Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

In an effort to show, rather than tell, I’m putting forth my personal Top 10 Marketing Tools in a series. I asked the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network’s marketing committee to send me a list of their top 10 tools, and will be posting about them over on the OEN Blog.

(It’s spring break, so I haven’t seen any of them yet… So here’s my second in the series, to inspire action when they return:)

Tool #2: A Smart Search Engine

I have to admit, I’ve used Google for traditional searces for years. But when I went out on my own, I discovered that a roving worklife meant I was never sure I would be at the same computer all day. I’ve long been a fan of SaaS technology (software as a service - where you go online and login to manage information) and iGoogle, the personal Google service, has saved my bacon many times.

They’ll tell you - when you type in “what is igoogle” to your google tool bar in your browser - which is fantastic in and of itself - that:

Google offers the ability to create a personalized iGoogle page that gives you at-a-glance access to key information from Google and across the web.

• Your latest Gmail messages
• Headlines from Google News and other top news sources
• Weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
• Bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer
• Your own section with content you find from across the web

I don’t use it as a personal “portal” to all things online. I use it because:

• It gives me access to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, where I can set up living documents to capture and share notes, track action items and collaborate in meetings with clients. No matter where we are, we’re quite literally all on the same page.
• I used to be on a Dell with Outlook and a Blackberry, and could never get my calendar to synch with my PDA. (A great lead-in to Chapter 3) I kept my calendar online in Google’s calendar application, and while I wasn’t able to view my calendar (again, I’m not technical or patient enough to set it up correctly) from my blackberry, I could get to it from any computer connected to the internet. (A great selling point for SaaS) And, it would send alerts to my blackberry, which helped me get to meetings on time.

Beyond iGoogle (back to just plain Google for a bit), I use Google as a spelling tool and a dictionary. It goes like this:

You can’t get a fast read on whether you’re spelling a word correctly or not than to type it into your Google toolbar - take one of most commonly misspelled words - accomodate. If you’re unsure, in a flash you’ll know,

“Did you mean: accommodate?”

(While you’re at it, check out the results around the spelling correction in Google - you might see some smart search engine marketers trying to capture common misspellings for their clients.)

I use Google to quickly find sources for quotations - who knew John Heywood wrote: “Many hands make light work…” You can also find complete song lyrics in the same way.

But there are cooler things :

• like putting your UPS tracking number into Google to find out where your package is
• putting your flight number into Google to find out where the plane is…
• figuring out who called you by knowing where the 541 area code comes from… instantly
• …and don’t even get me started on Google maps - it’s the greatest thing for those of us who used to have to rely on CitySearch to find restaurant phone numbers… thank goodness for Google.

…those are the quick timesavers that make Google one of the Top 10 Marketing Tools I use.

Internal communications can be hard - even when you’re a small company. Especially when email is so precarious.

Cases in point, just today:

1. I was copied on an email from a broker to a client about a personal loan. I had no business being copied on that note, and have NO idea how it happened, but I didn’t read it (is that unusual?) and immediately deleted it.
2. I copied and pasted a few email addresses from an internal email to a small group of people, and inadvertently cc:d someone outside the organization. Who knew kthomas was Kevin Thomas, not Karen Thomas? Neither Wes (in the first instance) nor I (in copying his email addressees) did.

The ONLY way - in a fast-paced, multiple email address world - to protect and control internal information is to have your internal constituents opt in to RSS feeds for collaborative environments.

The Problem:

I have five email addresses that I maintain. I’m probably a little unusual, but I’ll bet most people have at least two - one personal, one business - in each content record. Poor Wes, in using Outlook, probably entered “Thomas” into his Outlook “To:” file, and Kevin popped right up. God forbid he was on his PDA addressing the note. If he’s like me, and he didn’t have his glasses on, there was no hope for accuracy…

Email is prone to human error, and RSS is a defacto, double opt-in, secure way to get the right information to the right people at the right time. Enterprise-level, managed RSS systems are particularly secure, requiring user authentication from within a firewall.

We have no room for human error when the collective intelligence of well-written tools can protect us from ourselves. I’ve started recommending that clients use RSS systems - like that from one of my clients, Attensa - to collaborate and communicate updates internally. Email is simply too precarious, and too reliant on human accuracy, to protect internal IP.

My friend James Dellow invited me to get the word out about Enterprise RSS Day of Action, which is currently in planning stages. There’s an official WIKI here, and James posted on ChiefTech about it, with the notion of starting a discussion on practical implications of enterprise RSS adoption. I plan to be a vocal advocate.

My email experience today is just one matchstrike fueling the fire for the Enterprise RSS adoption.

I had an interesting discussion yesterday with my friend Michael Sampson. He’s a blogger, content author and perpetual student of collaboration technologies and real-use cases for them.

Michael’s recently finished an ebook called The 7 Pillars Analysis of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 where he has ranked it as a collaboration platform on a seven-point scale. Without giving too much away, he said SharePoint failed his collaboration litmus test on six of the seven pillars.

Well, you can imagine the stir that’s beginning to cause…

His post about the eBook was picked up on CRN, and the comments there are pretty typical of the blogosphere fanning the flames of a discussion. One comment, from Andrew Brust, Chief of New Technology at twentysix New York, was especially passionate; and in response, Michael published an Open Letter of rebuttal.

In fact, on his “Effective Collaboration” blog, there’s quite a stream of conversations around the specific merits of his opinions, cause and effect, and even a little ethical drama playing out.

In our chat, I told him it might be interesting to further the conversation at the SharePoint conference coming up next week in Seattle. (That made him just a little nervous… I think.) I also wonder (on my own) what the Jive Software guys would think of the paper?

My bottom line? If you’re going to take a stand in the blogosphere, and (particularly when you) point out the emperor is only wearing socks, enjoy the reaction… ’cause you’re going to get it.

I believe Michael is perfectly capable of holding his own. And I’m anxious to watch the story unfold. Regardless, I hope it spurs sales. Likely it will. Any PR is good PR, after all…

I’m just plain happy this morning. Maybe it was the lunar eclipse, maybe some great meetings this morning, and maybe, just maybe it’s that I’ve felt terribly productive this morning. I’m pretty excited that my RSS reader - from Attensa (a client of mine) - gives me the capability to tag my persistent search results (and have them appear in my del.icio.us account) and comment on blog posts that reference my persistent searches right from within the RSS reader itself.

I don’t have to follow a link to the site, I just get a little window with the post right in it, and can comment right from there, saving tons of time.

Check it out - hoping the thumbnail shot here will work for y’all. (Just click on it, and you’ll see the whole shebang…)

You can also see that Attensa searches 18 different sites for the most up-to-date mentions of any keyword combinations you want to track. Attensa’s RSS reader is free (as is their virtual feed server for little [1-5 people] groups - enterprises pay, but the increased productivity I’ve seen will quickly pay for itself), and you can download it from Attensa’s site for Outlook, Mac, or web reading…

Eclipses are cool, wherever you find them.

Brilliant acronym. Found a story about it on Scott’s blog over at Attensa. Brilliant concept to (ahem) share…

One of his clients has a few set rules for collaboration across the enterprise:

“Here’s his advice on bringing the technological and cultural initiatives together.

• Get knowledge brokers and connectors into the pool of early adopters for Enterprise 2.0 pilot programs so they can share their experience and lead by example.
• Cultivate the skill of knowing where and how to find relevant information.
• Reward team members who find and share those gems of information that can solve a problem or advance the business. Tag it, forward it, republish it.”

Thanks for sharing, Scott! (Via Attensa)