50 Coolest Websites (Time has heard of)

So it's out, the 50 Coolest Websites (that Time Magazine is aware of) of 2006. What is fascinating about this list is how many of these names I have never heard of.

That might not mean much to people who have never read this site, but I am a surfing, bookmarking, RSS fanatic - and there's just too much being created daily for anyone to know everything that is going on.

One of the beautiful things about the Internet is creates on a global scale the relationships we have in the real world. Those sites I am most likely to read, are often the sites most likely read by my closest contacts. In fact, if you saw a version of this site as it is connected online, you'd understand that we tend to surf in clusters because our natural inclination is to read what others have read.

This is not a bad thing. In fact, with the amount of information available today, no one can truly claim to command knowledge of any single subject without a caveat next to their statement. Online sites help us categorize that knowledge, and so the best surfers and researches learn to identify hubs that will take us to the knowledge we need at any given time.

It's sad in some ways, because it represents a fragmenting of culture that is not easily resolved. At the same time, it is good for us, as the more people think for themselves the less chance any of us have at tyranny.

So check out the 50 coolest Websites as defined by Time. Don't feel disappointed if everyone they quoted comes from New York City. That is, after all, who they know.

Interactive Marketing Recruiting Booming

Everyone is hiring - at least that's the story from Fortune Interactive and Ad Age.

Interactive marketing is a hot career spot, because everyone wants some of that good old fashioned internet marketing. Online Ad Budgets are up 20%, and agencies are scrambling for talent that quite simply doesn't want to go back to work for an agency.

There is a point where the pay rate for someone with design, development, and marketing skills just can't be matched inside. It's similar to the cap on salaries you see for Java developers who are good, but can't be paid executive salaries if spending is going to be kept under control.

Developers get stuck because it's very hard to go out on your own as a developer - there's just too much to do, and if you're working in a team, being an independent is a huge disadvantage. Internet marketers, including graphic design, branding, Flash, illustration, SEO, PPC, e-mail campaign managers, and copywriters can all sell their talents to a broad audience. It's easy to get work once you have the pedigree, and even agencies will tap you for overflow work.

This creates the talent crunch, both for internal departments and outside firms. Inside corporations, the tend towards talent commodization crushes the life out of creative types, both with salary and with repetitive work. In firms, the pace demanded burns out creatives, even when the money is twice as high as the work that can be found inside.

Now this is all my opinon, of course, and I don't want to speak for Franki - but as a former recruiter, I can tell you that partnering with and outsourcing to independent designers is the only way to shore up interactive marketing efforts.

You can't hire enough college graduates to do the work, and they quickly want to go out on their own, too. The ability to run a profitable business with a laptop, a cell phone, and a portfolio is going to have a long-term effect on larger firms.

And one last word of caution: If you're on the inside thinking of going out - better take a look at the non-compete/non-solicit portions of your contract. If you're on the outside, you should make sure you're reading that clause before you sign up as a partner. This is a problem the recruiting world has, and as the talent crunch gets worse, you'll see it reflected in your contracts.

Nathan Gilliatt provided the links and wrote about this first, which funny enough I had read but not put together in a post. We have to get new OPML files.

Job Posting: Part-Time Blogger Opportunity: Marketing and PR

Durbin Media Group (that's us) is looking for part-time bloggers. Essentially, our business has grown to the point where our clients need additional help putting out relevant content, and they need part-time bloggers to help put out that content.

Durbin Media Group approaches blogging as a business. Our goal is for our clients to serve as content aggregators for their community. As a part-time blogger, your role would be to make 2-3 posts a week in your area of expertise from researched content you found on-line. Your hours are your own, and you work remotely.

We have several clients looking into this option, but right now, we just need one blogger, part-time, who is interested in the world of women's products and services. Our client is a Public Relations firm in California, and the pay is $200 a month for 2-3 posts a week (6 month contract, renewable). You manage your own schedule and have editorial freedom on what to write.

Qualifications:
Experience posting in Blogger or Typepad.
Basic Internet research skills.
Good writing skills.
Good editing skills.
Basic HTML helpful.
Great attitude.

We will train you on the specific types of writing you will do, but having experience posting in Blogger or Typepad is required. If you're competent enough, you can get great experience in Marketing and PR, and burnish your resume (while getting paid).

