Biznology Blog: May 2008

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May 16, 2008

PR Professionals Do Web 2.0

Every profession has its professional society, but you'd imagine that the PR profession's own society would do a great job on getting attention for its PR. Well, there is an excellent paper put out last year by the Arthur Page Society that shows how public relations in changing with the times. It's funny, but until recently I had heard nothing about it. Now that I've read it, I thought you'd be interested in what PR professionals think about what they do.

I was most interested in what the paper had to say about the emergence of new digital media that changes the way PR people must operate. (You'll recall that was a big theme of my most recent book.) And I wasn't surprised—all the correct points were hit about how PR people must become attuned to a new way of working and get comfortable with the new ways of reaching audiences.

There was also, thankfully, a strong emphasis on authenticity—being real with your audience so that your credibility will be heightened. Veteran readers know that being real is one of the "Three Rs of Web Marketing" that I have long championed, too.

I was also interested in parts of this paper that covered topics beyond new media, such as the empowerment of new stakeholders. More people inside companies than ever care deeply about their firm's image, and they have reputation monitoring tools that empower them as never before.

While I work with PR people all the time, and most recently have begun addressing more of them in my appearances, I was not fully aware of the extent of this dynamic within their profession. I am quite familiar with reputation monitoring, and I speak all the time to PR people about their use of such tools, but it hadn't occurred to me that the stakeholders within their company can use those tools, too, putting pressure on the PR team to respond.

I found the paper quite useful in giving me some background that I otherwise would not have had. If you are interested, you can download the PDF for "The Authentic Enterprise" and read it yourself. The paper is oriented to large companies (specifically to the Chief Communication Officer, as if we need another "C" level exec), but I think many of the points are pertinent to medium and even small companies. I especially like the emphasis on new ways to measure PR effectiveness.

My favorite line in the paper is "We are no longer in control." Most pointedly, there seems to be an insistence by some within the PR profession that message control isn't dead. I think it is, in part because we never had message control. I mean, there have always been companies with bad reputations, and I don't think it is the result of a failure of the PR team. Sometimes messy facts get in the way of the message we want to control, and we never controlled what people say.

I think what we had was media control—no one could afford to debunk our messages in the media, unless they got the attention of the press. That is withering away quickly, as Web 2.0 gives every small voice a free printing press. People say just as much about companies as they ever did, but now the words are seen and heard by far more people because of the Web. Negative comments have always been around, but now they are in our faces.

In the interest of full disclosure, Jon Iwata, one of the co-chairs of the committee that authored the paper, works for my company, IBM. I don't know Jon, but I thought you should know about the connection. Jon recently was named the head of both Communications and Marketing at IBM, which I think is an excellent move—many of the marketing skills required for Web 2.0 are already to be found in PR professionals, so bringing those two factions together under one person is a smart idea to foster collaboration. Marketers must learn to speak with a more journalistic, factual (dare we say authentic) voice to get customers to choose to listen. PR people can really help with that.

Driving any company toward more authenticity is a good thing. The paper exhorts CCOs to lead their companies in the "building of trust in all dimensions." That sounds good to me.

Posted by mikemoran at 7:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 15, 2008

Do You Know How to Optimize Landing Pages?

When you speak at conferences frequently, you meet a lot of interesting people. When I was at Search Engine Strategies in New York in March, Tim Ash came up to me after my speech and gave me his great book, Landing Page Optimization. It took me a while to crack it open, but I want to make sure you don't make the same mistake. Tim's book is a must-read for any Internet marketer, because your landing page is the welcome mat for your whole site. If your landing pages don't work for your visitors, then you need to read Tim's book. And if you think that they are working, you might want to check Tim's book anyway, because they could probably work better than they do now. Read my book review of Landing Page Optimization at Search Engine Guide.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 14, 2008

Do Your Customers Believe Your Advertising Claims?

One of the biggest changes the Internet has wrought (I love saying the word "wrought") on marketing has been the death of hype. People just don't believe your claims anymore. They are looking for documented, verifiable benefits. It reminds me of the nuclear arms negotiations between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., when the motto was "Trust, but verify." Customers don't blindly put their trust in advertising claims anymore, but they do want to trust those they buy from. As marketers, we need to figure out how to win that trust, and that won't happen following the old hype play book. If you're concerned that your claims have that hollow ring or that your customers might be letting your promises go in one ear and out the other, read on.

You see these kinds of claims all the time: "If you can find a lower price than ours, it's yours free." Now, how many freebies do you think they've given out? If no one believes it, then why do we keep saying it?

