OTOinsights

Forrester Research Points to OTOinsights

Thank you Brian Haven, Senior Forrester Research Analyst, for pointing to OTOinsights  in a recent report titled "Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2007" as an example of how marketers should leverage their email and RSS content to support their initial steps into the blogsphere. 

Brain writes:

" Make your first strides into social media with RSS and blogs:  Last year, we said holding off on social media was OK>  But rapid consumer adoption of these channels indicates that the time is now to enter this space.  How to dive in?  RSS is relatively simple first step for marketers with mature email marketing programs in that initial RSS feeds can consist of repurposed email content.  Likewise, email or RSS content can also create initial blog posts.  For example, interested users can find insights from interactive agency One to One Interactive from its blog, via RSS, or in email alerts."

In addition to leveraging existing e-mail/RSS content to support initial blog initiatives we would like to add to Brian's advice by recommending that marketers actively educate their internal constituents on their company's corporate blog strategy and, when appropriate, seek regular contributions from their staff as a way to begin generating new and more relevant content.  Additionally, marketers would be well served by incorporating social bookmarking (like De.licio.us) into their blog strategy as a way to augment their existing content with complimentary content on the Web authored by external sources.

OTOinsights ranked in "Z List"

One to One Interative's blog, OTOinsights, has been listed in a meme making it's way around the blogsphere called the Z-List.  This list was inspired by Mack Collier. The point of the list is finding great blogs.  I orginially came across it via Seth Godin's blog.  I have included the entire link set below:

Creative Think
Soloride
Movie Marketing Madness
Blog Till You Drop!
Get Shouty!
One Reader at a Time
Critical Fluff
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New Millenium PR
Pardon My French
Troy Worman's Blog
The Instigator Blog
AENDirect
Diva Marketing
Marketing Hipster
The Marketing Minute
Funny Business
The Frager Factor
Mindblob
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That's Great Marketing!
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
darrenbarefoot.com
Two Hat Marketing
The Engaging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew's Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
Conversation Agent
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett's Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Jeremy Latham’s Blog
SMogger Social Media Blog
Masey.com

Measuring the ROI of Weblogs

Steve Rubin of Edelman recently pointed out in one of his recent blog posts how Charlene Li has created a model for measuring the ROI of blogging based on the costs of achieving similar results from other channels such as the hiring of a buzz agent.

Interesting stuff, especially appreciate the sentiment in one of the comments that one item the "suits" so frequently miss is how the "'I' in ROI" is so minutely small relative to the potential return, however difficult to measure.

Five Corporate Blogging Success Factors

Dr Walter Carl, the students in his Advanced Organizational Communication class (Spring 2006) at Northeastern University and John Cass and his colleagues at Backbone Media, recently published a research paper that seeks to uncover reasons, conditions, and factors that make a corporate blog successful. 

The research team interviewed twenty corporate bloggers from companies of varied size and industry, and asked each blogger a series of standardized questions.   After careful review, the research team identified five factors for a blog's success:
1. Culture
2. Transparency
3. Time
4. Dialogue
5. Entertaining Writing Style and Personalization

Blogs, Podcast, & RSS Advertising on the Rise

According to the Center for Media Research and the PQ Media's Alternative Media Research Series, ad spending withing blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds grew to $20.4 million by the end or 2005, a 198.4% increase over the 2004 level. Spending on blog, podcast and RSS advertising is projected to climb another 144.9% in 2006 to $49.8 million.

The executive summary of the report goes on to highlight the following key findings:

• User-generated media remains primarily national in scope with 98.1%, or $20.0 million, of all advertising spending coming from the broader market in 2005
• Advertising networks and click-throughs are the largest ad insertion methods, generating $8.0 million and $7.8 million, respectively
• Blog advertising accounted for 81.4%, or $16.6 million, of total spending on user-generated online media in 2005, but blog ads will comprise only 39.7%, or $300.4 million, of overall spending in 2010
• Podcast advertising totaled only $3.1 million in 2005, but is projected to reach $327.0 million in 2010, when it will account for 43.2% of all user-generated media advertising
• Spending on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) advertising totaled $650,000 in 2005 and will grow to $129.6 million in 2010
• Total spending on user-generated online media is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 106.1% from 2005 to 2010, reaching $757.0 million in 2010
• Technology was the largest single category at $4.0 million in 2005, due primarily to the technology-savvy early adopters of user-generated media
• Auto was the second largest marketing category, generating $3.9 million in 2005, as car manufacturers utilized user-generated media to market their higher-end models to the "influential" demographic
• The media industry spent $3.2 million to advertise in user-generated media in 2005, as the industry tried to capitalize on its advanced knowledge of the consumer shift away from traditional media

Top drivers of the above trend include continued media fragmentation, perceived ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, and the desire to more effectively reach the 18-34 year old market.

Monitoring your Online Reputation

The most recent findings from the Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and comScore Media Metrix estimates 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day.  Furthermore, they report in two surveys of American adults conducted between January 13 and March 21 that involved 2,871 Internet users, that 9% of Internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of Internet users say they read blogs.  Another way to render these numbers is to note that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population (Internet users and non-users alike) have created blogs. That’s one out of every 20 people. And 16% of all U.S. adults (or one in six people) are blog readers which is approximately 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population. 