For an interview, contact Franki Durbin at franki@durbinmedia.com. Please send a few samples of your writing and an url of your blog.

We are looking at building up a talent pool of bloggers who can do this kind of work on their own schedule. If you are interested in other opportunities as a part-time blogger (pay varies), please send us a note at info@durbinmedia.com, and we will contact you for other clients.

TMobile and Online Reputation Monitoring

Online monitoring is a hot new (well, maybe not new, but definitely hot) topic for corporations interested in protecting their brand. Trademark and copyright lawyers make their dough protecting trademark infringement, but a new class of cyber-customer is taking corporate names in vain, and unlike the websites of the past, they're having more success in stinging companies.

We all remember the websites that appeared in the late 90's titled: www.(bigcompany)sucks.com. It was just the latest attempt by consumers to express their outrage at the lifeless customer service and poor quality of a company's products. These days, with search engines and blogs and Consumer Generated Media, those complaints are top-of-the-mind to anyone searching your brand.

Church of the Customer has one today, as a disgruntled T-Mobile customer pays to put a giant decal sticker on the back of their car warning customers off of T-Mobile. The picture came from Matt Certo, a blogger who saw the car parked in his company's parking lot, and Voila! It's all over the internet.

Ben and Jackie then point us to a Google search of "TMobile Sucks," which shows a long list of disgruntled people complaining about the company.

People on the fringes do fringe work but if I were at T-Mobile, I would consider the effort of this customer vigilante a leading indicator of bigger problems to start working on.

That's a fair statement, but I wonder if the problem is T-mobile. One of my blogging friends in employment is Dennis Smith, a recruitng blogger for T-Mobile , and because I respect him, I felt the need to defend T-mobile.

Let's take a look at the searches for some other wireless carriers.
Sprint Sucks - 1,030,000 results
Cingular Sucks - 565,000 results
Verizon Sucks - 1,370,000 results

Compare this with the 554,000 results for T-Mobile, and you have a clear winner? Well, a lot of this depends on the type of customer, the number of subscribers, and whether or not the subscriber is the kind to get indexed on Google or another search engine. Also, this kind of tracking isn't exactly accurate, as Jim Durbin Sucks gets 74,000 results, and while that may be true, I don't think 74,000 people hate me that much. Even Mom, Baseball and Apple Pie Sucks gets 281,000 results.

Corporations can't handle this level of complaint, but there is something to be said for generating positive results, and each of these companies, when you just type their name into a search engine, gets positive results.

So why do online monitoring? Because you never know what is being said, and you may find yourself rushing to respond weeks after a blogstorm has hit your company. The Comcast video of the tech sleeping on the couch didn't convince people that Comcast was terrible, but it provided an outlet to complain about cable in general.

In the case of the T-Mobile decal, the company may suffer from a general dislike of cellular companies, even if they have the lowest number of complaints. It's not about fairness, it's about being involved in conversations with customers before they have the opportunity to turn you company into the leading story on the six o'clock news.

Some bright people write about online monitoring. Nathan Gilliatt lists different ways for company to begin the process. Jeremiah the Web Strategist lists some technical ways to monitor your name, a very helpful list if you are going to do it yourself.

Some companies like Intelliseek also offer monitoring services (at a hefty cost). And then of course there are blogging and market research experts {cough* Durbin Media *cough} who can track your company online and also provide the tools to address the issues using blogs, social networks, and direct communication.

It's not something you have to do - but waiting until your company gets caught in the crossfire is too late.

Love to Travel? TurnHere.

I just love it when technology and my love of travel merge. That's precisely what's happening at TurnHere.com. Featuring short, professionally produced videos intended to capture the essence of a cities and neighborhoods, TurnHere gives you a front row seat for travel destinations around the world.

Because the clips are created by independent filmmakers and videographers, the vibe isn't too commercial. Instead, the movies are upbeat and give a true sense of the locale from that filmmaker's perspective. It's like logging on and getting a personal tour of distant neighborhoods from an insider who is passionate about their hometown. All from the comfort of your desk.

Although currently focused on the US, we're hoping the content will quickly expand to other parts of the globe. We love the idea and hope the business model suceeds. Read more about TurnHere at AdAge.

