Jonah Bloom of AdAge took notice of the WOMMA bloggers that were in Florida for the WOMBAT conference a couple of weeks ago. Truth be told, bloggers love a little recognition now and then!

Just outside the conference hall at last week’s Word of Mouth Marketing Association basic training conference was a blogging station -- a.k.a. a few computers on a table -- and a huddle of real, live bloggers blogging about such issues as how word-of-mouth marketers should pitch information, to, you guessed it, bloggers.

Why is this a big deal? Well, that depends on your perspective. At the end of the day, all forms of media were represented at the conference - bloggers included. From the 'conference coverage' perspective, bloggers have a unique ability to get the blow-by-blow coverage of each session, as we heard in some of the post-conference testimonials of people who read the blog, or decided not to take notes because the bloggers' coverage was so good!

By bringing bloggers into discussions of word-of-mouth marketing, highlighting their work on the WOMMA Web site and being generous with the association’s content (i.e., giving information away free to all, rather than only to paying members), Sernovitz and his team have built a culture of trust between bloggers and the word-of-mouth marketers who seek their attention.

Technorati Tags: blogging, conference blogging, wombat06, womma wombat

DIY Network recently launched a two-month internet-only marketing campaign designed to drive DIY Network tune-in via targeted impressions, and drive DIYNetwork.com clickthrough for relevant content.

They did everything online. Site-specific banners, ad networks, blog advertising, RSS advertising (no podcasting, though), contextual ads and paid search.

Not only did they do online marketing proud, they got results from their two-month effort to boot!

- 67.9 million impressions
- 580,000 clickthroughs
- 80 percent of site visitors were new to DIYnetwork.com
- Visitors viewed an average of seven pages
- Rich-media banners average interaction rate was around 10 percent
- CTR for paid search increased 183 percent during the campaign, reaching 4.25 percent

They were even so kind as to share a diagram of their success with iMediaConnection.

Source: DIY Networks via iMediaConnection

Technorati Tags: Advertising, DIY Network, Pheedo, RSS

Marqui, the blogging and communications company, in conjuction with FreeRange Communications, the mobile RSS company, have released a great whitepaper on RSS entitled "RSS Rx: How Marketers Can Make the Most of RSS Technology." The document is a quick read, at only 15 pages, but gives a really great overview of RSS for marketers in a conversational tone that is very much a Marqui thing. (I mean, really, look at their website and you'll see what I mean)

The document cites nearly every RSS study done to date, and highlights some of the prominent RSS purveyors throughout the document. (Full disclosure: Pheedo is mentioned in the document)

There is also a fair bit of prescriptive content on 'what do do next' with your new-found RSS knowledge, such as the following:

Marketers interested in incorporating RSS into their activities should first take a hard look at their Web site. What content does it have that can – and should be – distributed? For example, does your site have blogs, forums, press releases, product information, support information, email newsletters, audio presentations or whitepapers? If not, can any of these items be added?

Even companies relying on third-parties to manage some of these items might be surprised to find that adding an RSS feed is an option. For instance, companies using a newsletter service to manage their newsletters should ask if the service comes with RSS feeds since more and more services are adding this capability.

Marqui has made the whitepaper available for download on their site in the downloads section.

Technorati Tags: Marqui, Pheedo, Freerange communications, RSS, whitepaper

Chris Hoyt, president, Hoyt & Company wrote a compelling article on the HUB magazine website about mining the blogosphere for comments and content on your company.

According to a November 2005 Reveries.com survey, over 60% of companies surveyed weren't monitoring the blogosphere.

On the heels of the WOMMA WOMBAT conference, the emergence of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and the venture funding flowing into the word-of-mouth marketing space, its never been more apparent that monitoring the consumer media (blogosphere) is an essential function in every marketing department.

So, what might you listen for on the blogosphere?

1. General consumer understanding
   Find your evangelists & vigilantes
   Early warning signs on issues
   Consumer specifics - likes and dislikes
   Competitive intelligence
   Product/service improvement ideas
   Campaign tracking
   WOM tracking

What would your company listen for?

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogging survey, business blogging, womma+wombat

Todd Tweedy of Boldmouth is slowly releasing the results of a recent word-of-mouth marketing study over the next few days on his blog. He's posted some pretty revealing information so far - I can't wait to see the rest.

While a majority of organizations claim they are already using word of mouth and, with even higher numbers noting WOM is either extremely or very important to the organization’s overall marketing plan I was surprised to learn that 71.4% of all organizations that responded to the survey don’t have an established word of mouth marketing plan.

