Open Source Blogging

A few weeks ago I attended a press event that the San Francisco Giants and Shoretel put on. The audio isn’t that great because we’re in the server room for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Here SF Giants’ CIO, Bill Schlough, is showing off how the Giants saved a million bucks by upgrading its telecommunications equipment.

Remember that the ballpark that the Giants is in was originally named for PacBell, the local phone company. Interesting look at how phone systems have changed in just the past 10 years.

This is a nice win for Shoretel. How often do you … Continue Reading

First time I found Get Content Get Customers in a bookstore - Borders at the Newark Airport…sandwiched between Porter and Ramsey.

Picture #1 shows the actual position of the book when I arrived.  Picture #2 shows the book as I left the bookstore.  Amazing, isn't it?

Also, for all you Kindle fans, GCGC is now available on the Kindle and currently sits at #8 in the Direct Marketing category.

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I love hearing stories about how people turned their passions into a career. Lou Mongello used to be a lawyer, but he kept going back to a childhood memory: his family kept taking the family to Walt Disney World in Orlando. He turned taking his own family there into a hobby and later quit his job as a lawyer and now has a media company that publishes books, CDs, magazines, and does a weekly radio show, er, podcast, about Walt Disney World. Very popular stuff and he is hitting a monetizable audience: traveling families who will spend lots of … Continue Reading

Our systems at Rackspace just had a major outage that is still going on. There is nothing worse than having our customers be down. You can see all the people talking about the outage in real time. Hundreds of people are working on getting all systems back up and running.

Right now we’re working to figure out what caused the outage and are working on getting everyone back up. Rackspace employees will report more on our Twitter account.

Read the rest here:
Rackspace outage and info

If you use any of this work, please link … Continue Reading

Kristina Halvorson (@halvorson) from Brain Traffic did an amazing presentation about Content Strategy as the Future of Marketing.  It's thanks to Kristina that I've been presenting more about a greater focus on content strategy as THE critical part of a total content marketing strategy. 

My key thoughts while reviewing her presentation include:

Relevance is key to your brand's importance to a customer.  Relevance is created through the distribution of consistent, compelling content.
Information from a brand must be useful. It must solve challenges or entertain (depending on the brand). hmmm, I wonder what can do that (yes, content)? 
When thinking … Continue Reading

Get Content Get Customers is just hitting bookstores now (you can read the news release from McGraw-Hill here). When Newt and I first started putting the book together in late 2007, content marketing was a relatively unknown term. Now seemingly a household phrase (at least according to Twitter), brands are still struggling with exactly what it means to develop a content marketing strategy.

Ah, but social media is all the rage. Is … Continue Reading

Honestly, I was a little punchy a couple night ago when I sent out the email below regarding the upcoming Custom Media Day - presented by Junta42, American Business Media (ABM) and Custom Publishing Council (CPC).

I'll pass on the long sales pitch here…you can read the letter below.  Here's the deal - if you are a part of any process where you are creating custom content for clients or for yourself, you should attend this event on June 17th in … Continue Reading

Big thanks to my good friend Susan Friedmann, CSP for having me as a guest on her radio talk show, Riches in Niches, this week. As you'll hear, Susan is a real pro and we had a great time chatting about the subject of attracting and retaining customers with content marketing.

Susan's radio audience is mostly small business marketers, so we talked specifically about what small, smart companies can do to become trusted advisers for their customers (and turn prospects into buyers).

… Continue Reading

I had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Woods (CTO at Eloqua) recently when we were both speaking at Online Marketing Summit - DC. We came to the subject of our respective books (mine Get Content Get Customers, Steve's Digital Body Language) and how they serve as the ultimate marketing tool.

Readers of this blog know that we (Newt Barrett and I) originally … Continue Reading

When possible, showing how your customers use your product is always the best option. It's also challenging.

Digital publishing provider Nxtbook Media found a way to do just that - with a little help from Zappos.

Showing that customers read digital magazines is not easy. You can't take a picture of them (yet). Sure, you have a lot of great statistics, but it's tough to bring those statistics to life.

Enter Nxtbook Map. Nxtbook Map shows in real-time around the world who's reading a … Continue Reading