Steve McQueen Inspires Us To Escape the Routine

We seem to go in batches when we see movies. Weeks of good films followed by weeks of bad ones. But lately, without fail, every time we go to the movie theater we leave knowing we wasted our hard-earned dough. Oddly, the best run we ever had were three weeks of free movies we checked out from the public library. Hit after hit after hit! We chalked it up to lowered expectations and the knowledge that we didn't waste a dime to see the flick.

To break our recent movie rut we enlisted the help of TiVo and Steve McQueen. I'd seen Papillon a half dozen times, and finally gotten Jim to watch it a few months back. I just love that film. So this time we decided to embark on what will further be known as McQueen Week 'o6. So far we've seen The Great Escape (Jim still whistles the theme from the movie), Bullitt (featuring the mother of all car chases) and as of last night The Hot Rock (an awesome heist film). For the uninitiated, it must be noted that the legendary McQueen is able to carry a film with very few words. His "I've got a secret" demeanor and expressive face do most of the work for him. We're hooked - and we're not even done with our TiVo'd movies.

What humored us was knowing that we'd taken to Steve (we feel we can refer to him on a first name basis now) for an escape from the ordinary. An escape from work. An escape from subpar entertainment. An escape from daily life. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Hummer is borrowing a page from the same book for their latest campaign.

Designed to inspire you to break free from your routine, "Escape" is for anyone who's ever worked on an office and daydreamed about breaking out to have some fun. The spot is a perfect tribute to The Great Escape, and even features an appearance by McQueen's son. This is all in an effort to spice up the appeal of the H3 and encourage us to "Escape Greatly." Hummer hopes to overcome consumer misconceptions about their brand. With Escape, they hope to let us know that the newest Hummer is fun to drive, fuel efficient and affordable - and as it just so happens, the perfect escape vehicle for your adventures.

So here's our advice for the week: watch the The Great Escape, view this terrific Hummer commercial and do something new and different. Break out of your own routine and go have some fun. Trust us, the office will be there when you return.

BlogSwap Posting up at Gautam's site

I have a BlogSwap posting up at Gautam's site. It's on the atypical uses of blogs in the corporate world. If you want three solid ways to use blogging software for your company, shoot on over there.

One of the concerns Franki and I have with blogging is how narrow blog launches are. Far too many corporations have drunk the blog kool-aid. Yes, enabling conversations with your customers is a good thing, but until business blogging matures, simply having a blog to say you have one is a poor use of your time.

Blogs should have purposes, and there are ways to use the software and the medium to sell, to improve internal communication, to improve SEO, and even to improve your public relations. That can't be done with a blog written by an intern or a marketing person that talks about the office birthday party. There are solid ways to use blogs and track their value, but most of those stories get glossed over because they are not as exciting as 100 million (non-paying) MySpace users or how a blogger got fired for criticizing the company health plan.

We've actually got something in the works to help with this, an idea for Blog Case Studies where the best blog marketers get a chance to promote their successes. It's our belief that solid proof of how blogs improve business practices will launch a new wave of blogging stories vastly superior to pie-in-the-sky promises of a brave new Web 2.0 world.

Check out that link to Gautam (a fellow blog marketing consultant), and we'll get the Case Studies blog active.

Slip on Your Loafers and Join the Smirnoff "Tea Partay"

How do you make the product launch for an alcoholic iced tea beverage in the Hamptons look cool? This is how. Smirnoff's "Tea Partay" video is definitely worth the buzz being generated. You've just got to see it in all it's pastel splendor to believe it.

BBH, the firm that made the video, clearly understands engagement strategy. By making the clip fun and self-mocking they 'let us in on the joke' and made it more likely we'd send it on to friends. Through the wonder of YouTube, they knew we'd make it viral. And it worked. Over half a million views so far, and they only invested $200K in the develpment of the film. Compare that to the production cost of typical 30-second spots - plus airtime. This was excellent use of technology and trends to launch a product without a big budget. Now toss on your cardigan and visit the site, playah.

Automotive Advice for Women: Ask Patty

Here's an example of how to use a blog to pitch a business. AskPatty bills herself as a website for women to learn about car buying, selling, maintenance, repair, car care and car safety.

It's a well-designed site with a great consumer demographic. When hearing about the Long Tail, we don't always think about niches, but a nice that caters to a very specific audience with a very specific purpose is bound to create a loyal audience.

