PodZinger: Search Engine for Podcasts
I've blogged before about the tools that are out there to discover and monitor relevant discussions and media mentions of your product, business, competitors and customers. By now you should be aware and using tools like RSS, Google Alerts, Technorati Watchlists, the search tools in your newsreader and other customer intuition tools that may be appropriate to your work flow.
As new forms of communication and media distribution develop savvy developers create new tools to help users search and monitor these new messages. This is exactly the case with PodZinger a search engine for podcasts and video podcasts. Drop your keywords into the search box and specific occurrences of those terms are discovered and highlighted for your review. You can watch or listen to specific clips of the entire podcast. Nice.
If you are a technology company and you want to track mentions of your new product PodZinger is a great tool to track product names and measure the buzz across podcasts.
Technorati Tags: customer | customer insights | intuition | Podcast | Podcasting | PodZinger | search
March 22, 2006 in Blog Outsourcing, build credibility, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, CMO, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Daily Candy to Sell at Auction for $100 Million
Here's a word from the B2C email newsletter world that will give you pause. Daily Candy a trend spotting shopping daily email newsletter service is poised to sell for $100 million. Wow! there is a lot of value in building a targeted permission based audience.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Daily Candy's business is a simple one: It produces urbane email newsletters that make daily recommendations on shopping, entertainment, food and media. Originally written for a clutch of trend-obsessed New York City women, the site produces 11 electronic newsletters, including editions for Chicago, San Francisco and London. Advertisers pay for access to the newsletter subscribers.
Wall Street Journal: Former AOL Official Pittman Puts Web Firm Daily Candy Up for Sale
Technorati Tags: Daily Candy | email | emarketing | marketing | marketing to women | newsletter | Wall Street Journal | WSJ
February 16, 2006 in audio publication, Award winning publications, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, Business publications, Business relationships, CMO, company blog, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Free Wikis at PBWiki
If you are looking for an easy to use and free place to build a wiki for your personal use, your work team, your company outing, your school play or anything else you can think to organize with the direct input of others I highly recommend you check out PBwiki, its a very easy to use wiki platform. It's true what they say-- PBwiki makes creating a wiki as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Uhmmmm Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Now is the time to learn about all the uses for a wiki.
PBwiki: Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.
Technorati Tags: wiki | PBwiki
February 15, 2006 in award winning design, Award winning publications, blog publish, Blogging Tools, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, CMO, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Track Your Comments with coComment
I have been telling you for a long time now that you need to use the available Web Tools like Technorati, Feedster and PubSub to discover and track the conversations about your customers, your company and your products in the blogosphere. Beyond just discovering conversations you should join the conversations with constructive comments that add value to the conversations. Discovering blog posts good and bad about your product and responding in an authentic and transparent way is good for your business. It shows that you are listening and responsive to the needs of customers.
The problem comes when their are dozens of posts and you begin leaving comments all over the blogosphere. How do you know when others comment in response? You don't want to spend a lot of time manually checking each post to see if there are new comments. There's a new tool to help you track your commenting activity. coComment is a new service that helps you track your comments and see when others add comments to posts you have commented on. The service is in a private beta but go ahead and request and invitation. It seems they are sending them out within hours of your request. Not only can you track conversations you are participating you can get an RSS feed of your comments for your RSS reader. The service doesn't support all blogging platforms yet but is promising.
Technorati Tags: blog | corporate blogging | customer | customer communications | customer insights | Feedster | PubSub | coComment | Technorati
February 9, 2006 in award winning design, award winning magazine, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Blogging Tools, build credibility, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, CMO, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Luxury Hotels Using Technology to be Intuitive about Their Customers
Preferences it's all about knowing and adjusting to the preferences of their guests.
When regulars like Laurence Wiener check into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York, they get more than a smile from the concierge and a mint on their pillow. Wiener's hotel room “knows” exactly how warm. It welcomes him with a personal message on his television. It even loads his most frequently dialed numbers onto the phone.
And the bellhop did not have to do a thing.
At the Mandarin and other high-end hotels, new computer systems which connect individual rooms to network servers can now keep track of guests' preferences and change the room conditions automatically.
These “smart” systems can learn whether a frequent guest likes the lights dimmed, the curtains closed or the room toasty warm. They can also personalize the electronics in the room so that the music of John Coltrane, for instance, greets jazz buffs when they enter their rooms. Meanwhile, sensors in refrigerators alert maids when the minibar is running low on Coca-Cola.
