If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can even subscribe by email! Thanks for visiting!

The July / August 2008 edition of trendwatching.com’s Trend Briefing is now online, covering INNOVATION AVALANCHE, including new and updated trends, and no less than 41 new business ideas, many of them begging to be introduced to the Australian market.

So… time to finally dream up that new product or startup. You know you want to

Filed under: marketing, tools
No Comments

Up front and personal: I make a MASSIVE $6.75 for each copy sold. “Woop-dee-” and may I say “doo!”

It is ABSOLUTELY NOT the reason I am banging on about this product. If all I cared about was the money I would throw just about everything I receive at you in the hope that some of it would stick.

But I so FERVENTLY believe in this package, because I have it myself and I have lots of the author’s other superb material, that I am leaving myself w-i-i-i-i-d-e open to criticism, be it silent or googleable.

But there are important provisos about this package. It is definitely NOT for everyone:

• if you earn $100k a year or more for yourself or your clients from social media networking or online marketing, I wouldn’t bother with this package; you already know it (so Shai Coggins, Darren Rowse and Jeremy Wright needn’t bother purchasing it, for example)
• if you are confident that you can answer any of your clients’ questions about social media, social networking, social marketing and help them take advantage of these tools TODAY then I wouldn’t bother forking out the requisite $27
• if you ‘know it all’ and think that a measly $27 product is unlikely to impart wisdom you don’t already have then don’t bother putting your credit card details in the form
• if you know what Social Aggregation Broadcast Tools are and use them daily, in their SALT, Narrow SABT, Passive SABT, Active SABT and Integrated SABT forms, then this package is not for you (I will cover these in our own Social Media newsletter, out at the end of this week)
• if you have an unshakeable prejudice against long-form, direct marketing sales tactics on the web complete with boxes, highlighting, testimonials, bullet points a-plenty, etc., preferring instead the ‘gentlemanly/womanly’ purity of short-form content, then stay away from it

BUT… BUT… BUT…

IF you are NOT Darren Rowse or Jeremy Wright or Shai Coggins, if you are NOT 100% confident that you can answer your clients’ questions about this new communication landscape, if you are NOT already a guru and have hundreds, if not thousands, of worshippers at your feet and a fleet of Rolls Royces in your garage, then perhaps you need to pay attention to what follows.

From Matt Gill at Nitro Marketing, the publishers of Joe’s Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 course:

Hi Lee,

Look what arrived in my inbox on Friday…

"…I can’t believe you guys did this.  Thank you so much!" ~ Frank L.

"In all my years of marketing, I have never seen anyone go the extra mile like this. You guys cease to amaze me…" ~ Jennifer S.

"I went back to the Hypnotic Marketing website to see if this was mentioned on there, and it wasn’t.  Was this sent to me by mistake?" ~ Jamie L.

"… My husband handed me the mail and I was shocked to find the package from you!" ~ Dallyn K.

What are all of these Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 customers raving about?

Well….

SURPRISE!

Those who purchased Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 are starting to receive our secret surprise in the mail.

In the MAIL? Yes!

Dr. Vitale never mentioned it on the website and with everything going on, we must have forgotten to tell him that we printed a few thousand copies of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 on a CD and 48-page print manual.

And we also forgot to mention that we not only provided everyone instant access to download everything, but we’re also physically mailing Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 to everyone who gets in on this insane launch of it.

Believe us, when Joe heard about this, he was just as shocked as the customers.

This is a first in the "ebook industry".

Actually printing a manual with step by step, shortcuts, and highlights of what to do to see results.

And a full professional CD interview of the Social Media Marketing tutorial.

For THAT price!

(Yes but only during launch - for 24 more hours)

Note to customers: We’re getting these in the mail to you as fast as we can… if you haven’t received it yet, you will this week. Surprise!

*** IMPORTANT UPDATE ***
Monday is the absolute last day that you can download Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 at the low price and get all of the
crazy launch bonuses.

Yes, Monday is the end of the Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 launch.

On Tuesday you’ll see the price more than triple to $97, as we begin price testing what a product this big can sell for –  PLUS you’ll see ALL of the thousands of dollars of launch bonuses removed.

Update…
We ONLY have 148 physical copies of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and a surprise CD that we have been mailing to customers available.  And we’re not going to print any more because Monday is the last day.

You have absolutely zero risk. Joe Vitale backs Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 with an unconditional 365-day $ back guarantee.  

And if that isn’t enough, check out what others
are saying about HM 2.0 over at http://www.hypnoticmarketing.com/videos (note: if you are concerned about my revenue motives, then use the links on the video page to purchase; by using the links on the video page I won’t receive a single penny and you would have ‘beaten the affiliate system’ you hero you)

Right now is your absolute last chance to secure Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and save yourself $70 while getting all of the bonuses.

….. The End.

- Matt Gill
Editor, Hypnotic Marketing Tips Newsletter

PS:  The End.

It’s over at midnight June 30th.

And if you think that the ‘price rise’ is a fake, a scam that will never actually happen, let me assure you that it will. My beloved Nitro Marketing Blueprint jumped in price on the day they said it would and I was grateful that I’d bought it at the ‘first in, best dressed’ price.