Where better to research car buying in a feminine-friendly way?

I love this site, and I love the ideas behind the site. It's pro-women, not anti-man, and Patty really reaches out to other women to get their voice heard. The site has only been around since May, but it's worth taking a look at (even if you're a guy).

Citi Yanks Millions in Ad Dollars

To boost stockholder satisfaction, Citi will be pulling as much as $120 million in spending from magazines, the web and cable for the short term. That's a considerable loss in terms of brand building from a banking giant long known for their creative campaigns. This comes only a few months after they shaved $20-30M from their direct marketing accounts.

The question is, as we head into the heavy spending months of the holidays, whether Citi discovers that bolstering their bottom line means weakening their brand. Until they resume spending in 2007, we can expect to see less Emmy Award winning spots like this one.

Local Online Marketing in St Louis: Are You Preparing for Local Search?

Local advertising is big business - putting your ads and coupons in front of your customers in the newspaper, the checkout tape at the supermarket, and on bus benches should be an integral part of your retail marketing strategy.

So...what are you doing about marketing online? Have you paid for a few Google AdWords? Maybe you have some banner or text ads showing on local websites? Well, Google is trying to up the ante, recreating CitySearch through its Google Maps (local version).

Enter the coupon. Google Maps now offers local companies the ability to add coupons to their local listings, making it easy for your customers to go online, look for the location of your business, and print out a coupon.

I have my doubts about the efficacy of the program - will such a program increase the number of customers and the amount they spend at restaurants, furniture stores, or car dealers? More and more people are searching online to research prices before coming in to your store. With Google being the most used search engine (60%), chances are most of your customers are at least typing your name into Google to see what they find.

A savvy competitor can put ads and links into the search engines that directly compete with your listing. There are few of those about, but they are getting better at diverting traffic from your site to theirs. Coupons is just one aspect of the campaign. As the big boys, like Federated, divert their money away from newspapers, customers will gravitate online for specific information. What is your strategy to grab your portion of that online audience?

Online marketing is more than spending money on SEO or a website. You should call us if you can't get the answers to any of the following questions.

1) What is the number one way to increase search engine relevance for my website?
2) How can I work with bloggers to improve sales leads?
3) What percentage of my customers type my company name into a search engine?
4) What can I do with $10,000 online that I couldn't do with newspaper advertising?
5) Is there a way to put ads created for the radio or newspaper online without costing me more money?
6) Where did all that money for AdSense go? Where are my new customers?
7) What is the difference between SEO and blog marketing?

For answers, contact Durbin Media Group.

How Angie's List is Trying to Become a Household Brand

Angie's List has started running spots on Fox News. In the past month, the WSJ and the NYT (subscription needed) recently ran pieces on them as well. Why the sudden media blitz? Although they've been around for years, social directories like Angie's are just now showing up the radar for most people. And Angie's List wants to be first in your mind when you seek consumer-generated reviews for home improvement contractors.

Mom and Dad relied on friends and neighbors to find a reliable painter. But today's homeowners can jump online and visit a variety of sites to discover what plumber shows up on time or which electrician you can trust. Zipingo, Judy's Book and InsiderPages are among the many sites competing with Angie's List, but not one of these has generated enough critical mass to become a household brand.

Worse yet, free services like Google and Craig's List make it tough for a paid service to build a strong brand. Angie Hicks Bowman, CMO of the List, believes "consumers are more vested" when they pay for content. In truth, the $51 annual fee offers just enough of a barrier for entry that we could assume the reviews have more credibility than those found on a free service.

As a homeowner, the Angie's List commercials I've seen do a great job of getting my attention. One shows a painter walking across a hardwood floor with red paint on his shoes. Another talks up an electrician who went well beyond the call of duty when the homeowner was running late. The spots are brief and to the point, but truly drive home the message of the service: know the contractor's reputation before you hire them. If you've ever hired out for help with your home, you immediately relate to the agony or relief of the reviewer in the ad.

Right now the List has 425,000 subscribers in 67 cities, and they want to be "the" go-to service in the top 60 markets. We'll keep tabs to see if this campaign has the necessary pull to get them there.

Blog Marketing Case Studies

There is already more written on the topic of blog marketing then one person could read in a lifetime. Blogging is still supposed to be the next killer app for business, but every pdf, powerpoint, speech, book and presentation still presents the same few examples when discussing the "power" of blogs to influence sales.