Reporters, consumers, clients, investors and employees are learning about your organization every day when they search the Internet. Tracking, measuring and managing your company's online reputation (or your competitor's) is becoming increasingly important.  Your company's reputation is its most important asset, not being immediately aware of a negative or erroneous article, blog post or forum comments can begin to quickly and significantly errode that asset.  One nasty rumor that circulates freely on the Internet can have a lasting and damaging effect on your company's reputation, image, brands and public relations efforts. An article entitled "The blog in the corporate machine", published on February 9th, 2006 in The Economist, states:

The spread of “social media” across the internet—such as online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs—has brought forth a new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm's reputation. Often the assault is warranted; sometimes it is not. But accuracy is not necessarily the issue. One of the main reasons that executives find bloggers so very challenging is because, unlike other “stakeholders”, they rarely belong to well-organised groups. That makes them harder to identify, appease and control.

Monitoring thousands of news sites, millions of Web logs (blogs), message boards and user groups can be a daunting and time consuming task, however today's content discovery and  mining technologies can help your company track, react to and counteract damaging rumors and issues that exist and thrive in blogs and elswhere the Internet. But doing so requires a commitment that stretches from the CSR department to the executive suite.

Corporate marketing and PR departments must begin to augment their current interactive strategies with a Consumer Generated Media (CGM) strategy that focuses on anticipation, prevention, management and education.

Elephants And Donkeys Enter The Blogosphere

And speaking of deploying blogs... C|NET informs us that our elected friends on the Hill are making their way into the Blog scene.  This is not surprising at all, especially given the explosive growth of the Blogging community.  Check out the article to learn about current politicos typing their mind, including Sen. Kerry, Sen. Obama, Rep. Hastert, and Rep. Conaway.

By the way, several do not allow comments, and all are almost certainly moderated, so your 15 minutes of fame will be wasted if you try posting personal Manifestoes.

McDonalds Deploys Corporate Blog

Steve Rubel reported today that McDonalds has launched a new blog called Open for Discussion that will offer perspectives on the company's “aspirations, activities, and challenges ... to make a difference on corporate social responsibility issues that matter.” This, no doubt, will be a trend that we will continue to witness in the marketplace - corporate marketers leveraging the power of the blogsphere to augment their current marketing and PR efforts.

Benoit Sarazin, in a blog post entitled "Blogs: a revolution in corporate marketing" provides three examples of how other companies have begun to take advantage of blogs as part of their marketing and PR mix:  "First, Microsoft reached an astounding achievement: create a human corporate image, close to its customers and to the software developers' community. A Microsoft employee, Robert Scoble, authors one of the most visited blogs on the planet. He shares his personal ideas and opinions on all kinds of topics, in total freedom, without any review by Microsoft's organization. He does not hesitate to criticize Microsoft's products when competitors do a better job. His bluntness gives him utmost credibility within the High-Tech community and he has acquired a strong authority when defending Microsoft's positions that he agrees with. This is such a success that Microsoft invites a number of its employees to follow his example and to create blog communities around diverse themes.

The second is Nokia who uses blogs to apply the best marketing tool for the promotion of new products: word of mouth. Nokia has created a blog to promote its new mobile phone, Nokia 7710, where it invites about 20 VIP customers (early users of the product) to share their experience. The result is a series of independent opinions, written in a casual and funny style, full of stories and useful practical tips. The site is a fantastic resource for all potential buyers who search for a relevant input on how the product can meet their needs.

The last example comes from Michel-Edouard Leclerc, President of the French retail chain Centres Leclerc in France. He shows us how an executive can create a strong connection with its public. He has created a blog where he freely expresses his stance on business issues and his personal interests. Rather than relying on a remote and stereotyped image formatted by the information media, he lets readers understand his passions, sense the depth of his views, appreciate what he like and what inspires him. In short, readers get the feeling of knowing him as a close friend even though they never met him."

Quicktime 2 RSS

According to the Guardian, Apple is working on something called 'QuickTime 2 RSS,' which will allow someone to record a lecture and then have it automatically encoded for playback on a video-enabled iPod and seeded to an RSS feed, which would automatically be populated on the iTunes Music Store. The best part of this? It would be free, you just need to buy the camera and the Mac to run it on.

Umbria: 'Splogs' Clutter Search Results

Though some 80,000 blogs are being created every day, 10-20 percent of them may be spam, according to Umbria Communications, which monitors consumer-generated media, reports AdWeek (via MarketingVox). Umbria's research has found that 2.7 million blogs out of 20.3 million are spam blogs, or splogs, many of which are created solely as a shady marketing tactic, using stolen web content, often via RSS feeds, to profit from contextual ad programs.

Umbria examined blog search results in October from Technorati, IceRocket and BlogPulse, finding that on average 44 of the top 100 results were splogs.

Google's Blogger tool is often pointed to as a major culprit, because its open application program interface (API) has made it easier to mass-produce splogs via computer programs, according to Umbria CEO Howard Kaushansky.

Source: MediaBuyerPlanner.com