Clutter and the Small Business

One of the things that I love about my wife is her philosophy on cleaning. I grew up in a house with cooks who couldn't boil water without getting at least three pans dirty, so when Franki introduced me to the concept of Perpetual Cleaning, my heart took a little jump and I signed on for good.

The concept of Perpetual Cleaning is a simple one - pick up as you go along, and you'll take less time and effort than if you wait and do massive clean-ups.

You'd be surprised how much of a difference this makes in your daily life. Clutter around your house and your office affects you in many ways. It's harder to work efficiently, and it's harder to enjoy your leisure time when you have the burden of a large clean-up always on your mind.

Like paying bills and confessing your sins, cleaning up has a therapeutic affect on everything you do. Don't believe me? Read this entry on clutter ar Ariane Benefit's blog, Neat Living.

It still amazes me how much weight and stress is lifted from your shoulders when you clear clutter. How much more easily you can breathe when your to do list shrinks. And to be honest, because Alan & I cleared our clutter together, it felt kinda like we had a date! Seriously, we had a chance to connect, talk, and make decisions on things that affect our life together. And we had some fun too as we found things that made us laugh, took breaks to play with the cats, etc. In the hustle of everyday life, we don't get a chance to spend a whole day together very often. As our reward, we relaxed during the evening. As we cuddled up and enjoyed watching a couple shows we had Tivo'd on The DaVinci Code, we both marveled at how good we felt because we had accomplished so much. We could truly relax because stuff wasn't hanging over our heads anymore. So that got me thinking about all the ways clutter (defined by Webster as "disordered things that impede movement or reduce effectivenesss") affects you and you don't realize it till it's gone.

Adriane goes on to list 10 areas where clutter affects your perception, and thus the quality of your life.

As a small-business owner, the demands for my time have never been greater. From insurance bills to marketing to billable work, the demands of the business can easily lead to allowing clutter to build-up in my personal life.

Our perpetual cleaning philosophy allows us to focus on work until the work is done, and then fully relax when the time comes.

BNI Des Peres Networking Meeting

I had the opportunity to visit with the Des Peres Chapter of BNI this morning. This was a lively and friendly chapter that meets at the Bulls and Bears cafe near Manchester and 270.

Going to several BNI meetings, I've noticed some similarities and some difficulties experienced by referral networks. The biggest challenge I see for BNI chapters in recruiting new members is many people are afraid of asking for or giving referrals.

BNI is a referral group. You are required to bring referrals for the other members. Yet for many small business owners, asking for a referral is difficult enough for their own business. How do you sell someone else's business when you're not comfortable selling your own?

The beauty of BNI is the more meetings you go to, the more comfortable you are asking for and looking for referrals. BNI works as a support group helping you overcome your fear of referrals. It also trains the mind and the ears to be aware of opportunities to sell.

Professional salespeople know that the key to a referral is creating a mental image in the mind of a prospect. You don't ask, "who do you know?" You ask "Do you know anyone that fits this profile." Going to a weekly meeting and practicing these statements trains ordinary people into referral-generating machines.

A good reminder for a Tuesday morning.

Thanks to Charlie Scarlett for inviting me, and perhaps we'll be successful setting up another example of a BNI blog.

The Business Blog Network of St Louis

We're trying to think of a good name for a new venture. It's a small thing, just an association of businesses that blog in St Louis.

Right now, there are so few, that an association has the ability to greatly increase the visibility and success of each blog. The way it works is simple. Any business with a blog sends me an e-mail, links one or more of the other business blogs, and they can add a logo to their site.

There are no dues, no other requirements, and no catches. This is about promoting those businesses that are willing to engage the blogosphere. Durbin Media Group will offer help in two ways. First, any local clients of ours are automatically added to the list. Second, Franki and I will be offering Corporate Blogging 101 every second Wednesday at the Kaldi's in Chesterfield. We'll spend an hour offering free advice for those who want to start a blog, already blog and want to promote themselves, and those who are curious how to handle issues with bloggers.

Over time, we hope to build up a list similar to that of Ryan Money's Utah Bloggers. Early adopters have a huge advantatge online. We hope that growing a collection of non-competitive businesses will encourage the growth and provide local case studies for retail blogging.

Contact me at Jdurbin@durbinmedia.com, and if you have a better name, we'll be happy to use it.

Also check out StlRecruiting.com for other updates.