There was another graph that showed almost 50% of organizations surveyed stating that they "are currently using word-of-mouth marketing" Um, sure you are... Of all of the organizations I've worked at and worked with, I've never seen one with a defined word-of-mouth program or have ever heard WOM mentioned in a marketing planning meeting. (note: I'm guilty as charged...I never thought about it 5 years ago either...)

Technorati Tags: boldmouth, survey, word-of-mouth marketing

Well, now that was a conference!

First of all, thanks to the fellow WOMMA bloggers who helped me bring the conference coverage to everyone last week:

- Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing and the Diva Marketing blog.
- Josh Hallet of hyku - another pro blogger and blog consultant
- Marianne Richmond of Resonance Partnership, LLC and the Resonance Partnership Blog

Thanks also to WOMMA for bringing us all to Orlando to be part of such as great thing. It was a pleasure working with such fine folks covering such a monumental event.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, feedback, Josh Hallett, Marianne Richmond, Toby Bloomberg, wombat06, womma wombat

Some of my favorite places in Green Bay have had Wi-Fi for some time now, and more are on the way, so says our humble hometown paper, The Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Personal Favorites:

- Kavarna
- Luna Coffee
- Jitter Bean Cafe

Oh, and a cool photo of Luna with Mark Garrigan of randmstudio - also of the Green Bay area and also blogging!

Looking for free Wi-Fi in the Green Bay area?

Jimmy Seas Bar, Pub and Fenders — 1330 Marine St.
Kavarna Café — 112 South Broadway
Yikes! Salon — 114 South Broadway
Atlanta Bread Co. — 1481 W Mason St.
Hanrahan's Pub & Grill — Howard Johnson Inn and Conference Center — 2580 S Ashland Ave.
Oxford's Café and Pub — 217 N. Washington Street
Titletown Brewing Company — 200 Dousman St.
Piazza's Grill and Deli — 154 N. Broadway
Marco's Seafood Club — 1350 Marine St.
The Bar - Lime Kiln — 606 Lime Kiln Road
The Bar - Holmgren Way — 2001 Holmgren Way
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College — 2740 West Mason St.
East Town Mall — 2350 East Mason St.
Austin Straubel Airport — Ashwaubenon
Airport Settle Inn — 2620 S. Packerland Drive
Freddie's Coffee House — 1620 Lawrence Dr.
Luna Café — 330 Main Ave.
Jitter Bean Coffee & Ice Cream Café — 2680 Monroe Road (Brown County GV)
[Source: wififreespot.com]

More on Wi-Fi all over Wisconsin...

Technorati Tags: Green Bay, wi-fi

According to some shrewd scientists, today is the Day of Gloom. Namely, the dire convergence of all our seasonal woes, the most depressing day of 2006 is today, January 23, as identified by psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University's Centre for Lifelong Learning.

Taking into account factors such as foul weather, Christmas debts, the lingering effects of seasonal overindulgence, failed New Year's resolutions and generally reduced motivation, Arnall's worst day "formula" is ([W + (D-d)] x TQ) ÷ (M x NA). (W: weather, D: debt, d: money due in January pay, T: time elapsed since Christmas, Q: time since failed New Year's resolutions to quit smoking, drinking etc, M: general motivational levels, NA: the need to take action.)

[via Scotsman.com]

[UPDATE:] Merlin Mann at 43 Folders posts the actual formula for 'gloom day'

According to this morning's VentureWire:

Venture capitalists poured more money into U.S. companies in 2005 than in any year since 2001, reflecting a growing appetite for Internet-related start-ups and later-stage deals.

The amount raised by U.S. venture-backed companies hit $22.13 billion, a 2.2% increase from the $21.65 billion recorded in 2004. The investment total rose despite ten less companies receiving funding ˆ 2,239 versus 2,249 - according to industry tracker VentureOne, a unit of Dow Jones & Co., also publisher of this newsletter.

The traditional sectors eyed by venture capitalists health care and information technology experienced a dip in funding for the first time in several years. But the far smaller consumer and business-services sector, which encompasses Internet commerce companies, produced gains in 2005 not seen since the dot-com boom days.

Technorati Tags: statup, venture capital

Playfuls.com has a pretty insightful article from last week on Google's move into the online radio station advertising network space via their purchase of dMarc, the ad network for Internet radio stations.

