Archive for the ‘e-marketing’ Category

Google TV Ads, Cisco Feeds MSNBC, & Interactive Marketing Agencies: A Fresh Perspective

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Another week, another Tuesday segment on TheTVNews.tv. This week, I aggregated three new online video news stories that I think merit your attention. My video segment is below, and below that are the Google TV Ads video demo, more comments, and links to all the sources. Please let me know what you think.

1. Great Video Demo of Google TV Ads

Seth Stevenson of SlateV.com did a wonderful job of demoing Google TV Ads for the rest of us. I’m sure you will agree that he proves his point that, yes, anyone with the technical chops to produce a 30-second TV spot and set up a Google AdWords account, also now has the opportunity to be a media buyer and place those TV spots on carefully targeted cable TV networks in the time slots of your choice.

I’m impressed and ready for a client who wants me to do this for them. I’m highly qualified. Are you reading?

Here’s the SlateV Google TV Ads demo for your viewing pleasure:

By the way, for those of you doing the math, not familiar with Google AdWords campaigns, and figuring that, hey, that’s about $1.30 per website visitor… please keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for AdWords customers to pay $4, $5 and up PER click. And the visitors he “acquired” via this campaign were coming to a strange website URL with no identified service or product being offered.

2. Cisco Feeds Its High-End Teleconferencing System to Rachel Maddow and MSNBC

In what is said to be “a news media industry first,” Cisco has partnered with MSNBC to provide  The Rachel Maddow Show’s New York and Washington D.C. studios with its branded TelePresence technology. According to Cisco, “TelePresence offers what traditional broadcast interviewing technology often lacks: a truly two-way, visual connection between the studio host and remote guest with virtually no audio lag time.”

To me, that’s an interesting tech story, not only because of the “no audio time lag,” but also because of further in-roads being made by a traditionally IT industry player providing hardware services to the broadcast TV industry.

Click here to see for yourself.

For more details and illuminations of the interactive benefits of TelePresence, Beet.tv has a video interview with Charles Stucki, VP & GM of the Cisco’s TelePresence unit.

3. Forrester Research Predicts the Future of Marketing Agency Relationships

Anyone in the marketing or advertising business knows that all marketing agencies are being forced to cross “boundaries” that traditionally defined specific niches. Now, Forrester’s latest report, “The Future Of Agency Relationships: Marketers Need To Lead Agency Change In The Adaptive Marketing Era” sets the stage for overlapping, multi-discipline agencies and the ways we all will be doing battle (or not) in the future.

But if you don’t feel like plopping down $499 for the report, I highly recommend Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim coverage of the report, Forrester Predicts the Interactive Agency of Record Will Die. Beal reveals the main types of agencies discussed and some of the top level data including this quote which gives you a flavor of the sophistication being required in today’s marketing agency market:

It is not enough for adaptive agencies to understand market research, ethnographic, or behavioral data. To fully understand customers, and to leverage that knowledge to improve customer experience, requires agencies to understand the interplay between the various types of data, and crucially, demands the ability to turn the data into actionable intelligence.

Stay tuned. The landscape continues to morph at a record-setting pace. Keep on dancing… and keep your seat belt fastened. ;)

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Posted in e-marketing, Google, internet marketing, online applications, online software, online video, technology, TV Industry, video, youtube | 6 Comments »

Am I Your Go-To Guy? (a self-awakening)

Monday, January 18th, 2010

One advantage of having a coach who is also a client is that her testimonials not only flatter me, they make me think.

Here’s what Christy Strauch, author of Passion, Plan, Profit: Twelve Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business, said about me and my work:

I think Jon knows better than anyone how to help businesses use the Internet as a powerful marketing tool. Wherever you are in the process of developing your Internet presence, Jon can tell you exactly what you should do next. He will enable you to take advantage of the latest (sometimes bewildering) array of tools, from blogs to Twitter, from Facebook and LinkedIn to YouTube videos. From my experience, Jon is the guy to call if you want to market your business more effectively; and, as a bonus, because of his openness, you will learn from a real visionary every step of the way.

What stopped me in my tracks about this statement was the “Jon knows better than anyone.” It’s a strong statement, and when it came on the heels of another flattering statement by another client, Rick Weinstein of Life Insurance Services for Charitable Giving, I had to self-reflect further:

The go-to point player for the Cleveland Cavs is LeBron James. Simply stated, Jon Leland is the go-to player if you are a profit-seeking entrepreneur who wants to leverage the power of e-commerce. Better yet, Jon is a people’s person. He’s no nonsense and a master communicator. I view Jon as a life-long partner, not a vendor; and I am pleased to wholeheartedly recommend him.