I can only suggest you purchase this product so many times, and the time to stop has now come. It’s now time for you to take responsibility for your own knowledge acquisition.

Filed under: marketing, tools
No Comments

The big bad man in black, Mitch Joel, has an excellent post on how you might want to consider the three leading and different social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

In Mitch’s eyes (and I concur with him wholeheartedly but add one extra component — more details at the end of this post):

• Facebook is great for catching up with your past: friends, long-lost and still close; old school chums; old work colleagues
• MySpace is the present: you can hop around people’s profiles keeping up to date on what’s the latest and greatest in art, music, parties, literature, culture… — it’s where the young and trendy are hanging out
• LinkedIn is for the future: your work network, your next job, your next boss, references and recommendations from past colleagues and clients that will feed into your next gig.

Mitch has very neatly caught the zeitgeist of these three networks, but I would add one extra, one that seems to straddle the present and future: Plaxo.

I know that Plaxo is controversial to some: Comcast is its parent, and for reasons not clear to me (because I’m located on the other side of the globe) this seems to raise some ire. But I find that it is a handy tool that more and more social marketers and social networkers are joining — either for ‘research’ purposes or because it serves a genuine purpose.

I strongly recommend you read Mitch’s full post– a great read!

Technorati : facebook, linkedin, mitch joel, myspace, social network
Del.icio.us : facebook, lee hopkins, linkedin, mitch joel, myspace, social network
Ice Rocket : facebook, lee hopkins, linkedin, mitch joel, myspace, social network

Filed under: clippings, tools
4 Comments

Gary is well-known to the VW (Virtual World) community; as developer/creator of both the ABC and Bigpond Islands in Second Life (Bigpond Island is the most visited location in Second Life) he has the street cred to capture the ear of the VW devotee.

If you then look at his digital media background (ground-breaking work at the BBC inter alia) you begin to realise just why the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) got him onboard to guide the Laboratory of Advanced Media Production (LAMP) initiative. He’s also the head honcho at The Project Factory (one of those ‘I would kill my own mother to work there’ sort of places). The man’s no fule, as Nigel Molesworth would say.

Gary recently presented at the Trilateral KANZ Broadband Summit in Seoul — Korea, Australia and New Zealand — and spoke about the opportunity for co-development and cross-training between the three countries (and, I would suggest, within the larger Asia-Pacific region in time).

Gary suggests that it is the bricolage nature of today’s ‘amateur’ digital creatives that threatens to undermine and overthrow the ‘professional’ creative from their throne (and job). He argues persuasively, with slides [smile*], that in a hard-wired and wi-fi’d broadband world creativity can extend and inform itself both within and across borders.

He goes on to present examples from various LAMP projects, including projects that have found their way into the ‘real’ creative community, informing such entities as ABC TV here in Australia.

Gary is someone to watch and follow (as I assuredly do). Not only does he have a brain that could power a city the size of Sydney for a month, but he also is a genuinely nice bloke: self-effacing, humble and eager to engage in conversation with those who show genuine, informed interest (but naturally and quite understandably not the ‘tyre kickers’). He also has a very deep understanding of the various virtual worlds that includes but does not stop at Second Life (which is my failing — so far I have only investigated Second Life, although my research is pulling me into Habbo Hotel; a presentation to the Habbo management team is in the design-finalization stage.

Here’s his slideshow, and you can read the transcript of the presentation over on Gary’s blog.

| View | Upload your own

——————–

* a reference to one of my all-time fav movies, "Addams Family Values" when Debbie Jellinsky has the family tied up to electric chairs and prior to ‘throwing the switch’ offers to educate them (in the manner of all the best evil mastermind criminals) as to her motives and her underlying psychology:

I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs, or electric chairs. But sometimes people just won’t listen. And so I have to use persuasion - and slides.

Filed under: Second Life & 3D virtual worlds, public speaking
2 Comments

Three (and a bit) ways to survive a blogstorm:

1. Be prepared.
Set up the facilities by which your advocates and evangelists can come to your aid. They *can* come to your aid via their own blog, but it really helps your cause and your Google digital reputation if you already have a blog of your own that they can come and rally around you on.

2. Persistently and voraciously monitor the ‘Live Web’.
A storm can erupt within hours and it is the foolish organisation that fails to constantly be searching for its own name, the names of its staff, its products, its services, the names of its competitors, the names of its key industry players.

3. Be prepared to respond.
Sometimes the best response is ‘no response’, but not very often. If the first few mentions of you in the Live Web are from, shall we say, less-credible elements of the blogosphere, then it *may* pay to ‘watch and wait’ rather than jump in to save your reputation. However, I would *strongly* advise you to work with your Social Media-savvy PR consultants to make a final decision — there are factors such as the commentors’ authority, their own networks and in what format or media the comments were originally posted to consider, inter alia.

