Ampers & Dot

So tonight’s Interactive Marketing Meetup was a great success.  Aside from battling for attention with a few of Central Square’s finest (who push around shopping carts all day…), I think the talk went well and we were able to cover a lot of fun corporate blogging tips.

Of course with as much as we covered, and as much as I rambled, we only got to about half of the planned talk.  So to make it fair for everyone, I’ve attached below (tried to embed with Zoho, but it stripped my links!) both presentations for everyone’s enjoyment.

Part One: Best Practices for Launching a Corporate Blog (the presentation we actually covered)
Part Two: Best Practices for Running a Corporate Blog (the one we didn’t get to)

Download and enjoy.  And email me, comment below, or Tweet me (@znh) with questions.  Let me know what you thought of the talk!

It was great to meet everyone!  Hope to talk to a lot of you again soon.

If you’re around the Cambridge area tonight and looking for something fun and hip to do, then make sure to check out The Dark Knight playing at every theater in town.  BUT- if that’s sold out (which it likely is) and you still have no plans, then stop by Andala at Central Square for a talk on “Best Practices for Corporate Blogging“.

The session will go through a general overview of how any company can adopt a corporate blogging strategy, the advantages to running a corporate blog, as well as some really nitty gritty tips and tricks to make a blogging initiative successful and fun.  The talk will be geared towards any level of experience, with any sized company, and any budget level for interactive marketing (something for everyone!). It doesn’t matter if you are thinking about starting a company blog, already have a company blog, or don’t even know what “blog” or “company” are, this will still be a fun and useful discussion.

Plus, I’ve heard this guest speaker is pretty awesome…

The basic agenda for the talk is:

• Introduction to corporate blogging
• Advantages of corporate blogging and why you should be doing it too
• Case studies: what works and what doesn’t
• The cyclical steps to successful blogging and practical tips to making it work
• Action points for every level of corporate blogger
• Q&A

Sounds great, right?  Well it is!  So if you’re interested then head over to the Internet Marketing Meetup page to register.  And later I’ll likely post some slides up here to share more fun from the talk.

Hope to see you there!

First off: yes, this is yet another iPhone post and YES, I’m sorry.  But this one has a fun twist, I promise.  And after this post I’ll be back on track with more social media-ish posts for a while… or at least until I can think of another iPhone post!

Anyway, last night I hosted the monthly Gadgetry MeetUp here in Boston and sure enough, someone brought a new iPhone 3G to play with.  This was unavoidable really, I mean, it’s a gadget club… gimme a break.

But what I found most interesting was the conversation shift from the cool things the iPhone can do, to the bigger scale impact the device has on the market.  The bulk of discussion (lead by my Windows Mobile optimistic enthusiasm) stemmed around the iPhone changing the game for everyone else.

The iPhone has already played a large role in changing the way we look at gadgets, what we expect from gadgets, how we shop for gadgets, and what we pay for gadgets.  And all of these changes will improve the gadget market.

Gadget Design
Believe it or not, there were very, very few buttonless PDA Phones before the iPhone.  HTC (the largest Windows Mobile device manufacturer) had a few contenders without keyboards, but even those had a handful of hardware buttons.  A year ago everyone mocked the original iPhone’s lack of hard buttons.  And now every PDA Phone manufacturer makes one or has one in the pipeline (even the “all business” Blackberry is working on a buttonless device).

When the first iPhone came out, HTC was still pushing almost 75% of its devices as “smartphones” (non touchscreen).  Now, only a year later it sounds ridiculous to have a PDA Phone without a touchscreen.

And there’s no denying the beauty of the iPhone.  I’ve tried.  And failed.  The thing is just slick.  And you know what?  It’s forcing the competition to think slick too.  No one is coming close yet, (no, not even you, Diamond, but good effort!) but we’ll start seeing some viably pretty contenders soon.

Mobile Browsing
One thing I keep hearing is that “Mobile browsing is going to be dominant by 2012″.  Well you know what?  Mobile browsing is dead.  The iPhone killed it.  As faster and more capable devices continue to pop up, the mobile web won’t exist.  There will be no need for miniaturized webpages when we can scale full sized ones onto smaller screens.  In theory Windows Mobile and Palm have done this for years.  In practice the iPhone made it work.

