Internet Marketing Blog

Google Maps Knows All

A little geek humor. This is a cute, clever and funny short by The Vacationeers about the dangers of Google Street View:

My New Employer

As I mentioned at the end of October, I've left the wilds of independent consultancy and taken my Internet marketing practice to Tunheim Partners, a Twin Cities-based strategic communications company that offers public relations, public affairs  and, my specialty, of course, Internet marketing.

My first official day on the job was Tuesday but since I've been working alongside my new colleagues since October, it did not at all feel like "the first day." Going from the freedom I had being self-employed, to the requirements of being an employee has been a fairly big, but entirely positive, change for me.

Now I really get to focus on the things I love to do and no longer have to deal with the necessary but pain in the ass things that go along with running your own business.

It really hit me last Friday because I had just a fantastic day that, when I stopped to think about it, made me all the more excited about working here. The first half of my day was taken up with working on several very cool and exciting online campaigns we are in the process of executing.

In addition to making me feel right at home from the moment I moved in, the people here are incredible to work with. As an independent guy, I often worked pretty much alone and when I did work with teams, it was not on a daily basis. It's a dynamic I didn't realize I missed and one I very much enjoy.

The reason I enjoy it so much is because everyone I work with is smart, skilled, and passionate about what they do. I've got a ton of talent with which to work, so I'm able to do some very engaging work that I had not often had the chance to do.

My lunch hour was spent discussing and debating some serious public policy ideas! As a matter of the course of business, we were trying to come to terms and understand some aspects of a problem and the way we did that was through discussion and debate.

I absolutely love such intellectual exercises, so it was like being in college again.

Then the rest of the day I returned to working on exciting projects.  When the day was over, I just thought to myself: I love my new job!

So, for the record: I am now Director of e-Strategy at Tunheim Partners. My email address here is derickson@tunheim.com. My phone number is 952-851-7242.

Ciao.

The Very Big Corporation Of America

It's been a little more than a month since I've "sold out," as my friends would jokingly say, and gone corporate.

I gotta say, I am enjoying it a lot; more than I thought I would. I gave up a little freedom but I get to work with a lot of very smart people who love what they're doing. How could you not have fun in such an environment?

Still, I'd forgotten about many of the trappings of the corporate world. One of the most glaring of those things is the catch-phrases that get bandied about so effortlessly. I chuckle to myself when I hear one, but I'm sure I will inevitably eventually catch myself using them.

Anyway, the point of this post is to laugh at myself and my environment. I was thinking recently about Monty Python and their wonderful parody of Corporate America in the Crimson Permanent Assurance, the short film that preceded their feature-length film, The Meaning Of Life. So, without further ado, here is my favorite lampoon of Corporate America:

My New Crib

That's me at my new diggs.

I moved offices along with New School Communications after my friend and business partner Blois Olson sold his company to the Tunheim Partners PR firm; I'm going along for the ride.

We moved in last weekend so this is the first week at the new location; which is in Minneapolis, very close to the Humphrey Terminal and Mall of America.

So, I'm snapping photos with my crappy camera phone and one of Tunheim's Vice Presidents walks by my office, pauses, chuckles, stops and asks me with a smile what the photos are for. I explain that they are for the amusement of my friends seeing me go "corporate." She was nice enough to take a picture of me, which you see above.

I have a lovely view of the hotel across the street and I'm told that there are often nude sitings, a phenomena I'm not quite sure I'm ready to see. I do also have a view--not a vista--of the Saint Paul skyline, which is nice.

The first couple of days I was absolutely freezing (which was the case with the previous office) and that drives me absolutely crazy. I hate being cold. But today, happily, I found the heat register so that will no longer be a problem.

Tunheim rents the entire 11th floor of the Riverview Tower and the place is laid out as you'd expect any offices to be laid out, so it does feel corporate.

