Blog covering all aspects of Internet marketing including search optimization & marketing, email marketing, blog marketing, video marketing, social network marketing, SMS marketing & online pr.
Though most people understand the concept, corporate blogging is still a relatively novel concept that encounters a significant amount of reluctance to employ as a marketing tactic. Often, one of those barriers is a perceived lack of resources. Who will be the blogger? How much time will it take?
Team blogging is often the answer.
Last November, the Marketing Voices podcast interviewed Southwest Airlines' PR Manager Paula Berg about their team approach:
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.
I am impressed with SixApart's customer service.
I got an email last night from them providing a workaround for the problem I detailed in my post on Wednesday, TypePad's Embeddable Maps Bug, a mere day later. This is the solution they gave me:
At Weblogs > Posts, click on the title of the post to go to the Compose page. Click on the "Customize the display of this page." link toward the end of the page. Select Plain Text and click Save Changes. The page will refresh and display only the HTML for the post which will allow you to edit the post. Click Save changes when you are done editing. More information is available in the Customizing the Post Page Display article.
When adding complex HTML, including embed code, to your posts, we highly recommend using the Plain Text editor. More information on adding HTML to posts is available here.
It works perfectly.
The Google Maps embed code uses the IFRAME tag, which I suspect is what is causing the problem in TypePad.
I've discovered a bug in TypePad's blogging system. I believe it has not yet been discovered by SixApart because I couldn't find reference to it in TypePad's Knowledge Base nor on their Everything TypePad blog.
You'll notice at the beginning of my last post, Gmail - Customer Generated Video, the first line begins with this typo: "ofIn mid-July Google asked their Gmail users to submit video clips that..."
I cannot go back and fix that "of" at the beginning of my first sentence because TypePad won't allow me to. When I click on the post to edit it, the text from the post displays briefly but then displays the post as follows:
I cannot access the posts using the Edit HTML feature nor can I get at it by making the editing canvas bigger.
The post contains text, hyperlinks, an image of the Gmail logo, an embedded YouTube video and an embedded Google Map. I have never had any problems with using any of these elements within a blog post except with Google Maps.
I came across the bug first on August 23, when I wrote about Google Maps' new embeddable code in a post titled Google Makes Embedding Maps A Breeze.
I have not tested using another map service like Microsoft's, so I don't know if it is embeddable maps in general that are causing the problem, or Google Maps in particular.
Regardless, it's an annoying little bug that I hope SixApart gets fixed right away. And while they're at it, maybe they could make their system much more accessible to smart phones.
I want to use the web interface on my Pocket PC phone.
See Also:
I'd like to add to the conclusions I made last week at the end of my Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Citizen Journalism post.
I'm beginning to wonder if the explosion of citizen journalism produced by Minneapolitans in the aftermath of the collapse was atypical. I wonder if Minnesota and Minneapolis merely enjoy certain traditions, characteristics and capabilities that, combined, create an ideal environment for citizen journalism to thrive.
I mentioned some of them in my previous post, but I didn't tie them together. Let me try.
Traditions
The social scientist Robert Putnam once observed that if Minnesota has a problem, there's likely a group of Minnesotans who have spontaneously gathered together to try and solve it. We have a high degree of social capital and a genuine sense of civic duty. That tradition helps make such activities as citizen journalism seem natural to us.
With E-democracy's email list forums and our thriving blogging community, we are at home communicating online.
Technology
We also have a high technology tradition. From Engineering Research Associates to Seymour Cray, the "father of supercomputing," and Control Data Corporation to the Gopher protocol to the birth of electronic democracy, Minnesota has been on the leading edge of technological innovation.
As Pioneer Press technology reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata points out, Minneapolis' municipal wifi had recently been rolled out and actually played a crucial role in the emergency personnel's ability to respond to the crisis.
With broadband wireless access across most of the city, the prime technological component was in place for immediate, on-the-scene citizen reporting.
Creativity
Minnesota has a long tradition of supporting the arts, so it is no surprise that the state in general enjoys a large artistic community, and Minneapolis has a particularly thriving arts scene. The community, therefore, has an abundant pool of creative talent from which to draw.
Those talents--writing, photographic and videographic, specifically--lend themselves perfectly to journalistic pursuits.
