PRSA 2008 Lessons: Control vs. Credibility

Remarks: For chapters 3&4 and 5&6, I linked two things and had one post here (http://gct681.blogspot.com/2008/09/oldanip40-freedmanp-67-customer-service.html), and another post about short thoughts on amazon daily
(http://gct681.blogspot.com/2008/09/short-thoughts-on-amazon-daily.html). To complement, I would like to share one thing on lessons from the PRSA conference 2008 in Detroit.


First of all, I would like to share my Youtube videos taken at the PRSA 2008 confenrece. Each short intro starts with Korean language, but, the whole interview in English. So, wait for seconds:)

Interview with ipressroom Chairman
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=QjnnwsPorZc

Interview with the author of PR 2.0
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3kLRn5SSs

Radian 6 Service - Interview
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=kgzkcBbiszc

Among these, ipressroom Chairman's interview was notable to me.
1/ Control vs. Credibility: Traditional PR was about "message control" in a sense, but, not any more. However, still, "old mind" tries to control their messages in communicating with consumers. Good example is corporate website. They only shows "good news" not "bad news." Advanced companies, like Southwest and Dell transparently communicate both good and bad news and respond to them. If a company tries to increase control, then, credibility goes down, according to Eric Schwartzman, the Chairman.

2/ Corporate Media: Now, any company can have media, not just New York Times or Wall Street Journal, due to social media technology, like blog. Right now, if you look at corporate website, say press room, it becomes "tomb of press releases" simply storing press releases. However, companies start to leverage their website as an interesting media, such as New York Times. One example to do that is UCLA news room site (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/default.aspx), using not jus written contents, but, videos, sounds, etc. Traditional PR people rely on "other media" but, moving forward, they will have to create their own contents, and media to actively and directly communicate with audiences.

Corporate Press Release and Blogosphere (Ch. 14, p.171)

With the new media influence, traditional press release also changes. Now, companies start to produce social media release, not just (traditional) press release. Example, see http://www.edelman.com/news/. You will see two different formats: traditional and social press releases.

Social media release, a new format of press release in the social media, has different characteristics. First, traditional one was for company to journalist. Consumers had no access to press release. With the social media influence, now, press release becomes company to direct to consumers. Second, social media release has different formats. For example, core news facts; quotes; multimedia; links; RSS feeds; resources; tags; trackback and comments. Traditionally, companies try to 'frame' news to their benefit, but, in social media release, it is more of providing "stuffs to talk" to bloggers. Third, even bloggers engage in press release. If you look at the social media release, people reply to the press release contensts, trackback, etc. This didn't happen in the past.

Shull also talks about what companies can do to leverage their press release in the blogosphere. This is a big change for corporate PR. It used to target journalist directly, but, now directly target consumers on the net. Also, traditional press release is to "push our contents" to media, but, now, "pull consumers/bloggers interests and put them on our (press release) contents and formats."

So, from what's being changed in the press release, we still observe "power shift" from corporation to consumers.

Social Media, Social Networking (Ch. 18, p. 213)

Story #1: According to a media report, candidates for Obama's new cabinet, as a candidate screening process, their 'social media network', like myspace will be reviewed.
Story #2: Recently, I had a conversation with one of my friends in the US. At that time, he had a couple of job interviews, and told me that now companies review job candidates' social networks to find who they are, and who they are connected...

Here, Evans talk about the importance of social media, besides search engine. Social media is "social" because it really engages people. The above example is about finding out a certain people to engage with whom in what manners. Traditionally, companies use 'megaphone' to talk to consumers, but, with the social media, like blogs, now companies (can/should) share conversation with consumers.

Why the new marketing/Ad/PR/even journalism is 'conversation'? First, direction: in the past, companies 'shoot' messages towards consumer, but, consumers had few tools to talk to companies. Why? Publishing cost was high, so, only companies normally could spend advertising money, building fancy websites, etc. But, due to 'cheap technology'(for example, it costs nothing to produce your blog), now, people also have public channel to talk to many people. So, now, it is really two way street. Second, timing: if we consider real conversation offline, it happens on a real time basis, not one person says one thing, and much later someone responds. With the social media, now people can share opinions on a real time basis.

So, with the two direction and real time, social media becomes a real conversation tool between institutions and lay people, and this is the first time ever in our history.

Google as a Message Test Tool (Ch. 19, p. 220)

What is the most advanced consumer research tool in the world's history? The answer will be Google. Marshall showed an example. There is a young author called Tim Ferriss who wrote a best seller "4-hour workweek." I also bought this book and read it before. It's about new lifestyle, where you work 4 hours a week, and enjoy your life! I didn't know this guy used google ad to test the title of the book. He tested a different titles through Google ads, and decided the final title, which was a very successful. From this case, we can see a couple of aspects why internet/google becomes the best consumer research tool. First, the speed. As the author pointed out, it would take weeks or months to do this through traditional ad system (like classified ad), but, now we can do hours or days. Second, cost. Relatively, it costs much less to do this test. Third, you can do it alone with a little technical knowledge.

As more people spend more time on-line, internet sites like google becomes a great consumer research laboratory. I came to think "search engine" does not only mean "information search engine" but also "consumer search engine..."

Perry Marshall on How online businesses can use Google AdWords (Page 219)

Marshall starts out with a very important point, are people searching for what you are selling? What he means with this is that even is something sells, it doesn’t mean that people will search for it. He takes toilet paper as an example. Everybody buys toilet paper, but has anyone ever searched for it? Another problem he mentions is if you have a new product that people don’t know exist, how are they going to search for it? He gives the example of someone inventing a pill that will prolong your life for ten years. Everybody would be interested in this product, but how many people searched for “live ten years longer” this morning?

But let’s say that people are searching for your product. Marshall makes the point that AdWords isn’t necessarily the best place to advertise in order to draw customers to your page. He has found another use for it. He proposes that you use AdWords as a testing place for your new add campaigns. There are a few key elements in how AdWords works hat makes this possible. First of all, AdWords rewards good ads. If allot of people click on your ad, the ad will get a higher position in the rank, and/or will cost less/click. It also lets you post multiple ads against each other, thus allowing you to test what campaign is best. You also get a good idea about how your ad stands compared to the competition.

So after you have tested different ads and finally come up with the best one you can start advertising in other places, like banners or affiliates.

To me this sounds like a very smart thing to do. It is very easy to use, and most likely very cost efficient considering all the great data you will get out of it.

holy grail of advertising

On page 233 Kevin Lee, as many marketing heroes before him, briefly speaks about social networking, though it quickly leads him to the topic of narrowcasting. Narrowcasting is basically about one on one marketing, in opposition to mass marketing, which Lee sees as the Holy Grail of advertising, which would be sort of an everybody wins condition. Nobody really wants to deal with advertising, but if you don’t have a choice, most people would like to see something of relevance, and marketers want to more efficiently target the receivers, and this is where narrowcasting comes in with its’ targeted ads. Lee sees social networks as a place where narrowcasting could happen. I guess it’s because this is a place where you can find out what individuals actually want, and at the right moment make them an offer that they won’t see as intrusive. Because I still believe that one of the biggest problems with advertising in with a social network is that users find it intrusive. I think these are Internet users that are relatively used to online ads, and therefore are used to simply ignoring them, but in a social context this disregard would quickly be replaced by annoyance, which of course would have the exact opposite effect the marketer’s after. However, if the ad’s related to something the receiver wants or needs, this annoyance will probably not chip in. More likely that it actually will be welcomed! A win win situation! This is probably a way more costly way to market ones’ product, but it’s definitely a more efficient way that will pay off in the end. I could see this as being the future of advertising.

social networking between businesses and customers

On page 213 Liana Evans speaks about social networking, a topic that’s been covered pretty thoroughly in Online Marketing Heroes and definitely more than once before by myself in these blogs. There’s nothing really new brought to the table in Evans’ interview, and my choice of question to focus on may not have been the best, but I find the whole area of social networking and social media quite intriguing, so I still find an interest in looking at different thoughts on the topic. Evans speaks about the potential of social media for businesses, and focuses on the great advantage of having the ability to communicate with ones’ customers. Conversation about ones’ product with the actual end users can help in shaping the product according to the users’ wants and needs, letting a company more effectively satisfy their target consumers. And customers will find satisfaction not only in getting a product they actually want, but also simply because they are actually being heard. They feel that they can make a difference, and they feel that the company cares about their opinion, which I think will greatly increase the probability that the customer will return to the website for further purchases. Just by opening a line of communication like this can be a far more effective marketing strategy than any traditional advertising approach. And the whole web 2.0 trend with social networking and social media gives a company the ability to have deep conversations with individual customers or potential customers.