So I'm gonna keep it loose and keep it real by calling my new office, "The Crib."  :-)

Haste Makes Mistakes

I've received two comments about the inaccuracy of my last post, Google Docs Explained In (Ripped Off) Plain English. In that post, I said that Google had appropriated Common Craft's wonderful "In Plain English" format and style to produce a video explaining their great Google Docs service.

Had I simply watched the entire video, I would have seen "Video by commoncraft" in the final frame. Is two minutes and fifty seconds too high a price to pay for accuracy? Of course not. I could have watched the entire video or I could have visited Common Craft's web site and I would have learned that Google was a client.

My bad. There's no excuse for it and I apologize for the error.

It is interesting how powerful a brand Common Craft's format has become--at least among a certain psychographic, of which I'm clearly a member--that the moment I see "In Plain English" or watch the format they use, I immediately think of Common Craft. That tells you how well done their videos are and how successful they've been with them.

The Mixing Brands Dilemma

My screw-up illustrates an interesting dilemma: Should you or should you not mix brands? More often than not you do not dilute one brand with another. Perhaps that explains why the Common Craft logo appears on the last frame of the video.

Not to excuse my error, but had I seen the "Video by commoncraft" at the beginning of Google Docs Explained In Plain English, I obviously wouldn'tve made the error I did. Rather than, hey, they ripped off Common Craft!, my initial reaction to the video would have been, cool, Common Craft is explaining Google Docs.

In this case, rather than diluting either, establishing both brands at the outset would have inspired confidence in the content because they are two brands I like and trust a great deal.

Google and Common Craft would obviously have better research and insight than I to make that call. Regardless, Google was smart to hire Common Craft to explain their services because they are the best at explaining complex, technical stuff to real people.

Minneapolis School Bus Accident Victim Was Local Blogger

The Minneapolis man who was killed by a school bus near Lake Calhoun last Thursday was identified by his iPod and turned out to be thirty year old local blogger, Adam Finley.

According to Mashable, Finley blogged for TV Squad--where today staff are reposting their favorite Finley pieces--and for AdJab.

Finley published a podcast at Raise Your Children My Way, Damn It! and maintained a MySpace page.

Metro Blogging Minneapolis remembers Finley.

My condolences go out to Adam's friends and families.

Happy Belated Blogiversary To Moi

I just realized that my blogiversary has passed without me even realizing it, so here's a belated Happy Blogiversary to me!

I had been blogging here for exactly two years on August 3.  On August 3, 2005, I kicked things off by whining about Radio Userland as a blogging platform.

I can't honestly say that I've been blogging since then; more like I've been intermittently blogging for two years.  But since I relaunched this year, I've been trying to blog at least three times a week and I've been pretty successful about posting on a daily basis.

So far, so good.

I guess I'll have to put myself in the doghouse for forgetting my blogiversary; knowing me, it'll probably take me a week to get out.

Off The Grid

I took a vacation to Vermont over the weekend and ended up staying one day more after my return flight was canceled. Though I mostly had phone and Internet access throughout my stay, there were points during my stay where I had no connection at all.

The loss of access gives you some perspective. You realize how much communications technology has become woven into the fabric of our everyday existence. I don't know how many times I reflexively reached for my MDA to look something up online only to be disappointed to discover I had no access.

I was hardly roughing it; all my hotel rooms had broadband access, the Burlington airport had wifi, and for the most part of my trip,  my phone had Internet access. But getting shut down forced me to forget about work and focus on other things. Such as Vermont's tremendous natural beauty.

The incredible vistas in the mountains with a quality of light that suffuses the deep green flora in a soft glow.

It's easy to get caught up in the everyday details of business so you do sometimes need to both take a step back and literally smell the roses and, if you're lucky, get the creative juices flowing again.

That natural beauty was breathtaking and inspired creativity; and that's not a bad thing at all for business.

Online Customer Service - Photo Sharing

I clicked on a link to someone's Flickr photo album the other day and got the following error message:

Flickr was down and instead of the photos I was expecting, I got these instructions to print out the page, color in the circles, and post it to Flickr for a chance to win a free Pro account. Wow! Great customer service.

I understand that technology can go awry but that fact doesn't make it any more furstrating when I actually encounter it. All I really need is for a company to acknowlege my frustration and pledge to fix it.

Flickr did that and more. Here's the text from the photo above:

Arrggh! Our tubes are clogged!

Because this sucks*, we thought you might like to enter an impromptu competition to win a FREE PRO ACCOUNT!

Just print out this page and colour in the dots. When the site's back up, take a photo of your creation and post it ot Flickr, tagged with "flickrcolourcontest".

Team Flickr will pick a winner in the next couple of days, and that lucky duck will get a free year of Pro.

* Seriously, we apologise for the unannounced downtime. We're working as fast as we can to get flickr.com back online. Details here.

I know the chances I have of winning that Pro account are remote (as of this writing, there have been 1,058 photos tagged with flickrcolourcontest) but their smart anticipation of inevitable technical problems with empathy for my frustration, the humor displayed in offering a coloring contest as a response to customer frustration, and the gesture of offering the chance at a free Pro account go a long way toward alleviating my aggravation. AOL could learn a lot from Flickr. The fact that I took the trouble to follow their instructions and comment on their clever customer service just proves how effective it is. Here's my entry:

Flickr Coloring Contest - 07/19/06 Hosted on Zooomr

You've noticed, no doubt, that the photo above his hosted at Zooomr. While I'm obviously very impressed with Flickr's customer service expertise, I gotta say that Zooomr's got it figured out as far as photo sharing is concerned from a blogger's point of view.

They are actively recruiting bloggers with free Pro accounts of their own. The best Zooomr feature is ready-made, cut and paste code for a varitety of sizes of your photos so you can easily embed them in your blog. Click here to get your own free Pro account.

Help Victims Of Hurricane Katrina

I remember the horror and pity I felt when watching the coverage of the Southeast Asia Tsunami. I'm feeling the same thing as I watch coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Help out however you can. Here's a FEMA press release to tell you how:

Cash Sought To Help Hurricane Victims, Volunteers Should NOT Self-Dispatch

Washington, D.C. - Voluntary organizations are seeking cash donations to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina in Gulf Coast states, according to Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response. But, volunteers should not report directly to the affected areas unless directed by a voluntary agency.

"Cash donations are especially helpful to victims," Brown said. "They allow volunteer agencies to issue cash vouchers to victims so they can meet their needs. Cash donations also allow agencies to avoid the labor-intensive need to store, sort, pack and distribute donated goods. Donated money prevents, too, the prohibitive cost of air or sea transportation that donated goods require."

Volunteer agencies provide a wide variety of services after disasters, such as clean up, childcare, housing repair, crisis counseling, sheltering and food. "We're grateful for the outpouring of support already," Brown said. "But it's important that volunteer response is coordinated by the professionals who can direct volunteers with the appropriate skills to the hardest-hit areas where they are needed most. Self-dispatched volunteers and especially sightseers can put themselves and others in harm's way and hamper rescue efforts."

Here is a list of phone numbers set up solely for cash donations and/or volunteers.

Donate cash to:

American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English,
1-800-257-7575 Spanish;

Operation Blessing
1-800-436-6348

America’s Second Harvest
1-800-344-8070

Donate Cash to and Volunteer with:

Adventist Community Services
1-800-381-7171

Catholic Charities, USA
703 549-1390

Christian Disaster Response
941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
1-800-848-5818

Church World Service
1-800-297-1516

Convoy of Hope
417-823-8998

Lutheran Disaster Response
800-638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service
717-859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response
888-256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
800-872-3283

Salvation Army
1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769)

Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief
1-800-462-8657, ext. 6440

United Methodist Committee on Relief
1-800-554-8583

For further information: visit the website for the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD).