31Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Ted Demopoulos on BusinessBlogWire: The Four Types of Business Blogs

Advertising, Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Public Relations
Ted Demopoulos (public speaker, consultant, blogger and co-author – with Shel Holtz – of the book, "Blogging for Business" ), guest posting on Business BlogWire, writes about the four types of business blogs… 1) Internal blogs: Internal blogs are used for internal company or project communications, and are not available on the Internet. 2) Problogs: I call blogs started primarily to make money, for example through advertising and affiliate programs, problogs. 3) Company Blogs: These are blogs started to help support an existing company or product. 4) Independent professional blogs: These are similar to company blogs, but are written – and owned – by individuals. About the latter type, Ted cites two examples of independent professional blogs, Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion and my blog, A New Marketing Commentator. And I…
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27Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Sports Illustrated: “Start Your Own Blog”

Blogging, Miscellaneous
Writing in the March 27 issue of Sports Illustrated, Chris Ballard notches a refreshingly candid, thoroughly modern story about his online brethren: the journalists, columnists, reporters and, yes, just plain bloggers who cover sports on the Web. From the lead-in... The Internet is changing sports coverage. Columnists who seldom leave their couches hold forth. Athletes break their own “news” on their personal websites. Rumormongering is rampant. Don’t like it? Get rowdy. Start your own blog. An insightful overview of how sportswriting has evolved over the years, this article is worthy of high praise and much attention not as much because – ironically – it’s published offline, in a magazine (what the snarkiest and most cynical among us might refer to as a dead-tree medium), but because so much of what…
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23Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Hill Holliday Enters the Blogosphere in a Big Way

Advertising, Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing
A little more than five months ago, I wrote right here about Union Square Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that had shed its Web site entirely and instead staked a claim in the blogosphere. That was them. This is Hill Holliday we’re talking about now. Yes, not just one of the best known, but one of the best -- period -- ad agencies in the country has apparently gone the “all-blog format,” which is how Adrants’ Steve Hall recently characterized HH’s exciting, new Web presence, adding... The beauty of this approach, what many agencies still need to discover, will catapult Hill Holliday into the "conversation" about advertising. The site will get natural Google love, Technorati love and proliferation throughout the blogosphere's link-fest, something a static agency site can…
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20Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Web Marketing Association’s Study Scores PR Web Sites Low

Advertising, Blogging, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Public Relations
In case you missed it, the Web Marketing Association (WMA) recently released its Internet Standards Assessment Report (ISAR), which “provides industry benchmarks for Web site development and is based on data collected from 9,748 Web site evaluations since 1997.” You can sign up to get your own free copy of this report here. In his summary of the report, Adrants’ Steve Hall said “public relations sites ranked low across all categories,” a finding that prompted the following comment from another Steve in my blogroll, Micro Persuasion’s Steve Rubel… When I read this my gut says that the adoption of blogging and other social media technologies on agency sites will separate the men from the boys, the ladies from the girls. As agencies begin to blog (or not), their writing skills…
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13Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Using Blogs to “Connect Up”

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Public Relations
In a conversation with Allan Hoffman on Monster, Scott Allen and David Teten, authors of “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online” (a book I've written about before in this space and which my neighbor to the north, Ted Demopoulos, just reviewed on his blog), explain how to use social software – including, of course, blogs – to advance your career… Monster: Your book views blogs as powerful tools. Should everyone be blogging? SA: A blog may become as important, if not more important, than your resume. The resume may get you onto the long list, but the blog is definitely a tool to get onto the short list. If you're trying to position yourself as an expert, then you should be blogging about your topic and building…
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07Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

Using Direct Mail to Land a New Job

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Cause-Related Marketing, Client Service, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Public Relations
If you’ve ever been between jobs, you know how much of a challenge it is to stand out in a crowd of those who are ambitiously jockeying for the same gig. After all, chances are you’re just one of dozens, if not hundreds, with relatively similar credentials in line for that one plum position. And unless you know someone in a corner office who can grant you the inside track, the odds of your resume getting past the gatekeepers and in the hands of the top dog are slim to none, never mind getting your foot in the door for an interview. With that said, in addition to going about my new job search in all the usual ways – posting my resume on online job boards such as Monster…
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04Mar 2006 by Bob Cargill

How to Subscribe to the NEDMA Conference Blog — and Maybe Win a $10 Starbucks Card for the Effort

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing
As you may recall, I announced here in January that the New England Direct Marketing Association had launched a blog to help promote its upcoming conference, NEDMA ’06, It’s a Brave New World. I also told you that, in addition to my position as co-chair of this conference, I couldn’t be more excited to be taking on the responsibilities of moderating this new blog. “Yes, like any blog, it’ll be a labor of love for all involved, but the truth is that using a blog as an online propagation tool should almost be a requirement for anyone staging a major conference amidst today’s new marketing landscape,” I wrote in this space some six weeks ago. Well, so far, so good. If I do say myself, I believe we have a…
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27Feb 2006 by Bob Cargill

Yvonne DiVita: Author, Marketer and Publisher of Two Blogs, Lip-Sticking and A-ha!

Blogging
I’ve never met Yvonne DiVita, but I feel like I’ve known her for a long, long time. Sure, that’s in part a credit to the camaraderie of the blogosphere, where many of us who have been out here for any significant period of time (in my case, just over two years and 50,000 words) certainly look at each other as kindred spirits out to change the world, word by word, link by link. But it's much more a testimony to Yvonne, who really is a great role model and mentor, a very dear and generous friend -- to me and so many others who spend so much time here in our own “third place.” Yvonne is a kind and gentle blogger (see both Lip-Sticking and A-ha!), a baby boomer grandma…
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24Feb 2006 by Bob Cargill

Thank You, Blogosphere

Blogging
Earlier in the week, I posted here on A New Marketing Commentator what I called “my career imperative, my own personal brand mantra, my clarion call to any potential employer who will listen and accede to my dream of a new and even better way of doing my work.” And while I suppose what I wrote in this post could have been perceived as over the top, I can tell you that it was straight from the heart, honest, urgent (at least in my mind, it was – and still is) and extemporaneous (although I second-guessed it for hours before I dared publish it). It certainly was a reflection of who I am not just as a blogger, but as a person at home and at work. I can’t help…
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