How Blog Marketing Works in Social Networks

It's unclear to many executives why blogs should be part of their business communication strategy. Ceding control of the company message to the general public goes against centuries of increased centralization. The very purpose of a corporation is centralized control based on pooled resources, so how can giving away that control be healthy for the company?

Maybe the problem is understanding how a blog can bring in sales, instead of how it affects public relations.

ROI is difficult to measure in PR and Marketing. Even with complex statistical models, the easy answer to increased sales is to claim the sales staff is responsible for the gain, not the marketing.

Online sales and leads solve that problem, because they form a trackable database that points directly to where the lead came from. As the internet, and search in particular, grows in importance, the ability of companies to connect to niche communities online will depend in large part on how interactive their website is in comparison to competitors.

Don't take my word for it - ask the SEO Blog what they think of Social Networks. .

As a search marketing application, the basic concept of social networking is simple. There are multiple points of connections between almost anyone on Earth. Working from that basic truism, virtually anything imaginable is possible to find, share, enjoy, and track, providing a cross-reference can be found. With social network applications, user choices and preferences are saved, stored, shared and used to build rapidly growing chains of endorsements.

As those cross-references are established, the profile of a person, company or service provider, along with its traditional website increases in recognition and reputation. Think about how links affect rankings at Google but on a different, more chaotic sort of scale. As search marketers however, our job is to get our clients' sites recognized and to build traffic across their domains using whatever legitimate means is available and relevant to their business.

Social Networks are groups of people who form an identity online. The only way to sell to these online communities is to become a part of these communities, and blogs are the simplest way of doing so.

Rather than spending ten thousand dollars a month on newspaper advertising to solicit 30 leads, businesses could be spending five thousand dollars a month connecting with a group of 500 people that represent 30 leads, and another 100 referrals. When in Rome...

Now, to be honest, these communities are not fully formed in every industry vertical, but they are getting there. What company is taking the time to join these groups early? What would be the advantage of an online database of prospects informed about your company prior to the time they are ready to buy?

Me? I prefer to ShadowBox

There's a blogger located across the pond with a good head on his shoulders and excellent advice on business blogging.

Patrick Dodd, the author behind Corporate Blogging 101 , is in his own words, a well-traveled entrepreneur living in merry old England.

His site is pretty much a mirror of the marketing group on my RSS feed, and he's a welcome addition to the roles. He offers white papers on blogging (obviously a great way to market a new product), and he offers advice on how to business blog.

One post that hit home was his post on the acceptance of blogs by corporate executives.

This is frightening. The blogosphere is the place where conversations are taking place. Its the place where your customers are talking about you. Its the place where your competitors are talking about you. Joining in these conversations should be priority #1 for businesses - and you dont need a blog to do that.

• A minority (15%) say that someone in their organization is currently writing a blog related to the company or its activities.
• Only one in five (21%) report reading business-related blogs once a week or more frequently.
• Only 30% of senior executives report that they have a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.”
• Forty percent believe that their companies should have corporate policies to address the writing of blogs unrelated to the company or its activities. This compares with the 77% who believe their companies should have such policies concerning the authoring of blogs sanctioned by the company.

Absolutely! Before you unleash your corporate blog(s) you must have blogging policies in place.

The study, run by Harris Interactive, shows a giant gaping chasm between how business bloggers like Patrick (and Franki and I) see blogging and how the corporate world sees blogging.

To them, the negative press, the wild nature of the medium, and the lingering bias that bloggers are angry men in pajamas firing off letters to the editor of the New York Times is slowing the adoption rate of blogs.

At this point, the pain of learning about blogs is greater than pain of ignoring them. The problem for these executives is online communities reward early adopters. Thus, a great opportunity both to educate and to profit from the current lack of acceptance.

Patrick continues with a call to action. What are you doing with your blog to bring in business?

Myth #4: Blogs Should Never Be Censored

(Part of a white paper on the 7 Myths of Business Blogging)

The History of Blog Censoring

When the Blogosphere first started, there were several key principles that were more or less recognized by the early bloggers. Transparency was one of those first key principles, and it remains a strong advantage and characteristic of successful bloggers in 2006.

The ability to form relationships with fellow bloggers online is hampered when one or more participants is providing false statements, hiding their identity, or providing information that is designed to falsely show evidence of expertise when none exists. As most of the early bloggers were motivated by politics and media, the desire to "root out" the dishonest led to a desire to provide access to all comprehensive and factual information that could affect an issue under discussion. This is not a special quality of bloggers, but a necessary community strategy for any digital formation. Transparency is a form of currency in a medium particularly susceptible to fraud.