Or maybe your claim is just vaccuous: "Quality since 1923." (Before 1923, it was utter crap.)

Or your claim is boring: "Your local hardware store." Um, I kinda knew where you were located, thanks.

All this was brought to mind as I watch the steel-cage match being waged by companies that want my cable TV, Internet, and land-line phone business. They both offer a "triple play" package that seems about the same price to me. They each seem to like to instill fear about the other by talking about "phone company TV" or "cable company phone service" as though their competitor has a corner on bad will. (Face it, you two, no one likes either one of you.)

They argue a lot about who has the best package for HDTV, but I don't really understand how they count how many channels there are, so that goes over my head. (I wouldn't even know how many channels I get now, HD or not.) I similarly can't figure out what the difference is in the phone service from each.

But my favorite is the speed comparisons for the Internet service. This one I actually can understand. They each seem to delight in comparing how much faster their fastest service is compared to the competitor's slower service. Which just confuses all those folks out there into sticking with dial-up. (I had to personally walk my in-laws through the decision making process so they could pick one.)

I wonder why they can't just say, "Hey, ours is slightly slower than the competitor's [or about the same or slightly faster] but that isn't what you care about. Our price is about the same, too, so don't look at that either. What you really care about is..."

Now, I am guessing that I know. It's because they don't have much to say. Now, I know that cable companies usually don't have a contract to sign (so no early termination fees) and that phone companies often throw in installation or equipment for free (one was giving away HDTVs around here recently), so why aren't they talking about those things exclusively? Maybe I am naive (OK, OK, I know I am naive), but I think that there's just too much out there designed to fool customers. And it backfires.

Some people (like me) see through at least some of it, and we then doubt everything else that is said that we don't understand. Others (like my in-laws) glaze over and remain frozen in time, choosing neither option. Now, I am sure that some people really are fooled and go along for the ride in one car or the other—the companies wouldn't advertise this way if it never worked—but I think the long term damage they are causing themselves is really sad.

Right now, they look at things as though there are only two players, but that will change. What would happen if a cell phone company bought a satellite TV provider (or vice versa)? What will happen as cellular broadband or Wi-Max spreads? And if none of these things happen, something else will.

Sure the phone companies and cable companies can adapt to the new technology, but they should expect more competitors, not fewer. And when the competitors come in, don't be surprised if they aim for more authentic claims as a differentiator.

I know the old joke that says that if you can fake authenticity, then you have it made. So I don't expect human nature to change. But as customers get smarter and smarter, your advertising claims need to keep up. P.T. Barnum said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but I personally think people will go broke doing that soon.

Posted by mikemoran at 6:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 13, 2008

Do You Pine for the Good Old Days?

I was with two of my kids for "Take Your Child to Work Day" not long ago. We went to a bustling IBM location and, while there, I noticed something odd. I asked myself, "Why is there a Model 168 over there?" This was a computer that I worked on when I first joined IBM almost 30 years ago, and there it was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria. I immediately realized that it was on display as a museum piece—that's how old I am. So, I told the kids exactly what had just happened to me (they were less surprised at how old I was than I) and I walked them over to explain how a 168 worked.

They are accustomed to hearing about how their mom and I had no computers in our homes when we grew up. (I am sure it sounds like my dad telling me about how they had to save a nickel to buy a movie ticket during the "Great Depression"—just what was so great about it, anyway?)

But I decided to go into more detail. I tried to explain how what they were looking at, which was the size of a walk-in closet, was but a small part of the computer--it was essentially the central processing unit that fits on a chip today. There was a roomful of huge printers and disk drives and networking equipment that made it work in real life.

The 168 was one of the first computers to have a screen instead of just a set of flashing lights and switches, although it had lots of those, still. And I explained how their cell phones probably have a faster CPU and how the memory stick inside has more storage than that whole room did back in the '70s.

And it made me realize how different the technology industry is from most other industries. I mean, if I showed you a car from the '70s, it would look old, but you'd recognize it as a car. And you could figure out how to drive it—in just a few minutes. In fact, you'd recognize and be able to use most products from that era. But not a computer.

In fact, I doubt whether many of the people, myself included, that knew how to run those computers back then would even remember how to work them now. Technology changes so rapidly that there's no such thing as learning skills and just executing your job throughout your career.

I remember noticing in the 1980s that there were very few 50-year-old programmers. The few I met were very good, but most people that age who had been programmers had moved on to other fields. They had become managers or systems analysts or project managers or some other role that benefited from their technical knowledge, but did not require cutting-edge up-to-date techniques. They had gravitated to roles that changed more slowly.

