Trent Reznor and Peter Murphy have both long been linked as Trent credits Peter for breaking him into radio (see end of Youtube video below). Matt Cutts pointed out some of NIN’s best practices pointing to Bill Slawski’s post on Indsutrial Music Marketing. I’ll add another example. Last year, Trent and Peter toured together and did some pre-show perfomances together in various places. They were on a page where you could download them. Due to that they are now on Youtube. I post Trent singing the Bauhaus classic “Bela Lugosis Dead” and Peter Murphy’s “Strange Kind of Love” for your enjoyment.
Category: Branding/Buzz/Viral
Branding/Buzz/Viral
Another Reason SEO Matters (Dave Pasternack of Did-it) + Blogroll Submissions
To run a successful SEM campaign on Google and now Yahoo! the quality of the landing page matters, which implies strongly that it is SEO optimized and friendly. So even Google says that you need to have SEO skills to run an SEM campaign!!! Though the sloppy way some folks linked to his bio page makes one wonder if he is losing a war but winning a battle?
In the spirit of SEO, I’m currently adding to my blogroll for a limited time. Please add my blog to your blogroll with just my first and last name and e-mail your link and short anchor text preference. I’ll get right back to you with your new Google PR5 link.
Relevant links:
No longer exists: http://nielsentech.blogspot.com/2007/02/seo-being-killed-by-search-engines.html
No Longer exists: http://incredibill.blogspot.com/2007/02/dave-pasternack-ranking-report-shows.html
If I missed a relevant site, please let me know.
Sociable 2.0 Plugin Release Interview: Peter Harkins
Please bookmark as “Sociable 2.0 Interview” – Thanks!
I first met Peter Harkins in person at Barcamp Chicago in the Summer of 2006. As I’ve gotten to know him, he knows far more than just coding, as he appreciates and participates constructively in conversations about business strategy and monetization. It’s a winning combination.
The response has been incredible to the Sociable plugin, so you’ve been slammed with inquiries…
Peter: I’ve gotten dozens of mails about Sociable in the last week, from sites wanting to be included, users testing it out in unusual situations and last-minute feature requests. I’ve promised to get 2.0 out by Midnight February 1, so it’s been a race to the wire to get in new features.
Peter: I’ve added 26 sites at last count in this version. Just this morning a Hungarian programmer sent me at least a few more, so I may have as many as 60 sites in the next version.
You’ve add new language translations with this version, that is exciting…
Peter: Yes. It looks like this version will have support for Spanish, Czech, Italian, German and French with more to come. Before 2.0, interested users were just picking it up, translating it, and offering it for download on their blogs. It was a bit frustrating to track bug fixes between different branches of Sociable. Now we’ll have a unified project to share resources and drive development faster, I want to have releases at least every other month in 2007.
You keep the installation and interface pretty simple…
Peter: Deliberately, so, yes. As a programmer, it’s really easy to think of the UI as “that last bit I have to add so people can use my beautiful code” instead of what it truly is: the most important part of the application. So I spent a lot of time making sure that you can install Sociable just by unzipping and uploading it, rather than try to provide complicated install instructions. I spent time on a feature most people never see: when you install Sociable, it checks a manifest of files to make sure it was uploaded right, and it tells you what files go where if it’s not perfect. It provides help right when you need it most, and plainly enough that you understand it.
Peter: The drag-and-drop in the admin interface is just a delight to use, and deliberately so. I want blog owners to feel safe playing around with the different options to see what works on their site. So I’ve spent most of my time on making the UI really nice as well as fixing up the insides.
So you also reprogrammed the internals of the Sociable application for future development and expansion beyond WordPress?
Peter: I want to start porting Sociable over to work on other blog engines like TypePad, Movable Type, Mephisto, and more. So I’ve cleaned up the internals of 2.0, laying the groundwork for 2.1 or 2.2 to support more engines. It’s also going to start doing a little stat reporting when it checks for updates. I know there are roughly 10,000 blogs out there using it, but I’d like to know more exactly and maybe cross-reference to traffic rating services to find out what kind of positive effect it has.
You have an alert system for updating?
Peter: Yes, Sociable checks for new versions when folks view the admin console and notifies the blog owner to go download it. Without it there’d still be people using Sociable 1.2 in five years, hopefully with it everyone will be upgraded in a month or two.