Setting aside straw men with concerns about free speech (a debating tactic, not an actual argument unless the government is doing the censoring), the problem of censoring or deleting comments was decided by each blogger and a portion of the reputation of that blog was determined by how consistent a blogger was in following their own rules.

Some blogs opted out of comments (Instapundit). Some blogs held that they were paying for the space, and thus had every right to edit, delete or ban commenters who weren't following their rules (Daily Kos). Some blogs just banned flagrant violators and spammers (pretty much everyone). There was no formal decision on who was right or wrong, because there was no governing board of Blogdom.

Business Blogging

The original ethos of blogging was against money and corporate control. As late as 2004, blogs that sold ads or sold products were considered "dirtier" and less original than bloggers that remained amateur non-profit efforts.

As the ability to make money increased, the concern about authentic blogging quickly fell by the wayside. Bloggers and businesses begin to work together to determine the best ways to integrate blog campaigns with marketing, public relations, branding, employment and product launches.

A lot of mistakes were made, as businesses sought to circumvent the community standards with fake blogs, paid word-of-mouth marketing, and sponsorship of blogs without revealing a paid relationship. The backlash against these practices were sudden, overwhelming, and a created a sense of fear in the corporate world that bloggers were erratic, angry internet denizens more likely to start a mob then work with a business.

And that's where the nonsense of Blog Censoring came into the spotlight. Somewhere, somehow, someone said that All Blogs were Free Speech, and any censoring of a comment was tantamount to violating the essential liberties of a free people. Companies fearful of retaliation bought this line of reasoning, as the threat of negative press led them to avoid blogging entirely rather than be forced to create a platform for disgruntled customers or employees to vent. Public accounts of bloggers writing nasty comments to companies were picked up by the press, multiplied, and now the conventional wisdom, found in a lot of blogging advice, is that companies who wish to blog cannot censor or delete negative comments (unless it's comment spam).

To add to the fire, the government censoring in countries like China and Iran of bloggers, aided by Google, Microsoft and other high-profile tech companies threw more fuel on the fire. No one thought to ask some basic questions of whether a difference exists between a government using the threat of force to silence its citizens is the same as a business refusing to allow portions of the general public to use the business website as a megaphone.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

I have no official capacity in the blogosphere other than citizen, which means my voice matters only as much as the search engines and my fellow bloggers say I have. In my opinion, a business should be able to write a blog, censor comments, ban commenters, and in general control the topic of their blog.

The principle of transparency demands that companies be honest about their intentions. That does not mean that companies must answer every question or bow down to the whim of any web-surfer who stumbles on their site. The principle of whether a company should be trusted is the same as it was for the original bloggers - is the company consistent in following the rules it decides to establish for its blog. In effect, the company will be judged on whether they or contributing to the online discussion with their customers, or whether they're providing false and misleading information intended to benefit the company.

That's it. That's the point. A business blogger who writes about technology is not required to discuss third quarter results. An employment blogger who posts jobs doesn't have to answer questions about the latest sales products. It's a choice, and a company can best handle the situation by stating the obvious - those questions aren't ones I talk about. You control your cyberspace in the same manner you control your building. You don't let the public spray paint your building, so why would you let them spray paint your blog?

Two Concerns

1) Comments are only one way a citizen has to voice their opinion. Bloggers are already discussing your company, and just as you have every right to control your space, every blogger has the right to control theirs. When negative comments are written about your company on a blog you control, heavy-handed attempts to attack the blogger often backfire. A company has a right to protect its reputation, but a smart company will try to address the problem before sending threatening letters (letters that are often posted on the offending blog).

2) Comments on a company site can and should be edited, but only if they are clearly off-topic, or if they cannot be addressed because the commenter is not willing to engage in a civil discussion. A company that deletes every comment that isn't universally positive will rapidly lose its audience. When confronted with a negative comment, companies should consider the best way to address the issue, whether it's replying, taking the conversation private, or deleting the comment.


Summary

Censoring and deleting comments is not inherently bad. The goal of blogging is transparency and open dialogue between a company and its customers. To have that dialogue, the two sides must respect each other.

Providing a platform to the public in the form of a blog is a business decision. Smart companies can manage that decision with sound blogging and commenting policies.

Jim Durbin
Director, Corporate Communications
www.durbinmedia.com.