At the time, I thought that it made sense, that as you get older, you might want to do a job that was pretty much the same as it was last year. I thought that as you get older, you might tire of constantly keeping up with the new thing. After all, an accountant has changes to keep up with, but not this many. Most jobs are reasonably similar to what they were when you started them 30 years ago, but not technology jobs.

And then it hit me. What's happened since the dawn of the Web is that technological change has begun to inject itself into many jobs, not just ones that are ostensibly technical. And, yes, marketing is now buffeted about based on swings in technology, so that now marketers must deal with search and social media and podcasts and who knows what next.

And I would forgive you if you were pining for the good old days, when metrics consisted of counting the coupons turned in at the register. Or keeping track of how many people did what the print ad told them: "Call this number and ask for Alice." Well, Alice doesn't live here anymore.

We're stuck living in the times we are. Frankly, if you're not excited about the changes in marketing, you probably need to find another line of work. Just like those old programmers that became project managers or personnel managers, you might need to find something to do that doesn't require you to keep up. Because as much as it's true that you don't need to keep up with everything that's trendy, you do need to pay attention to enough of what's going on that you try things to see if they work for you.

Pining for the good old days might be comforting, but it's not successful.

Posted by mikemoran at 2:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 12, 2008

"Do the Basics Right" in Internet Marketing

I thought I'd do an interview with Ellen Corrigan of iCrossing to get some tips on where Internet marketing is going, and she talked about that, but the most important advice she gave is that the more things change, the more the stay the same. "Do the basics right," she said, instead of getting too tied up in the new stuff that your forget what's important. See what else she had to say.

Ellen's title is Senior Account Director & Strategist at iCrossing, a global digital marketing company, so she is perfectly positioned to advise us Internet marketers on what we should be paying attention to. She was happy to answer a number of questions for us in an e-mail interview.

Me: What's your background? How did you end up in the job you have now?

EC: I started managing Internet marketing on the client side and loved it. I knew I wanted to learn more about the space, especially paid search, so I researched Interactive Agencies that had the best reputation. I joined NewGate Internet and worked with an amazing team of media managers, strategists and developers. I moved to iCrossing with its acquisition of NewGate. While my main focus is paid and organic search and feeds, I work on other interrelated services such as Web design and social media. iCrossing has the philosophy that all Web behavior is rooted in Search. I really believe that is true, and so my background plays very well into all of our services.

Me: For those who don't know, can you explain what business iCrossing is in? What companies do you work with and what do you do for them?

EC: iCrossing is a digital marketing agency that helps connect customers with the brands that we serve. iCrossing was founded as a search agency and we are the only company that applies that DNA in search to other areas of digital marketing such as Web development, display, analytics, social media, and mobile.

iCrossing works in many verticals—e.g., Retail, Travel, Entertainment, Auto, Consumer Package Goods, and Telecommunications. Our clients include major brands such as Coca-Cola, Toyota and Travelocity. One of our key differentiators is our ability to integrate our multiple services into a single digital strategy. We currently have 620 employees in 15 offices in the U.S. and Europe.

Me: How does iCrossing help customers understand all the choices they have for Internet marketing these days?

EC: We customize a plan for each client and make recommendations based on our experience. We have worked in this industry for a long time, and we know what tactics and networks work for each vertical. As new products and strategies come online, we test and retest. For example, when Google initially launched content advertising, we kept refining our campaigns and worked directly with Google to identify tools that would help us optimize and grow these campaigns. We also built technology to help us collect and manage data. We now have many effective strategies that work in content based on the vertical.

Me: With so many options for how marketers spend their advertising dollars, how does someone decide how to allocate their budget?

EC: Our job is to help our clients make these hard decisions. There definitely are some tactics that work for every company, like organic search. It should be a staple in every company's marketing mix.

Defining a company's objectives is key. We have some clients that are interested in driving revenue online and some that are interested in increasing brand exposure. Some major brands don't necessarily have an online conversion factor, so it is our job to define metrics that justify each tactic. For example, what is the value of paid search impressions for a major brand? We live and die by numbers and for everything we do, we have to figure out a way to measure it, report the results to our clients and use this intelligence to drive the marketing mix.

Me: What's the biggest challenge you see for marketers as their advertising choices become more and more dizzying?

EC: There is no guesswork in advertising anymore. All of our clients want to see extensive metrics around each campaign that we manage. With digital marketing we can provide the data and the answers, but sometimes the amount of data that we are crunching and how it relates to other on and offline data becomes incredibly complicated.

