disrespectful here; sometimes the provider sales team needs to realize that the buyer is just not that into you. Maybe the buying organization has not prioritized a need that the provider is trying to address and there is no existing budget. The conversation hasn’t moved into an area of immediate pain that would be the…

Here’s A Public Agency That Really Understands Content Marketing

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:45:00 EDT

AC Transit's Dedicated Site, ACTForMe.org, Paints a Brilliant and Loving Portrait of the Benefits of Public Transit AC Transit operates a very sophisticated bus transportation system in the San Francisco Bay area, handling more than 65 million passengers annually in an area covering 364 square miles. That's pretty impressive. But what really impressed me is the fact that they also make excellent use of the web to tell a story that turns taking the bus into the obvious transportation choice.

Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Grew 22 Percent in 2008

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EDT

STAMFORD, Conn., June 12, 2009 — Worldwide business intelligence (BI) platform, analytic applications and performance management software revenue reached $8.8 billion in 2008, a 21.7 percent increase from 2007 revenue of $7.2 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

Five Proven Improvements Your Business Must Make During this Recession

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:15:00 EDT

Of course it’s easy to slump in our chair and wish things were as simply as they were two years ago. We reflect on an image of bon vivant behavior and business just seemed to slide under the door. But let’s face it; many businesses became fat and dumb including your customers. Many of them weren’t thinking about being lean, fast and efficient. They were spending more time looking at how to keep the stock price up in an era of financial froth instead of focusing on meeting the needs of their buye…

Coaching the Star Performer

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 EDT

I have a tenured sales person who has a history of overachieving his sales quota for the past three years. In fact, he has been one of the top performers in the company and is excellent at closing business in competitive accounts. However, his service after the sale and his follow through is the worst on my team. Clients have complained frequently about feeling as if, he only cares about them when he is selling them something and then he disappears, doesn't return phone calls, etc. I have attempted to coach him on this deficit but quite frankly, he doesn't take criticism very well and I have seen no improvement. How can I counsel him to improve without damaging his level of high performance?

Social Media Marketing Turkish Style

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 EDT

As I looked at these log files, I could not help but think about the cultural issues surrounding the Turkish way of thinking to exploit any social system. Wouldn't it be easier for these spammers just to conduct legitimate business like everyone else? It would. But the thought process behind this type of behavior is the pleasure of being "smarter than others" by breaking social rules. They get some sort of satisfaction from that.

Marketing Like the Big Boys

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 EDT

The Bailiwick Company launched two new service offers that help small and mid-sized businesses compete on a level playing field with their larger competitors.

The Web-Based World: In Praise of Google, iPhone, Twitter and Facebook

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:00 EDT

I would not have written this blog in the year 2000 and by now I am highly opinionated towards Google, of course in a good way. During my graduation years (1996-2000), I used Rediff and Yahoo! search for my college projects, and ACM seminars. In the year 1996/1998, Google was known but to very few people. But nowadays Google is not just an Internet search company but a worldwide phenomenon that changed the way everyone thinks.

Video Games Meets Surgical Training in Las Vegas

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EDT

With all the bad economic news coming out of Nevada, it is easy to miss a healthcare bright spot -- the emergence of virtual simulation training of future surgeons. The Virtual Skills Laboratory at University Medical Center (UMC) has been training residents since December 2008 with advanced simulators, allowing them to get hands-on training before operating on humans.

Enterprise-Based Applications in the Cloud Are Next

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:45:00 EDT

One thing is pretty clear to me from an investment perspective. I am not going to invest in the next hot cloud computing infrastructure service that will compete against Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft, and every other large tech vendor in the world. This is suicide and far from capital efficient.

What's the Best Definition of SOA?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:15:00 EDT

It seems that I am not as flexible as I believed I could be on my thinking regarding SOA. I attempted to categorize various SOA engagements in my SYS-CON article entitled A Classification Scheme for Defining SOA, I believed that I could hide my dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity surrounding SOA by lumping SODA/application development into its own subcategory. I was wrong! When it comes down to it, there's still just too much ambiguity surrounding the term service.

Bing vs Google: Microsoft Gets Serious About Search

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:15:00 EDT

Even my 90 year old Grand Mother is aware that Microsoft have dominated software products. But where have they been in search? Microsoft Live Search handled about 9 or 10% of searches but that pales in comparison to Google's 60% and Yahoo! at over 20% of searches. But perhaps now, finally, Microsoft is getting serious about search with Bing.

Opera Unite Cuts out the Middleman

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:30:00 EDT

The inclusion of a web server gives attackers clear line-of-sight to their targets. There’s been a few articles on Opera Unite that have called into question the security of the decision to include a web server with the browser.