beyond the basic text website

On page 189 Lee Odden makes the recommendation that blogs be the first media a company should get into beyond the basic text website. This makes a lot of sense, and not merely because of the technical reasons Odden gets into, like making the website easier to find in a search engine, or giving the website the advantage of having a RSS feed. Of course these are two of the strongest reasons for starting a blog on a company website, since it significantly increases the visibility of the website by providing a “free” search engine optimization and granting access to a further channel of promotion (RSS feed). It seems to me to be a very easy out of the box way to make your website more visible and increase content. But other than increasing visibility I think having a blog also may increase the number of returning customers. As Odden says, a lot of e-commerce websites are mostly static, i.e. there isn’t really much changing on the websites. The way I see it this could actually discourage customers from returning to your website. Lets say a potential customer finally finds your website through your excellent marketing strategy, and finds your website really interesting etc. This customer may then return a few times, but if nothing really changes on the website, if it’s not being (visibly) updated, or no new content is added, this customer may, at least the way I see it, 1. Get bored with the website and therefore not return again, or 2. Loose trust for the website, seeing that if a website isn’t being updated questions arises like, does the company still exist, or is it even a serious company? Having a blog is an easy way to give a website some life, making customers want to return even if they haven’t got any further planned purchases. Having blogs may also increase a websites visibility through word of mouth. Today there’s a lot of ways to promote your website using all types of media and social network channels, but I agree with Odden that blogs is a good entry point, both because of its simplicity and the advantages that comes with that simplicity.

social media adoption in the business community

Ed Shull speaks about how businesses are adopting social media marketing and mentions something I find quite interesting, i.e. “the thing with big companies is that very few of them truly want to be innovators”. In this quote Shull uses the word want, as in it being a conscious choice, however as he continues to speak he leans more towards an incapability to think outside of the box, which I actually rather see as the reason few companies take steps towards innovation than not wanting it. The whole web 2.0 trend has taken the Internet by storm and has quickly become a natural part of Internet users’ lives, so it’s only logical that this be adopted by the business community. But of course as with everything new it’s hard finding entry points since it requires a lot of creativity and out of the box thinking. There has to be innovators. And I think it’s the fear of making fools of them selves or of wasting money that holds companies back from taking these innovative steps, which is the reason it always takes some time before new markets and channels are adopted, as with the whole concept of online and search engine marketing. As for “social media marketing”, I believe that the adoption time will be even longer, since it requires an entirely different line of thought. Companies have to let go of the traditional, reason being that with social media they will now be entering a roam that is closer to the users at heart, at a more personal level. I think web 2.0 users have a greater tendency to find any marketing attempts in this area of the Internet as more intrusive. I kind of see it as an advertising campaign being launched in an individuals living room. The impact of this will most probably not be very positive. No, social media marketing definitely requires some more finesse.

The Advertising Change Experienced by Traditional Ad Agencies, page 226

Reading the interview with Kevin Lee of Didit was a quite refreshing experience and a well needed brake from all the talk about search engine optimizations and blogs in the previous interviews. Lee gives us the traditional marketers’ perspective on the change brought upon us by the Internet. On page 226 (and 227) he explains how the traditional advertising agencies are handling the change.

The traditional approach in marketing is to simply buy loads of exposure with only some attention paid to getting the right audience. It’s a kind of mass marketing where the important factor is how many people you can reach.

However, the new way of looking at advertising, from the customers’ point of view, is that people nowadays only look at ads that are relevant. Also, there is the fact that targeting and finding segments becomes easier with the new technology and dynamics of the Internet. In addition, as we’ve read in previous interviews, it is much easier to track actual revenue (or rather: sales) to certain advertisements. This raises the bar for what ad agencies must do to please their customers.

A good example that Lee mentions is that by getting an advertiser to buy a couple of Superbowl spots they could get billings worth $6 million having put in a very small effort. Comparatively, to get $6 million worth of billings in well targeted advertisements (narrowcast media) won’t be nearly as smooth a ride.

In some way this development is related to my belief that advertising on niche web sites will grow, that I discussed in my previous blog post. Successfully aiming the advertising dollars at the right audience has always been important, but now there are the tools (and economies of scale thanks to the universality of the Internet) to do so much more effectively than before.

Taking Advantage of Social Networking, page 214

Liana Evans has a somewhat fresh approach to social networking, thinking of it not only as the core networking sites that Facebook and MySpace mainly are (especially Facebook is all about managing the network of your contacts). Evans places social web sites, which I would simply call communities, in the same category as the networking sites, and thus answers the question about how to take advantage of social networking with suggesting targeting communities.

I believe that the networking sites, primarily Facebook (at least at the moment), will be very effective in targeting certain demographics, such as specific regions, age groups etcetera. However, niche communities, such as the movie communities IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes mentioned by Evans in the interview, offer a different kind of information that may perhaps be even more valuable than the demographics of Facebook.

The reason for me believing this is that it is obviously often much easier to place a product within an interest range than within a demographic range. For example, if you are selling fishing equipment it makes sense to go to a fishing community, while targeting a certain demographic based on age, income, sex, location etcetera may be a pretty inaccurate targeting method.

Combined with the universality of the Internet that lessens the importance of location demographics, I believe this seriously undermines the value that Facebook can offer advertisers. Of course, Facebook may address this by simply encouraging people to list their interests in their system, but I believe such lists will never really be as accurate an information source as who actually visits the niche web sites.

In summary I believe the smaller communities that are focused on certain interests and hobbies will carry a relatively large portion of future advertising budgets.

Question on Page 222

Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions, running on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. Typically, guerrilla marketing is unexpected, where consumers are targeted where they would not be expecting, which can make the idea that's being marketed memorable. The marketer uses all of his or her contacts, both professional and personal, and must examine his company and its products, looking for sources of publicity. Many forms of publicity can be very inexpensive, others are free. When implementing guerrilla marketing tactics, small size is actually an advantage instead of a disadvantage. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are able to obtain publicity more easily than large companies; they are closer to their customers and considerably more agile. In order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer. It must build trust and support. It must understand the customer's needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits."Guerrilla marketing is specifically geared for the small business and entrepreneur. It should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgment, and guesswork. Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination. The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales. The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month. Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions. Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses. Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign. Use current technology as a tool to empower your business. I think this is not true that what firm sell so people will search for it. For example given like toilet paper people buy it and often not search for it online. It is also hard to advertise a problem that people do not know. It is obvious that one of the very first things you should test is what domain name people actually like to read in your Ads.

Jill Whalen on why Google has become so popular (Page 199)

The main reason why Google took off was simply because it was a better search engine than the competition. Whalen gives a quote, “Try this; if you can’t find what you are looking for with Alta Vista or the other engines, try this one.”. This is exactly how I remember it. Back in elementary school I was looking for something for a class assignment and had a very hard time finding the information I needed. Then someone suggested that I try to search with Google instead, and it worked. I didn’t switch exclusively to Google form that day on, but when ever I was looking for something I included a search with Google. For me, I think what made the scale tip over was when I noticed the simplicity of the Google design compared to for example Alta Vista, something that Whalen also mentions as part of Google’s success.

First Question on page 198

Search engine optimization(SEO) is the key to making sure your sites gets found by people searching at Google and other search engines for the information,products,or services that some firms or businesses offer. This is very important for business marketing strategy and it means optimizing the website with right key words in the right places. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific search engines. Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. By 1997 search engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, I think,there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site. However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals. Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.

Lee Odden on multiple search results (page 186-187).

This question, like many previous, is all about SEO. However this one concerns something a bit different in my opinion. Odden is talking about the possibility to have perhaps the top 5-6 search results on a query to be about the same company, your company.
The method that enables this can be seen as devious or simply as cleaver use of the different resources available. The basic idea is to use the fact that search engines have started to list videos and pictures in the search results. The system used in order to rank these pictures and videos is the same as for written content on web pages.
Let’s say you have allot of nice pictures and videos of your products on your webpage or even videos of customer testimonials. This content will get picked up by the search engines, but will most likely not achieve a high rank because the content isn’t optimized for that purpose. So what Odden is suggesting is to put the pictures on image-sharing sites with a reference to the company webpage. The same goes for the videos. Put them on YouTube. Of course you still keep the pictures and videos on the webpage as well.
This will enable your company to occupy several search results at the same time from one query.
As I mentioned in the beginning, some people will probably dislike using such a method, but the simple fact is, it works. People use search engines to find what they are looking for. As a company it is not hard to see that you would like to be among the top search results for any query that fits your products. And if you had the choice between occupying the first result or the first second and third, it’s pretty clear what anyone would chose.

Ed Shull on press releases targeted to bloggers (page 171).