The biggest challenge is figuring out how to measure all the efforts and how they fit together. We've developed a rather advanced marketing dashboard that is currently in use by clients that pulls, and analyzes in data from different online and offline sources, and presents that information in a single view. This visual approach definitely helps identifying trends and opportunities.

Me: How do customers decide between search marketing, display ads, and other choices?

EC: We generally start with the basics and stabilize the main campaign. The basics include paid and organic search, feeds, banners, emails and affiliates. Once the main campaign is stabilized and we understand the metrics, we start testing other networks and strategies and see how they compare against the main campaign.

Me: Can you explain to people what behavioral targeting is and why marketers ought to pay attention?

EC: Behavioral targeting is looking at consumers' behavior online and serving advertisements based on their areas of interest. Marketers ought to pay attention because it works and is incredibly powerful. The networks are still refining their delivery capabilities around these ads, but where we have tested, we have seen very promising results.

Me: Do you have any tips to give marketers who might be struggling to keep up with all the changes that happen each year in Internet marketing?

EC: Do the basics right. If you start trying to get too complicated or launch every new service, you can waste your resources&mdas;not necessarily financial resources, but your online marketing team's ability to optimize and maximize your core business. When it comes down to it, the core strategies will provide the best return. Other strategies offer incremental value. As the newer strategies mature, they will provide more and more value, but if you aren't managing your basic marketing efforts well, you will lose profitability.

Me: Do you have any predictions for where Internet marketing is going?

EC: We are moving towards more relevancy. With the focus on demographic, behavioral, remarketing efforts and consumer-generated content, the goal is to provide relevant experiences and information to the millions of personalities that are searching online. The goal is to help everyone find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. Whether it's buying a specific product or researching in-depth, online marketing will have to cover all the bases and be in all forums with the appropriate voice. In social spaces, people are searching for honest opinions outside a company's marketing speak. Companies will have to develop and launch strategies to reach consumers in an appropriate and respectful way in all online forums and networks to be successful.

Me: Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions for my readers.

Posted by mikemoran at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 9, 2008

Why It's Hard to Care About New Search Engines

I regularly am asked to look at new search engines, and because I have been working with search technology since the '80s (yeah, I know I'm old), I am interested. I am a search geek and it's fun. But, if you're an Internet marketer, I think it's harder and harder to care about any search engine other than Google. And it's especially hard to care about new search engines. There are several reasons why this is so.

The first is simple market share. Over the past few years, Google has gone from holding a slight lead over Yahoo! to some analysts awarding it 70% or more of U.S. searches, with similar dominating positions in many other countries. In some countries it is virtually the only search engine—in Scandinavia, for example. So, marketers should care only about the search engines that reach their target markets.

But that's too simplistic, because market dominance is never enough to win the technology game. Just ask AOL. And because I am so old, I've seen lots of dominating positions fall, so it would seem that smart marketers should be on the lookout for "the next Google," right? I don't think so.

Some argue that Google is so good at what it does that there's no way for another search engine to come along that does it one better. But I don't believe that.

Others argue that Google's dominance of the ad market is so thorough—its profit share is far higher than its share of searches because it monetizes better than its rivals—that a superior search engine won't succeed even if it comes along. There might be some truth in that, but I think there's a simpler reason that new search engines are uninteresting to the average marketer.

It pains me to say this, as an old-time search guy, but I think that the market has moved on from search. Search has been the way for this generation of Web users to interact with the Internet, but the next generation will likely move on to something new and better. Oh, people will always search for things, but search is likely to become a feature of a larger environment, rather than the focus of a separate thing you do.

So, what is that larger context? I don't know. Some speculate that it's social networking. If you live your life inside Facebook, then you'll do your searches from within Facebook. Others think it's a virtual world, like Second Life. Maybe it's something no one is talking about.

So, as interesting as new search engines are to me, I don't think they have the ability to change the world the way they once did. They might show us new ways of thinking about finding information, and move the industry forward, or they might be acquired by Google or one of the other mainstream search engines and have an impact that way. But they are unlikely to topple Google, or even make much of a dent.

No, when Sergey and Larry talk late at night about the threats to Google, I bet they spend a lot more time talking about larger environmental contexts than they spend on new search engines. Which is why Microsoft buying Yahoo! probably wasn't all that scary to Google. Microsoft buying Facebook is a lot scarier.

So, if you're a marketer that wants to know what's coming next in search, my guess is that wherever it comes from, it won't be search. If Google is not the company we're all talking about in five years, it won't have been replaced a new top dog in search. It will be toppled by a company that does something more interesting than mere search.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 8, 2008

Are You Practicing Comb-Over Marketing?