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt

Bad breakup in your past? To promote Vaughnifer's new movie The Break-Up, Google is encouraging you to make a clever video of your awful story to share with the world. While we're shocked anyone would want to do this, we do have some insights on using technology to get your video noticed. Take a moment to learn how Logitech's Orbit video cam can help you begin the healing process.

BNI Westport Blog

We've launched a pilot for BNI St louis.

It's the BNI Westport Breakfast Chapter blog.

Mix Tapes from Car Manufacturers

Making mix tapes was "the" thing to do when I was a teenager. The ability to record music off the radio and place it on an audiotape, name it something cheesy, and pass it over to friends was a great pasttime, and if you were lucky, you had a friend with a mixing board who had access to the cool new techo tunes from New Order, Camoflauge and Depeche Mode.

Then came the era of CD's, and the ability to mix songs onto a cassette became an art that anyone could pick up - which explains the pull of Monster Ballads.

Maybe I just wasn't a big music fan, but the best mixes always came from the cool retail stores. Abercrombie and Fitch some awesome playlists in the mid-90's, and if it weren't for the fact that their music systems played a different format, I would have taken those tapes and copied them for all my friends.

But now Music has taken a new twist, as car companies have joined coffee shops with their own playlists. This goes far beyond the cd you received when you bought your new Pontiac - this is full-fledged music playlists provided by car companies like BMW and Mercedes.

I was reading Mirona Iliescu, a Romanian blogger, and found this entry about Mercedes Mix 12.

Mercedes Mix 12? I never heard mixes 1-11! It seems that the noted car, excuse me, automobile company is putting out music as a branding phenomenon to remind the public that leather seats and cruise control enable a life style, but good music defines it.

(Speaking of Romainian bloggers, Mirona, who blogs at Cheezy Cheeky, provides some startling statistics about women in upper management in Romania. I wonder if they get paid as much as men.)

Back to the music - I think it's great that Mercedes is putting out playlists, but my real joy come when Bob's Auto Shop starts giving away iTunes playlists of the best of Southern Rock free with every muffler.

Pimp My Technology

Yahoo Tech launched weeks ago with nominal media mentions, but slow response from the tech savvy public. Never fear, "Hook Me Up" is here to save the day. A cross between Queer Eye and Pimp my Ride, the show helps the tech challenged defeat their digital woes.

Sounds like a grand idea. But I do see a bit of sweet irony here. The shows are designed to help those in our lives who can't even spell USB, right? But the episodes are only available online, and the individual has to have enough technology know-how to create and upload a video of themselves to be selected. Still, it sounds like a good attempt to drum up some much needed buzz. Besides, there's always a chance Xzibit will host season two.

I think I can. I think I can.

TechCrunch pointed us to something intriguing this morning: Mecanbe, a web-based portal for self-coaching and self-improvement. What is unique to the service is the community-oriented approach. While sites like 43things.com enable you to declare a list of things you would like to do or accomplish, Mecanbe allows you to track your progress online and let others in the community track your progress with you.

Jim and I talk offline quite a bit about accountability. There is power in sharing your goals, failures and actions in front of others. This is one reason why good sales teams often instill monthly or weekly one-on-one sessions. If someone else is privy to your goals and you've mapped out a plan to achieve it, you are less likely to fail.

While most of the 2.0 apps we're seeing appear to be focused on data management, organization and professional networking - this app hits home on a personal level. With so much energy dedicated to achieving peak performance at work, it is nice to see an online venue for prioritizing and tracking personal goal achievement. Having said that, what better way to track team progress and small group success than by working together online to achieve them? Mecanbe offers easy blog integration, allowing teams or individuals to publish Goal-Lists and share these developments with others.

The Australian-based service isn't live yet, but you can sign up today for notification of the launch date. If you're curious, you can even take a peek at sceenshots of the interface. Who knows, this might be a great time to finally learn Portuguese or take that trip arouund the world you've been putting off...

The Importance of Being First in Local Blogging

Weblogs Inc, the blog network reportedly sold to AOL for some 25-30 million, has launched its next phase of blog dominance - building statewide blog networks.

The first of these experiments is Blogging Ohio. Five Ohio bloggers discuss everything there is to know about the great state thats round at the ends and "hi" in the middle.

Why is this important?

Because in the blogosphere, "first in" confers a huge advantage due to preferential attachment.
The advent of Webogs into the local market legitimizes the trend towards local blogging as a way to generate both real ROI and signifies a recognition that national blogging is reaching a saturation point where even the best new content has difficulty breaking through to the top.