Since the release of the iPhone there have been a number of viable competitors in the mobile browsing space (Opera, Skyfire, Netfront), and they all work pretty well.  Yes, it will be a long time before this technology makes it into the bulk of devices, but it’s only a matter of time.  If I were a mobile advertiser I’d stop worrying about how to get my ad to work on a little screen, and instead start thinking about how to optimize regular ads to be viewed on slicker devices.

Gadget Spending
The new iPhone is $200 with a plan.  That’s awesome and new and I like it.  As I’ve argued before, the iPhone 3G’s low price forced the market to drop down to compete.  I’m completely fine with that.  What this decreased spending does on a larger scale is allows for greater and broader adoption into the market.

PDA Phones are no longer reserved for business execs with a thousand bucks sitting around to throw at a new phone.  PDA Phones are now for everyone and this is going to blow the market wide open for more devices, better competition, and a broader array of toys (plus, I think there will have to be some super devices built to satisfy that top end gadget spender, and I can only imagine how cool those will be!).

Further, the iPhone has tricked everyone into paying for data plans.  AT&T is making a killing right now because any iPhone it sells also comes with a data package.  Not many people had this before, but now it’s a necessity!  I do not remotely support the extortionesque pricing of additional text messages… but the iPhone data package makes it “normal” to have a data plan.  Again, this opens up the market making mobile gadgets mainstream.

Gadget Usability
Perhaps the most important fact of all, the iPhone makes gadgets cool and easy to use.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a die hard Windows Mobile nerd and I pride myself on the ability to flash custom roms, but sometimes I just want the damn thing to work… and you know what: the iPhone works.  I can say without a doubt that with enough tweaks, third-party apps, and custom registry edits, Windows Mobile can do more than the iPhone can.  But out of the box? Sadly, no.

In all fairness, this is why I love Windows Mobile: its insane customization ability.  I can tweak, edit, hack, alter, mess up, anything in the Operating System.  I’m the type of person who always wants more from my device and Windows Mobile always gives me that option.  I’m a constant tinkerer.  The first thing I’ve done with every new Windows Mobile device is take it out of the box- and reflash it to a custom build.  And that’s awesome.  But the problem is that there are very few people like me.

Most people want a device that works right out of the box.  The iPhone does that.  And it makes it very, very simple for anyone to pickup and feel smart.  The user interface is intuitive and simple.  Its simplicity is going to inspire a new generation of PDA Phone users who demand ease of use.  This is a good thing, as long as I can still tinker.

In the end of all this I have two conclusions: 1) the iPhone is a revolutionary device that will open up the market and make PDA Phone sales growth shoot through the roof in the next few years.  2) I’m a little jealous and have written an entire post rationalizing why I’m still an avid Windows Mobile person.

So Microsoft- get on your horse and start working.  If you want some advice send me an email- I have a few hundred bullet points of how to fix the OS.  And it would probably be more useful to your developers than it would be to the readers here in an upcoming blog post…

As noted in my previous post (which upset far fewer people than I expected) I’ve been out of town for the past week.  Well, to no surprise I return to the office with a heavily bloated inbox containing hundreds of messages and missed conversations from the previous week.  Yippee!

The strangest part about diving back into email was to see the number of replies and discussions all at once.  To have hundreds of messages all about five or six different topics is actually pretty crazy.  During the week when emails come through, it’s easy to respond, save, or delete, and that seems like it takes no time at all.  But when batch processing hundreds of emails from the previous week, it seems a lot more cumbersome and overwhelmingly daunting. So what is the actual cost?

Apparently checking email costs $650 billion. The constant interruptions of non-mission-critical messages interrupt the day enough to lose massive amounts of productivity.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is incredible strength in the productivity of email, it’s just not always used correctly.  Confirming and scheduling meetings works very well with Outlook’s meeting request scheduler.  But discussing a recent news story or a “clean out the fridge” message and CCing hundreds of people on every reply?  Maybe there’s another place for this.

Quick step back: office-wide discussion is incredibly important and helps bring an enterprise closer together to build teamwork, comradery, and so on, and important company/office news needs to be spread around so that all employees are on the same page.  But is email the proper venue to do this?  I agree with the guys at Mzinga, in that the better way to communicate within a company is through online communities.