If you notice that some guy has a comb-over, it's not working. Just like a bad comb-over, you might have marketing techniques and tactics that aren't working for you. In my first post for the folks over at Search Engine Guide and Small Business Answers, I explain how you can tell if your marketing plan is a comb-over. I'll be posting regularly at these two sites from now on, and will be pointing you to those posts on those days. I'll continue to post lots of original content here that does not show up on those sites, however, so if you're subscribed here, you'll get everything I write. You might find that you'd like to subscribe at Search Engine Guide and Small Business Answers, also, to catch up with the other great writers they have.

Posted by mikemoran at 8:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 7, 2008

Inside the World of Domainers

Internet marketing can take many forms. A few weeks ago, I had the rare opportunity get in touch with leader in the domainer industry. If you don't know what domaining is, read on. In fact, I got a few surprises myself when I interviewed Jerry Nolte, so even if you think you are up on domaining, you might want to take a peek, too. Jerry seems like the CEO of the entire domaining industry.

All right, all right, Jerry J. Nolte Jr. is the CEO all right, but of three different ventures, IPNIC.com (An ICANN accredited registrar), iMonetize.com (the fastest growing pay-per-click meta search engine, he tells me), and Domainers Magazine (the premier print magazine for the domaining industry). With all that going on, I was happy that Jerry had time for an e-mail interview.

Me: Can you explain what a "parked domain" is?

JN: Surely. A parked domain is merely one with nothing but ads from Google, Yahoo! or another pay-per-click provider. These advertisements, when clicked on, make the domainer a portion of money for sending his traffic to the clicked on advertiser.

Me: Cybersquatters and typosquatters have an unsavory reputation. Can you explain what domainers do?

Ugh! I hate those people. They have put a dark cloud over our entire industry. Cyberquatters and typosquatters buy domains that are very similar to famous trademarks. A true domainer buys generic names for the development or resale at a later date. For example, a cybersquatter buys something like gogle.com hoping to exploit money from the people looking for google.com. A domainer buys a name like roaming.com as to possibly develop a website about Wi-Fi roaming or cellular roaming in the future, or just to hold onto hoping to resell it later for a much higher price. It's not unlike buying a piece of empty land in a good location, and hoping that it becomes worth more in a few years, or putting a building on it when they have enough funds.

Me: How has domaining evolved over the years?

When I first got into this business, there were only a handful of people doing it. And there were even fewer registrars to buy domains from at a reasonable price. PPC was in its infancy with companies such as Findwhat and Overture ruling the roost. Over the past few years, things have exploded! Yahoo! bought Overture, Findwhat became MIVA.com, and let's not forget Google entering and dominating the game. Not to mention the resale prices of domains and live auctions—I have sold names that I bought for an $8 registration fee for thousands of dollars just a few years later. I could write a book on that.

Me: How many domainers are out there and is there any trend in the types of domainers in the industry?

Hard to say really. I would guesstimate there are about 1500 or so who are avid domainers. However, I am sure there are a lot more smaller ones just starting to get their feet wet.

Me: Is there a trend for domainers to have more domains or fewer?

Not really. It depends on their individual budgets and if they are doing it part time or as a career.

Me: Is domaining becoming more the purview of professional companies with employees or is it more likely to be a single entrepreneur's part-time job?

Both. However, it appears a lot of the individual and smaller entrepreneurs are getting bought out by the larger companies like Oversee.net, Marchex, and iReit.

Me: How do domainers typically make money?

Most use PPC companies like iMonetize.com, and some actually develop small Web sites and use AdSense and other ads to make a buck. How much they make depends on how much time they have, as well as how Web savvy they are.

Me: What is the average income of a domainer and what are the top incomes some domainers reach?

Average, I have no idea, but I do know of some people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month with their portfolios. As far as sales? Names can range from $8 to over $8 million, depending on the names. You can check some of our online magazines for some details. We post a Top 50 sales list in each magazine.

Me: How does iMonetize fit into the domainer industry? What kinds of services does it offer and how popular is each one?

What iMonetize does is simple, really. We let domainers use our service to find which PPC companies pay the most. We do this by using our name server to "round robin" the traffic across many different PPC providers for short periods of time. After we have collected enough data, we permanently point the domain to the PPC provider that made the most money.

Me: If there was one thing that Internet marketers should know about domainers, what would it be?

That we are not cybersquatters. We are businessmen just like other marketers, in a legitimate industry that is growing leaps and bounds each year. And, if they take the time to familiarize themselves with our industry I am certain that there could be some very symbiotic relationships.

Me: How does Domainers Magazine help domainers?

