Marketing 2.0

RSS and Marketing

Does it make sense to have a marketing-oriented website and not enable it with RSS? Not according to Robert Scoble who recently went ballistic over a new Microsoft site that did just that. When he asked his co-worker why there was no RSS capability, the guy informed him the site was for non-geeks. Didn't the guy know that RSS is the holy grail for the blog community? I enjoyed reading Scoble's reaction and can offer my own thoughts on this thorny issue.

If you are a marketer and you don't know what RSS is, you had better find out fast. It's simply the best technology available for your audience to download or subscribe to the content on your site. Yeah, I know, you want them to come and visit every day to see what's new. Guess what? Nobody has time to surf their 20 or 30 favorite sites every day looking for relevant content. RSS brings the content to them. Plus, when they click on anything that looks interesting, they are brought to your site for the full posting anyway.

But wait, there's more. RSS readers are all over the place and many are available for free. They are simple to use and quickly become a valuable tool. So valuable, in fact, the big web browsers are building RSS read functionality in their future editions. The next version of Mac OS X, code-named Tiger will feature Safari RSS. Microsoft is rumored to be adding RSS to its products. Firefox, the hot new browser from Mozilla, already offers RSS with its Live Bookmarks feature.

In short, RSS is one technology that lives up to its hype. It's quickly being integrated into mainstream web products and communications. If you a marketer you cannot afford to ignore it.

Lessons From the Net

Jay Cross has written a good article on the lessons we have learned from the Internet over the past 10 years. First, a few stats to whet your appetite. Ten years ago, 38 million people had Internet access. Now, a billion are online. In 1999, there were 23 blogs on the Internet — today, the number is 45 million! Click on the link to read Jay's pearls of wisdom.

Link: Internet Time Blog: Meta-Lessons from the Net.

Google Blogger Busted

Another one bites the dust. Blogging has suddenly become a dangerous habit for corporate serfs. Google recently fired Mark Jen, specifically over his weblog 99 Zeros. You can read all the gory details directly from Mark on his blog or see what CNET News has to say about it.

Mr. Jen is the latest is a string of high profile bloggers busted for posting content deemed inappropriate by their employers. You may have heard of Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky, who was fired by Delta Airlines for posting mildly provocative photos of herself in uniform. As of this writing, she is suing the company. I wish her well; that is a long and difficult road.

Then, there is the saga of Michael Hanscom, the Microsoft employee dismissed for posting a photo of new Apple G5 computers being unloaded on Microsoft's dock. Here is the offending photo, courtesy of Mr. Hanscom, that cost him his job. If you click on his name you can read his version of the events that led to his loss of Microserf status.

CNN recently published a good article on the perils of blogging titled Have a blog, lose your job? . The author correctly points out that our treasured right to free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment, does not apply to the corporate world. Most workers are considered "at-will" meaning they can be fired at any time for any reason other than discrimination based on race, gender or age.

If you are a blogger and employed by a corporation be aware.  Ask if there is a company policy about blogging or publication. Check any employment or confidentiality agreements that you signed to ensure that you are not violating company policy. Avoid discussing or identifying your employer.

Remember — blogger beware!

H-P Fires Carly Fiorina

Here’s my take on the departure of Carly Fiorina from Hewlett-Packard. She was a strong leader and a capable manager who made a fatal, strategic error in buying Compaq Computer in May of 2002. With the value of hindsight it all seems so simple. Why would you buy a company that operates in a brutally competitive market, with slowing growth and shrinking margins? Maybe out of hubris, out of a belief that you can magically transform it into a Cinderella company, the belle of the ball.

At the time that Fiorina pursued the merger, she was strongly opposed by Walter Hewlett, the son of H-P’s founder. During a very nasty proxy fight, Fiorina’s troops characterized Hewlett as a dilettante, a musician who really didn’t understand the nuances of business strategy. It turns out that Carly didn’t understand this basic concept — you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse even by spending $20 billion.

By all accounts Fiorina did a good job managing the merger process and integrating Compaq. She cut thousands of workers and restructured the new organization in an attempt to improve margins and stimulate growth. I guess the merger went well but what didn’t happen was product development or sales growth. When was the last time you saw a really cool product with an H-P logo on it? Oh, yeah, when they started selling the iPod under license from Apple.

In the end, sales didn’t grow fast enough and the company could not compete with Dell on the basis of cost or efficiency. Face it; you are just not going to beat Dell on execution. They are simply too good. You take a road like Apple, make insanely great products that clearly differentiate themselves and are happy with your share in PC’s. Meanwhile, you look to grow in new segments like digital music or any market where you are not banging heads directly with Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins.

At the time of the merger, Scott McNeely offered this acerbic observation, “The visual I see is two garbage trucks colliding.” He may not have been wrong. Compaq was losing the PC battle to Dell and H-P couldn’t seem to find another star product other than printers. Nothing much has changed in the three years following the merger, despite all of Fiorina’s promises and strategies.

I went into Staples last week to look at laser printers. I saw a nice, inexpensive model from Brother and a very sleek machine from Lexmark. Then I looked at a butt-ugly model with the Hewlett-Packard name on it. It had similar technical specs but a higher price tag than the other two models. Even in printers, H-P couldn’t seem to turn out cool products anymore.

So Carly rides off into the sunset with her $21 million severance package (not including stock options) and the pundits are left to speculate on where H-P goes from here. Here’s my advice to H-P’s board and Fiorina’s eventual successor. It’s all about the products. Build cool products and develop new markets and customers will follow you. I think that should be the H-P way.

Why this "Internet thing" is just starting

I subscribe to Seth Godin's weblog and frequently find good postings there. Here's an example. Seth lists the top 10 reasons why the Internet is just starting to click after 10 years. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Penetration. There are 50 times as many people using the Net as there were then. 50x is a multiple you don't see every day.

2. Bandwidth. It's easy to forget how horrible modem surfing was. The prevalence of high bandwidth connectivity means that surfing is far more natural, more frequent and that the experience is better as well.

3. Tools. You can launch most any online service with almost no custom programming. Changethis.com demonstrated to me how straightforward this has become. It also means that finding the world's greatest programmer is no longer a critical component for most services.

To read the full article click on the link below.

Link: Seth's Blog: Why this "Internet thing" is just starting.

Blogs as marketing tools

Here's a good article from David Kirkpatrick at Fortune on the use of blogs for marketing communications. Kirkpatrick offers insight on how blogs are changing the relationship between companies, their customers and the traditional advertising world.

Link: David Kirkpatrick - Fast Forward: Want Truth in Advertising? Try a Blog - FORTUNE.

More podcasting resources

I just found a complete overview of podcasting at Wikipedia. They offer a complete explanation of the technology along with links to software tools, hosting resources, blogs and stations. I found this courtesy of ResearchBuzz, an excellent blog focused on search engines, databases and information resources. Check them both out.