In the past you mentioned that there are three different types of users of Sociable…
Peter: First up, there’s beginning bloggers. They’ve just started a blog, and they’ve got stars in their eyes of being the next BoingBoing or something. Sociable is a tool they’ll use to get the word out about their new blogs, and I’m really glad to help out. As much trouble as some have had spelling “Sociable”, it’s been most rewarding to talk to them because they’re new to blogging and are so happy to be able to easily drop in Sociable.
Peter: Then there are the established bloggers. They’ve got an audience and they want to start leveraging it. Sociable makes it easy for their audience to start getting the word out and growing the blog. I get most of my feature requests from this group, and they’re the people who send me the code to add their favorite bookmarking site.
Peter: I get a lot of links from the SEO crowd, who really put the word out about Sociable. They’ve found Sociable to be a useful tool, so they turn around and install it for their clients. Oddly they’re group I hear the least from, they almost never mail me. But they’ll be the most unusual mails sometimes.
So how are the SEO emails unusual?
Peter: I’ve gotten a really bizarre feature requests like – “You should make Sociable automatically submit each blog post to every bookmarking site! And then vote it up!” – or other crazy schemes! It’s frustrating, Sociable is a tool to help blog owners by reminding readers to bookmark good content. “Sociable should make other blogs using Sociable link to mine with the link text I fill in!” Ugh! I should mention that this is a tiny minority of the SEO folks, I’ve only gotten a half-dozen “Help me spam!” mails.
Sounds like we could monetize a Sociable SEO Pro version together?
Peter: There are definitely a few customers waiting, but I’ve got plenty of other projects ahead of it.
Like what?
Peter: I just recently launched NearbyGamers, a social site for tabletop gamers to find other folks to play card, board, and role-playing games with. It’s been a real blast, but my to do list is as long as my arm so it’s eating up my free time. And I’ve been trying to keep updating my own blog with web coding tips but it’s easy to slip out of the habit.
Sociable has created great networking for you. What are some of the better stories?
Peter: I ended up doing CrunchBoard for TechCrunch because I met a guy via a guy via a guy who used Sociable, and that was a real fun project.
What are some of the underused or misunderstood features of the tool?
Peter: One minor frustration has been writing CSS for Sociable that can deal with all the odd things different blog themes do. I’ve had dozens of people mail me asking (sometimes quite forcefully) why Sociable doesn’t look right on their blog, and so far none have thought it’s their own site doing it.
What else should the people know about Peter Harkins?
Peter: You should never ask him to sing anything…
Good luck with the release Peter!
Good Tips for Building Blog Readership
This post gives some great tips!
Interview with Joe Beaulaurier of PR Web
One of the many people I’ve had a pleasure of meeting in person is Joe Beaulaurier, Interactive Marketing Manager at PRWeb, Inc. Joe maintains an interesting personal blog on press release issues (no longer in existence).
Question: So a lot is happening these days at PRWeb!
Joe: Yes! We have been extremely busy upgrading our systems to accommodate increasing demands both in release volumes and page views. We have also been busy implementing partnerships such as Billboard’s Billboard Publicity Wire and Business Wire’s EON.
Question: What will being owned by Vocus will mean to PRWeb customers?
Joe: PRWeb has tried hard to listen to the market and deliver the tools and services it wants. This has done very well for us and our parent company, Vocus, wants us to hold that course. Their greatest concern was to come in and do something which would muck up what they saw as a great company with great products and rabidly loyal customers.
Question: Could you inform people about the new Business Wire alliance?
Joe: PRWeb and Business Wire have partnered to create a uniquely enhanced newswire service, EON. EON stands for “Enhanced Online News.” Press releases submitted using the Business Wire’s EON platform receive the benefits provided by PRWeb online distribution and technologies which will make the press release more visible to consumers and more accessible via Web 2.0 sites and social media sites. This really demonstrates how PRWeb complements rather than directly competes with traditional newswires.
Question: Let’s start simple, what distinguishes PRWeb from other press release services?
Joe: Traditionally, newswires were expected to either fulfill disclosure requirements for public companies (distributing news of material interest to stockholders out to financial analysts and into the financial news arenas) and/or to get the media’s attention in the hope they would reproduce the message to their audience. But PRWeb isn’t a disclosure newswire and we don’t stop at delivering your message to the media.