We try to keep the industry updated on all the latest happenings. It also has some of the best coverage of the trade shows available, as well as some of the best information to get started in the industry for those who are interested. The magazine is available online for free, and in print by subscription from our Web site.

Me: What can domainers do to to build their reputations, or does it not matter?

It matters, and I think we in the domaining industry are doing it. We are holding trade shows and inviting other industries to see what we do. We have started our own trade association called the Internet Commerce Association as well as trying to get the word out about us through any means we can.

Me: Is there any set of ethical standards or best practices that domainers adhere to? Are you concerned about government regulation in the domaining industry?

You can check out our standards, and read our latest issue of Domainers Magazine to read about the very subject of government regulation.

Me: Thanks, Jerry, for spending this time explaining domaining to my readers.

Posted by mikemoran at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 6, 2008

Skinflint Market Reseach

Focus groups and phone surveys have been the traditional bastions of market research. And, despite everyone's best efforts, they've always been expensive and out of reach for many businesses. It left us with two kinds of businesses: those that can't afford market research and those that can't afford enough market research. If you're ready to learn how any company can begin conducting market research using the Internet, read on.

Whether you are a big company or a small one, market research is the lifeblood of your company, because unless you know what your market wants, you can't make it and you can't persuade people to buy it. Although the Web has been lauded as a low-cost way to market and sell products, I think that it's gotten too little attention as a cheap way to do market research.

So, whenever I think that a cheap way to do something has gotten too little attention, it's time to roll out another in the series of Skinflint Internet Marketing Guides. To find out how you can take advantage of cheap (or even free) ways to collect market research on the Web, check out the Skinflint Guide to Market Research.

Posted by mikemoran at 8:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 5, 2008

Need Help with Movable Type? Just Twitter

If you're like me, all you've heard about in blogging software the last couple of years is WordPress. But as a long-time blogger using Movable Type, I wondered what they have been up to. And then Twitter brought me together with Byrne Reese, Product Manager of Movable Type and Community Leader of MTOS at Six Apart, maker of Movable Type and other offerings. He was kind enough to grant me an e-mail interview.

Before I get to the interview, I want to remind you of how I met Byrne. He was the person at Six Apart that reached out to help me when I was Twittering about a problem with Movable Type that prevented me from posting my blog for a couple of days. I was so struck by this use of Twitter that I wanted to find out more about Byrne.

Me: How did you end up doing this job at Six Apart? What did you do before this?

BR: My background is in engineering actually, but in my last job I had found a passion for leading product development teams and knew that in my next job I wanted to do that full time. So the first thing I did was apply to all the companies whose products I respected the most. Six Apart was on a very short list.

Six Apart stood out for me because of a product they had created called Movable Type. It was a tool that had transformed how I managed every web site I owned online. It saved me hours of work and it was a tool I found myself spending a great deal of time in every day.

But there was something else about the tool and company that resonated very strongly with me as a technologist—their commitment to open source, open standards and amazing design.

At the time Movable Type was not open source, but it didn't bother me - the same way that it doesn't bother me that my MacBook running OS X is not open source either. Ironically they have a lot more in common then you might expect—for one, neither would exist without open source. But also, both Apple and Six Apart place a premium upon creating beautiful and well designed products.

I was sold.

And now four years later I could not be more honored to be working on the product that was the impetus behind me working at Six Apart in the first place.

Me: Six Apart has been one of the huge forces in blogging over the years. The last few years WordPress has gotten a lot of attention, but what has Six Apart been doing to take back the momentum?

BR: By focusing more then ever on what we do best: innovation, design and openness. We pay a lot more than lip service to the technologies and products that shape the Internet today. We commit our resources, time, money and energy to things like Atom, TrackBack, DiSO and OpenID. Furthermore we are almost always the first to support cool products and technologies like the iPhone, Fire Eagle and Atom. Then there is all of our open source technology as well, like memcached, perlbal, mogilefs, Movable Type and other cool projects we will be announcing soon.

However, being "open" in our eyes is so much more then creating and maintaining open source software. In this day and age almost anyone can make that claim.

To be truly open is a much larger commitment to embracing good ideas, even when they are not your own, and to supporting the products your customers use, even again, when they are not your own. Take BlogIt for instance—one of Facebook's most popular applications built by Six Apart. Not only does it allow you to post Vox, TypePad and Movable Type like you would expect, but you can also post to WordPress.com, WordPress.org blogs, twitter, Blogger and others. I think you will be hard pressed to find our competitors actively embracing us the way we are willing to embrace them.

This quality I think really sets us apart from our competitors and is the kind of attitude that I think will draw people to our products.