Ed talks about different things companies can do to improve the chance that their press release will be picked up by bloggers. He immediately stresses that there is a big difference between a press release targeted towards regular news media and one targeted towards bloggers. He suggests a more complete release, while still keeping it short and concise, by including links to references and all other information regarding the release. To provide good contact information is also important, because many bloggers might want to ask questions about the release to make their post more unique.
This last statement feels like is underlines a very important difference between conventional news media and bloggers. While a newspaper might just post a summary of the press release with some minor comments, or simply post the entire press release and be satisfied with that, a blogger goes a couple of steps further. In most of the good blogs I’ve read, the person/persons blogging are first of all genuinely interested in the area that the blog concerns. This is what makes them dig deeper and perhaps not be satisfied with just a press release. This is at the same time the same quality that makes blogs so popular to read.
Ed also suggests that companies should have a dedicated part of their website for press releases and that they should provide all the information that the bloggers might need to write and interesting post. This includes things like company history, technical information, client quotes and maybe most important, pictures. A blogger interested in writing about you or one of your products should never have to hunt for a good picture of the product or for example the company logo.
I very much like this suggestion, mostly because it’s such and easy thing to do. I think it’s fair to assume that all serious companies today already have a website and to include a new page with information and pictures does not require allot of work, especially when all the content already exists.
Finally, Ed ergs companies to not focus all their energy on the A-list bloggers with the motivation that the smaller bloggers still have big audiences, they might be more narrow focused and thus you reach a larger number of model customers. He also points out a flaw in the way we measure pages popularity with for example PageRank. It is very possible that a sites “visitors” only subscribe to the RSS feed and don’t actually visit the site.

How Blog Affects Southwest Business (p. 180)

BusinessWeek, a while ago, ran a cover story with the title "Blogs will change your business." I agree, not exactly because it is a new trend, but because, it really is shifting power from organizations to individual customers. Brian Lusk of Southwest Airlines is talking about it in this question. Through their corporate blogs, Southwest Airline changed the way they did the business: open seating + early scheduling announcement.

Is it good for the business? Some people might say, thinking "if they didn't have blogs, they didn't need to change all those things." Well, that might be true in part, meaning Southwest didn't need to go through all those pains to change the way they did a business. But, if anyone agree "doing business is about customer satisfaction," then, this is the way to go. Before, there was a very limited channels to listen to the customers, but, with this corporate blog, Southwest listen what the customer wants, and then change themselves to meet those wants.

This is why the new marketing is "conversation". The book quoted "I blogged, You Flamed, We Changed." Not all things customer wants can be changed, but, at least, can be heard.

Southwest case shows a good example and insight what our corporations need to do in advance in the age of social media, and transparent conversation.

Customer Comments on Corporate Blogs, Page 179

While Brian Lusk talks about the user comments on Southwest Airlines’ blog on page 179 (last question) and 180 (first question) I can’t help but feel a little bit put off by what is put forward as generous moderation, but sounds more like pretty harsh moderation.

Lusk begins his answer with assuring us that they don’t edit user comments for content (though they do edit spelling mistakes, which at least from my perspective seems strangely ambitious and weird – I don’t want anyone to edit mine or others’ posts, even if they are spelled incorrectly). Lusk continues:

“We put up some negative ones. With the skirt issue we put up some pretty negative comments. I don’t think a lot of companies would have posted that kind of negative response on a corporate blog.”

And here Lusk seems oddly proud to have allowed negative user comments at all, implicitly saying that they deleted or denied comments that were too negative. Perhaps it’s a great feat coming from a corporate background, but for someone of the younger Internet generation such as I it just sounds wrong that there is any such moderation at all. Lusk is even clear about the fact that they allow off topic comments, so them sorting through negative comments does not seem to be a readers’ service.

Something else that clings to my mind in Lusk’s answer is that he thinks of customer comments as something Southwest have published themselves, which, again this may just be me being younger, from an experienced Internet user is quite strange. Perhaps he would be more tolerant towards negative comments if he did not have that perception.

Anyhow, I believe that not allowing negative comments is just negative for the company in the long run. If people cannot vent their frustration on the company blog (where the company can respond) the frustration will be vented elsewhere. The whole idea of the blog was to get the consumers communicating where the company could participate, and it seems to me that it’s no less (probably more) important when dealing with small crises like the skirt issue.

Additionally, users who get their negative comments denied will most likely be even further agitated and continue to sack the company brand somewhere else. I believe such moderation behaviour in the long run results in a perception of the company as a kind of totalitarian firm unable to listen to criticism. Obviously that perception will be very limited if the blog and this moderation behaviour is limited in itself. The point is, however, that, no matter the scale, I think moderating negative customer comments it’s a bad way of handling the issue.

Paying For Blog Mentions, Page 165

On page 165 Ed Shull speaks about the both interesting and controversial phenomenon of paying for blog entries. At least in Sweden it has caused some controversy where bloggers have been paid for the content on their blogs and not let their readers know of it.

A common opinion seems to be that as long as the blogger tells the readers that he or she gets paid for making the post, it’s ok. One could argue that the paying company ends up only with basic information as in a regular advertisement, but the real value is probably in the buzz that may be created through the blogger voicing his or her opinion on the matter the discussion among the blog’s users that is initiated.

Shull has an interesting solution to the ethical aspect of paying for content, not caring about what opinion the blogger voices, as long as it is an opinion – or at least he says so. The practice kind of works in theory. However, we don’t really know what the mentioned requirements really are and the relationship with the paying company will obviously taint the blogger with either conscious or subconscious bias.

To me, this method is ethically okay, though as a reader I would prefer if the blogger committed to informing the readers whenever there is money or any other return involved in the content. Also, I will always be suspicious of companies paying for content, whether they pay for opinions or just mentions. The line is too thin, and there are too many shadows and opportunities for foul play.

I think that the consumer perspective is that a company with a truly strong product would rely on the product, and not enter into questionable marketing efforts. Because of that, if I ran a company I would never touch the paying for content business, since I believe a mistake there can blow up in your face and really damage your brand, but that doesn’t mean that I think of the actual method as unethical.

Question on Page 178

Blogs is a valuable tool to the company. The blogs is well-written and very important of different internal bloggers. It covers topics which are important for both customers and companies. I think blogs is like a place where we could have a conversation with our customers, where it would be informal and fun and kind of like our general culture. I think it needs to be widely readed and like a big experiment for the company business. Generally when there is a new issue reading of blogs continues to increase. Internally inside the company both managers and employees need to embrace it. I think a lot of employees who participate in comments on the blogs and read it daily in ever company .Blogs not only provide the opportunity to express oneself, but also a platform for interaction and information enhancement. Blogs can include comments, suggestions, advice, directions, and links to related websites. Individual bloggers tend to use different blogging styles. Successful marketing through blogs creates or enters a community of interest where readers are involved in the use and lifestyle of a product or service. Blogging sparks interactive communications using low-cost self-publishing and syndication of content. It is not a way to make money or shill products.Speaking of legal matters; I think there should be some protection for bloggers. It allows everyone the ability to voice an opinion or ask a question about some piece of communication. some internal blogs may be specific to a project team or a functional team. I think Blogging is ability to provide best information word wide.Bloging for a company or other is very important at this time.

Common mistakes in online copywriting - Page 141

Heather Lloyd-Martin mentions Keyphrase stuffing, the text is so full of keywords that the readability suffers. On the opposite side you can have to few or no keyphrases, or you might have allot of keyphrases but they appear in graphics and thus can’t be read by the search engines.
She also mentions the importance of the page headline. This is what will show up as a link if your page is a hit on a search engine, so you want it to be compelling to the person searching.
Short copying is another thing to avoid. With a short copy you can’t include as many keywords and if you do the readability will suffer.

The biggest problem I see in online copy writing is the lack of knowledge many companies still have when it comes to how search engines work. Some people I have talked to, who has made pages for some bigger companies, had very little understanding about the nature of search engines now days. They still used pretty much the same things that worked 5-10 years ago.

