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As we move into the new year (and yes, this is our last working day in 2007), we all tend to look ahead with our goals, resolutions and new good habits in mind. At work, I hope for two things. And by hope, I mean we’ll do whatever it takes to bring these resolutions to life. Most importantly, I hope we continue to build a meaningful relationship amongst ourselves and with our clients.  Those relationships keep us sane and motivated starting every day at 8:30 a.m. in 2008. Secondly, I hope that our work keeps getting better and we continue to deliver the measurable results that our clients hire us for.

Happy New Year!

This last week, myself and a few others members of the New Media team went on a book tour stretching across a few states on the East Coast. The book we were selling is aimed at an older audience than any of us, and we learned very quickly that we had to completely change our frame of mind in order to make this tour a successful one.

Coming from a generation of Internet-aholics, we thought that pretty much only focusing on online PR would mean a successful tour would occur—after all, this is how we get all of our news. Well, it became clear pretty early on that while our online PR efforts were bringing some people in, and contributing greatly to our optimization and search engine ranking, the fact that our core audience was (on average) about 60 years old, meant that most of them were coming because they heard about the signing though the (old-fashioned) grapevine.

Once we did secure some traditional PR coverage, we saw our successes increase exponentially. This was definitely a huge learning curve for myself, as I find myself having the tendency to believe that everyone does things the same way I do. I learned that traditional PR does still have a valid place in this world, and that I really need to be able to take a more focused look on the audience, and determine from there what kind of PR avenue is the most beneficial to all.

Every marketer and advertiser’s dream is to have millions of people interact with their brand, but pay nothing for those interactions, or “impressions”as we ad folks call them. Those of us in the industry know developing a communication is one thing, while getting that communication in front of the masses is another. I’m talking about media, usually the most costly component of the two (creative and media) in the marketing mix. That being said, every now and again a marketer/advertiser creates something special enough to not need paid media. Instead, people seek the communication at large, it becomes something you have to see, as apposed to something you’re forced to see; furthermore, it’s something all your friends, family and acquaintances have to see as well. This is what we call the Viral Phenomenon.

One recent instance of the Viral Phenomenon in action is Dove’s Evolution of Beauty, a made-for-YouTube ad that has seen approximately 10 million requested views in just one year. Today, there’s another brand making a successful jump onto the Viral Marketing bandwagon and it’s quite the unlikely candidate. Earlier this week SPAM–the canned meat product–began, well… spamming (pun intended) the Internet with its made-for-YouTube production. The animated video happens to be more about toast than it is about SPAM, but toast is cooler than SPAM, so I’m not complaining.

Like most viral initiatives of this nature, SPAM’s viral production drives viewers to a website, TheBookofSpam.com. Once there, TheBookofSpam.com aims to educate people on SPAMS’s positive qualities and eliminate peoples perception of the canned meat being dangerously disgusting. In the end, I am not running to Safeway to buy SPAM, but I am blogging about it, so–in my opinion–it’s a success.

How do you get people to enjoy your blog and keep coming back for more? It’s all about the content! Here are some pointers about blog writing that should help you build readership:

Be real. This is the most important thing—take note of this before anything else that I list off. People can tell the difference between an honest blog and a blog with an ulterior motive. People read blogs for the same reasons they have conversations—it’s social, they learn, and they have an opportunity to share their own thoughts. It’s when you try to become a salesman that you scare the readers away.

Keep it current. Okay, so let’s say that very recently, there was a news story about alligator meat and how it’s the hot, new, holiday dinner entrée for 2007 (not really—although I can tell you from personal experience it’s really not that bad). Google searches for the term “alligator meat” will undoubtedly spike during the few days after the story. Why is that? Because it’s current! The news story piques people’s interest and they want to learn more. If you write about it, you’ll attract some of the Internet searches and gain readership.

Keep it relevant. Sure, you can write about current events, but make sure your blog entry is relevant. You can plant keywords all over the place and direct tons of traffic to your blog, but if what you’ve written isn’t relevant and engaging, you’ve done your readers—and your blog’s reputation—a major disservice.