Most importantly, however, in drawing people to our products is our community. I will admit that, in the past couple of years, we stretched ourselves so thin that we lost sight of our greatest asset: our users. We were so heads down building products that we neglected to make our users feel heard and listened to.

But that is all changing with a reawakening of our Movable Type user and developer community through Movable Type Open Source, the recently launched TypePad Community Advisory Board, and of course of new Media Services division which is devoted to helping bloggers succeed.

Me: How long have you been monitoring Twitter to address customer support problems? How did the idea come about originally?

BR: We actively monitor a number of channels users use to express themselves, from Google, to Tweetscan, to Technorati, to you-name-it. This all comes back to what we are trying to do with our community because at the end of the day what motivates at Six Apart is helping people. When we see a new site launched using one of our tools, nothing gives me (and all of us) a greater sense of pride because we know that we helped someone.

And when a user is expressing frustration with one of our tools, we want to help—not just because we want them to have a positive experience, but because we are constantly striving to make our tools better.

Maybe one day our tools will be so perfect we will transcend the need to monitor Twitter for users talking about our products. On the other hand, if that day ever comes, then there is no doubt that we will have failed to push our products hard enough to stay ahead of the curve of what users want and need.

Me: What software do you use to monitor all those Tweeple? How well is it working? Would any improvements make it easier to do your job?

BR: I use Tweetscan and Summarize. I find most Twitter search tools work equally well, but I switch between tools just to see how those product evolve.

I actually don't have many suggestions for these tools, not because they can be made better, but because they do what I need them to do.

Me: Can you share with us a story or two of successes that you've had in customer service since monitoring Twitter?

BR: Well, this interview comes to mind.

Bottom line the most important thing is the process of reaching out and connecting with people because at the end of the day, that is what really matters.

Me: Do you monitor other mentions of Movable Type on the Web, outside of Twitter? How do you do that?

BR: I monitor inbound links to movabletype.org and movabletype.com using Google Blog Search. I monitor our support forums, and even our internal help ticket system we use with customers.

But strangely enough one of the greatest resources I have are the people out there that I have made a connection with who IM and email me links they find. Believe it or not, not everything is found via Google—sometimes it is an actual human! Hard to believe, I know...

Me: Can you measure how successful this monitoring activity is for Six Apart? Do you have any metrics that you track to see how you are doing?

BR: We are not a metrics-obsessed company. Sure we have them, and I look at them, but I tend not to stress out about it. Each of us at Six Apart is empowered and encouraged to focus on what we love and what we do well—that is one of the reasons we all love working here, but it is also one of the reasons I think we are so successful.

Me: What would you tell a traditional software support manager who finds this kind of monitoring vaguely suspicious, if not a total waste of time?

BR: I can certainly appreciate the feeling one might get from feeling input overload. Part of the trick is admitting to yourself that you can't, by yourself, sift through it all and then coming to peace with that. Even if you can only do it an hour a week, that is OK, especially if that means for that hour you managed to forge a connection with a new person, friend or customer.

The hope, of course, is that by connecting to one person, you in a sense also connect to their friends and their friends' friends. That is what social networking is all about.

Me: What's the most unexpected benefit you've found from monitoring the Web for customer support?

BR: There is nothing I like more than the surprise people express when I contact them. "Oh my god, you actually read my Twitter messages!?!?" I think people have a deeply rooted need to be heard, so when you take the time to sit down with anyone, regardless of the medium, look them in the eyes and say, "you have my undivided attention, what can I do for you?" you are fulfilling an important human need we all share. And I love giving that to people.

Me: Thanks so much, Byrne, for taking the time to explain this new style of customer support to my readers.

Posted by mikemoran at 5:57 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 2, 2008

Private Virtual Worlds Continue to Grow

You might recall that I have written before about Unisfair, which supplies private virtual worlds to companies that want to create a more immersing event than WebEx, but with more privacy and measurement than Second Life. I've told the story of Unisfair's ROI, but I caught up recently with Sarah Tonzi, a publicist working for Unisfair, who updated me on the company's progress. I thought you'd be interested in hearing what's happening, too.

Sarah was eager to tell me about Unisfair's recent 2.0 release that added professional networking and multi-language capabilities, but I wanted to hear about what customers where doing with these features. After writing my previous stories about Unisfair, I heard from other vendors with similar technologies, but each time I asked them about what customers are doing with their technology, I never heard back from them.

