There Are No Marketing Secrets



[caption id=”” align=”alignright” width=”202” caption=”Image via Wikipedia”]The Wall Street Journal[/caption]


I’ve been a long-time reader of the Wall Street Journal but haven’t subscribed to the print edition for some years now. My work gives me access to the online edition but I rarely spend much time consuming the content online; there’s something about leafing through the paper that is lost in it’s electronic format. So I took advantage of an offer to trade some expiring frequent flyer miles to restart getting the version on paper. The first edition arrived yesterday.

Immediately I thought the timing was fortuitous as there was a feature on “marketing in a web 2.0 world”. The piece is a nice overview of conversational marketing and I recommend reading it if you are not quite up-to-speed yet (linked below). But the premise of being “secrets” doesn’t really fly with me since the collective wisdom is fully open source at places like Chris Brogan’s blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah, Jaffe Juice and countless others. Or you can hang out on Twitter or Friendfeed if you want the real-time version. I also believe that what we are doing in social media now will become integrated into the practice of public relations and marketing over the next few months as the ressession continues to shift money from broadcast media to online search and ultimately the social web.

But there was an interesting quote in this WSJ piece that I found particularly interesting:
So who should direct a company’s forays into Web 2.0 marketing? A number of managers identified an ideal set of skills for an executive that go beyond those of a typical M.B.A. holder or tech expert. We coined the term marketing technopologist for a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction.

The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World - WSJ.com

I like the term “marketing technopologist” and will use it in my social profiles. I think it encapsulates what I’m trying to do for my clients and my own personal brand. It’s also ironic that I would have probably not read this story if I didn’t get the Journal in print. So I guess I was wrong… print still lives.

And to borrow a phrase from Adam Curry, “There Are No Secrets, Only Information You Don’t Yet Have.” And you better get informed with social media if you are a marketing or PR professional. Just sayin’
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Attack of The Google Election 2008 Gadget

The folks at Google have put together a great maps mashup of election results.

Forget The Resume, Get A Blog

Via Twitter a few minutes ago I learned about Aaron Strout’s post announcing two job opportunities. Blogs have been used for a while now to recruit talent and any headhunter worth working with blogs these days. What I found interesting, no, innovative about this post is how prospective applicants are asked to respond.

Don’t send a resume, just blog. Or write on your Facebook wall. Or Tweet.

This is hiring in the social media age. It really makes a lot of sense because it’s difficult to make hiring decisions based upon what someone has done in the past, particularly in something like social media where a long track record is less than 4 years. But by screening applicants based upon how they use social networks and personal publishing tools, the hiring manager will quickly separate the stars from the pretenders.

Simple, direct and brilliant move, Mr. Strout. I’m sure you will find some rock-stars for those jobs.

Is Facebook The Future of Email?

I’ve been using Facebook more and more over these past few weeks and I really like the email functionality. Since the service is fully integrated with mobile devices, I can be notified when someone sends me a message on my mobile phone and read it on their mobile interface which works great on my 2 year old RAZR with the crappy embedded browser (Opera Mini doesn’t work reliably for some reason).

So is this the future of email? Perhaps but you still can’t read your Facebook mail on an airplane or anywhere without an internet or mobile connection. I’m sure they will have a solution for this problem at some point…

Another Reason To Use Google Docs

I’ve been using Gmail for two and a half years now and really like the service a lot. But they made it quite a bit better with the integration of Google Docs and Spreadsheets that allows you to open Office format file attachments. I’ve been using it to open and read press releases and spreadsheets people send me and it occurred to me that this was completely virus safe. As a Mac user, I really don’t worry too much about viruses but sometimes I do access my Gmail from my Windows PC in my office.

From now on I’ll just use Google Docs and Spreadsheets for these attachments. I wonder how many others will do the same thing? Not good news for the Microsoft Office product manager.

FatTrackr added to the program

While surfing the fatblogger posts on Technorati I found FatTrackr from an entry by Cris Harshman at The Life Ledger blog. I can’t resist combining fatblogging and a Web 2.0 app so I signed up. Since the widget is too wide for my blog right now I’ll just post it every once in a while on my posts.
Thanks for the tip, Cris!

Twitter and the Cult of Calacanis

I signed up for Twitter yesterday to see what the the buzz was about after hearing Leo Laporte talk about it on Twit and net@nite; Jason also succumbed to the hype about the same time.


After using it for a day, I don’t see it as addictive as Leo or Jason but it is interesting from several angles. If you have several family and friends on Twitter, I can see it as somewhat useful in creating ad-hock meet-ups based upon where everyone is. Even with more famous “friends” like Jason and Leo there is a weird sort of connection that is made when an IM pops up about Twit or ordering a chicken salad at Denny’s. But this is not what I think is compelling about this service. The killer app is here is micro/mobblogging.


Jason’s entry yesterday shows this potential:


“…i have 72 followers in like five hours. does this mean i can tell folks what to do and they will do it?! like a cult.”


Uh, no, but you can reach more people with your message, man.


Twitter entries are sort of like one-liner blog posts done via a browser, mobile phone or IM client. Whenever something comes up, you can dash off a “post” to your Twitter feed. Very cool and I think somewhat more useful than just posting what you are doing and where you happen to be (but I might warm up to that aspect with time).


So there might just be something really important here… I’ll keep using Twitter and try to figure out how to monetize this…


Jason’s got some ideas:


“This twitter thing is going to be huge…. I’m going to start a network of twitter blogs around topics like gadgets, cars, and gossip….”


He might just be onto the next Weblogs, Inc. I’ll figure out something for the wine trade. Discuss…

Microsoft Office Waterloo?

I spend quite a bit of time daily using Microsoft Word and Excel on both Mac’s and PC’s. For the past week or so I’ve been checking out Google Docs and Spreadsheets for much of this work and really like what I see. As someone who multitasks with multiple web browsers, email, chat, text editors and FTP clients open all the time, I like not having to open Word or Excel for simple document prep. Since Google Docs has PDF as an output medium, I don’t even have to use Word for SOW’s or invoices anymore. Best of all, it’s free.

If I worked at Microsoft, I’d be kind of worried right now.

Cool video about Web 2.0

I have been busy with a million projects and not blogging much here, so I thought I’d get back online with a cool YouTube video both demonstrating and explaining Web 2.0:
[youtube]6gmP4nk0EOE[/youtube]

Open Source Software + Passion = Web 2.0 Opportunities

The formula for my personal Web 2.0 mashup:

  • Wordpress

  • BDP RSS Aggregator

  • Related Posts

  • WP-PostRatings

  • WP-Notable

  • Tim’s secret sauce



    • Prototype site live by this Friday… I’m excited ;-)