Use pictures & videos. This one is easy. Think of it this way… are you going to buy the cookbook that has nothing but words, or do you want the one with pictures of the food that you’re making? Pictures and videos very easily engage readers. They break up the text and make your entry appeal to different sides of the brain.

Keep it short & sweet. Huge, multi-paragraphed blocks of text are frightening. This isn’t college—it’s not required for your readers to read what you write, so make your entries inviting.

Make it resourceful. If you’re writing an entry about your sentiments toward alligator meat as a delicacy, provide your readers with relevant resources via links on your in your content that will provide them with more information. In this case, you could link to stores that sell alligator meat, information about alligators, recipes that include alligator meat, cuisines that use a lot of alligator meat, etc.

So after writing a blog entry about writing a good blog entry, did I deliver? Well it depends. For those of you who found this entry via the “what makes a good blog entry?” search phrase, my answer is yes. It’s short—probably less than 500 words. It’s current and relevant—blogging is gaining in popularity every day, and there’s still confusion as to how people should use their blog. I added an engaging image (albeit, it’s a tad unrelated), provided you with links, and I kept it real, man.

I do apologize to those of you who got here by searching “alligator meat.” Here’s a link to a fantastic site that should satisfy your curiosity. I’ll even throw in a video:

Today our department is buzzing in anticipation—Mitch and Mike seem to have made a full recovery from the disappointing college football season. Patrick and Christina are battling East Coast weather while on a book tour, and most of us used our lunch break to do last minute shopping for today’s annual gift exchange. The office vibe is downright festive. There were even holiday-themed sprinkle donuts this morning (Thanks, Mitch!).
As Holiday Season 2007 closes in you might be wondering what to get that special blogger in your life. Here are a few gift ideas from a department full of people who are never far from their keyboards.

1. A comfy, ergonomic office chair.

2. We often talk here about social marketing and Web presence. Now you can read about. This book is getting great reviews for examining the extent and possibilities of viral marketing.

3. A good roller-ball mouse and headphones.

4. Anyone putting content online should have a dictionary, thesaurus and “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White within reach. Even in the holiday season there is no excuse for bad grammar on websites.

5. We spend so much time at our desks that they soon become littered with crumbs, hand sanitizer and random printouts. Improve the look of a blogger’s desktop with goofy or practical desk decorations including the USB Doomsday Device Hub and or the Stapleless Stapler.

I am a self-admitted casual gamer. I’m not hardcore to the point where I can’t discern the difference between my life IRL or in game. I do use term like IRL (in real life) in jest, mainly to let you know that you’ve been PWNED ftw (dominated for the win). And due to my gaming enjoyment I’m constantly to recommend a game, platform or even strategies.

More recently I’ve been asked about whats better Nintendo Wii and everything else. Every time a new console comes out there’s a ton of hype. But what really changes? Bells and whistles in most cases, but not in Nintendo’s. It started with their Nintendo DS being more popular then the mini powerhouse PSP. They learned something there and translated it into the Wii. Making both the most wanted products on the market. I’ve always endorsed both over their more expensive competition. Let’s see if their advertisings give away the new upgrades.

Nintendo Wii - Live connectivity with friends and family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5cPVP_llfo

Xbox 360 - One kid’s adventure through a game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tj2zIs05jU

PS3 - The pure power of the machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qamwVJaYW8

So, what’s all this say about these three machines? Simple, while the technology behind the 360 and PS3 are top-notch, the game play is pretty much the same. The added benefits are a high ticket price, faster game loading and ability to play online with your friends. The Wii? Play at home with your friends. Ever heard of, been to or missed out on a Wii party? More then likely.So how does this tie into the web? Well, it’s that interaction that the Web is missing. How and when will this change? I don’t know, but all that Flash and Ajax are are bells and whistles pasted on an archaic model. The moment a website can create that sort of interactivity will be the day of uprising. Myspace and Youtube have teetered on it, but don’t have that same indescribable ability as Wii. Once that can be re-created on the Web, well… Wii would like to play.

I ride the bus to work every day. It’s a good way to interact with the city and experience the advertising flora near the office. Admittedly that is not why I ride the bus (cheapskate) but overall the whole experience pays off. I was amused to notice last week that the Adult Swim billboard had changed in a peculiar way.

Adult Swim is the popular late night programming block on Cartoon Network that is aimed at young adults. The shows are generally pretty low budget in terms of animation, but the writing and subject matter more than makes up for the difference. Anyhow, there is a billboard on 3rd and Davis in downtown Portland that I walk past twice a day that has consistently featured ads for Adult Swim, and changes about once a month. Usually they are pretty great in that over-the-top bad sort of way—like the billboard with two lazy, regal looking tigers surrounded by an image of some colorful galaxy. It’s the same awkwardly self-aware aesthetic that makes sweaters of howling wolves nostalgically funny.

The billboard sometimes features actual shows but it seems like increasingly they are aiming for the quality I just mentioned. The latest installment is colorful painting depicting two horses in a meadow. It’s a pleasant sight, and certainly kitschy to the extreme but there are no words except for the simple “buy our dvds” and [happy holidays] in place of the standard [adult swim] logo. The only things that make it discernible are the stylized font and brackets used in the text [happy holidays] but more importantly, the fact that there has been an Adult Swim billboard there for as long as I can remember, which is probably less than a year (I haven’t worked in this neighborhood too long).

The whole situation reminds me of optical illusions where you stare at something for a while and when you look away you have some image burned into your eyeballs for a few seconds, according to the Internet these are called “after image illusions.” It’s seems like a risky move to go so lightly on the branding, but it certainly got my attention. But then again I am Adult Swim’s target market.

We’ve all heard the stories of employees not hiring smart, talented, aspiring college students due to their (gasp) inappropriate Facebook/Myspace accounts. Look out Gen Y, these stories are not fables or urban legends, but realities in the wonderful world of Web 2.0.

As I mentioned in my previous entry “Personal Branding 101,” we should think of ourselves as “Mini-corporations.” With the advent of social networks we have a unique chance to advertise our brand like never before. Think of entering into social sites as if your company is going public. If you were a public corporation you would strive to highlight your finest attributes while desensitizing your poor qualities.

With our professional and social lines blurring, managing your personal brand is more imperative then ever. You do not know who is looking at your page, so practicing common sense and checking your site often is key. Below is a list of advice as you strive to elevate your personal brand

1) If you use the sites to communicate your feelings and frustrations use caution. Don’t tell the world about your problems and sadness. Your sob stories should not be surfacing on the net. Do you really want to be the pathetic brand? Use an actual paper diary if you need to get things off your chest.

2) DELETE inappropriate messages and pictures. If you think, ‘wow my boss would be disappointed if he saw this,’ get rid of it. This doesn’t mean you can’t show pictures of you having fun and enjoying some drinks- in fact some organizations might think of you as a “stick in the mud” and “boring” if you don’t. Just don’t cross the line of being offensive and immature.

3) Set the controls to “private” so only people you know personally can access your account. Keep in mind, however, that just because your boss isn’t a “friend” doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for him or her to see your account

4) Balance your site. Don’t add a bunch of graphics, application and pictures just because you know how. It makes your site look cheap and gaudy. Think when you create a Power Point Presentation. Chances are you refrain from adding most graphics, colors and transition slides because it is unappealing.

5) Users can become too active by posting thousands of pictures, belonging to numerous groups and adding many applications. This intense amount of participation gives the impression that you have nothing better to do then play on social networks.

6) Have fun, connect, be cautions, balance and enjoy!

Rock band names should be somehow cryptically reflective of real life. This is the first part of a short series of descriptive band names for a systems administrator at Respond2 New Media.

Back when I was a kid in grade school we had a custodian we called “Archie.” First impressions of Archie were always a little weird. He’d rarely look straight at us unless we weren’t looking at him, and we never could tell if he had really wide hips, or if he was just carrying a lot of keys in his huge pockets. He was always moving.

He was an incredibly good janitor. All 1,000 of us kids spent our time messing up the school, which was a central, shared resource. He cheerfully spent his time fixing and cleaning it. He’d take care of toxic spills of sodium hydroxide in Mr. King’s science room, he’d know what to do with extremely long boogers proudly placed on the bathroom mirrors, and he even had a magic can of stuff that would take care of the permanent pen scribbles on the chalkboard. Whenever it got really bad, we called Archie, who would show up with a smile of love for us kids, any pride evidently discarded in the bottom of one of those big pockets. Five minutes later he’d be gone, and so would the problem.

Here at Respond2 New Media, we have a huge, virtual library of the work we’ve done. It’s what some people call a “versioning system.” It’s built on software called Subversion (SVN for short), and it helps us keep track of graphics, source code, server configuration and technical documentation. When we make a change to a website, we “check” the change into the SVN repository: it’s a record of everything we’ve done. It keeps a history of what changes happened, where those changes occurred and who made them. We can access this repository from anywhere on the Internet, so we can set up our sites on any machine connected to the Web. It works on Macintosh, Windows, and pretty much every flavor of UNIX and Linux.

This all sounds great, and it is. However, nothing is ever deleted from SVN. All our developers make changes to this shared resource. It’s also not perfect. It’s like living in a small, cluttered classroom with a lot of other people. This means that someone has to come along and clean it up from time to time. Sometimes somebody makes a really, really big mess and we have to come in with our magic can of stuff that will take care of the problem. So, one of the jobs we do here at Respond2 New Media is custodial work on our SVN repository. Thus, the new band name, The Janitors of Subversion.

Unless I’m heading out on a date (so, rarely), Charles Shaw seems to be the wine of choice at my household. There’s just something about being able to get tipsy off one $3 purchase that just makes you feel good. At least sort of…

Growing up the daughter of the ultimate locavore, and now being a pretty adamant one myself, it’s hard for me to justify buying some cheap (gasp!) California wine—especially when the Willamette Valley is home to some of the greatest vineyards in the country. But then I do end up buying it because I don’t have a lot of extra cash just lying around ready to be drunk up.

AdWeek recently reported that 26 percent of 21-to-30-year-olds spend their alcoholic beverage budget on wine. And, it’s just a fact of life, but 21-to-30-somethings really know how to take down the alcohol, in fact, they love it so much they make games up to consume more, meet for happy hours regularly, and post funny pictures on Facebook of their friends completely in the throes of it.

So, yes, while you may not call these youngsters the most desirable of all customers, the fact of the matter is that they have some disposable income and, as we’ve discussed, they like to imbibe.

Trouble is, some of these vineyards make it difficult for young people to get involved with the wine industry. We grew up in a time of designated drivers, and when only a few folks want to head out, this can cause a problem. We also don’t want to pay any ridiculous tasting fee (anything over $10-15 accounts for that), and being asked to be in the Cellars Club seems like a lofty proposition for those of us still paying off school and our car.

So, wineries, it’s time to reach us—I mean, who are you going to sell all those vintage wines to 20 years from now?

Some wineries have already started there own blogs, and that is a great step in the right direction, but what they really need to do is get out there. Just like in online PR, participation is KEY. Plan some events at the winery that are 30-and-under and include a reduced tasting fee and perhaps some snacks, and then shuttle people to and fro. Better yet, hire a band and set up an event somewhere in a large city where people can easily get home with a cab (or, more likely, public transportation—we are CHEAP), then focus only on them.

When those bottles are in front of me, I’m enjoying my time, and they are only around $20, I usually find myself buying a few. Just ask Sokol Blosser, I certainly didn’t let them down on my Thanksgiving-day wine trip.

As AdWeek also says about this age group, “Though few claim to be knowledgeable about wine, 34 percent are ‘interested in learning more.’” Time for some innovative marketing!