Finally, take heart.
Even those who have been tested by fire can confirm that the nature of the blogosphere is incredibly fast-paced and volatile. Huge, all-engulfing firestorms roar through the blogosphere every week, devouring all in their path then moving on to fresh pastures. On Day Two you might think you are in the middle of WWII; by Day Fourteen you might think you are on cloud nine and the fuss and bother all just a distant memory. Just remember to go back and restore your digital reputation at Google.

**************

Note: This is a reposting of an earlier article for testing purposes (plus it never hurts to be reminded of the important stuff, does it?)

Technorati : blogstorm
Del.icio.us : blogstorm
Ice Rocket : blogstorm

Filed under: blogging
No Comments

From the ‘Corporate Good Relations’ Department, via our roving correspondent Dan York.

Intel, the chip maker and long-time partner of Microsoft in a partnership known to many as “Wintel”, has decided not to upgrade its 80,000 employee computers to Vista.

The infamous ‘unnamed source’ says that internal audits show the cost of migration and upgrades to be not worth the hassle.

As Steve Lohr reports in the NYT,

Could Intel change its mind? Quite possibly. Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven Ballmer, has few equals as a forceful, persuasive salesman, and he and Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, meet regularly.

‘Forceful, persuasive salesman’. Code, perhaps, for ‘bully’ or ‘thug’?

Filed under: PR, clippings, miscellaneous
No Comments

My favourite Sydney PR agency Text100 have just wrapped up an Asia-Pacific survey of bloggers [pdf report], asking them what they wanted and how they preferred to be contacted.

Personally, my own demands are few and quite logical:

• Copious bottles of Verve Cliq in order to motivate me to read any of your press releases
• Free business class flights and appropriate accommodation to meet with you once a quarter so you can avail me of more of your clients’ stuff
• Copious fawning and bowing at my feet from the most attractive female members of your staff.

Having been assured by Antonia Christie at Text100 that these simple demands will be met each time we meet, I then studied the raw data and findings that Antonia ’secret squirreled’ to me.

Here’s some key stuff:

• We want to be treated professionally, not just as an electronic deposit box for your endless releases
• We want to build up a long-term relationship with you, Mr/Ms Agency, therefore please start a conversation with us before you hammer our inboxes
• Be a part of the blogging community that you wish to engage with. If you don’t know who and what the key players and key issues are, we won’t take you seriously
• Be the appropriate person from your organisation to contact us — that is, the person who is actually close to this issue, not some office junior fresh out of his/her undergrad PR degree
• The Social Media News Release [video introduction to SMNR] is key to gaining our respect. Use it, or lose it
• The majority of us actually do have some ethics, and would therefore honour an embargo. You will figure out over time who won’t (and the ethical amongst us would expect you to not contact them again)
• Similarly, the majority of us do believe in disclaimers — that is, if you throw some kit and kaboodle our way, we will more than likely disclose that fact so there’s no hidden conflict of interest. Oh, and never request the return of products you send us for review — the vast majority (99.985%) of us do this for love, not money, and we don’t have the time and money to repackage everything and send it back to you.

I guess the standout, one sentence précis of this is:

It is crucial for PR people to know their target,
know what they are interested in,
offer them unique information,
and know how they like to be engaged with

There’s a whole lot more in the final report, including the stats breakdown and stuff, and even video reports.

Jeremy Woolf, Text100’s Peer Media ‘lead’ (whatever that is - see note about jargon below), offers advice and tips on how to engage with bloggers following the results of the Text 100 APAC Blogger Survey, all of which are YouTube vids:

• Jeremy unveils why this survey interests PRs
• This is a unique survey to APAC
• Jeremy provides tips to engage with bloggers
• Jeremy discusses what bloggers want

One interesting finding from the textual analysis (as distinct from the purely quantitative stuff) is this comment:

“Those who contact me should not be lost in their own jargon”

Wise words, indeed, and something we ALL as business communicators should remember!

One of my very own academic colleagues, Michael Netzley in Singapore, offered the following thought about the survey:

The survey showed that effective PR agencies need to make social media part of their DNA. …To succeed, PR professionals must increasingly become grounded in social media.

Many thanks to the be-lurgied but assuredly still gorgeous Antonia for giving me a sneak peek at the results.

You can read Text100’s news release and download the pdf report.

Currently playing on the trusty teak-walnut laminate BetterComms radiogramme: ‘Mr Siegal’ by Tom Waits. Classic line: "How do the angels get to sleep when the Devil leaves his porch light on?"

Filed under: PR, blogging, podcasting, tools
6 Comments

• Scrubbing the atmosphere of CO2 - Boing Boing
  Environmental scientist Wallace Broecker proposes that the only way to fix global warming is by literally scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere and burying it.
  (tags: climate green science)
• Mind Control Made Easy - Boing Boing
  Carey Burtt’s superb “Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader” (2000)
  (tags: howto psychology video youtube control mind)
• Summize
  Site that allows you to live-search Twitter for a topic or phrase. A great site to have open in the background as it refreshes and let’s you know how many extra results since you last searched. RSS your clients and be surprised each morning! Cool tech.
  (tags: summize twitter web2.0 tools socialnetworking socialnetworks)

Filed under: clippings
No Comments