Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

As I’ve mentioned before, I think Pete Blackshaw is great. I have from the moment I sat across the dinner table from him in Newark, NJ - at the end of a blogging and social media conference - and listened to him glow about his kids.

He’s smart, forward-thinking and his advice to businesses about consumer generated media (CGM) is extremely well-rooted in reality. So when he announced his 2008 forecast intentions on Facebook and asked for feedback from the CGM group, I’ve been looking forward to reading them.

They were published last week on ClickZ in the CMO section. As far as I’m concerned, anyone interested in “Web 2.0″ should read, learn and enjoy.

By 2009, the Radicati Group has predicted that the average knowledgeworker will spend 41% of her time managing email. That’s astounding, but not out of the question in my opinion. One of the side effects of all the social media and “web 2.0″ collaboration tools available to us is a huge increase in email.

In an article a couple weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, Rebecca Buckman said:

“Email overload is now considered a much bigger workplace problem than traditional email spam. Inboxes are bulging today partly because of what some are calling “colleague spam” — that is, too many people are indiscriminately hitting the “reply to all” button or copying too many people on trivial messages, like inviting 100 colleagues to partake of brownies in the kitchen. A good chunk of today’s emails are also coming from brand new sources, like social- and business-networking sites like Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp., or text messages forwarded from cellphones.”

I am both guilty of spreading the problem to colleagues (I’m a Facebook and LinkedIn user) and often invite them to connect with me. I’m not so worried about that “good chunk” of email sources - since (at least for me) they have high business value.

My issue is with email from within organizations whereby the cc: list wraps names like garlands on a tree. At that point, people - blog it - your subscribers can choose to:

• react by commenting on your post publicly (within your firewall)
• engage in a 1:1 dialogue with you about your post (in email - an appropriate use)
• start a new threaded discussion that could benefit the entire organization

I’m talking not only about banana bread in the lunchroom; I’m talking planning for an upcoming customer visit, product launch, brand discussion, patch release, product enhancement, research project.

As I’ve noted many times before, email is no longer the venue for such collaborations when we have tools like Clearspace, Wordpress, and Attensa’s RSS platform.

Employees can then opt-into discussions they care about, and ignore those they don’t - at their own time, on their own terms, and under their own controls.

I had lunch with my friend Michael Krol today, who fixed my Mac email problems. He told me he’s been blogging about Mac OS for awhile, and solved a niggling problem for me that I didn’t even know I had…

My iPhone opened iPhoto every time I plugged it in… Michael published a fix here, which caught the attention of some Mac bloggers, and he’s received plenty of thanks in his comments.

He blogs about what he’s passionate about - things that make his development life easier. And it’s paying off nicely for the rest of us.

Even for those of us who don’t know a lick of code, there are gems at MichaelKrol.com.

Subscribed.

I tell most new clients (especially my B2C and technology clients) that they need a YouTube strategy to stay relevant in search. This afternoon I got a nice MediaPost article by Eric Gruber: Marketing on YouTube: How to Promote Your YouTube Videos With Article Marketing (subscription may be required).

Some highlights that go beyond simply marketing with YouTube:

“Step 1: Create an article that grabs readers’ interest. Once you have uploaded your videos to YouTube, you must heavily promote your videos if you want to sell more books, products and services online. One of the most effective ways to broadcast your message is by writing articles related to your videos and submitting them to the top article directories, Web sites and ezines that accept articles.

Step 2: Turn readers into prospects with a strong call for action and an offer they can’t refuse. At the end of your article, you can promote yourself and attract visitors to your YouTube video page with a bio box. This is where most article marketers make the fatal mistake of failing to encapsulate the essence of what makes you and your offering unique. For example, they may write something like:

Blah Blah, is a keynote speaker, seminar leader and author. She has spoken in 26 countries on four continents. She is president of Yada Dada, Las Vegas. Check out her YouTube video at___________

Technically there is nothing wrong — except it is BORING…

JJ: okay, I have to change my “About” page…

Step 3: Submit your articles to the top article directories to build links and improve your search engine optimization. Just like your Web site, to increase your YouTube Video page’s search ranking on Google, you must increase the number of inbound links to the page. The higher you climb in search results the more unique visitors you will get.

Step 4: Submit your articles to the top, targeted Web sites and ezines that accept article submissions in your niche. For best results and to climb higher in search engine rankings you can’t just have any link. You must have links on high-trafficked Web sites with high Google Page Rankings and high Alexa Traffic Rankings. Plus, by placing your articles on highly-competitive, targeted Web sites like About.com, instead of just second-tier article directories that will publish anyone’s articles, you will win trust in the hearts and minds of your targeted audience before they even see your YouTube video….”

Here’s a hint: do the same things with your web site or blog, or white papers, and you’ll see rich benefits right away.

I’ve been talking about my email problems quite a bit - because I’m living in the hell of them… so in frustration with email; I’m going to use my blog and RSS to get the word out to at least some of my network:

I’ve got a client - Auctionpay - who needs a Director of Marketing Communications. Know of anyone?

They’re a growing software company in Portland, OR with a huge heart - the environment is excellent, the people are great, and the product is rock solid.

Primarily, they need someone who can build a team focused on delivering quality leads to a great group of telesales folks. Anyone with trusted, Portland-area candidates are welcome to send me an introduction and we’ll take it from here.

If this works as well as I hope (and suspect it will), I’m going to chock up yet another reason to subscribe to RSS feeds, use enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools like Attensa in the workplace and subscribe to my blog while you’re at it!

1. Write once/read many - saves the time and energy of another blast email to contacts for all of us.
2. Opt-in subscriber base offers highest quality connections - I’d assume (maybe I’m naive) that those who subscribe to my blog have some sort of heightened interest in my world.
3. Leading edge thinking - I’m looking for someone who knows a little about technology and social media; what better way to surface interest than to use the medium to deliver the message?

So another experiment is launched. Do I have any willing collaborators?