I Spent A Year Adding Content & My Competitors Nicked My Rankings

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EDT

A quick follow up to my SEO fight club article, and somewhat tongue in cheek. I just spent a year adding original content which people have told me is really useful, getting relevant links from those [...]

Medical Recruiting In the Digital Age

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:05:00 EDT

IN MY last post, I wrote about the premature sounding of the death knell for public relations. I'll go a step further and say that, the need for adept public relations skills is actually growing and is more critical today than ever before. In fact, the use of strategic PR has begun to dominate areas that [...]

The New Dimension of Identity

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:30:00 EDT

For people who travel a lot, or people whose business is not fixed in one location, the question "Where are you?" can take on added significance. There are a spate of new tools and web sites that can help the mobile professional answer this question. In fact, location becomes a new dimension to being online. Being on line is no longer a binary yes or no. It is now a yes or no, and a where.

The 24X7 Work-Pleasure Lifestyle

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:15:00 EDT

The blur between our work life and our home life can be a little frightening in the 21st century. It started with the cell phone interrupting dinner dates in the late 90s. The next step was employees using instant messaging on their laptops in the middle of business meetings. The ability to invade your personal life from a business standpoint and the idea of getting personal under the radar with instant messaging at a business meeting was off and running.

The Blackberry took it to new heights.…

Who the Heck Is Your Social Media Prospect?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:15:00 EDT

The most important part of marketing is the same no matter what product or service you're selling and no matter what medium you're using to sell that product/service. It's to 'Define Your Prospect'. Who are they? What do they do? What are they doing right now? What are there habits? Dig, dig, dig. The more you can define them and even connect with who they are and where they're at right now in their lives the easier it is to market to them.

About Disability Resource Exchange Social Network

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:15:00 EDT

A social network whose main goal is to bring together people with and without disabilities who are interested in discussing disability issues.I created and manage a social network for discussion of disability issues. The website address is: http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com

Government Social Media Reputation Management in the Cloud

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EDT

During this morning’s IAC breakfast, discussing “Transparency, Collaboration and Web 2.0”, a panelist made a very interesting point. While the US Federal Government’s use of Internet social media services and cloud-based information-sharing applications is well underway, albeit at the very earliest of stages (mainly due to significant policy, privacy, security and simple “newness” issues), by far one of the major risks lies with accountability.

Accountability in collaboration and information-sharing environments is typically achieved to some degree by association of metadata with the information packages being exchanged, or with the “containers” of online events and the trusted identities of those participating in the dialogue. With social media applications and contexts like Twitter or Facebook, however, there are far too many ways that the “information packages” (i.e. unmanaged conversation bites) get exposed, syndicated and shared – disassociated from what I’ll call the “accountability metadata”. Accountability metadata might be described as one part records management (provenance, chain-of-custody, attribution, etc. of the actual material), one part situational awareness (i.e. the UCORE model; who, what, when, where regarding the actual event context being discussed), and one part “trust in context”, or “reputation” (i.e. popularity index, authority index, security attributes, etc.), and one part semantic accuracy (i.e. the topics and language being used is consistent with the context of discussion within which it’s introduced, for example according to a NIEM namespace).

"S-CORE" for "Social Media Core Information"?

As an example, the tweet associated with this blog entry is in fact an “information package”, albeit made up of unstructured data (as far as I can manipulate). Within the Twitter universe, there is an association (or “assertion”) of accountability metadata with this Tweet, so long as you’re a member of the community and can view my profile data, link references and prevalent topical themes. My profile data is associated with an employer and other communities, which themselves provide additional accountability data. But what happens when the Blog Tweet is Twitterfed, gets Tarpiped into Identica, over to Friendfeed, into Facebook and finally its RSS feed repurposed as a discussion item on someone else’s blog widget?

The original metadata isn’t carried along, and therefore some degree of manual intervention may be required to respond to non-attributed, out-of-context or otherwise mis-purposed data. Google searches may return search results containing my tweet language in non-intended contexts, thereby possibly enabling alternative or even incorrect interpretation. A homeland security social media “tweet”, for example, from a first-responder regarding a health-related assessment may be determined by HHS as inaccurate and possibly dangerous as most obviously interpreted by the public. Enter “Online Reputation Management”.