Question on page 155

A person who runs or writes for a blog is known as a blogger. With the advancement of the Internet, consumers are now able to access not only opinions from close friends, family members, and co-workers, but also from strangers located around the world who may have used a particular product, visited a certain destination, or patronized a property. More consumers are relying on online opinions for their purchase decisions, from which movies to watch to which stocks to buy.
Today blogs have become very influential components of the Internet, and their importance is growing exponentially. Personal blogs can be effective means for people to promote themselves and some people find them to be psychologically fulfilling tools for self expression. The year 2004 is widely considered the year of the blog because of the role they played in major news events and the increase in their numbers. Research has shown that interpersonal influence arising from opinion exchange between consumers is an important factor influencing consumers’ purchase decisions. Word-of mouth or advice from friends and relatives often ranks as the most influential source of pre purchase information. Most blogs include some text, some still pictures, and, at times, moving images. To create a blog, a blogger needs to upload multimedia information to the website setup to create blogs. With the current computer technology blogs can be created easily by any member of the general public, without much technical knowledge. Therefore, I think blogs are becoming very popular amongst web users to share their life experiences with other web users around the world. In future ,almost all acquisition will be through search. Blog marketing provides more information inside the organization and uses that information to attract new customers.
Blogs allow others to comment on topics and provide further insight. In this respect. Blogs as a social network. A community of users forms. With more and more people participating in blogs, they have become a very useful to finding information fast and easy. I think Blogs are a great way to spread information that is difficult to find. Even though the Internet has vast amounts of information, it is not easy to locate that information. By creating a blog, users can contribute hard-to-find information as matter of eliminating the hassle of searching hours on end to find all of that information in a centralized location.

applying marketing focus to journalism

On page 129 Jordan Gold speaks generally about moving print content online. When picking out this particular segment of Gold’s interview I must have misread what was actually being said, since nothing of real essence is brought to the table in this short excerpt. However if we take a closer look at the few substantial statements Gold does make on page 129, taking the rest of the interview in consideration, it still becomes clear that Gold is a person that knows his field, obviously
Something I did find interesting here was the topic of applying marketing focus to journalism, i.e. with an online headline you are no longer just telling what’s in the article, instead you’re marketing the article. Gold doesn’t fully agree with this and remarks that it’s always been about making good leads to draw people in, in both print and in web journalism. It’s not clear if this means that he has always considered headlining to be a form of marketing, or if he has never considered it at all, though I think it’s implied that he’s leaning towards the later. He does however make the distinction of drawing a person into an article and drawing a person to clicking a link, and to me this is the fundamental difference between print and online journalism. If you already have a newspaper in front of you, it doesn’t take even half the effort to get you to read the article, however if you have to click a link to see the article, if you actually have to take action to get to the article, so much more interest has to have been awaken to get you to do it, especially if you happen to have a slow Internet connection. To me this is where it starts being about marketing the article. Instead of making the headline a compact summary of the article, as so the case in traditional print journalism, it’s about creating a buzz of interest. A buzz big enough to make a user click the link. Is this then really still pure journalism? Well obviously not in its purest form, but starting a discussion of what journalism really is about is an endless one. However something else of interest here is how Gold relates web headlining to the one on the cover of traditional magazines, and now when thinking about it, the similarities are really obvious, wondering how this has never passed my mind before. Magazines have been using the same type of half mysterious headlines with that higher drawing power on their covers for ages, trying to get people to buy them and open them up, on the same way online headlines want people to click their links. The transition for magazines to the online world should therefore not be a very hard one. I believe the only thing holding publishers back from transferring from print to web is the fear that Gold speaks about in his interview, the fear of the web not being sustainable.

Converting Old Media Contents to New Media (last Q of p. 124)

Hello, Prof. Amblee and friends. Now, I am in Detroit for 2008 Public Relations Society of America annual conference, and this morning, Craig Newmark from Craiglists, which our professor mentioned in the class, delivered a speech.

One of Craig's key message was he simply "listen what they want/need," and match the service. In our textbook, the question is about converting newspaper content for online consumption. Gold replied it got to be changed by adding video, audio, etc., to make it more web friendly. More and more newspaper companies adapt this change.

However, if we look at magazine industry, they are behind, esp. in Korea. There could be a reason for that. Compared to the newspaper, still, people may want to read magazine through paper, rather than web, however, still, magazine industry should seriously look at how they can adapt online technologies. Their website does not tell story properly, and few research is done for this.

Another area that media companies are not good at converting their content into online consumption in Korea is trade publication. Probably, this might be related to the budget issue. At the same time, experts in each industry, deliver up to dated, and in depth news/opinions through their blog, so, it is "replacing" trade publication.

My thinking is that trade publication, sports/entertainment newspaper will need to move to online faster than general dailies, which will have a much longer life of paper version.

Page 130 First Question

The Web audience is growing at a great speed, while print circulation is not. And online revenues are growing faster, too. If the trend continues, I think there’s little doubt that eventually online becomes the main business. Advertising plays a key role for the development of online newspaper or books business. This type of Ads is quite different. The online newspaper business need to build a community of interest where people coming in and tend to buy books. To take a newspaper and putting it online is not interesting in the internet sense. The firms have to do more like on the site with news, there needs a video or Audio as well to run it with the simplest player. The headlines should be written in such a way that looks interesting to readers. the length may be change etc.This means that the firms are customer focused and customers can visit easily and happily to the site. The headlines are web friendly plus quizzes, contests, voting etc need to be developed. In the past few years, newspaper companies have been rapidly expanding their Web presence - adding blogs, slide shows and podcasts in the belief that if they built it, advertisers would come. As for the blogs and video content that the site is adding, "those investments will definitely add to advertising revenue.

P105 Greg Jaboe: Optimization

The question is about important of optimization that works for the company. Greg Jarboe shows Google as a case of optimization. Before 2003, Google search page and news ware totally separated field. In early 2003 to 2007, Google was optimizing content for Google news and they put Google news in search page. For example, if you search for “Hillary Clinton.” And scan down the results, you see a little photo somewhere around the fourth listing, in the section labeled New Results. New Results link is news that coming Google news. Google always tries to figure user’s POV. And they improve and optimize content for practicality.

I think optimization is very important issue for the company. The firm needs to improve or develop a research system for analyze product or site. Optimization should accomplish by POV of user.

Drawing People to Online Content, page 128

On page 128 Jordan Gold promotes the idea of special “online headlines” that are constructed especially to drive a click from the reader. The headlines are such as “The 10 Things You Should Never Do at Work” (which if you ask me is not so much just an inviting headline as it is an interesting topic) and “Eagles Release ProBowl Linebacker” (which is withholding information to force the curious user to click).

Frankly, I think it’s kind of stupid to use misleading headlines, such as the second example, to “cheat” an extra click from the visitors. Clicks themselves aren’t worth anything, what you want as a website is for people to spend time on the website. Tricking people into unwanted clicks is just inflating the numbers. To me, the only reason that people are measuring clicks and not time spent on sites is that it’s too hard to make an accurate measurement of time spent.

Apart from cheating the numbers (and the advertisers who trust in them) I also think that this practice is a disservice to the website itself. In Sweden we have a website called Aftonbladet.se which is basically an evening paper that’s grown into the biggest news website in Sweden. Up until a while ago they often used very misleading headlines which sometimes had you wondering if you’d clicked the right news item. For me it got so annoying I even stopped visiting the website, because it was just too much work digging through all the rubbish to find what I was really interested in.

On a sidenote, they seem to have changed this practice now, and, if I may guess, their newly introduced user comments functionality may have something to do with it. On the news items with misleading headlines the comments were often filled with angry people bashing the website and its writers (who, coming from an evening paper background, are constantly fighting a reputation of being relatively unserious about journalism and the truth). This may be an interesting example of a website using the community functionality not only as a service to users, but also as a means of communication from its users.

We also spoke briefly about how Gold’s headline conviction contradicts that of Greg Jarboe, whose interview we read last week, and Heather Lloyd-Martin in the second interview we read this week. The two believe that headlines should be constructed to be easily found by search engines, thus to the point and containing keywords relevant to the article.

I think website owners should only worry about the users – provide a good service and people will link your website. If anything, the one thing the Internet does is shift power towards the “little people” – the users. I believe that when you have them, the rest will follow.

link building - the fundamental essence of the web

On page 114 Eric Ward speaks about link building as the fundamental essence of the web. The World Wide Web is basically a web of links. Although this may seem very trivial, Ward did manage to get me thinking when posing the question, “does a website exist if nobody links to it”? I found this to have something of a philosophical cling to it, something in style with, “if a tree falls down in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it fall, does it make a sound”? Okay this is kind of wandering into the roam of philosophy and the topic of existence, but I still find it to be somewhat relevant. Can something exist without being perceived? As this however is a topic that can be discussed forever, let’s quickly bring it back on track and leave it at as Ward puts it in the very beginning of the chapter: No matter how much time or money you spent on it, a website is invisible until somebody links to it. Users can only get to a website if they know that it exists. This mere fact makes link building as fundamental as the links themselves and Ward manages to emphasize the importance of link building in the online world of PR and marketing. In the offline world a store's at least something physical, so even without any publicity it could still catch some passing-byers and then rely on word of mouth to make it's existence known. In the online world, there are no passing-byers. If a website isn’t linked to the web, it simply isn’t part of the web; it doesn’t exist. Of course the URL could be entered directly, but again the same problem, the user has to know the URL to be able to enter it. It has to be made known, whether it be through online or offline advertising or word of mouth.
Ward mentions two different approaches to link building, the white and the black hat approach. I’ve never really understood why the black hat approach, more known as spam, is still being used until now, especially when everybody hates it. But after reading Wards thoughts about link building, it suddenly makes a little bit more sense why spam is still kept alive. As long as somebody clicks the link, and there will always be a couple that do, no matter how few, it can be seen as success. Cause if the users that clicks through find the website to satisfy their needs, the website owners can rely on word of mouth to make the website known, turning the black hat approach over to a white hat. I'm sure that finding the right channels for building your links is strategically better choice, but I can imagine the desperation of just wanting to get yourself out there. Link building is basically just making your website known and connecting it to the web.