Kryptonite, Dell, Microsoft employment, Dan Rather and Howard Dean are the stories, but surely a cultural phenomenon that will change the way businesses interact with customers would have more, well, proof.

I'm blog savvy, so the list of blog successes I can think of Southwest Air, Starwood Resorts, GM, IBM, Sun, and a host of Web 2.0 companies that started blogs to great fanfare, but mostly have abandoned them. Starting a blog and writing a blog and building traffic is a personal success, but when does that translate into a professional success?

I'm tired of having to cite Charlene Li winning a $1 million account because of her blogging. I believe there are success stories by the thousands out there, and am committed to finding them.

If you are a blog marketing consultant, send me a note and in the next few weeks, I'll follow up with my new sites on Case Studies, designed specifically to give our burgeoning industry a central location to showcase our successes. If you have a client that has experienced increased sales with a blog marketing campaign, I want to hear about it and promote it, and you.

More next week.

Send an e-mail to me at jdurbin at durbinmedia dot com with the title Blog Case Study.

Friday Roundup

Friday already? The week has flown by. Here's what the brands have been up to this week:

• State Farm gets hip. That's right, it's not your dad's insurance company anymore. Nowwhat.com is aimed at 18-24 year olds, and comes close to making the insurance business seem cool. We havent' seen them yet, but the TV spots sound surprisingly good. They also make no mention of State Farm - but are designed to drive traffic to nowwhat.com. See what Brandweek had to say about it.
  
• No one likes dimly lit parking garages, and from the looks of it they'll be even more frightening if this anti-violence outdoor campain takes off. Surely we can all see the irony here. Note to self...for clever robbery decoy, hide behind structural column opposite this guy.
  
• We love this spot for Cap'n Morgan, showing us just how creative a guy (and his posse) can be when in need of an alibi. Funny and very well done by Grey Worldwide.
  
• Gross. Repulsing. Awful. But it does get its point across. Watch this "belly dancing" anti-smoking spot aimed at Virginia teens.
  

Mr. Organization Strikes Again!

The Home Office just got a lot more interesting. Franki surprised me this morning with the CardScan Personal for organizing my business cards into an electronic format.

VCF files may be the trendy way to pass someone your business information, but nothing quite matches the memory power of passing someone your business card and introducing yourself. For all the talk of a paperless world, many of us still rely on the old standby of a piece of cardboard with our logo on it.

Now I have the best of both worlds. Bwahahahahahaha.

And something funny - we need to sync the CardScan to Outlook, but I use the Mac version of Outlook, called Entourage. We thought we might need to sync it to our Vaio, but Franki said that these days, we might be able to just plug it into the Mac and let the Mac do the work.

It's funny because it's true.

The Joy Of Working From Home

There is a lot to be said for telecommuting, and I wanted to share some postives and negatives.

Positives:

• I've lost 15 pounds.
• Today I went to a KickBoxing Class at 9:00 a.m.
• No Commute - so Gas Savings
• Cooking Breakfast and Lunch
• I'm the one that drinks the last of the morning coffee.
• No Shoes.
• Tax Write-offs for the home office.
• I have a better monitor
• No birthdays
• Better Office Chair
  

Negatives:

• Fire Alarms.
• Cat meows during conference calls.
• The office is always open on the weekends, unless I close the door.
• Sometimes I'm at work at 6:00 because I can wake up and be ready to do something.
• I order my own office supplies
• No birthday cake
• Had to pay for better office chair and monitor
• Have to answer cell phone as Thank you for calling the Durbin Media Group in case it's a client.

That's about it for now - I'll try to think up some more.

More Advertisers Shifting to Online Strategies

After years of spending far too much on television spots, Foster's is focusing all of their US ad dollars on internet advertising. This August they'll begin using a cost-effective campaign designed by Ogilvy and launched on heavy.com. Foster's sees this as the smartest way to reach the 21-31 year old males they weren't reaching via TV spots. Gary Cattell, the Foster's brand director, says the move comes after realizing that their ad budget was too small be effective on television:

"We probably should have done it a few years ago. The amount of presence you can get on TV for your money just isn't enough."