LeBron James! Yikes. I was humbled and inspired at the same time. And, I’m not just tooting my own horn because together these quotes added up to a personal wake up call. Thanks to my willingness to listen to my clients, I realized that I have not been positioning myself well given the levels of my expertise and experience.

I honestly know that I am able to be that “go-to guy.” I am so much more than just a website designer/developer. I am someone who can tell virtually any client of any size company what they should be doing next with regard to their web presence and their internet marketing. But, unfortunately, up to now (at least recently), that is not how I’ve been telling my story. Hello? Mr. Leland calling Mr. Leland. Wake up!

So, yes, we do websites, but I also want you to know that these days we’ve evolved ourselves into WordPress experts. As a result, we offer a carefully evolved approach to using WordPress as a CMS (content management system). We’re calling this custom “cocktail” of plug-ins and configurations, “We Do WordPress Right!” But most people, even some of our clients, don’t know that yet.

Furthermore, we have initiated a brand new set of internet marketing packages which include support for blogging and social media marketing. (Please contact us to receive a confidential copy of these offerings and get the “go-to guy” on your virtual team. 8-) )

I’m done with just being a website designer who also does internet marketing. It’s time for me to re-own my expertise as someone who has honestly been on the cutting edge of new media all the way back to the early ’70′s—before the term “new media” was invented—when founding a narrowcast radio network was “new media.” (Read more about the other new media/new marketing innovations I’ve been involved with for literally decades in my online bio.)

I hope my “self-awakening” is inspiring to you as well. Have you been under-selling yourself? What story should you be telling about yourself that you have not been telling?

And, of course, if I can be your “go-to guy” that helps you build a truly successful web presence, I’d be delighted.

My apologies for the shameless self-promotion, but I needed to say this “out loud.” Thanks for listening.

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Posted in blogging, e-marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, web design, WordPress | 12 Comments »

Leading with Value: The Currency of New Marketing

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Giving value is where all meaningful social media marketing startsIn my keynotes and workshops on internet marketing (which I am hereby referring to as “new marketing”), one of my key concepts is “leading with value.” For me, a key part of business in general is creating (and maintaining) relationships. Of course, business is about much more than just making money. But, in this culture, that’s easy to forget. My real bottom line is the fact that the quality of the relationships that I have created via my business are perhaps the greatest source of satisfaction that I have in my work (right up there with the creative satisfaction and opportunity to make a difference).

For this reason, I am particularly enthusiastic about the authentic aspects of social media that literally depend upon “leading with value.” Social media is about networking, which to me means “virtually meeting” new, interesting people and learning new things from them. And, likewise, being able to easily share what I consider to be valuable information with as many people as possible. I love that. I enjoy it so much that sometimes I even think, “I was born for social media” …and I’m not even a social media “big shot.”

So along these lines, I simply want to start my Monday morning by sharing a couple of insightful blog posts that to me do a great job of underscoring some important aspects of our new media world. Hopefully, they will provide sparks for you as they have for me, so we can all go out and (like the Beatles said) “make it better”:

  • Focusing on Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter
    This is one of the most substantive blog posts I’ve read in some time, and I especially like it because it addresses, in a very real and pragmatic way, how best to deal with Twitter users who spam. Bottom line, don’t auto-follow everyone back; and most importantly, un-follow all those affiliate marketers who are only trying to “capture” your dollars.
  • The Five Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign
    This list of values provide a foundation for social media relationship building that are, as the author says, “essential.” They include “generosity” which is very close to my “Leading with Value” concept.
  • ABC-TV News on “Marketing with Meaning”
    Yes, marketing executives are actually writing books on how marketing campaigns are more effective when they have MEANING. What a concept! Nice to see it being covered in the so-called mainstream media.

Enjoy! And keep having fun out there.

Posted in blogging, e-marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, twitter | 3 Comments »

Web 2.0 Expo Provides Snapshot of Rapidly Evolving Next Generation Web

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

I had the illuminating pleasure of spending a few hours today attending the keynotes and browsing the innovations on the floor at the O’Reilly/TechWeb conference, Web 2.0 Expo SF. These have become quite vibrant affairs with NY, European & (I think) Japanese iterations now on the annual conference schedule.

(Keynote photo of John Battelle on stage with Marc Andreessen at Web 2.0 Summit SF 2008 by James Duncan Davidson.)

This spring’s SF show attracted about 8,500 web-savvy geeks and associates and I was impressed with the consciousness of both the collaborative conference editorial orientation as well as the folks in attendance. Top level insights of the day were provided by John Batelle’s interview with Mosaic browser creator, Netscape founder and Ning.com do-it-yourself social network entrepreneur Marc Andreesen who offered a interesting historical perspective on why the web browser will persist and warnings about the “coming nuclear winter” with regard to the economy. Author and Harvard/Oxford professor, Jonathan Zittrain also offered a quite thoughtful “big think” analysis of how and why we should take security and Web 2.0 business concerns more seriously.See his book, The Future of the Internet… and How to Stop It for more details. We’ll all be glad if you do.

Beyond these considerations, Web 2.0 seems to be alive and well with not only ample opportunities for open source collaboration, but with myriad kinds of mashups that bring remarkable power to the web browser.

Many folks are familiar with the Facebook and MySpace plug-ins that let individuals do more… (as one presenter said, “we’re no longer browsing the web, we’re creating it”), but there are now many more web-based tools that let you create powerful online applications, plug-in widgets and whatever, without the need of any desktop software. For example:

  • At the most basic level, Slide let’s you create custom slide show widgets from digital photos that you upload to PhotoBucket or Flickr
  • For multimedia types, I’ve been impressed with Sprout Builder which is kinda like a web-based Flash authoring tool for the rest of us. But in this case, you get embed code so that your Flash widget can be posted anywhere and can spread virally
  • Zude.com hypes itself as a social computing platform, but what I liked is its ability to let you drag and drop virtually any kind of web content into a Zude page for online publishing and sharing
  • and for the more advanced gear heads, Coghead.com offers a platform, also in a web browser of course, that let’s you build interactive business processes, like lead capture for example, all in a drag and drop environment. Who needs code? ;)

What I find most interesting is the way that all of this functionality has become web browser-based. It seems that we are destined to do all of our computing in the cloud. In any case, the creativity, collaboration (amongst people as well as interconnected bits and bytes) and the communication channels are continuing to get ever more powerful… and all of this is really just getting started. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Thanks O’Reilly for giving me a glimpse of the future as it is appearing now… in browsers near us all.

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Posted in e-marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization | 3 Comments »

Seniors Nintendo Wii Bowling Video Scores as Viral Video Marketing

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

Here’s a video that’s not only entertaining and about seniors using the innovative Nintendo Wii video game, but it is also a clever form of viral video marketing which subtly promotes a senior assisted living company. Expect to see more of this kind of thing in the future. This one is unusually well done, and they save the low-key pitch for last. Appropriately putting the fun first…

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Posted in e-marketing, internet marketing | No Comments »

Yikes: All Internet Data is Lost! ;)

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

And now for a dweeby 2 minute humor break. Enjoy!

thanks to TechCrunch

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Posted in e-marketing | 2 Comments »

New Apple TV Ad

Monday, May 7th, 2007

Business 2.0 has a new “get-a-Mac” Apple TV ad before it’s release on a day when Apple stock reached new heights, pre-iPhone’s release (for which surveys are showing a strong demand). Seems it’s a mad, mad new Apple world where the superior platform is even gaining market share.

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Posted in e-marketing | No Comments »

A Good Lesson in Email Subject Lines

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

This is a basic issue for anyone who sends out email announcements or email newsletters. It’s crucial to your “open rate” that the subject line be compelling and engaging. One useful point here that I’ve wondered about but never heard clearly defined is the 56-character space limit. Solid guidance. Dr. EBiz is generally a good resource too…

http://www.wilsonweb.com/email/sugarman-subject-1.htm

The ConstantContact.com service’s learning center also recently published a two-part series of articles on this subject.

Meanwhile, my ebook on Internet Marketing should be completed “real soon.” Stay tuned.

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Posted in e-marketing, small biz e-biz | 1 Comment »

Understanding Blogging 101

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

This dude, ChrisG, is getting some well-deserved viral buzz. He’s doing the blog thing well; and he’s explaining what, why and how he’s doing this blog thing well, all along the way.

I know many folks out there are scratching their heads trying to understand the whole blogosphere and viral marketing phenom. Well, Chris’ latest post, The Three Dimensions of Blogging: The Vital Combination Every Blog Must Have is as good an introductory summary, explanation and orientation as I’ve seen.

And since Chris is something of a blogging “guru” his site also offers many other resources as well. Most of all, check out how he walks his talk, the free e-book only after subscribing, etc etc.

Thanks, Chris. Great work.

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Posted in e-marketing | No Comments »

US Online Ad Spending Continues Rapid Growth

Monday, November 27th, 2006

I can’t believe that I’ve not posted a thing that I learned at Webmaster World in Vegas two weeks ago, but bottom line: search marketing and search advertising as well as online viral, word of mouth marketing are hot and garnering a bigger and bigger piece of the US business marketing dollar pie. For example, this eMarketer report summarizes a consensus among analysts that internet advertising spending is continuing growth at a 30-40% year over year pace.

FYI, in addition to ComBridges internet marketing services, I’m working on a workshop and e-book to help smaller businesses get a handle of the effective use of these marketing channels. More on that soon.

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Posted in e-marketing, search marketing | No Comments »