As you can see, podcasting is still a virgin market, at least from the advertising point of view, and the announcement made by Google, that is will buy dMarc Broadcasting, a company that maintains and runs an advertising network for online radio stations, represents perhaps something more than an integration of Google AdWords in the audio content.

Very few players - Pheedo included - have been able to really crack the podcasting ad market. There are a number of factors at work, not the least of which is a strong inventory for advertisers to choose from. Most podcasts are not really great places for advertising just yet...due to low listenership and the subject matter of the usually niche content.

Bill Flitter, CMO of Pheedo, a company that’s trying to create such a network, declared in July 2005 for Clickz Network that he has managed to gather round 30 podcasts on which to run campaigns for 6 advertisers , http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3517416, which is not much, but nevertheless, it’s a start.

At WOMMA, Bob Garfield made some pretty compelling arguments that podcasting and other niche consumer 'pulled and controlled' media will win the day...but that's IN THE FUTURE. Perhaps, 5 years down the road or so.

While I don't exactly feel warm & fuzzy about Google's pushing forward in this space, I do like it for the fact that it lends credibility to an ad-supported model for content. There were some pretty heated discussions last week, especially from the hardcore grassroots marketing folks, about how awful advertising in podcasts really is. Face it folks - no one works for free here. I personally enjoy the advertising in, say, Adam Curry's podcast because it's targeted and relevant...which is what advertising in Web 2.0 should be all about anyway.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Pheedo, Podcasting, wombat06

After enduring the WiFi at Disney this week, the most pathetic excuse for WiFi since dial-up, it's a breath of fresh broadband to be able to connect to proper wireless, and at no charge to boot.

Kudos to the Orlando International Airport.

Technorati Tags: disney sucks, wifi

Have a great rest of the week folks and keep an eye on the WOMMA WOMBAT blog for many, many frequent updates from the WOMMA Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference!

The band of bloggers and I will be down there covering the conference for WOMMA, so be sure to drop by and say hi. We'll be the one's tapping away in the sessions and connecting up at Cafe WOMMA's WiFi hotspot!

Here's a few things to keep an eye on over the next few days.

- Posts tagged WOMMA
- Posts tagged WOMBAT
- Posts tagged WOMMA+WOMBAT

Sam Decker, the former e-marketing guru of Dell.com and the author/editor of 301 Do-It-Yourself Marketing Ideas has recently make a return to his roots in an Internet startup, Bazaarvoice.com, a word-of-mouth marketing company. Bazaarvoice obtained a $4M round of funding to boot!

You can get all of the official speak here, but for the real juice, checkout the interview that I conducted with Sam, or one that he recently did with Jennifer Rice over at Brand Mantra (among others).

Interview questions for Sam Decker.

Q. Sam, I find it interesting that word-of-mouth marketing firms are getting funding. I don't see other startup ad agencies or marketing firms getting funding, to what do you attribute this trend?

That the problem which word of mouth solves is getting larger, and the solutions and their acceptance are getting more mature. Customers are overloaded with information and choice. I don't see either of those abating. The only place to turn is each other. The marketing model is changing. Marketing will become less about selling and more about helping people buy and providing relevant and credible information to make those decisions. Those come from word of mouth, for lack of a less hyped term!

Q. Word-of-mouth is an almost pre-historic form of marketing - why all the hype now? What happened?

The "Web", in its broadest sense, has hit mainstream. Evidence of this is Walmart.com was the big growth story this holiday season. Web 1.0 was rehearsal, and a lot of people dropped out of audition (I was part of three of those companies :-). Now, eCommerce and social networking tools (including blogs) are connecting us exponentially faster than early forms of word of mouth. In addition, its becoming more and more measureable with maturing solution and online metrics. And finally, the emergence of WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) has amplified the topic.

Q. Word-of-mouth is typically seen as a B2C tactic, but I'm a B2B marketer. What WOM wisdom does Bazaarvoice have for B2B marketers on the subject of WOM marketing?

First, we all Cs in our B roles. Even in B2B purchases, we buy on emotion and justify with fact. "Fact" could be recommendations from colleagues, or what you hear about a product or company reputation. The question is how does the word of mouth information flow. The key is to put a system or environment in place where it is convenient and motivating to share opinions with other customers. This could absolutely occur on a B2B web site...in fact, for many B2Bs they have highly motivated and passionate users of their product (i.e. experts) that want to share their opinion. Not only on the purchase decision and quality, but on the uses and realized benefits too.