For example, when a traditional newswire says they are inserting your release into Yahoo! News, they are actually inserting it into Yahoo! Financial’s news index. This is where people interested in finance are spending their time, this is not necessarily your best audience (consumers, trade partners, etc.). When PRWeb inserts your release into Yahoo!, it is being placed in Yahoo! News. This is the consumer-oriented property as opposed to the financial-oriented property.
In addition to locating the best distribution channels for your release, PRWeb has also led the industry with, and in some cases is the only newswire to offer, many technologies built into our platform which makes your release more visible online and gives visitors more information and resources when they arrive at your release page.
Question: You recently added several new features. Could you outline what these mean in detail?
Joe: PRWeb customers are always discovering many new features and tools while using PRWeb. Some of these are rolled out with very little fanfare, such as the new eBook Electronic Media Kit Wizard.
The eBook Electronic Media Kit Wizard provides PRWeb customers with the ability to create a professionally produced collection of their press releases in PDF format. This tool provides for a customized cover and company profile page. The full release body including Internet links is provided for every release included. This means PRWeb customers can now easily produce a professional company information packet for the media, potential partners or prospective clients.
There are many other changes such as additions to our PRWeb Podcasting service offerings and Trackbacks are now available on PRWeb Photowire pages.
We are always pursuing new ideas and methods to improve our offerings which, quite frankly, is a very fun part of our business!
Question: Also announced was the elimination of the free release service. Yet many have commented positively on this, can you please explain this apparent contradiction?
Joe: Let me first explain why we did this. PRWeb has grown and changed many times over the past decade. One goal that has always been present has been to give the most people access to our services. To do this meant keeping our prices as low as possible and even providing a free release product in our offerings. This has served us and the market well as our speedy growth has shown. I will go so far as to guess that we have actually created a new group of press release users who otherwise would not have been able to afford them.
But as time passed, we discovered two critical challenges to the free distribution offering. First, we had to defend ourselves and others from the prospect of spoofing (a third-party releasing information about someone or some company that just wasn’t true). To do this, we had to greatly restrict the distribution of free releases to the point where there just wasn’t any value in them any more. Second, the editing resources used to maintain quality content on our site was largely from the free content. The time spent dealing with free content versus time spent on paying customers became too tilted towards free content. So given the risk, the lack of ultimate value provided and the burden on our resources, it was decided to discontinue providing a free release product.
To answer your question, yes there is a positive side to this for our customers and for visitors to our site. As mentioned, we were dedicating a lot of resources to free content which can now be dedicated to our paying customers. This means an increase in customer service response time, freedom for our staff to spend more time with our customers as needed and higher quality content on our site.
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I’d like to thank Joe for spending time with us talking about the press and social media release services that PRWeb offers. It’s an evolutionary journey that is taking place in this space. What other questions might you have for Joe? What do you think of these new offerings and how do you compare them to PR Web’s competition? Inquiring minds want to know!
Bill Hanekamp talk about Microsite.com
Jason Jacobson at the Chicagoland Entreprenuership Center invited me to see a presentation on Microsite’s this morning by Bill Hanekamp. I left the conversation believing that microsites are an underutilized tool that help enable potentially viral and social media content. They are underutilized most in the B2B world where you do some interesting things to build traction with prospects of long-sales cycle and complex products and services.
Thanks for inviting me Jason!
Education is Becoming Prepared – Is Your Hiring Process?
From Page 52 of Time, in an article about education, December 18th, 2006: “Jobs in the new economy-the ones that won’t get outsourced or automated-“put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos,” says Marc Tucker , an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.
It’s interdisciplinary combinations-design and technology, mathematics and art-“that produce Youtube and Google” , says Thomas Friedman, the best selling author of The World Is Flat.
Yet human resources, hiring managers, executive recruiters, candidate sourcers, chief marketing officers and chief financial officers haven’t yet mastered the art of finding this skill set of thought leaders seeing big picture patterns and seek out one dimensional candidates with “experience”.
What has to happen to integrate these skills into a recruiting and hiring mindset of what is this person capable of rather than a limiting belief frame of compliance? A discussion of how to recruit these types of skills more proactively is certainly welcome in 2007!