Old PR and Results/Sales Measurement(p. 100)

I really enjoyed reading Jarboe interview as a PR practitioner. Indeed, PR is changing, and PR people are nervous, in a sense, and little bit confused out of this whole change. Basically, Jarboe showed an example where he made a linkage between publicity results and actual sales. This is great, but, we(maybe Jarboe too) have to understand a bigger context.

While there are many ways to categorize PR, here, we need to keep in mind that PR has two subjects: Organization and Product. Traditionally, PR has been 'organizational image marketing' and in 1990s, with the trend of IMC(Integrated Marketing Communication) and a popularity of MPR(Marketing PR), PR has been leveraged in product marketing. In reality, normally, marketing PR budget comes out of marketing budget, while corporate PR budget is allocated separately.

In this interview, Jarboe talks about product PR, not corporate PR, and I agree, if it can, it is better to show the value of PR in terms of $. But, PR shouldn't and wouldn't limit itself to only product marketing PR. Rather, in this age where trust becomes an important corporate asset, businesses would require PR to do more of corporate side of activities.

Question on Page 118

Link Building is an important issue of the web. With the help of link building researchers, scientists, Academics can find out documents very easily. The basic purpose of www is that it is a web of links where any body can link to anything. It is important that links have relevancy which means to place links on relevant sites and pages. The link must be replaceable if the site owner are unhappy with the link and there the exact location, text and description are need to build the link on a site.
Some links are more valuable than others like a site which have the links of some popular website or search engines. The links of sending emails in the form of newsletters say yahoo, MSN etc are very useful because a lot of visitors can see it. Every site has their own potential depending on own linking and its subject matter. Paying for a link is not so much big issue I think because when you pay more the link will also be more popular like links of Cnn.com, ESPN.com, BBc.com etc.The high value links can improve the ranking of a site. If some Art work is included to links that is also a factor of ranking.
Link building is one of the solutions that help in providing high search engine page ranking and improved visibility to a website. For any professional web developer, link building forms the backbone of SEO (Search engine optimization) operations that helps in bringing quality web traffic to your website. I think Link building is an efficient way of enhancing the popularity of a website. To avail the benefit of link building, create genuine and information rich back links that are useful to clients. Make sure that the links are keyword rich that help in boosting the web traffic of website.

Writing Press Releases for the Consumers, page 101

Greg Jarboe has a very practical view on press releases, as is shown in his answer on page 101 (and 102). He preaches optimization of press releases so that they will be found by consumers searching the Internet.

In the interview, he gives a very long answer, but most of it is spent on two extensive examples. There is really not that much substance and Jarboe basically only makes this one point: Plant common search phrases in your press releases so that it will be found by searching consumers.

It really seems to be that simple, and it probably is. However, I think that Jarboe missed the point of the question somewhat, Miller asked “[...] you’re writing a release to be read by the consumer. How does that change the press releases you create?”

Jarboe extensively explains how to get found by consumers, but does not spend a second on how to address them. Press releases are traditionally not very entertaining and follow a certain style that is aimed at journalists, offering quotes and background information to fill up an article. For an ordinary consumer this is not the most effective way of finding information.

Personally, even when looking for information and a press release turns up, I don’t read press releases, unless I’m pretty desperate. If there is a sale – put it on the front page and I will see it.

What I’m slowly getting to is that I don’t think press releases is a good way of communicating with consumers. I believe companies should separate the press releases that they send the press to be forwarded further and what’s essentially just news for and directly to consumers.

Regarding Jarboe’s answer, there is little to add. If you want customers to pick up your press release and read it, they obviously need to find it, and with the amount of press releases being thrown out there being easily found in searches is essential. The question is how effective traditional press releases really are in communicating with customers and how much they really affect sales.

Greg Jarboe on the importance of blogs in PR

When a company wants to get some new information out to the public, they usually publish a press release. The press release then, hopefully, gets picked up by some media and reaches the public. When you talk about media you usually mean newspapers, magazines, TV and more recently news webpages.
I wrote that the press release “hopefully” will get picked up. Well that might make it sound like its all about luck, that’s not completely true. All companies have a PR staff, and ne of their jobs is to make sure the press releases gets picked up by the viable media. I’m not going to go in to how they do this because it’s too off topic. Anyhow, lets say you get allot of hits on your press release and you want to know from what media most of the hits was referred. This is of course very valuable information for the PR staff, so they can know what media to target harder next time.
Oki, back to the topic. There is a new type of news media now days, namely the blogs and podcasts. But, as Jarboe points out, many companies haven’t realized this fact yet. Jarboe really emphasise the importance of blogs. His company made some research for other companies to see where the traffic to the press release came from, and it turned out that in many cases blogs contributed with more traffic than big news organizations.
I have to say that I’m actually not surprised by this. I think it has to do with what type of reader sees the different media. The newspaper might have a hundred times more readers than the blog, however only a small percent of those readers are actually interested in the topic of the press release. With the blog it’s a different story. Blogs are usually specified into one area, so the readers of the blog are more likely to be interested in your information. Another aspect that is in favour for the blogs is the trust issue. Big news media are very faceless or anonymous. With blogs you know that there is an actual person, maybe allot like yourself, writing the content. Of course actual persons write the news for the newspaper as well, but I hope you can see the distinction. My point is that if you follow a certain blog regularly, you are very likely to value the bloggers opinion and thus very likely to read about the things he/she writes about.

P78 Tamara Adlin: adlin, inc.How do you measure success?

“I think customer experience should be a consistent focus in an organization.”

In this Adlin’s question, he didn’t deal with essential meaning of success. He wants to tell elements that help the firm in control. Most people are interested in measuring ROI (Return on investment) but condition of present and future is more important issue for the firm. If you can figure out problems of company in process, product and communication, then you can easily measure success. Quicken finding problem in product which could mean the web site can bring better communications between marketing and product development and able to help an executive team to make a quick decision. Adlin said all of these things impact a company’s ability to satisfy their customers.

I agree with Adlin’s idea but I think the answer doesn’t match to the question. I think measuring success is calculation of profit. Figuring out the problems of product is important but the firm should see expansive review of problem in social, economic and political matter. Once the firm is in stabilization, it is easy to make a profit.

competition in today's online market

So on page 16 Greg Hartnett speaks of the differences of starting up a web business today compared to the early days of the Internet, and initially brings up how the online market has gotten dramatically more competitive over the years, which, no offense to Hartnett, is kind of obviously logical. Back in the early days of the Internet nobody really knew what to make of it. The future of the Internet was extremely clouded, and I can imagine there were many that thought it was just a fad that wouldn’t last. Of course with few players entering the market, it didn’t leave much competition and I can imagine that many of the pioneers did fairly well, which probably lifted the whole “it’s just a fad” thought and triggered the boom. And with the whole boom and bursting of the bubble, I think the online business roam reached that stage of stability that any technology or market eventually reaches. Everything kind of swings into place. There are now the few strong players, which any new enterer has to compete with. And I don’t think competing with branding, whether it be in the brick- and mortar roam or WWW branding, is ever easy, ergo the market has become a lot more competitive.

Hartnett’s advice to be more specific makes a lot of sense in a market where I believe most general grounds have been covered since long ago. Because I think competing with the big guys, which consumers of course always will prefer, is closer to impossible than to hard. One of the fundamentals of marketing is offering something that your competitors don’t have, and the big guys most likely have a whole lot more than a new enterer could ever offer. But since the big players mostly cover a very broad consumer base, niching makes a lot of sense in a strategically marketing approach. I think the number of niches out there is endless. I think there’ll always be a market seeking those very specific products, no matter how niched. So instead of thinking big and instead strategically targeting these smaller chunks of the market is the best way to success, as it is in any competitive environment. And there’s nothing that would stop you from expanding to other niches once you’ve conquered a market, and on this way slowly taking down the big guys.

What I found rather interesting is what Hartnett brings up about search engine marketing. He sees niching as the way to go because of the growing value of search engines, and I just realized the logic in this marketing approach. Any new online business that targets a too general market has no chance of competing with the big players in a search engine query. If a potential consumer types in a query that’s too general, of course the results will be more than covered by the existing businesses. However, if the newbie targets a specific niche, I believe they have more than a fair chance to catch those potential consumers searching for that specific niche. Since most Internet users go through search engines in their online browsing, niching is most likely the best way to compete in today’s online market.

Issue of Persona (75-76)

Tamara Adlin suggested "persona" perspective while approaching your web marketing. A few thoughts on this:

1/ Her job is interesting, customer experience consulting. I think her notion of 'persona' all boils down to the basic: look at your marketing from a customer POV, rather than company POV. She noted "I think that far too many companies just look at it page by page by page, so the site ends up being not so pleasant to use"(p. 76) Too many websites focus on fancy design, emphasize their strengthes, but, not considering user's persona/experience.