Online reputation management is a significant industry in itself (many local Washington DC Internet Marketing companies provide it), focused on making sure search engine results aren’t creating or promoting a false or unwarranted image – of a person, company, or product – because of overwhelming yet unverified online information posted to the contrary. Back to the HHS example – the erroneous tweet works its way into Google search results via multiple channels (and perhaps aggregate or federated search results), and subsequently becomes “the truth” because it’s on the first page of results. HHS or some other responsible, validating entity must now engage reputation management techniques to deliver more, better or different information into many of the same social media channels, in addition to a couple of its own highly-authoritative channels, to counter the ultimately false search engine results.

This may be part of the reason that Data.gov is so far a producer only of raw data, vs. “information” – since information carries with it expectations and actually delivers a degree of unstructured accountability that’s very hard to define, manage and monitor on the Internet. Structured data is far easier to manage, since it typically isn’t shared via social media (at least with its structure intact), and structured metadata is easily embedded. Citizens can certainly help resolve semantic inconsistencies, can establish some level of “social trust” by using the data, and can prove usefulness (and therefore legitimacy) by creating popular applications – but citizens aren’t really accountable to the rest of the Federal Government’s constituency, and its reputation. Ultimately, organizations will look back to the Government for trust and accountability with respect to information packages (vs. data) they can use in legitimate business ventures involving social media.

However, the Federal Government’s foray into producing information packages for consumption by public social media will likely be constrained for some to come, until industry can come up with a generally accepted standard and technology examples to permanently associate “accountability metadata” to unstructured information payloads released in the wild. This might then be followed by an oversight agency or program that could automate perhaps some of the Federal Reputation Management tasks that would then be necessary – enabling many more useful, unstructured conversations in public social media, moderated by trusted Government sources. Perhaps from the cloud.

How to Leverage Social Media for B2B Marketers

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:00:00 EDT

It's time for the monthly ClickInsights' Expert Interview Series - focusing on sharing tips ' n tricks for B2B marketers. This month's focus is on leveraging social media, certainly a timely and much discussed topic! Read the post by B2B marketers including Ardath Albee, Brian Carroll, Patsi Krakoff, M. H. (Mac) McIntosh, Maria Pergolino, Seamus Walsh and yours truly by...

Linda Fischetti on VHA Healthcare

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

This week pre-recording of Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum featured Linda Fischetti , Health Informatics Architect at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). During a panel discussion, her comments on VHA accomplishments and plans included:

If You Talk the Talk, You Better Walk the Walk

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:45:00 EDT

Businesses large and small are jumping into a social media presence these days. It’s a great opportunity for real communication with your audience. If you walk the walk. But what happens when the talk isn’t the walk? When a customer pushes past the social persona. Do you walk the walk - or do you crash and burn? Two cases in...

Small Business PPC

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:30:00 EDT

The search engines such as Google and Yahoo! provide millions of potential customers every year for most industries. Taking advantage of this is a must for any budding online business. But what if you just service a small local area? Can the search engines be of advantage to you? Of course they can.

How to Lead on Search Engine Result Pages in 2009

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:52:00 EDT

Since there are lot many websites that are activated on the internet on the daily basis, it has become to market them regularly. The search engine marketing and SEO are the tools generally used to do the marketing of the websites on the internet. However, the online market is also as dynamic as the real stock market. There are new standards and upgrades everyday in the field of SEM and SEO. Yet so there are certain factors that remain consistent no matter whatever changes occur. Let’s just lo...

Turn Prospects Into Buyers With Compelling Content

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EDT

How do marketers provide compelling content that customers and prospects actually want to consume? How to combine old and new marketing in innovative and useful ways? How to build on going customer relationships? How to attract prospects and retain customers? Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett provide answers to these questions in THE handbook for content marketing "Get Content. Get Customers.".

Tips on Marketing White Papers

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:45:00 EDT

I have put together a list of lists on white papers. There is a treasure trove of information in these lists on how to write and market white papers.

The 6C's of Content Marketing

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:00:00 EDT

Marketing 101 taught you the The 5 C's of Traditional Marketing - Company, Collaborators, Customers, Competitors, and Context. What are the 6 C's of Content Marketing? Customer, Community, Content, Conversation, Continuity and Consistency. Find our more about the 6 C's of Content Marketing and how to harness these with your marketing strategy.

The 7S's of Content Marketing

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:00:00 EDT

The challenges marketers face today are multifold. How you do create content is such a way that it not only addresses an individual's informational need but also reaches the masses? How you present content so that your target audience does not loose interest? I wrote about The 4P's of Content Marketing and The 6C's of Content Marketing to give you frameworks to brainstorm these types of marketing questions. Find out more about the 7 S's of Content Marketing and how to harness these for the growth of your business.

How To Market White Papers

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:00:00 EDT

White papers are an essential item in your marketing toolbox. I have compiled a list of blog posts on marketing white papers.