The functionality of email is no longer what it used to be.  Which is likely why Read Write Web claims that Email is in Danger.  Ultimately I don’t think email will ever really be replaced, the same way we still have snail mail for many things (although yes, that’s slowing too), we will have a need for email for a long, long time.

But anyway, this is basically just a 6am rant about how I’m nervously avoiding having to deal with my inbox mess.  But the biggest trick I know, that was illustrated here: close email when attempting to do something else.  I checked my email this morning, saw the endeavor ahead, closed it and started doing something else.  The only way I know how to combat the productivity suck of email, is to avoid it.

How do you fight email?  If you have an idea then comment below or message @znh on Twitter.  Just don’t email me about it.

Quick intro then we’ll dive right in to bashing one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world: Blogger (aka Blogspot (the platform is called Blogger, the free blogs are hosted at ***.blogspot.com) hence the confusion).  Blogger was created by Google and this leads to two obvious conclusions: 1) it is free to use 2) it lacks features.

Its inherent freeness keeps it popular and widely used, but ultimately Blogger should be a way to learn the ropes, not climb them.  Over the last few years I’ve helped build dozens of blogs, both personal and corporate.  Although I do my best to steer clear from using Blogger, it happens.  Often.  And I’ll find myself stuck with limitations and pushing through work arounds

So please keep in mind that if you currently use Blogger for your blog, I mean no disrespect and it says nothing negative about your blog.  Because maybe some of these things aren’t important to you, but they are dramatically important to me, and that’s why I (disclosure) use WordPress.

10 Shortcomings of Blogger Blogs:

1. Page support. Ever tried to create an “About Me” page?  Or a “Contact”? Or any of the pages that should be completely standard in blogs?  Apparently Blogger doesn’t see these things as necessary. This is by far the dumbest oversight for the platform.  There are ways to do it, but why should you have to trick your platform into letting you do something so standard?
2. “Read More” option. Yes, I’m well aware there’s a work around (that requires writing a brief code snippet on each post… not good for the basic users), but why should we have to work around?  Why can’t it just work?
3. Easier image alt-texting. The only way to play nice with the search engines is to go into HTML mode and manually type in ALT tags? Really?
4. More advanced template customization. There is a relatively small template development community for blogger, mainly because the options are so limited.  But one template page containing all the blog’s code?  Annoying.  Give me external CSS please.
5. Simpler template customization. Yeah, I know. But the limited widget options aren’t bad, but if Blogger really is the platform for the masses then it should have many, many more options and a public repository of widgets.
6. HTML stripping. Ever tried pasting text into a Blogger post and have it come out with some of the funkiest characters ever?  This is less Blogger’s fault than it is Microsoft’s but it’s still really damn annoying and is the only blog platform I’ve used that still has problems with this.
7. Improved permission support. Many blogs have multiple authors contributing content.  Blogger has two sets of permissions: Admin or Not Admin.  For a company blog you need an admin and you need permissions and authorities and notifications and more to set up a work flow.  Blogger doesn’t have any of this.
8. Scheduled posts. I’ve gotta be wrong about this one.  At least I hope I’m wrong.  But Blogger doesn’t allow you to schedule posts for the future.  This just makes no sense to me.  (Oh, but it is in “beta” apparently).
9. Categories and Tags. Each serve a very important but separate purpose.  Blogger gives you the option of Tags or nothing.  Not much of a choice.
10. SEO support. WordPress has dozens of plugins made specifically for search engine improvements.  Metatagging, better sitemap building, titling, keywords, everything.  Blogger does not.  It actually makes these things either difficult or impossible.  Maybe Blogger knows how bad some of its blogs are and doesn’t want to subject them to the public…

Look, in the end successful blogging is about good content.  No amount of flashy design or advanced site functionality will pull in readers if your content is lacking. Conversely, there are a lot of very popular blogs published through Blogger, all because they have great content.  The blogging platform is ultimately irrelevant - this post is really just about making that platform work for you.

If you’re new to blogging and not yet ready to take off the training wheels, start up in Blogger.  It’s free, simple, and basic enough to not screw up.  But once you’ve grown tired of its limits, read this guide, and take your blog to a new level.

What else do you wish were included in Blogger?

Lastly, I’m on vacation the rest of the week, but will be back in town for PodCamp Boston - hope to see many of you there!