Local blogs, whether state, city, or region focused, still remain a competitive environment for the independent blogger working part-time versus company-backed group backed blogs.

Whether in politics, business, or in dicussing the local social scene, local blogs are still in the growth phase outside of a few cities (New York is blog saturated and has been for some time). With Weblogs, Inc pushing into the Midwest (and I can only imagine Southern and Southwest States are next), the window for local bloggers to make their mark is shrinking.

There's no telling if this is a net positive or a net negative, but if you're interested in building a St Louis or Missouri based blog network, now's the time to get on the horn and give me a call.

Hat Tip: Blogspotting

I hope someone read them their rights first...

The LAPD is blogging. They've only been up to it for a few weeks, but it's great to see some momentum. One post in particular by the Chief has garnered quite a few positive comments.

This is a gutsy step for a municipal department to take. Especially one with a colorful history and a leading story like today's post. In our current Age of Transparency you simply cannot afford to be hiding behind closed doors. This is definitely a good move for the department. We look forward to seeing other cities join the ranks.

Industry Blogs

Industry Blogs has added Brandstorming to their list of internet and marketing blogs.

Industry Blogs is trying to catalogue business blogging on the net, so they are a good place to start for finding curious bloggers - I'll be writing about who I find and adding quite a few to my Rss feeds.

The first one that caught my eye was the category for Automotive. There's blogger there talking about marketing to dealerships, which of course is a big push for Durbin Media.

The Light Is Green, (the link is to a podcast on how dealerships can avoid shrinking margins), and it's got some great information - although his Jared Diamond book reviews are a little lacking.

From the car dealer perspective, it looks very interesting - especially as the company is located in Argentina and sells dealer software. I'll have to look more into this.

Blessed is He, the Ad Saint.

I did a search for blogs linking to the AMA and came across Ad Saint (quite the catchy name), a blog about the St Louis PR, Marketing, and Advertising Scenes.

Written by Walt Jaschek, this blog has a great personal voice - it's clever informative, and if he posted daily I'd put him in my OPML file (it's how you stock your RSS reader).

Still, he covers the marketing advertising beat - and he's one of the few St Louis business bloggers out there, so he will quickly appear in our new St Louis links section.

If you are a St Louis Business blog, send me an e-mail and we'll get you added.

How To Avoid Burnout

Laura Ricci discusses the problem of burnout for creatives. Your brain is wired to perform certain tasks, and when you perform that task too much, or spend too much time on a proposal, you literally wear out your brain.

The brain works by creating pathways for specific projects, like your last proposal. Communication is passed between cells along these synaptic pathways by electrical charges. The gap between cells has a conducting property. Think of it as a gel that holds a charge, similar to a battery.

Synaptic pathways wear out

When the synaptic pathway is fired continuously, like your last proposal, the gel loses its charge after awhile. Communication slows and takes on static. By the time you notice a slowdown, burnout has already occurred.

The gel will re-charge, but it takes a day or several, and the pathway must be closed to most traffic.

This was something Franki taught me when we first started our business - she's a big fan of taking regular breaks, forcing your body to completely focus on a task away from the computer.

Since our business is entirely computer based, from writing, to researching to design to development, the temptation to sit in front of a screen for 8-10 hours at a time is ever present. Taking breaks is not a sign of weakness, but a discipline, which is why we stop in the middle of the day to exercise, watch a little television, play a game of chess, or eat a real meal.

Performed in a workplace, these tasks would be seen as wasteful and probably get you fired. Running your own business, when there is always more to do, can lead you to burnout.

That's why our computers are turned off for the weekend, and only rarely on after 5:00.

How to Defend Yourself Against Blogs

Franki is always reminding me that many of my stories and comments on blogs are about their negative potential. Exposing secrets, talking about negative customer experiences, and ratting on your bosses are part and parcel of the blogosphere, but that's not an effective sales strategy on why companies should start their own blog.

Business Blog Consulting gives some great examples of positive steps that companies can take.

The work comes from MultiChannel Merchant (a pretty good site and an industry stalwart)

"Public relations experts say it is essential to assign someone to watch over the blogosphere. “It will take some time, but if you keep tabs on blogs every day or every week, it will be manageable,” says John Wagner, owner of Houston-based public relations firm Wagner Communications. “There's not going to be 500 posts a day about your company.”