Climate
Perhaps because of our harsh winters, Minnesotans have learned the value of helping one another out. If your car stalls on a long stretch of road in January with mercury at ten below and the wind chill making it even more brutal, that approaching car could be literally the difference between life and death. Knowing this, Minnesotans are more likely than not to lend a helping hand.
That attitude is required for the collaborative journalism on display at the MNSpeak thread about the bridge collapse.
Is the explosion of citizen media resulting from the 35W bridge collapse a confluence of factors unique to Minnesota or can we expect to see the same variety, quality, and volume of content elsewhere?
Only time will tell.
Mobile, Broadband, RSS & High Definition
Several trends bode well for citizen journalism:
Combine all these trends and suddenly you have the ability for one citizen with a blog and a high-def video camera to be an on-the-scene reporter who can upload her video footage to her blog right from the scene and through the magic of RSS, stream the report directly to the televisions of her subscribers.
Aggregators & Editors
The problem with citizen journalism is that much of it is spread over disparate sources; blog posts here, Flickr and YouTube uploads there, and microblog posts over here.
In a disasters such as the Minneapolis bridge collapse, finding all these citizen reports is problematic absent a system that aggregates and consolidates them. You either have to already know about a particular source of citizen media, or you need to know where to look and how discover such sources.
Currently, there is not one central source you can go to consume citizen media. We need an infrastructure that formally aggregates such sources with a function--perhaps a digg-like feature--that would bring the quality content to the fore.
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.
Because I live in Saint Paul and Internet communication is my profession, I have watched the aftermath of the Minneapolis bridge collapse with the horror and sorrow of a Minnesotan who loves my community, but also as a communications professional who observes online behavior daily.
It was from that point of view, then, that I was endlessly fascinated with the role that citizen journalism and citizen generated media played in the coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse.
I did not have television news on Wednesday afternoon, a rarity for this news junkie. I did have the windows open and the first thing I heard that was related to the bridge collapse, though I didn't know it at the time, were the sirens of the Saint Paul first-responders rushing to the scene.
Twittering The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
The first time I became aware that something was going on was on Twitter.
I missed the first tweet about it from Chuck Olsen, a.k.a. Chuckumentary, a local documentary filmmaker and video blogger, who got the Twitterverse scoop on the Star Tribune, who subsequently posted a tweet about the bridge collapse. I first heard about it indirectly on Twitter from posts that commented on the effects of the disaster, like cell phone lines being clogged.
CLARIFICATION ON 8/5: The first actual tweet about the disaster that I read, was from Chuckumentary and that was because he was a Twitterer I was following. Minneapolis blogger Aaron Landry posted a tweet about the disaster before Chuckumunetary. Unfortunately, because of Twitter's lack of data mining tools, it may not be possible to find out who had the first post.
Instant Messaging The Bridge Collapse
But I still didn't know that the bridge had collapsed until a friend IMed me:
Friend: OMG!
Me: ??
Friend: are you watching tv?
And thanks to KSTP TV's 24 hour coverage, it was on all night long.
Bloggers Provide Eyewitness Accounts Of The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
The most fascinating citizen media was at a discussion thread that went up immediately at MNSpeak, a site frequented by many Minnesota bloggers. The thread was used to discuss the disaster, disseminate news links, post "I'm okay" messages, and give first-person accounts. Such discussions also took place at Metafilter.
Eyewitness accounts began appearing on local blogs:
And, of course, the blogosphere exploded worldwide with posts (bridge collapse, minneapolis bridge, minneapolis) about the disaster.
Email Discussion Lists About The Bridge Collapse
Minnesota has an extremely active online political environment, dating back to the early days of the web: In 1994, E-democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting electronic democracy, held the first -ever email debate in the nation.
E-democracy hosts many email discussion lists including one called Minneapolis Issues, in which the bridge collapse was discussed. Some list members emailed their first-person accounts.
Members of the St. Paul Issues list worried about their city's bridges, discussed transportation engineering, and conducted a list roll call to ensure the members were safe.
The Minnesota Politics list debated the political and policy aspects of the collapse.
Political Blogging About The Bridge Collapse
In light of our tradition of online political debate, it is no surprise that Minnesota has a vibrant political blogging community. The spin game exploded on both the liberal and conservative blogs.