Q. Are you thinking of writing another book, Sam, perhaps one on WOM marketing?

If I write more Q&As, maybe I'll have enough content! I'm focused on making Bazaarvoice a great company right now. From this experience, working with a large set of clients on a best-in-class marketing platform, I'm sure there's some valuable learning. In the meantime, I'll be posting what I learn on my blog at www.deckermarketing.com

Q. It's interesting that you're moving from such an operationally efficient, large company as Dell (who has struggled with word of mouth on blogs) to Bazaarvoice - a startup focused on a highly mysterious form of marketing. Any thoughts on the contrast of these two experiences, and how highly-meterics and efficient companies can improve their business with word of mouth.

This is what is so exciting for me. There is a deep gorge between the day to day business operations and the democracy and ambiguity of word of mouth. We're creating a bridge between these two cliffs with tools, systems, processes and metrics to bring word of mouth closer to a company's online experience. Once it's part of the operations, and you can see results, you can't ignore and you can start to optimize. This is where companies like Dell do very well (rhyme not intended).

Q. Out of the gate, can you give us a glimpse of what do your first 90 days will look like - both personally and as a company?

In addition to company launch activities (PR, speaking, shows, web site, etc.), I'll be spending a lot of time with clients and prospects. I had the fortunate experience of running consumer Dell.com for several years, but I won't base our product roadmap on these assumptions. We are 100% client focused, and our clients will be collaborative partners in developing the best-in-class word of mouth services. I'll also be writing more on my blog (we'll also create a Bazaarvoice blog) to share what we learn.

Q. What's unique about Bazaarvoice that separates from the other WOM marketing purveyors out there?

First, we can narrow our definition to product-based word of mouth, not viral or buzz campaigns. And narrow our purpose to enabling and creating word of mouth. After that, we're totally unique! :-)

Our purpose is to enable and amplify customer conversations that may otherwise be happening to a less extent. We are a fully managed solution, bringing to bear technology, bandwidth, services, analytics and expertise to make it easy and cost effective. Our founders have years of experiencing building technology and services for the top brands in online retail and ecommerce, and I have years of being an online retailer. Moreover, we are all metrics- and result-oriented. So, all that to say is 'we get it'. We'll soon launch our full story, and you'll see our early clients are getting it too!

If you're an online retailer interested in learning more, you can email sam at sam [at] bazaarvoice dot com.

Technorati Tags: sam decker, womma, word-of-mouth marketing

My friend Elaine is looking for some talented people with Siebel in their blood. There are a number of really great positions. Know anyone?

If you or anyone you know is interested, please contact Elaine Motyl at elaine dot motyl at whiteboard-partners.net.

The positions:

1. Siebel Business Analyst
2. Sr Siebel Business Analyst
3. Technical Analyst
4. Siebel Application Interface Consultant(2 positions)
5. Siebel Configurator
6. Siebel Interface Consultant
7. Business Objects Project Manager
8. Business Objects Administrator
9. Strong Business Intelligence Analyst

In just a few days, Toby, Josh, Marianne and I will all converge on the WOMBAT conference to do some pretty heavy conference blogging. We've worked very closely with WOMMA do put a great blogger program together to make sure that we're setting a good example of how comp'ed conference blogging should be done, but at the end of the day, what do we know.

I'm more interested in what you all know. What are some of the "Best Blogged" conferences you've been to or read about? Have you conference-blogged yourself and have some good posts to show off?

I'd love your take on what you feel makes the best conference blog and conference blogging experience (and reader experience if you're consuming conference blog posts)

Thanks!

Technorati Tags: conference blogging, womma+wombat

It was such a bummer to get an email first thing this morning from Rob O‚Regan, Editor in Chief of CMO Magazine, stating basically that they are shutting things down after only 16 months.

CMO has become a must read, cover-to-cover magazine over the past year and I'll certainly miss it. Apparently, they couldn't get the ad revenues to support the thing.

More to the point, they had blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, webcasts and all kinds of other cool stuff. These were not just old-school publishing folk. These guys really made a run at this.

Is there just not enough of a market for marketing to marketers???

It was such a bummer to get an email first thing this morning from Rob O‚Regan, Editor in Chief of CMO Magazine, stating basically that they are shutting things down after only 16 months.

CMO has become a must read, cover-to-cover magazine over the past year and I'll certainly miss it. Apparently, they couldn't get the ad revenues to support the thing.

More to the point, they have blogs and are not just old-school publishing folk. These guys really made a run at this.

Is there just not enough of a market for marketing to marketers???