2/ If I can borrow Adlin's term, I think now company also should think about "their persona". What this means, with the web 2.0, through web, companies need to share 'conversation' not just promoting their strengthes. To share the conversation, companies no longer should build impersonal website, but, web conversation channel with personality. One of the strategies to do this is to showing a real person(employee) when sharing conversation through the web. For example, corporate blogs these days, upload contents with a real people's voice, rather than "Dell", company name.

3/ As Patrik pointed out below, persona, if it took too narrowly, it could have a risk. So, companies should have a balance between the use of statistics and persona.

Tamara Adlin on "personas" - page 73-74

Tamara Adlin talks about how a site can improve their customer experience. The main thing she points out is that you shouldn’t think in terms of “users” or “customers”, but instead what she calls personas. Personas are basically an imaginary person of a certain sex, age, income, etc. Adlin proposes that personas give a much clearer picture of what is needed to improve customer experience. She makes a good example, instead of having a segment, like 35- to 45-year-old women who live in the suburbs, you have the persona Maryanne. Maryanne is 37, lives in Bellevue, has two kids and not allot of time for shopping, etc.
I definitely see her point, and agree that personas probably is a better way to approach the issue. However, I see a risk of getting too focused. If you dig down too low you might end up with a service that is perfect for Maryanne, but at the same time is completely horrible for anyone who doesn’t fit the very narrow persona that is Maryanne. Also, if you want to make a service for more than one persona, you will probably have allot of trouble satisfying everyone without some more general view. I feel that it’s still viable to think in broader terms as users and customers but in combination with the personas.

Adlin also talks allot about the importance that everyone in the company has a very clear picture of who their customers are. Her style for making this happen is by starting at the top, with the shareholders, executives and other influential personnel. This way all directives going down will already be focused on the target.
I can’t do anything else than agree on this point. When you are selling a product or a service, the most important thing is to know who is going to buy it. If you fail at this point, your company will most likely not exist for very long. So everyone working inside the company needs to be very clear about who your buyer is. If for example the CEO has one perception of whom the buyer is and then sends down directives to a lower level manager who has another perception, well anyone can understand that this will cause problems.

Using the Competition, page 77

I chose this question in Adlin’s interview mainly because I think he broke a tough taboo when saying that he looks at “competitive web sites as version 1.0 of our redesign”. Stealing, or even just being inspired, by competitors, is, according to my background, not something that we speak loudly about. Still, it’s obviously impossible not to be influenced by what your competitors are doing, and if there is a competitor’s idea that users love, you too need to supply them with it to stay in the competition.

It’s too bad the question (and thus also Adlin’s answer) is focused on the usability aspect, and not the competition itself. I agree with Adlin that with regard to usability competitors may be used to learn from. However, you can’t really copy usability without copying an entire web site. It’s the context – not individual details – that decides whether or not a web site is easy to use or not. Sure, certain features, such as perhaps Amazon’s one click buy (had it not been patented), can be picked up, but to me that is not about usability but features and services.

Something I’d like to have seen Adlin discuss is how a company should really act in the online community. When people can easily communicate with each other and with companies, the company’s personality may become a greater issue than it has been up till now.

For example, if customers (and general Internet users) realize that a company is copying other companies it will affect how people see that company. Also the number of people who actually realize that the company is copying other companies will be greater due to the ease of communication online.

What I’m getting at, though perhaps a little off topic, is that when people really start talking with and about companies’ and the way they act (such as has increasingly been the case in blogs), having a good social image may become more important to companies.

Personally I think that companies need to pay extra attention to the ethics of their actions, and the way in which the public will interpret their actions. It would have been interesting to see how Adlin thinks a company should relate to its competition online with this in mind.

Page 23 First Question comment

Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Many advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of "brand image" and "brand loyalty". For these purposes, advertisements sometimes embed their persuasive message with factual information. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including television, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet and billboards. On the internet search type advertising are impressive and banner advertising is also a good option. Mostly people not like to click on banner advertising so that type of advertising becomes useless from time to time. Advertising is important to companies. It is used to exploit all aspects of their product in a positive way. Ads convey crucial information about the price, quality, and availability of products, they save consumers time and energy. In addition, advertising images are responsible for part of the pleasure people take in making purchases. Advertising doesn't sell to your audience. Its job is to get you noticed for the specific things you do well. Advertising promotes the distinguishing features, benefits and advantages of your offer to a wide market. The goal of advertising is to bring in valuable leads for the selling process to take place. Advertising is important, what are its strengths and what are its weaknesses, making a judgment on how it's important to your business. Depending on how good your product is, you will be able to use different kinds of advertising.

positioning on the web

Jacob Hawkins speaks in his interview about overstock.com and their choice of positioning that has made them the online success that they are. When it comes to positioning, Hawkins doesn’t make any greater difference between the online and offline world, meaning that either way it’s all about finding a customer niche and trying to fulfill it.

I’m however not too sure about this, thinking his approach may have been a bit too general, looking maybe too strictly at the process of positioning, and not really answering the question of what works on the Internet. The way I see it there has to be some significant differences, at the least in how you choose your position in the online in comparison to the offline world. To me the number of positions you can take on the Internet must be somewhat more limited that in the real world. There are several positions and niches that I just can see doable on the Internet, like selling products through the experience approach, like Starbucks and their coffee. I can’t even see it possible to sell true exclusiveness in the online world, since I think there’s a certain point where the price makes the customer want to touch the product before buying it, which of course you can’t do on the Internet.

The value niche in which overstock.com competes can’t in any way be unique. It may have been unique back in the very beginning, but I think it’s more likely that this position is today one of the most common you can have on the Internet. The reason being that I think most customers do online shopping strictly for lower prices. If they can find the same prices in a real store, they would probably go there instead.

So the value niche, selling branded products for cheaper prices, is probably a good position to take, explaining Overstock’s success. Problem however now being that this market must be quite saturated already, Internet business being easy to start up, leaving a whole bunch of tough competition. I think to be successful in today’s market a company has to niche itself even more, position itself even more specifically under the value niche, and going that extra mile for the customer. Just like Overstocks working hard to satisfy theirs, a new company has to find a way to satisfy their customers, maybe by e.g. offering speedy deliveries.

Except for this customer beneficial positioning, I can only see one other position working in the online world, and that’s offering more unique products (but not necessarily more expensive ones). I think that except for those who shop for cheaper prices there’s an additional group of people that shop online for products not available in their local stores. In the end however, I think it's always about the prices.

user generated content and travel

On page 50 of the Glueck interview we are once again brought into the topic of social networking., more than clearly one of the hottest trends on the Internet right now. With the risk of repeating myself from previous blog entries, I want to point out how it’s the influence of generation Y that’s shaping the future of the Internet; both by structure and by content. Although what Travelocity is doing on their website isn’t strictly social networking, which Glueck also emphasizes, he instead uses another for today’s Internet important keyword, which is “user-generated content”. And the way I see it, Generation Y is just as much about user generated material as it is about social networking. I think this is something that comes rather natural in a time that’s all about communication and connectivity, and where information’s so easy accessible and distributable. Everybody with an Internet connection can easily share their expertise and thoughts. And the information seekers find trust in having multiple and independent sources on the same topic, rather than just having one source, even if it may be of high stature. We can just take the growing popularity of Wikipedia as an example for that. And I believe this type of user generated knowledge will just keep on spreading

But except for the typical generation Y traits I’ve already mentioned, I believe one of the forces that’s thriving all these knowledge sharing communities and reviews may be this generation’s strong focus on individuality. I think it’s an attitude of wanting to be unique and to be seen and stand out from the masses that drives members of this generation to share knowledge, skills and experiences.

Now going back to topic of discussing Travelocity’s website, I find it quite interesting how Glueck mentions travel to be one of the biggest areas of communities on the Internet. After first thinking that this can’t be right what he’s saying, I’m now coming to realize that this may actually be true. There’s a lot of websites and more specifically user generated content out there about travel. I can mention a very popular Swedish website as an example, resedagboken.se. This is a website where users write diaries about their travels, during their travels, with optionals like maps, pictures and videos. They post their diaries so that their family and friends can travel with them in spirit, but I truly believe that it’s more often about sharing their experiences so that other people planning on doing a similar trip can share their joys and avoid their pains. I think it’s human nature to share like this. In the past it’s only been to family and friends, but this generation has now taken it all to a higher level, making our sharing’s available to everyone.

There must be an extreme demand for information about travels and destinations, with travelers like myself wanting to get the most out of our trips, so integrating user reviews into their website must have been a very rewarding strategic move by Travelocity. As I already mentioned today’s generation have come to trust other individuals more than if Travelocity had just posted some information, but I think people trust other individuals even more if they can tell that they think alike, which would make the categorized reviews yet another good move.

P27 Jacob Hawkins: Overstock.com_Online promotion

“The Internet is a direct marketer’s dream”
“The key is to help them find what they are looking for as quickly as possible.”

There are brand marketers, like Ford or Visa, don’t measure which advertising dollars are driving which revenue dollars and direct marketers, like Overstock.com, do measure which advertising dollars are generating which revenue dollars. Overstock.com advertises anywhere in online, so far as website is not illegal. The Internet is a direct marketer’s dream. Overstock.com developed an in-house tracking system that allowed them to track the performance of each online advertisement they did. They were able to remove poor advertisements and invest in the great campaigns. Overstock.com was one of the first companies that use such datas and it gave them great advantages over competitors. They can select advertisements efficiently. But increased competitor they find underpriced advertising deals and have spent a great deal of time optimizing their company. The companies who survive long-term are the ones that discover how to best meet the needs of their customers.

I agreed with a marketing plan which Overstock.com did. I think Overstock.com survived because of datas and analysis. Figure out needs of customers and select advertisements efficiently. But with many competitors, E-mails or online banner can turn away from customers. To survive online market, I think multifarious way of marketing is need like on & offline linkage marketing or advertising in online game or others. Massive Inc (Research & analysis Company) announced that advertisements in game raised recognition and consumer preferences of brand. Online is a huge place for a study of successful marketing.

P63 Lauren Freedman: the e-tailing group_Customer Expectations

“It’s easier for a small person to compete now than it was ten years ago.”

When customers are shopping online, customer expectations are very high. Last 14 years many changes have taken place. Customers are starting to expect better service or product. Fast delivery, real-time feed back or service and in-stock product. Those elements are what customers want from a merchant. These are a lot of pressure, from a merchant perspective. As time goes by, customers gain more experience toward shopping. The experience customers are using rich media like audio, video or multiple views to test or observe their product. They also use tools like customer reviews to get detail information. These kind things make more confidence toward buying product. And merchants should consider these kind systems. Because of customer expectation, better techniques of marketing are required.

Oldani(p.40) + Freedman(p. 67) Customer service

Both of the two questions I look at this week from Oldani(p. 40) and Freedman(p. 67) talk about the customer services/reviews. A few thoughts on on-line customer service.

1/ With the personal media, like blog, it is so easy to publish consumer complaints by themselves, but, for companies, it is so difficult to manage them. Look at "AOL cancellation issue" by Vincent Ferrari (http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY), which became an issue even in main TV station news. This is a new challenge for companies.

2/ Oldani emphasized that they UNEDIT consumer complaints. That's very important. Before web 2.0, company website EDIT and only showed good news for them, but, in web 2.0, where individual can own and run a media, companies should not edit and open even to consumer compalaint. Why? Because, if you don't contain them(complaints), then, it doesn't mean it will go away, but, those complaints will be expanded outside the company website, which will be even more difficult to influence. Look at Dell's blog, they now talk about consumer complaints too.

3/ For the customer service, speed would matter. As people enjoy shopping 24/ 7, they want a faster speed.

4/ While, customers can easily put complaints online, in the web 2.0, customers also can easily put and spread complements too. Companies should pay attention to this phenomena. Transparency applies not only to bad news but also to good news. Consumers are the best PR persons.

5/ Companies used to manage in-bound consumer complaints, but, moving forward, they should manage out-bound too. This means, companies closely monitor consumer complaints/complements online, and approach them to fix the problem, address it, and build relationship with online consumers and reviewers.

Jeffrey Glueck: Changes in travel market p.49

Asked about the changes made in travel market by Travelocity, Jeffrey Glueck puts it into three stages. Stage 1: from the first foundation of the company as the first online travel company till their establishment in this industry and the popularity earned among the customers. First stage is about tools and prices, he says. Tools being the Internet for searching flights and the convenience earned by that. Unlike before, when the customers had to go some travel agencies to arrange flights, which would only be in service certain hours a day, now Travelocity changed the direction of the market. People can access any traveling info by internet 24/7 and by a lower prices than traditional traveling companies. The second stage is about "brand affinity and being customer's champion". Now, Travelocity got brand name/reputation among the customers (intangible resources) and have earned their trust. The third stage was about relevance and experience. They not only provided flight information, but also, planned out the whole journey for the customers by their wishes, including where to eat, what culture programs to visit and many more.

I think, Travelocity had a great first mover advantage by completely conquering the market at first and earning much popularity among the customers by that. Although there wre many competitors later as Expedia, or TripAdvisor, by regular innovations and improvements, it succesfully beats the competition. Everytime they come up with new things, like this time the costumer review/community function that provides the travleres opportunity to share their experiences with others so that later onews get even smarter at traveling. In this kind of competitive market, with relatively low entry and exit barriers, Travelocity is doing pretty good I think.

Media Planning and Measuring Marketing Efforts, page 55

Jeffrey Glueck of Travelocity has some really fresh and interesting views on where to spend your marketing money and how to measure the return on investment to maximize the efficiency of your efforts.

It’s not rocket science, Glueck’s idea is indeed very simple, but at least I hadn’t thought of this before, though of course I haven’t really been involved in running TV commercials or other such advertising campaigns.

Glueck is basically saying two things: a) Clicks on search engine ads can sometimes be derived from TV commercials or other marketing efforts that made the user make the search, and b) a lot of the searches that result in clicks are made specifically for a brand name, which makes it misleading to bundle all search words together when generic words (such as “Hawaii hotel”) aren’t pulling their weight.

Another issue, that I don’t believe Glueck discussed in his answer, is that to me it seems quite pointless to pay for your own brand name, at least if you are a somewhat big brand – because you will still end up at the top of the search list. In the case of Travelocity, Glueck’s company, searching for “Travelocity” on Google results in their paid ad at the top, followed by the exact same link at the top of the ordinary search results. The following three results are also links to various Travelocity sites.

If I were Travelocity, or any other major brand, I wouldn’t pay for my own brand name, which may sound like a small deal, but the numbers in the interview said that as much as three quarters of the search engine clicks are done with your own brand name as the search word. In other words this practice would cut costs of search word advertising with 75 per cent.

Retail Stores and E-Commerce, page 43

Mark Oldani of Circuit City is asked how he utilizes and coordinates the company’s retail stores with its online sales. The answer is simple and quite intuitive: A seamless customer interface across all channels.

It really makes sense since it makes it easy for customers to deal with the company, and rids them of the headache of a split “company personality”, and instead lets them deal with a company that has a single identity. As customers, I don’t believe we think of the underlying structures of companies, we see the brand and expect every channel of the brand to recognize us as its customer.

While this may seem trivial from this perspective, I imagine that a company starting out with a retail business and a traditional bricks-and-mortar business model may very well carry the “baggage” (as named by Afuah and Tucci) that would make it separate the channels more sharply, even from the customers’ perspective.

Oldani goes on to describe the popularity of in-store pickup, which I can really identify myself with. At least when purchasing technological items I almost always make the order online to be sure I get exactly the right item and not have the stress of a line of people waiting for me to get done when discussing with the cashier. If I don’t have an online order when I get to the store I often times even use the computers there to place an online order and then use the quick pick up line to simply pick up the item.

However, when buying things that are not technological products, such as clothes or similar products that are easily evaluated physically, I prefer in store shopping.

To summarize, strong coordination between retail and online (and whatever other channels there might be) is essential, and quite an obvious conclusion looking at it from a top down – and not from a traditional retail business’ – perspective. Other than that, there is not really much to add.

Lauren Freedman: e-tailing group – Online shoppers

Lauren starts out with the claim that most online shoppers shop online because of convenience and time saving, and that price, while still being a factor, comes in second place. I really don’t understand this claim. The impression I get form my friends and surrounding is that the main reason to shop online is price, or in some cases availability. I can understand what she means with time saving, you don’t have to go to the store to buy something. However, when buying online it will take longer for you to actually get the product because of shipping. For convenience I assume she also refers to the fact that you don’t have to go to the store, but there are some cases when a store is preferred. I’m thinking about the times when something goes wrong. Maybe the product had some factory fault, maybe it breaks and you want to use your warranty or maybe you just change your mind and want to return the product. At these times, the decision to shop online may prove to cause some big inconvenience. If you bought the product in the store you simply go back and talk to someone and they will help you out. However if you bought it online the procedure is usually longer and more difficult. You first have to get in contact with the company by mail or telephone. Depending on what company you are dealing with this can take allot of time. Then you need to wait for the company to send you a waybill. After this you have to send the product back. This means packing everything back in the box and making sure it won’t get damaged in the mail.
I truly feel that shopping in a store is more convenient than shopping online. That’s why I often choose to buy a product from a store over online if the price deferens isn’t that big.

I mentioned availability as a reason to shop online. By this I mean when you want to buy a certain model of a product but you can’t find it in a store. This usually happens when you want a model that only is available in another country. I find that this is most relevant when it comes to clothing or accessories. I personally went online to buy a pair of shoes from USA because they had stopped selling that particular model in Sweden.

Jacob Hawkins: Overstock.com - Customer reviews

Jacob points out that customer reviews indeed are very important for any company. This because buyers generally want to get information about the product through reviews rather than from the product specs. I can strongly relate to this. Even tough the product specs interest me, the reviews and experiences from others are the most important thing. The reason for this, as Jacob accurately points out, is that the customer reviews feel less jaded. Information coming from the company itself can’t be trusted, or so you feel, because they obviously want you to buy the product. So to get information about a product from a source who definitely won’t point out any possible flaws isn’t worth much.
An important fact about reviews is that most people who actually takes the time to write about a product, writes a good review with the intention to help other customers.

Jacob points out that reviews actually can benefit the company as well. As mentioned before, reviews give customers good information about the products, something that all serious businesses should appreciate. But above that, something that is maybe even more valuable, the company gets feedback from their customers.

Jacob also talks about the fact that his company monitors the reviews to, as he claims, get rid of reviews that aren’t helpful to the other customers. He claims that they don’t delete negative reviews simply because they are negative, and I think that might be true. However, I will always be suspicious since us users can’t check what reviews was deleted. A better solution to minimize the effect of bad reviews (with bad I mean pointless slander or spam) is to keep them visible on the site, but minimize them as default and mark them as bad. This way all suspicion can be cast aside and those who want to read all review have the option to do so, while others doesn't have to be bothered.

Page 68 last question comments

The basic purpose of every business is to satisfy the customers. A business must identify their customers and also their needs and what they buy. For this purpose I think surveys results, or face to face communication is effective. The business will learn a lot about their customers and its cost effective tools for the business to adapt. The firm must try to offer some thing creative and unique over their competitor and their product or service functionality must be different. The firm must try to prepare their list of priorities like what to do first what to do this year what to do next and so on. The customer service also matters if the service the business provides is better than the customer remember their good service for the long time in their mind rather than the price. The firm must learn a lot from the Ecommerce evolution and try to adopt the right action in the right time and place. Also firm needs to improve their shipping as I told earlier because customers need sudden satisfaction. In the website the firm publishes those items which they have in stock the absence of products in the stock, so customers needs to be informed about that. The richer media for advertisement is also very important for the business.

page 27 How do you attract new customers to the site?

I think the one basic tool which is very attractive to customers is price of the company products. It’s a basic marketing tool for both online or offline business. The customers will be attracted by offering qualitative products at bargain prices. Pricing includes discounts, seasonal discounts, prizes, bonuses etc. the 4p, s strategy for the firm is very important to adapt effectively like product, placement, pricing and promotion. Time is also under discussion to include in 4p, s category. More than that if a business offers its products and services in a wider location means cover huge geographical as well as offering different brands to customer’s that business will be successful and customers are more and more. The advantage of offering more brands is that one brand profit will help other brands business like some brands are in question mark stage, some in star position, and some in cash cow and so on. The other useful source for firms to attract customers is advertising and also the advertising media which one to use is also important for the firm. If a firm use such source of media for advertisement which can’t target the targeted segment of customers so that will be useless. Emails, television commercials are common sources but nowadays advertisement through mobiles are very effective source. Because that advertisement will reach to target customers individually and he will be up to date every time. More than that every customer needs satisfaction and it is very important for both firm and customer. If the customers are well satisfied they will use their word of mouth source positively will have an impact on firm business indirectly.
It is important for every firm if firm leads over competitor that will be very positive affect to the firm business. Although such points looks very easy to use and adopt but it need a lot of planning, controlling, motivational activities in the firm organization structure.
Other way to attract customers is if the firm focuses in niche marketing like target each individual for their product use. In offline example like small tea bags introduced by Tapal or Lipton a liver brother company products and in the online environment I think mobile and emails are used to be as niche marketing. The customers what they are looking in to website can find as quickly as possible is also a reason. The longer time it takes for a customer what they are looking for on the firm website, seems to be less chance of visiting again. In the offline world persons goes to that shops which are near to their doors. In the online world firm must personalize their website store for each visitor. The customer reviews also affects the efficiency of the firm like many customers pay more attention to the customer review than they do the other information that firm provides customer about their product.

Jacob Hawkins: Advice on moving to Online Business. P.32

Reading Hawkins, we once again are assured that having a strong foundation = identifying your business model clearly and following it during your business is crucial for your business’ success.

I am currently reading a book on product innovation, where the writer emphasizes the very first stage of inventing/innovating a product – asking the right questions on what task a product has to perform. The correct implementation of this stage will lead to a right understanding of customer needs, then eventually the product parameters. However, if carried out wrongly, you get what is called mutations (imitation of existing products) rather than innovations, or even a failure of your design. I found the book really interesting and useful, however it’s whole another topic.

The reason I thought of it is that, just like the problem definition in product design, a business model in marketing is an extremely essential part of the whole process. You screw it up – you screw up the whole business.

As much as Hawkins emphasizes the importance of moving online, as much I am convinced that only online retailing would not be the potential to take up the whole market. I think still a lot of people will be preferring shopping offline, where you can actually see the product/test it rather than just relying on reviews or other sources. Perhaps, here the best option is what Hawkins calls multi-channel retailing, i.e. having both online and offline integrating with each other. Thus, in addition to “moving-online” and “integration” factors Hawkins is encouraging, the keypoint, I think, is to keep track of everything. Online/offline stores/catalogs should all cooperate in what service they provide, and in cases replace one each other’s disadvantage by others’ advantages.

Short thoughts on Amazon Daily

With the introduction by Prof. Naveen, I had a chance to visit Amazon Daily (http://www.amazon.com/gp/daily/ref=cm_dly_open). I also thought it is not organized by Amazon, but, it seems like it is organized by them. Here's an explanation by Amazon on Amazon Daily.

"Amazon Daily is a blog—short for "web log"—that contains posts by editors from all over the company... Each post gives you the opportunity to provide private feedback to the editor as well as leave public comments for other customers to see."

Whether it is posted by them or not, this could be a good example of corporate blogging in the following context:

1) For corporate blogging, it is wise to limit the writer to people company chose. While "openness" is a spirit of blogging, that doesn't mean companies should allow anybody to be a writer who can post in their yard(blog). Actually, who writes does matter. Somebody who knows the business, corporate history, and how to tell stories(in a transparent way) should be writers. In this case, editors of amazon contribute to this blog.

2) While there are limited writers, still, it should open for comments to visitors/customers, which Amazon does. Using this customer reply, or by responding to outside blog posts on Amazon, company can share conversation.

3) "Story Asset": As blog posts are accumulated, people can easily search whenever people want to know about a specific aspect of a company or product. While old website holds a bunch of 'facts', and promotional slogans, blog shows interesting 'inside stories.' People can build relationship by exchanging 'stories', not just by facts. So, blog posts, for example, becomes a 'story asset', what I would call. All the posts at Amazon daily is certainly an example.

Why do you think companies create bad websites (I.E. using too much flash, ActiveX and other technologies)?

Holman makes the case that the people that are actually making the websites are mostly concerned with things like looks and how “cool” the site is, and not about things like usability or loading time. The reason for this, she claims, is because the “techies” are trained to use the fancy technological tools, and thus will use them.
I have some experience with making websites for companies and have friends who actually work in this field, and I'm not sure if I agree fully with Holman. Sure, I have seen the type of websites that she is referring too and you have to put blame on the person/persons who made the site. However I feel that a big portion of the blame should lie on the company, or the persons in the company that actually hired the people that made the site. No matter if you buy a shirt or if you hire someone to do a job, the buyer always needs to do some research and quality control. There are enough people/companies out there who actually knows how to make a website, they have the technological and artistic skills needed as well as the knowledge to make it fast and user friendly. And they are actually not hard to find.
But of course, if you give the job to someone who only knows the technological parts of making a website, the end result is not going to be great.

Holman also emphasizes the role of the marketer when it comes to building a site today. Ten years ago you could get a competitive website that was more or less only made by techies. But the world has changed. I fully agree that the role of the marketer is very important. One good example of this is how can people find the site? Sure, you can do advertising and other things, but that costs money. What people usually do if the want to find something is use a search engine, like google. This is especially important for smaller businesses or newcomers that perhaps don't have allot of money to spend on advertisement, but also for the bigger already established companies.
The goal is to get as high up on the list of search results as possible when someone is using you keywords. But this is not an easy task. There is a whole science devoted to this. Companies whose only product is to make you site higher on the list.
So yes, the marketers part in building a website is very important if you want a competitive end result.