Podcasting The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Minnesota podcasters were busy, too. Mike's Hotdish posted a musical tribute to the victims. Inside Minnesota Politics posted a video of Congressman Oberstar discussing the collapse.
The aforementioned Chuck Olsen grabbed his video camera and went to the scene to record the aftermath.
Citizen Journalism Coverage Of The Bridge Collapse
More formal citizen journalism sites also covered the bridge collapse. The Minnesota Monitor is run by local bloggers, freelance writers, and professional journalists and primarily covers politics from a left-of-center perspective. The Monitor's coverage was as diverse and comprehensive as any mainstream media source, from reaction from political figures such as an MP3 of Congressman Oberstar's press conference, to MNDoT video of the collapse, to a story about the missing.
UPDATED 8/6: Twin Cities Daily Planet is "conceived as an experiment in participatory journalism, built on a partnership between professional journalists and individual citizens." Their coverage included a mix of professional and citizen journalism.
Citizen Photo Journalism Of The Bridge Collapse
Flickr has become a repository of absolutely remarkable photographs of the disaster taken by ordinary citizens. The quality of most of these photos are extremely good:
Citizen Created Videos Of The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Like Flickr for photos, YouTube has become a repository of video about the disaster. The video uploads were of several different varieties. Many people shot coverage of the bridge collapse on their television sets:
Some people expressed their emotion by uploading slide shows or musical tributes to the victims
Some people uploaded webcam video of themselves telling the world their thoughts and opinions on the collapse:
Finally, a lot of people uploaded the video the took from the scene of the bridge collapse. The following is a playlist I created containing all the citizen created video I could find:
As you can see, these citizen created video clips vary in quality but, perhaps because of their handheld nature, they do give you a far better sense of what it was actually like to be on the scene than the mainstream media television coverage does.
As of this writing, among the most viewed videos at YouTube are a Bridge Collapse slideshow (52,739 views), news coverage of the collapse (33,252), and the musical tribute (25,785).
Among the most discussed videos is a clip of local news coverage with 350 comments ranging from expressions of shock and horror and sympathy for the victims, to political blame, to a comment from someone who claims to have just passed over the bridge seconds before it collapsed.
Congressman Keith Ellison's office, the representative for Minneapolis, uploaded a House floor speech he gave responding to the tragedy:
Wiki-ing The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Wikipedia has become one of the most popular destinations for breaking news. This disaster was no exception. About three hours after the bridge collapsed someone created a Wikipedia entry devoted to the tragedy and a comprehensive, well-sourced document began to grow. And E-democracy hosted a wiki entry the following day with links to resources related to the tragedy.
Crowdsourcing - Mainstream Media Harnesses Citizen Journalists To Cover The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Most of the mainstream media encouraged their audiences to send them photos, videos and stories. The local Fox affiliate showcased viewer's photos, as did WCCO TV along with viewer's video;
KSTP TV showcased viewer's photos and video. One of the station's reports featured broadcast-quality home video shot from an apartment overlooking the disaster. I was watching it on an HDTV and the picture quality was just as good as KSTP's television coverage. Unfortunately, KSTP did not post the segment online.
Most of the local television stations departed from standard practice and streamed their coverage live.
The national news broadcasts asked for viewers' reports as well with mixed results. MSNBC featured cell phone video of the aftermath, while CNN's iReport featured photos from and phone interview with an eyewitness.
The newspapers asked for citizens help covering the event, as well.
The Pioneer Press asked readers for and featured their submitted photos of the disaster. Back in April, I blogged about the paper's embrace of Web 2.0; one of the changes the paper made to its web site was to add a bloglike commenting feature for each story. That feature was a popular one in the wake of the bridge collapse, allowing readers to comment, commiserate, and debate.
The Star Tribune asked readers to share their stories, provided an outlet for their sorrow and sympathy with condolences and guest book pages, hosted reader's photos, and, most interestingly, highlighted their suddenly hyper-relevant transportation blog. UPDATE 8/6/07: The Star Tribune's hyperlocal/citizen journalism project, buzz.mn, was also active, with the first post eliciting 136 comments.
The most deliberate integration of citizen journalism into traditional reporting, however, was showcased by Minnesota Public Radio with their Public Insight Journalism effort. MPR put their citizen journalism effort front and center on the top of the page of their Minneapolis bridge collapse section with a link to the Your Voice section.
Not only did MPR ask listeners for their photos, commentaries, perspectives and first-person accounts, but they also asked listeners to lend their expertise to help shed light on the story and hosted discussions about the bridge collapse in their social networking service, Gather.
Social Networks During The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
The social networking services were also used to communicate in the aftermath of the collapse. Facebook was used as a way to check in on people and find information during the Virginia Tech shooting and it was used as a crisis communication vehicle this time, as well.
The bridge spanned between the University and Washington Avenue exits, either of which takes you directly into a part of the University of Minnesota campus, so the college community was directly effected by the collapse. The editor of the University of Minnesota newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, told one interviewer that students were using their Facebook accounts to check in on their friends and loved ones.
Someone also created a Facebook group for the catastrophe, which, at this writing, had more than 7,000 members.
Many MySpace members blogged about the disaster.
Searching For Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Information
As news breaks, the first thing people do is look for information about the news using the search engines.
The Yahoo! Buzz Index listed the search phrase "bridge collapse" as the second most popular the day after the bridge collapse and two days later "mississippi river" joined it as the fourth most popular search. Later that day, both searches were pushed out by "bridge collapse video," at number one. The Yahoo! Buzz Log has the details of the evolution of searches over the course of the disaster.
The Lycos Top 50 will no doubt show a similar search spike for it's next weekly report.
What Does This Mean For The Future Of News Media?
I'm not quite sure, exactly, but I think some things are clear from watching this all unfold.
See Also:
This is the seventh part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The seventh segment discusses web log marketing through blog search engines such as Technorati:
See also:
This is the sixth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The sixth segment discusses RSS marketing through feed readers and blog search engines such as Bloglines:
See also:
I preach the virtues of robust traffic measurement all the time. I have been using Google Analytics since it was rolled out as a service and I absolutely love it, especially since they've adopted the new interface. Conversation Marketing has uploaded an excellent series of video tutorials for Google Analytics web site statistics services. If you aren't already using Google Analytics, I highly recommend looking into it. The following superb tutorials will take you through the ins and outs:
Google Analytics Tutorial 1: Setup
Google Analytics Tutorial 2: Essential Stats
Google Analytics Tutorial 3: Digging Deeper
Google Analytics Tutorial 4: Goal Tracking
Google Analytics Tutorial 5: SEO Analytics
Google Analytics Video Tutorial 6: Visitor Segmentation
If Google Docs can get the autosave function down, why can't TypePad?
It makes entirely too much sense to have a autosave feature for a blogging system that it baffles the mind that TypePad has yet to figure this out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; I should remember to save. But really, why should I?
The technology's out there; isn't it incumbent upon TypePad to include it as a feature, thus saving their customers a great deal of aggravation and loss of productivity.
I know it's obvious, but I just spent an hour composing a post on the recent Google update, only to have Firefox crash on me and therefore losing the entire post.
Yes, I'm pissed and I don't care if it's my own fault. TypePad should get with the program.
On Monday we launched AliShops.com, The Insider's Guide to Twin Cities Shopping. The site is the brainchild of Pioneer Press Savvy Shopper columnist Allison Kaplan, and features short, informative, and engaging reviews of Twin Cities neighborhood stores.
Graphic Design
The site had to be visually appealing, quick loading, easy to navigate, and, just as importantly, search engine friendly. The illustrations for the site were designed by my friend Patty at Spot Design. They give the site both elegance, visual charm, while also immediately identifying that the site is about shopping.
Search/User Friendly Database Design
AliShops.com features a database backend to handle the content and administration of the site but we specifically designed the database to include search engine marketing features. Each page on the site can have custom meta titles, descriptions, and keywords. The URLs for each page use keywords rather than ID numbers to describe the content of that page. All of these features contribute to help optimize an individual page on the site for a specific search phrase while also providing more information for the site's visitors.
We also designed the database to make it easy to sort the stores on the site in numerous ways, such as by category and neighborhood, city, county and even zip code.
The site search function is fairly robust, searching nearly all the database fields for the stores. Site visitors can further refine their queries by sorting their searches by name, category, county, neighborhood, city, state and zip code.