Sarah was happy to provide me a couple of customer stories that help us understand what this technology can do. Cisco is one of Unisfair's customers, and they are the ones who instigated the addition of the professional networking features. Like with a public social network, attendees of a Unisfair event can upload publish their profiles, allowing Unisfair to match people of similar interests together. Cisco has been using this feature in its Partner Exchange virtual world, so that business partners can locate each other based on expertise. So, in the past, your draw to an event consisted solely of information, but now, over time, you might be able to create a real community where other members are part of the draw of your event, just as with an in-person conference, where networking with fellow professionals is as important as the sessions themselves.

Sarah also described to me how Unisfair has added support for 15 national languages where they started with just English. A Swedish company that organizes virtual events, expoIT24, created the Nordic Virtual Business Fair, a year-round virtual world that has attracted Microsoft, SAP, and other IT vendors to participate. More than 1500 IT decision makers have taken advantage of the free online fair to begin their purchase process.

I believe that this virtual alternative to trade shows is becoming more and more important. Do you have any success stories to tell? I'd love to hear from more folks using virtual worlds to reach customers more effectively and more cheaply than through traditional road shows.

Posted by mikemoran at 6:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 1, 2008

Ratings and Reviews: Not Just for Consumers Anymore

We've all seen ratings and reviews online, starting way back when Amazon first introduced them. Over the years, they've become a staple of e-Commerce, with online retailers catching on to their impact on conversion rates. But what about B2B marketers? Why isn't there more usage of reviews in business-to-business marketing? If you've wondered why B2B marketers seem so much less inclined to show reviews on their sites than their consumer-facing brethren, so have I. Let's explore what the reasons might be.

Sure, there are some B2B companies that place ratings and reviews on their Web sites. I wrote about Sun Microsystem's use of reviews over a year ago, and Dell Computer and Staples offer them, also. I'm sure there are others. But B2B marketers seem to be far more reluctant to use ratings and reviews than B2C marketers.

That's somewhat understandable. When retailers display ratings on their Web sites, there's not much danger of losing a sale. If one book gets a low rating, you'll buy a different book from that same online bookstore. But B2B manufacturers are taking more of a risk that customers will abandon their sites entirely due to bad reviews.

But that reasoning only goes so far. After all, every B2B marketer knows how important customer references are in closing sales—why wouldn't product reviews be an extremely persuasive factor in B2B purchases? I know, I know, case studies and customers references are controlled, so there's no danger—all the reviews are good. But look at that another way: It means that they have less credibility than an open ratings and reviews system. So, if controlled references have such high credibility, imagine what open reviews would have.

Some observers believe that ratings and reviews and other social media techniques might have even more value in B2B marketing than in B2C interactions. Nancy Davis Kho, writer for eContent Magazine, had this to say in "B2B Gets Social Media:"

The irony is that social media tools, properly designed and deployed, may actually bring a greater payoff to B2B users than in the B2C environment. The reason? Tools that enable faster and more personalized interactions between customer and vendor can enhance corporate credibility and deepen relationships. Those are all important factors in B2B sales decisions, which tend to have a higher dollar value and longer-term impact than consumer sales.

In addition to the increased credibility of B2B ratings and reviews, they also compare favorably to customer references in another way: cost. B2B marketers know that it's like pulling teeth to get sales people to write up their customer stories, and when they do, the writing is not exactly Hemingway. The cost of extracting and polishing these customer stories, and then securing the approval of the customer takes time and money. Ratings and reviews are nearly free, with the only expense being to set up and maintain the ratings and review software itself. Vendors such as BazaarVoice not only provide the software but also the people power to keep track of submissions to ensure that vulgar and other inappropriate reviews are not posted.

I am left to wonder whether the lack of ratings on B2B Web sites is not because they don't work, but because they can't be controlled. Are we B2B marketers afraid of what customers will say about our products? Don't we trust our customers to tell the truth? Or do we lack belief in our products?

But rather than wondering, let's get the facts instead. It's clear that B2B marketers have not warmed to ratings and reviews—at least not yet. It's puzzling to me why, and it is equally puzzling to a colleague of mine, Christian Carlsson of ibm.com, so he decided he wanted to find out more. I'd like to help him and you can, too.

Christian has developed a survey that will take you just 10-15 minutes to complete. If you are a B2B purchaser, you can tell us your thoughts about all forms of customer references and how they help you in the decision process. Your experiences and your opinions can help us all understand this important topic. Christian has promised to share the results with us in a future Biznology newsletter.

I hope that you'll take the time to answer these questions so we can all learn more about how B2B marketers should value customer stories, so they can balance the apparent risk with the true reward. Here's the link to the survey. Thanks in advance.

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Posted by mikemoran at 5:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack