Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I’m at Innotech today in Portland, OR, about to hear a panel on “Media 2.0″- Scott from JanRain, Ray from AboutUs.org, Johnny from Feedia, Kent from Anvil Media and Brian from Intel.

JanRain works on OpenID, which is like your drivers’ license online - identity verification.

Intel’s Developer Forum recently was held in Beijing and was blogged live - a first for them, and probably for many there.

I’m working with Anvil Media on Search Engine Marketing PR - (SEMPR) for Attensa.

AboutUs.org is a wiki with information on 4million web sites - they’re like wikipedia for the “long tail” of the internet - for those of us who are not famous.

Feedia implements social networking framework so people can handle ipTV, podcasting, etc.

Q. What are the implications of social media?

A. Ray notes an increase in transparency is mandatory - people are being pulled over the threshold and taking the communications platform. Companies are being pulled with them.

A. Brian says, I’m trying to take marketing out of the equation, and give subject matter experts (SME’s) the opportunity to talk directly to the consumer.

A. Johnny said with millions of people playing with people’s brands, how do you control the brand experience? You don’t.

A. Kent - as a marketer, people are looking to agencies to help them negotiate this new world. Clients need to rely on agencies and marketers to help strategically advise companies on how to deal with it.

Thank goodness, because that’s exactly what I’m doing…

Q. How do you justify time spent on blogs vs. doing your regular job?

A. If you’re using the tools correctly, you might save time from a communication perspective. And at JanRain, they have engineers blog together with customers - it adds relevance for the brand.

A. At Intel, they encourage engineers to blog - and they make it really easy to blog. So it becomes fun and engaging for them.

A. Ray said wikis are even better at helping engineers interact. And in a wiki environment, everyone has the opportunity to “refactor” the conversation - so anyone can clarify a question or an answer which allows the group to make the whole conversation more meaningful.

A. Tip the funnel, let these collaborative technologies help people talk about your products themselves.

A. Pointing people to a publicly owned, collaborative site has more power in terms of marketing - third-party endorsement.

Q. What’s the difference between a blog and a wiki?

A. A blog is a platform for a single, knowledgeable individual / group to stream information. A wiki is a collaborative environment. ICANN wiki will allow you to create a blog-like wiki using wiki technology.

The culture of a wiki can be hard. You have to build a group of contributors - one person has to build an area of content that’s quality information - then get volunteers to help do the editing. Ray’s group welcomes their new contributors to further engage them. And comment moderation is important, because spammers will kill you.

PBWIKI has a great technology to allow regular people to start wikis. They’re “hosted” services - which means you pay by the month - and they hide the “wiki syntax” that will allow regular people who are familiar with Word to edit on a wiki.

Q. Is there a book about the strategic elements of all this?

The Long Tail, Wikinomics, Blogging for Business, any Seth Godin book, Naked Conversations…

I’m writing a book on both the strategic communication initiatives and breaking it down to practical how-to tips… will have to pick up that guy’s card…

What do the yellow pages come back like - once they’re recycled?

I got three sets of “yellow pages” from three different companies at my house this year. I kept one set in case the power goes out and shoved them in a closet, high out of sight.

No longer do I doodle my favorite pizza delivery phone number on the front of the cover. Like Peechees, metal golf cleats and rotary dial phones, I have fond memories of growing up in a different age…

Yet I live quite happily today surrounded by new ways to capture information, being a better steward of the earth and communicating with others.

So why the nostalgic discourse?

Via ClickZ today: U.S. Search Engine Rankings, March 2007

This information just out from comScore Network’s qScore panel - a group of 2 million people who’ve opted in to help researchers describe browsing and transactional behavior online.

As such, the data is indicative of leading trends (vs. behaviors of the internet population as a whole) and interesting to me because the whole population doesn’t usually take long to catch up!

In March 2007, 7.3 billion domestic searches were conducted. Google accounted for 3.5 billion search queries; Yahoo served 2 billion; Microsoft garnered 798 million; Ask.com served 379 million; and Time Warner, which includes AOL, hosted 368 million queries.

7.3 billion searches.

Think about it. People are going online to look for answers, products, people, news and services every day - multiple times per day, if 2 million people generated 7.3 billion searches themselves.

Yellow page advertising was great for small businesses around the country - and still is, in many ways. Increasingly, though, the web is the place for businesses to be found.

Sad thing is, no one’s knocking on doors offering ready-made 2″x3″ ads for small businesses, smartly categorized and re-usable year after year. Yet.

Simplicity is surely mixed into those thousands of yellow pages - let’s hope it stays mixed into whatever comes out of all those bins for reuse.

We need simplicity now more than ever.

Which (I contend) is why Google is still commanding the vast majority of searches. It is the best search engine to use - in its simple elegance.

For my part, I shall be talking about simple solutions for improving online “find-ability” in the months to come.

Word of Mouth (WOM) is the #1 influence for purchases by men in the US between 18-34 years old.

BIGResearch recently announced the top three
Top Three Media Influences for Electronics: Men, Ages 18-34:

1. Word of Mouth (WOM)
2. Internet Advertising
3. Television/Broadcast

If your prospects are men in the 18-34 year old range, do you have a marketing communications plan to capture their attention?

It’s almost here - Innotech Portland. Sean Lowery over at Prospera Events has improved the way the event will flow - each day features information for both marketers and IT executives.

Day 1 is the “Web 1.0″ track, where people can explore technology and techniques from a ‘novice’ perspective.

That’s where I’ll be delivering my presentation on corporate blogging: Gross Blog Anatomy. I enjoy speaking to people who are just beginning to leverage the blogosphere for their organizations.

Day 2 is the “Web 2.0″ track, where there are more advanced topics - and if newbies go through Day 1, the idea is that they will be able to be conversant in Day 2 subjects.

Registration is available online. I’m looking forward to it!

I’m watching the blogosphere and news feeds (through Attensa, of course) for coverage of today’s Attensa Feed Server 1.2 announcement - as I’ve been working on it much of the day.

My favorite analogy of the new Attensa Feed Server? It’s like TiVo for RSS feeds.

Brilliant analogy by James R. Borck who writes for InfoWorld/Computerworld.