Search Friendly Coding
The pages of the site use cascading style sheets for formatting and layout in order to both follow website design best practices and to make the pages as easy as possible for search engines to understand, and therefore index. The site looks and works well in all major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari for the Mac.
Advertising Management System
Though AliShops.com does not sell advertising, we implemented an ad rotation/management system for Allison to run internal sitewide promotions, such as one encouraging visitors to sign up for her free email update. The advertising management system allows campaigns to run sitewide or within specific sections. Ad campaigns can be set to expire automatically at a date certain or after X number of impressions or click-throughs. The system can handle graphical banner ads, text-based ads, or even rich media.
Social Bookmarking Integration
In order to promote sharing of the site and to provide a helpful feature for visitors, we built in the capability of visitors to save individual store review pages (example, scroll to bottom) to popular social bookmarking services such as digg, Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us, Furl, or to email the page to friends.
Not only does this help visitors keep track of their favorite pages, but it also allows other people who are using those services to find AliShops.com.
Email Marketing
We also designed a template email to match the look an feel of AliShops.com for her to use for her weekly email update. The update service provides subscribers with sales and specials and notice of when new stores and shops are added to the site. Email newsletters are a superb way to build an ongoing relationship with visitors.
Blog Marketing
Finally, we designed a companion blog for the site, AliShopsBlog.com. The blog provides Allison with a communication vehicle that is personality driven--more intimate and informal--which helps to make a personal connection with her visitors. With the ability for readers to comment on her blog, she can engage her audience in a conversation while gaining valuable insight into what they'd like to see in her Internet presence.
The blog features the same social bookmarking features that AliShops.com boasts, as well as RSS feeds for popular RSS readers.
We designed an email update template for the blog that matched the look and feel of the site, as well. The blog's email update allows her subscribers to get a weekly email containing all the blog posts for that weeek.
Last week I mentioned that Netscape had launched their redesigned, Digg-like home page. It looks like they've stumbled out of the gate by offering to pay top digg users to switch services. The controversy highlights the one element that makes social news sites like Digg hum: a critical mass of community members. In this case, the focus is on Netscape's lack of such a community.
Briefly, if you're not familiar with social news sites, here's how they work: You submit a story to them and then the community can vote them up or down. The most popular stories make it to the front page. A blog post, for example, that makes it to the front page of Digg can result in a massive surge of traffic to that blog.
Social news sites demonstrate day and and day out the network effect that these new community-centric technologies propagate. A little popularity goes a long way, especially if a story is picked up by the right people, those who have a large circle of online "friends." SEOmoz.org points this phenomenon out in a blog post that demonstrates that the top 100 Digg users are responsible for 56% of that site's home page content.
You'll notice that, like many blogs, mine includes links to make it easy for people to Digg my posts (see the "Add to" links below). It's worthwhile to include such links with your posts but, as the SEOmoz.org posts points out, the more you actively participate at Digg, the more likely your submissions will make it to the front page.
Membership, it turns out, has it's privileges.
P.S. Digg recently launched two tools to watch stories on the site in real time. Digg stack displays popular stories as they are "dugg" and allows you to see historical data on a given story to see how many "diggs" it got over time. Digg Swarm draws a circle for stories as they're "dugg."
If you blog, you are undoubtedly aware of the blog search engine Technorati. If you are not aware of it, you should acquaint yourself with it immediately. If you are a blog reader, Technorati is a great blog discovery tool; if you're a business person, it's a great tool for competition research and monitoring what people are saying about your company or industry; if you're a marketer, Technorati is a fantastic market research and trend analysis tool.
Yesterday, the site rolled out a complete overhaul and David Sifry has all the details including a fantastic screencast (.mov) that takes you through the features (found via John Battelle's search blog).
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.
Figures. As I was buried deep in writing my Online Political Advertising post yesterday, which discussed the important role of bloggers in diseminating political ideas, The Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey of bloggers that reinforces some of the points yesterday's post. It also is the first study to take a look at long-tail bloggers whose audience is only a handful of family and friends.
The New York Times quoted the director of the project, Lee Rainie, in today's paper:
“This is a decent portrait of the long tail of the blogosphere. These are the average, everyday folks who blog. They are different from the A-list bloggers who get so much media attention. This is the first attempt or one of the