The article goes on to suggest services like Blogpulse, which while good for someone like me to do research, is frankly not helpful to executives. Tracking the types of responses and the quality of the leads should be a regular strategy for corporate blog monitors. More important, monitoring online communications should be the goal, not just blogs.

The article does suggest some of this:

Let's say that you've found several negative references to your company on a few blogs. Your first reaction may be to rush right out and respond. But Wagner says that, generally speaking, you should bide your time. If you're a blog newbie, monitor the blogs silently for a couple of months first. This way you will get a sense of the language, tone, and style used by bloggers so that you can better gauge the potential for damage of the various posts. If you begin to respond to everything helter-skelter, Wagner says, you won't understand where to put your priorities.

You cannot understand what is going on in blogs unless you're reading and writing them. It's just one of those things that has become clear after four years of blogging.

It is precisely this reason that blogging hasn't caught on like wildfire at Fortune 1000 companies. Andy Beal asks if the executives truly understand blogging. I ask if the people advising the executives understand.

The new Harris Interactive survey:
Only minorities of top executives surveyed are convinced to "a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility either as a communications medium (5%), brand-building technique (3%), or a sales or lead generation tool (less than 1%). In contrast, most executives are somewhat or not at all convinced of blogs' growing credibility in these areas, (62%, 74%, and 70% respectively).

It's difficult to explain why a blogger who spends his time talking about his family and his softball league can have a major effect on the sales of a family furniture store in the month of May. It's even harder to explain how an unemployed blogger who writes in politics can cause 1000 people to drop their newspaper subscriptions, but these things happen.

To bloggers, it's easy to understand. Maybe we should be doing a better job of explaining.

Marketers Dabbling in Blogs: Real Estate takes a Big Leap

Steve Rubel reports on a Forrester Research report on dabbling in new media marketing.

Marketers and Their Plans:

* 50 percent use or plan to use blogs or social networks
* 47 percent use or plan to use RSS
* 43 percent go or have gone mobile
* 28 percent are doing or plan on doing advergaming or in-game ads

So what does this mean? It means whole new industries are looking at using blogs to connect with their audiences.

The Marketing Pilgrim says it's coming to Real Estate - in a big way.

The National Association of Realtors had several speakers evangelizing blogs as better at describing homes, a great market for hyperlocal information, and the next step for a typically conservative medium.

Speaking at the National Association of Real Estate Editors' annual conference last week, Professor Chris Roush of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill told the attendees, "It's time to embrace new innovations such as blogging and podcasting," according to Inman News. "Blogging is where real estate reporting should be headed," said Roush.

Blogging Systems' Paul Chaney attended and spoke at the event and discussed the use of blogs as a tool to provide hyper-local content to local residents. Roush also discussed this benefit noting that blogs can provide detailed information on specific homes in a way that classified advertising cannot.

The link also has a list of real estate blogs - a mini-community, as it were.

Here is a list from the Inman article of real estate blogs written by journalists, industry professionals and interested observers:

• The Matrix: http://matrix.millersamuel.com/
• The Real Estate: http://therealestate.observer.com/
• SocketSite: http://www.socketsite.com/
• Curbed: http://curbed.com/
• Curbed SF: http://sf.curbed.com/
• The Walk-Through (A New York Times blog): http://walkthrough.nytimes.com
• The Realty Gram: http://therealtygram.typepad.com/
• Property Grunt: http://propertygrunt.blogspot.com/
• Behind the Mortgage: http://www.behindthemortgage.com/
• Inman News blog: http://www.inman.com/blogger/bradinman.aspx

Imagine what happens when retailers, mortgage firms, and car dealers get ahold of this. Local blogging is going to explode.

Give me $100,000 and I'll make the change.

Here's a fun thought: If you gave marketing experts a $100,000 to play with what would they do with it? Voodoo Blogs tracks a contest from eMarketer that does just that.

Podcasting leads the pack from what I can tell.

podcasting – 5.7%
- search – 3.4%
- e-mail outsourcing – 3.1%
- content – 2.3%
- rich media – 2.3%
- behavorial – 1.9%

I'm surprised there isn't more information on blogging campaigns. Yes, it's the dead horse we flog around here, and it's self-serving as blog campaigns are major producer of our revenue, but blogs, when they're pitched correctly, is like setting up an information booth in the homes of your customers.

That they haven't caught on says more about the culture of the blogosphere than the effectiveness of the platform.

As for $100,000? How about $5,000 and we see what we can accomplish in four weeks?