Should your company blog?

Matt Dickman (Techno//Marketer) is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland, Ohio, and he says the answer to the question above depends on how you answer the following questions (Hint: the answer has to be ‘yes’):

  1. Are you listening to your online community? – Are you spending a minimum of two hours a day searching, reading Google alerts or using a monitoring tool like Radian6?
  2. Do you have something unique to say?
    – How will you differentiate yourself from other blogs and other
    companies? This could be your people, the information you publish or
    other forms of thought leadership.
  3. Are you willing and able to say it? – Can you talk about your industry and are you willing to put it out there?
  4. Are you willing to be challenged and criticized? – This goes with the turf. You have to be able to facilitate conversation in a respectful manner to grow a community.
  5. Are you willing and able to dedicate the resources to succeed?
    – People always underestimate this one. A good rule for this to succeed
    is to have one person dedicated to the success of your strategy for a
    minimum of 4 hours per day (2 hours of which is listening and
    commenting). That is one half of a full time person’s week. Have
    staffing plans in place as you grow and start realizing your success.

Matt has even provided a decision tree to help his more visual clients with these questions.

The two hour committment referenced in #1 sounds like a lot but I really don’t know how a company could get the most out their blog without the primary blogger investing that much time. You can’t be a naturalist if you don’t go in the forrest. Thanks to David for finding and sharing.

MacBook product placement in top TV shows

Ichattv_2In the season premier of The Office, Pam heads off to art school with what appears to be a new MacBook. Back in Scranton, Jim has a MacBook Pro so the two love birds can chat. Of course, Michael has to get in on the fun (“Put me down, Michael. Take me back to Jim.”)

Pretty good product placement. But no better than what we saw in the season premier of HBO’s Entourage (I would have sworn I posted on this but can’t find it), when Johnny Drama carried on an LA/Paris relationship via his MacBook Pro.

I’m sure PC users assume this is just Hollywood horse shit but it really is that easy to video chat on the Mac.

We’re not talking about a bottle of Budweiser on the kitchen table. In both instances, the Mac’s were written prominently into the story line. Would love to know how much Apple paid for these two placements? [via Cult of Mac]

“Fooled, and used, and a lot of people died.”

Bush and Paulson say the proposed bailout plan is the only way to save our economy. The only way. Okay, Dave Winer is willing to support the plan on the following conditions:

“Bush and Cheney must resign immediately. No immunity, no pardons. Nancy Pelosi will become President, promising not to run for re-election on November 4. Her term will be one of the shortest in US history, just long enough to enact the provisions of the bill being proposed by the Republican administration. If it really is the best thing for the country and not a trick, then the Republicans, being impressed by the seriousness of it, would have to insist that Bush step aside and let the Democrats execute the plan. The entire Bush cabinet stays in office through January 20, but reports, of course to Pelosi. And that includes Paulson. It’s pretty simple. If they won’t do it, we know they’re bluffing.”

Not that there’s anything wrong Vista

KingmacI think Jerry Seinfeld is damned funny. And smart. He’s probably a good choice for Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign ("Windows, Not Walls") for Vista. Jerry is reportedly getting $10 million for the gig. If they let him write the ads, they might pull it off. I don’t have to use Vista (Praise be to Allah!) but I don’t hear good things about it.

I bring this up because I just checked out the latest series of Get A Mac ads. Throne, Off the Air and Pizza Box. Snap!

Here’s something I’ve wondered… you’ve got Mac fan boys like me posting their love for all things Apple. Are there bloggers out there singing the praises of Vista? Drop a link in the comments.

Baseball promos riff on blogging

Picture_1Baseball’s playoff advertising push gets under way today, when the first spots of a $65 million campaign — the league’s largest ever — are broadcast. The spots will showcase blogging and feature Fox and TBS personalities like Jeff Foxworthy and Frank Caliendo. Separately they appear at a desk, tapping away on an Apple laptop, blogging about baseball and October memories.

In one of the spots, the scene is a desk placed at home plate, where Caliendo — an accomplished impersonator whose riffs on President Bush are hits on YouTube — sits, blogging in the voice of the president. “There’s Only One October.” (Mr. Caliendo, in his President Bush voice, closes by saying, “I’m pretty sure there’s only one.”) [Story at NYT.com]

I can’t find these on YouTube yet. If you spot them somewhere, please ping me.

Ad budgets to be reduced

Adv4food

“It’s going to be a bumpy six months for advertising, according to results from a new survey of advertisers released Thursday (Aug. 21) by the Association of National Advertisers.

More than half of the 100 advertisers (53 percent) surveyed expect their ad budgets to be reduced in the next six months because of the tough economic climate.” — MEDIAWEEK

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by CNBC’s Jim Cramer (Mad Money). Terry Heaton provides an insightful summary of special interest to local media companies:

“He said the company gives up billions in revenue by keeping ads off the home page. Why? Because it would upset users. “We prioritize the end user over the advertiser,” he told Cramer. This simple statement — if truly adopted by media companies — would revolutionize all of online media. We’d have a race to see who could better serve the wants and needs of the people formerly known as the audience, and that would be a refreshing change from words like capture, drive, and my favorite, monetize.

Google doesn’t provide any guidance whatsoever to stock analysts, and Schmidt’s answer, again, is profoundly simple when he says it would “get in the way” of running the business, adding, “If we started giving quarterly guidance, all of a sudden the whole company would start focusing on the quarter rather than trying to change the world.”

On the company’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts to make money from YouTube, Schmidt said it didn’t matter, at least not right now. He said they make plenty of money already, because YouTube places users in the stream of Google’s other businesses, and that cannot be overlooked. “I’d be worried if people weren’t using to YouTube,” he told Cramer. “Since it’s an enormous success globally, we know we will eventually benefit from it.”

What are people saying about your product?

ImagesThe folks Kraft Foods wanted to know what people thought of Vegemite (something they put on toast in Australia). So they hired IBM who has a little program called CoBRA (Corporate and Brand Reputation Analysis) to listen to on-line consumer conversations in blogs, boards and news feeds.

CoBRA scanned 1.5 billion posts in 38 different languages, and came up with 479,206 mentions of Vegemite. Outranking other giants like Coca Cola, Nike, Toyota, Sony and Starbucks when it came to people searching and commenting on their favourite product online.

There’s more on the story here. I only mention this because all those big brands mentioned above spend a butt-load of money marketing and advertising. I’m guessing Kraft doesn’t do so much for Vegemite.

This means something but I’m not sure what.

Waiting for iPhones in KC

Kcappleline

George just got off the phone with Alice (his wife). They stopped by the Kansas City Apple store and found 120 people waiting in line. The store is out of phones. They’re waiting for the UPS truck in hopes the store gets more iPhones. [Photo is from June 11th, courtesy of Bob Heater. Don’t have a shot of today’s madness.]