Alex Brown, the pioneering blogger and formerly the Associate Director of Admissions, who created the Wharton MBA Admissions Blog, recently joined a new company and helped create a corresponding blog and Wiki for MBA seekers to glean information from those who've gone before them on everything from the business school's interview process to the types of questions asked to how they answered.

According to Alex (via the social networking blog), the Wiki is

If you're in the market for an MBA, check out the Clearadmit blog and the MBA Wiki.

Technorati Tags: mba, wiki

My good friend Mark Kohls, owner of one of the most unique companies I've ever known of, Document History, gets a great blog mention today from the Chicagoland Genealogical Consortium.

Mark is a budding entrepreneur with an awesome little company. Document History offers you an affordable and powerful way to gather together your special reminiscences for your children, grandchildren and friends. Through Life Story RecordingTM, they provide a structured process to help you record your life story in your own voice.

Cool. Way cool.

Bill Flitter posted a great summary of the year in RSS activities over at his ReveNews blog. Full links to each of he events can be found in Bill's original post.

A few highlights:

1/10 – CNBC presents an introduction to RSS segment on Closing Bell. Welcome Wall Street!

1/12 – John Robb presents the idea of a Global RSS Subscription Repository to make subscribing to RSS a universal function that eliminates automatic subscription buttons from large vendors.

1/18 – Rok Hrastnik releases the most comprehensive electronic book on RSS.

2/23 – The Associated Press begins to deliver content via RSS feeds. Can you say mainstream?

4/3 – Feedburner gets second round VC funding.

4/28 – Dave Winer calls for RSS ads on a subscription basis.

6/24 – Microsoft announces that it will support RSS in Longhorn (now Vista) and Internet Explorer 7.

7/5 – The New York Times reports on the growth of RSS and the resulting RSS marketing opportunities.

9/27 – Forrester announces that 6% of consumers are using RSS, up from 2% in 2004.

10/2 – Feedburner announces partnership with Feedblitz to give publishers the capability to deliver content to readers via email.

10/7 – Google releases RSS aggregator: Google Reader.

10/10 – Yahoo releases whitepaper: RSS – Crossing Into the Mainstream. Key findings include:
• 12% of users are aware of RSS and 4% knowingly use it.
• 27% of internet users use RSS without knowing it.

12/4 – Target offers weekly ad via RSS.

12/12 – RSS Industry Night Roundtable, hosted by Rok Hrastnik, brings RSS industry leaders together to discuss the future of RSS.

12/14 – Pheedo releases second Pheed Read report.

12/15 – Microsoft announces use of orange RSS button in IE and Outlook.

Check out the rest of the RSS 2005 highlights here.

If we're in the era of 'web 2.0', then it stands ti reason that we're also in the era of 'conference 2.0', doesn't it? No, I'm not saying that we're going to go un-conference on everything, but I would like to see a bit more in the area of 'social & technological awareness' around conference communications.

I'd like to get your thoughts on what makes a good social media toolset for conferences.

I've come up with these tools so far, please add your thoughts in the comments:

1. A blog (of course)
2. A wiki
3. A Frappr map (like Loic's) of conference attendees, speakers and followers
4. A del.icio.us account tracking links about the conference
5. A flickr photstream with conference photos, tagged with the appropriate keywords
6. A technorati link to the conference keywords & tags
7. Buzznet Buzzwords

What else have you all used to bring social media to your conference?
What else would you try if you had the chance?

[UPDATE] LesBlogs did a great job using social media for conference coverage.

Technorati Tags: womma+wombat

I'll be posting this on the WOMBAT blog later, but I wanted to introduce y'all to the WOMBAT Bloggers who will be covering the WOMMA WOMBAT conference next week in Orlando. In true ethical WOM fashion, we'd like to fully disclose our involvement as quasi-compensated blogging pro's who happen to be just mad about WOMMA!

Seriously, our mission is to bring the conference out of the seminar rooms and into your living rooms (or offices, or basements, or wherever you happen to dwell in front of the screen).

And...the bloggers are:

- Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing and the Diva Marketing blog.
- Josh Hallet of hyku - another pro blogger and blog consultant
- Marianne Richmond of Resonance Partnership, LLC and the Resonance Partnership Blog
- Me

If you're going to the conference, look us up! You're sure to be blogged!

Technorati Tags: wombat, womma

The newest addition to our family:

Lucy is an 8 week old Golden Retriever. She's probably the most low-key and mellow dog I've ever met. That's a good thing around here :)

[UPDATE] The Purina podcasts just became very, very relevant. I've subscribed to all 3.