Yesterday Jeff Pulver wrote a pretty great post titled PR 203: How to Pitch a Blogger (or at least How to Pitch Jeff Pulver in 2008). If you work in PR, Marketing, Social Media, or just want an interesting read then definitely check it out. Besides, Jeff’s one smart and powerful guy, so you should probably be reading his blog all the time anyway.

Jeff’s post plays into the 2008 trend of anti-PR/blogger relations stories; most notable is the recent squabble between Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani and pretty much every PR company out there. Catch up on the whole story through Defren’s post that justifiably defends the PR industry. Basically it has become “cool” to bash the PR industry (see the Bad Pitch Blog for more).

First off: lazy work is lazy work. If you suck at your job and you blind send hundreds of emails to hundreds of bloggers saying “please write about my company” then you’re going to get what’s coming to you (seriously, read the Bad Pitch Blog… it’s embarrassing). BUT - that is no reason to get down on the industry.

The problem is that the concept of “Blogger Relations” is relatively new and evolving as quickly as bloggers themselves. Bloggers aren’t just that kid in his mom’s basement talking about WoW, or that teenage girl talking about puppy dogs, the captain of the football team, Hanah Montana, or … what do girls like these days… Morgan Freeman. Bloggers have become some of the most influential writers in the world. The line between mainstream media and bloggers has been completely blurred.

So back to Pulver’s point: it’s not something you can batch process. Pitching all bloggers the same is like pitching every magazine the same. Personalize your process and you’ll be much, much more successful.

And now onto the joke in all this: how to pitch Zach. Oh, and I get pitched occasionally and so far have had a few good pitches and a few ok pitches, but nothing bad. So if you’ve pitched me in the past- good work! You haven’t sucked, but you have potentially screwed up one of the bullets below. Secondly: I’m no Gina Trapani, nor do I get remotely the volume of email she gets. I’m not even close to being internet famous, or hell, internet popular. For the time being, I can handle lots of pitches.

So here are a few tips to pitching Zach, a small-time blogger:

• Like everyone else has said: read my blog first. I talk about startups, gadgets, web apps, and Bostony things. If you fall in one of those categories, I’ll be much more receptive, plus- I love those things and will get excited to read more
• Put at least a tiny effort into personalizing the email. My name is all over this blog and it’s all pretty informal. Writing to “dear sir” is just going to confuse me and make me think you are selling V1AGRA PILL5S!!! or other spamminess
• Be responsive. I have no problem responding to pitch emails asking follow up questions so if I respond, get back to me. Seriously, why would you pitch me otherwise? Also, I’m friendly in emails and often use too many exclamation marks, so at least it’ll be fun to correspond
• I promise that if I DON’T like your product, then I’ll contact you before I write anything for a chance to engage. That’s how I keep my integrity. And besides, I really only make fun of the iPhone and AOL (so if you are either of them, you probably shouldn’t pitch me)
• Sending me beta invites and/or free stuff will make me happy and much more eager to write about you
• I also like beer, popcorn, and video games

This is my point in all of it: I think a few of the mainstream bloggers have given blogger relations a bad name. I’m flattered when someone pitches me. This is where the difference is for me: I actually get excited when a pitch email lands in my inbox asking if I’ll review something. I think it’s cool! And so do a lot of individual bloggers.

So if you’re in PR and tasked with pitching bloggers, don’t be deterred by Trapani’s actions. Take it as a cautionary tale, don’t be lazy, send me free stuff, and don’t be afraid to reach out to the little-guys.

Yeah, this is my second iPhone post in a week, sorry.  As Silicon Alley reports the line has begun to form for the 3g iPhone, which will be available this Friday at 8am. Wait, is that post really from the 4th? Last Friday? One WEEK before the real launch!? Idiots. Seriously, camping out in line for the 3G iPhone is stupid. And here’s why:

It’s nothing that new.
I’ll admit it, when the first gen iPhone came out last year I understood why people where waiting in line. This thing was living in Rumorville for years, then marketinghypeville for six months. People were jazzed because there had never been anything like it before. No one knew what to expect. I’ll even go as far as calling it a new paradigm of gadgetry.