Cattell isn't alone. In recent interviews with a dozen major brand execs, Adweek confirmed that heavy reliance on TV is being reconsidered and money is rapdily flowing towards emerging media. Rather than the passive methods used in the past, even conservative companies are adopting far more interactive methods of reaching their audience.

Acura just launched an interactive campaign for their new RDX. Customers take photos of print ads then upload them to the web site to be entered into contests. Folgers, Audi and Chrysler are getting into the cross-channel game with attempts at viral marketing. Even mainstreamers like Coke and McDonalds are experimenting with new media "engagement" techniques geared to offer more customer pull, with Coke spending 80% more online than last year. While many of these efforts won't get the initial traction marketers want, companies are reassessing their marketing mix - and that willingness to experiement will prove worthy over time.

In truth, TV spots aren't a thing of the past. But the medium is getting a closer look as prices continue to soar. Smart media buyers are abandoning the once widely accepted blanket approach for precise 'accupuncture' methods. Zeroing in on their customers in ways never possible before. It will be exciting as we see the :30 spot evolve into more innovative vehicles, and as companies discover clever ways to reach niche groups screens of any size. Whatever the platform, changes are well under way and the fun is just beginning for those of us paying attention.

CollegeRecruiter.com Publishes Our White Paper

We reun several blogs, and for those who read Brandstorming because we're marketers, you might be surprised to discover we're heavily involved in the Online Recruiting world.

I've written a half dozen articles for publications this year, was on a panel at the Kennedy Expo, and we just recently launched a site for a fellow whose blog/corporate site is MNHeadhunter.

Continuing the Minnesota connection, today Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com published our whitepaper on Best Practices for Starting a Corporate Recruiting Blog.

We're experts in the matter. For more of our employment writing, check out StlRecruiting.com, Recruiting.com, or send me an e-mail at jim@recruiting.com

Understanding Why We Blog

You don't blog to make money, or pitch a product, or even to brand yourself.

You blog because something inside of you is telling that you matter, that your opinions matter, that you have something to say, and the world is willing to listen.

You blog because you can, and for those who cannot.

Some people get it and make their declaration of independence.

Most people writing about the blogosphere do not.



The video was created by Pamela from Escape from Cubicle Nation.
I found it reading the blog of Dennis Smith.

Market Intelligence Services: Net-Savvy Executive

Nathan Gilliatt is a blogger I like a lot, and I've never met the man. It doesn't stop me from shaking my head in wonder at how he takes complex ideas and puts them into his blogs. The man gives away more good stuff than most people sell.

His latest idea is the use of marketing intelligence using RSS. It's not new, but the way he pitches it is.

Check out his dashboard. Now imagine this is how you received up to the minute information specifically tailored to your industry. Sort of a YourCompanyCNN.

Most companies have their IE home pages set to a intranet. What if you had a home page set to a dashboard that gave you up to the minute information on your industry, your competitors, and your products? Imagine combining a company newsletter with the power of RSS feeds and all sent directly to your home page?

That's a powerful tool every company should have. I'd be willing to be Nathan and I could work together to deliver it to you. Sure, you could try this by yourself, but there's a big difference between creating a dashboard and creating an information center.

Durbin Media Group provides market research to companies that includes online monitoring (including blogs), trade publications, news stories, trends, personalities, employment, statistics and even the occasional dash of humor.

If your company newsletter is suffering from a lack of relevance, why don't you give Nathan or I a call and let us spice it up for you.

Car Dealer Blogs: Where are They?

One of my pet projects is convincing car dealers of the necessity of blogging. I know it's coming, but I don't know if I'll be successful in selling locally before someone else comes and does it wrong first.

There are many, many ways to use a blog in a dealership, but for right now, it looks like newspaper ads are still king.

Chew on this. Twice as many people visit a car dealer's website as read their ad in the newspaper. Qualified leads are the most important and most diffcult online tool for the dealers, and yet I can't find one dealer blogging in the country.

Let's go to the news articles.

DriveItAway Starts a Blog.
ClickZ Article says Auto Dealers need to engage customers earlier.
Auto Blogs the future of advertising.

If you work for a auto dealer in St Louis and you're curious how to drive traffic to your site and keep it there, then learning to blog should be a top priority. Over the next two weeks, I'll be giving the reasons why.

-Jim Durbin