But the 3G iPhone doesn’t improve on that. It’s just a little rounder and a little faster on the insides. The operating system still looks the same and acts pretty much the same. Hell, even Mossberg says so.  Being one of the first few to have this thing in your hands means pretty much nothing.  We all know what to expect.

It won’t actually have good data speeds for another few months.
Expecting to get that “3G” iPhone out of the box and be blazing through the webs at a lightening quick pace? Think again (side note: I’d love for someone to go through the line at the Apple store and poll to see how many people actually know what “3G” means).

Last year when the iPhone was launched AT&T’s network basically crashed for a month leaving iPhone users (and all the loyal 3G users) with TMobile like connection speeds (that’s bad, btw (2nd side note for new readers: “btw” is one of the only abbreviated terms I’ll use, but I only do so ironically because it actually has more syllables than “by the way”)). Adding a million customers onto a limited capacity bandwidth slowed everything down for everyone and things will be severely throttled again this summer.

And as Venturebeat tells it, this will improve in a few months, but not by Friday. So get out of line.

There will be an extremely limited resale market.
This is the most important point of all because I’m not sure people really understand this yet. Last year many of the early iPhone scorers were able to resell the devices for loads more than they paid. Good deal, right? Wait in line a few days a make a few grand- not too shabby. But not this time.

To purchase a 3G iPhone you will be required to sign up for an iPhone contract with AT&T (or spend $700). Sure the $200 pricetag is nice, but at iPhone contract prices, you’ll be hosed by the year’s end. What this means is that buying two to unlock (which is going to be more difficult) and sell on ebay will be a fruitless effort requiring you to be locked into a contract.

So why are people doing it?

Idiots. Also: fame. And: marketing hype. People get really caught up in the marketing (Apple is awesome at capturing the masses) and understand the exposure of being in this silly line. Just look at iPhone Jonny, a guy who will likely be interviewed dozens of times for his expert ability of waiting… in a line… for a week.

Basically, it’s the summer time. The news stations don’t have much to talk about and this is something to grab onto for the next week. Hell, I put the over/under on number of Gizmodo posts dedicated solely to the lines at stores at 42.5 - make your bets. So if you’re in the market for a 3G iPhone, I don’t blame you- it’s cool, but don’t get in line now. Just wait a month or if you really need the Apple-fix then go on Saturday morning and you’ll be fine.  Just don’t wait in line.

And once you do get a 3G iPhone… can I play with it?

So it turns out the internet wasn’t just a fad and might be sticking around for a bit. And in a related twist of events, social media sort of took over the web in the last year or so. Basically what I’m saying is that now’s as good a time as any to dive in and make a piece of it for yourself.

Here’s the inspiration for today’s post: the number of times I’ve heard people, in every industry and every sized company, say that “oh, well a blog’s not for me”. Well you’re wrong. It is. No matter who you are, what your company does, how big or small it is, consumer product or not: just do it.

Individuals
Personal branding. Heard of it? Go ask Dan Schawbel the personal branding expert- he’ll teach you. Another way to put it, so that everyone can be interested, not just the web junkies: when you first meet someone and get their card, or just a name, what’s the first thing you do when you get near a computer? Google them. Wait, you don’t? That’s just me? Yikes, I sound creepy now.

But if you are like me, and a large majority of people, then chances are you have Googled someone. And you’ve probably Googled yourself too. So what comes up?

Before I started this blog and other many other web creations of lesser-value, there was information about a few races I had run in years back and my (get ready for the embarrassment) Vermont state high school chess ranking (2nd, btw - but it’s a really small state…). This isn’t anything I’m ashamed of (sort of), but it’s not the full explanation of me. When someone looks for me now- they find what I want them to find.

I control the message. The results for Zach Hofer-Shall are what I’ve made them to be.

By writing your own content and branding it with your name, you can control the message too. By blogging regularly with content you know- you can align yourself with the text you want and take advantage of Google and make it work for you. Then in the future when employers, colleagues, friends, that girl you met that one time at a bar, will find the information about you that they should.

Small Company/Startup
This is the one I work with the most and is the easiest argument to win. If you are a new or small company there is one fundamental marketing truth: people don’t know you yet. And more importantly, they aren’t going on Google searching for your company name. If you’re Kleenex, or Amazon, then good- you’re probably going to do fine online.

But if you are “Roger’s Online Flowerporium” and you want people to find you online- you’d better face the fact that no one is searching for “Roger” or “Flowerporium” when looking for flowers online. They’re looking for flowers. So blog up the market and align your brand with your products

By blogging regularly with content about your industry you align your company with your market and products and even though you aren’t going to see massive returns from Google organically, the odds are better if you actually write that content.

Plus, small companies have the benefit of the reputation of being… well, small companies. You’ll be able to connect to customers better and build a small, but real community of consumers. And it’s better to have a small group of consumers who love the brand, than hundreds that don’t really care (that’s another debate for another time).

Medium/Larger Company
You’ve got a presence, probably an online marketing strategy (you have a company website, right? Ok, now keep going with that idea…), but now what? How do you standout from your competition? And how do you connect with your consumers? Blog! (I bet you saw that one coming.)

Setting up a blog for an established business gains the benefits of the social web as well as can be. Consumers are beginning to expect companies to have voices and human connections- they have questions- they want answers. You can give this to them and set your company apart from the market by blogging to give your company a personality. And by listening to them you can gain more market research than any surveys or blind studies ever could. You customers are there talking- why not communicate with them.

You already have a community in the real world, but unless you have a blog you are missing the opportunity to engage the community where they spend their time: online. And what I touched on earlier, the human element, is arguably the most important. It’s strange how quickly it’s happened, but I now completely expect every corporate website to have a blog, and if I don’t see one I assume the company “doesn’t get it”. How strange is that?

I mean, I realize I’m fairly jaded, being a social media consultant. But not having a company blog today is like not having a website in the 90s (I’m pretty sure I stole that line from one of the dozen books I’ve read on this exact subject).

Basically, blogging has become a completely acceptable means of corporate and personal communication. It’s no longer just that weird kid in his mom’s basement blogging about World of Warcraft and his feelings, it’s now normal for everyone at every level to be blogging.

That’s it. Stop reading this now and go blog. If you need help, email me.

I’m off for a few days for the hot-dog-eating, beer-drinking, fire-works-watching holiday, not blogging. Helping me fill the little hole left without my posts- go blog.

Today’s word count: eight bazillion. Number of times “blog” is mentioned: six hundred and thirty four.

So I’m a gadget nerd and somehow I have yet to address the 3G iPhone.  Heard of it?  No?  Well then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.

But if you have heard the news on Apple’s upcoming super-phone, then you likely heard that it’s going to be available at 8am on July 11th (next Friday, for those that want to go stand in line now).

The early July release comes as very little surprise to just about anyone (including me, from seven months ago).  I mean hell, as soon as the first iPhone was released it was pretty much assumed that there would be a follow up a year later.  We all knew this!

So where are the competitors?  Apple has already stolen a huge chunk of the smartphone market in the last year, why would the competition just let this launch come up without a fight!?  Where’s the Android Dream Phone (Q1 2009)?  Where’s Blackberry’s Bold (September for ATT)?  The Palm 800w (expected Q4 2008)?  Where’s HTC’s Touch/Touch Pro (Q4 2008)?!  None of these guys could get their act together to release a product in time to lure anyone away from the iPhone?  I don’t get it.

Samsung took a valid stab with its Instinct, especially by dropping the price to a ridiculous $129.  And that’s it.  Seriously.  That’s it.  I don’t get it.

What’s even more difficult to understand is how the competition would even let users think about the iPhone because iPhone converts are going to remain loyal to the iPhone.  It’s a device that will suck you in to its usability - the way Apple products do.  You just get used to the way the function and you don’t want to go back.  Other hardware manufacturers aren’t just going to lose users for one generation of a phone; they will be lost to the iPhone for years to come.

Personally, I’m about as die-hard a Windows Mobile fan as you can find.  And you want to hear a sadly honest admission: the 3G iPhone is enticing.  A year ago I laughed at the iPhone for its wimpy EDGE connectivity and its lack of MS Office interoperability, but it’s a year later and those mistakes have been fixed.  And I have no new options for WinMo.

Is the new iPhone that much cooler?  No.  But by dropping the price to $200 and being the only cool new phone on the market this summer, it will win.  The damn thing can’t even copy and paste (yep, that is correct), but it will still be the best offering on the market.