In the old days hotels relied on their staff to remember and make these adjustments to their customers experiences. People are a critical aspect of these smart hotels:
Smart networks rely largely on a user's preferences that hotels gather in various ways. Some guests, for example, fill out questionnaires before they arrive. At the Mandarin, housekeepers, bellboys and waiters took note of Wiener's preferences and updated the digital profile that the hotel keeps for each customer. Wiener, an anesthesiologist from Philadelphia, has stayed at the Mandarin 45 times the past two years when he was supervising the construction of his apartment in New York.
Trusted relationships are at the core here. Guests/customers need to trust a hotel to accept and benefit from these personalization systems. If you believe the motives of a hotel are to truly serve you better you are more willing to be open about personal preferences and information. If customers are concerned about the use of that information all the tech in the world will only scare off customers.
How is your business balancing the need to respond to customer preferences and assure them you can be trusted knowing their birthday and all that can be intuited from their purchase history.
International Herald Tribune: In 'smart' hotel rooms everything is just right
Related:
Hotel Forcasts the Weather
Find What Touches Customers
Technorati Tags: CRM | customer | customer insights | customer service | electronics | hotel | New York | Mandarin Oriental Hotel | telephone | television | travel | trend
November 17, 2005 in award winning newsletter, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Brand enhancement, build credibility, Business newsletter, Travel, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
I'm Curious...So I'm Asking
Recently, I have been in meetings and conferences and have seen lots of different solutions to how people manage all the stuff they carry around. So, I am curious...
Feel free to leave a comment with more details if you're so inclined.
Technorati Tags: electronics | gadget bags | poll
November 10, 2005 in Blog Outsourcing, Blogging Tools, Building Customer Community, Current Affairs, Travel, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Writing Memorable Newsletters: Spreadability
Spreadability is the ease with which your ideas spread from person to person. It's two basic modes are newsletter forwards and workplace conversations. For readers to deem your newsletter of high value it needs to provide ideas that readers can use. Ideas that readers can apply in their own workflows, share with others in their organization or share with their professional networks are ideas that will keep subscribers reading each and every issue that you publish. Once you have the content ideas and you are properly using Themes with Focus and good Summaries it's time to make sure that those ideas are spreadable.
Practical Tips:
Tell Stories: Tell stories of how readers have used, discussed and spread your ideas. Use a sidebar column to profile readers and what and how they are learning from your newsletter. Readers will see how others are benefitting from your newsletter and be inspired to do the same.
Encourage Forwarding: Always include a forward to a friend mechanism. Readers may not use it but it plants the idea in their head that it's OK and a good thing to forward your newsletter to colleagues. Users may forward your newsletter using the forward function on their email application. While this isn't trackable through your email newsletter application it is the spread of your content and newsletter branding.
Blog Them: Continue the discussion about your ideas and content on a corporate blog. Once you move your readers from your newsletter to your blog it's just one click to move them to your corporate site. A blog is a good place for more information about your email newsletter content. You can receive feedback via comments, conduct polls, and drive other behavior through a blog.
Related:
Writing Memorable Newsletters: Summaries
Writing Memorable Newsletters: Focus
Writing Memorable Newsletters: Themes
Writing Memorable and Spreadable Email Newsletters
Storytelling vs. Story-Crafting
Why a Reader Forwards an Email Newsletter
Technorati Tags: B2B | comments | communication | content | corporate blogging | customer communications | email | emarketing | forward | interactivity | marketing | networking | newsletter | permission marketing | promotion | stories | storytelling | subscribe | summaries | word of mouth
November 9, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, blog publish, Blogging Tools, Blogs, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, Business editorial, business magazine, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, Business publications, Business relationships, CMO, company blog, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Customer Intuition Failure: ATM Machines
Why is it that the bank that sends me statements in English asks me everytime I use an ATM machine if I feel like giving it a go in Spanish? Guess what bank? I'm going to select English every time.
Wouldn't it be better if you could just select a prefered language and have it programmed on your ATM card so the machine never had to ask you again?
As more and more self serve kiosks and automated systems take over the customer interactions there needs to be a common sense approach to their interface design. Just as people need to be intuitive about their customers so to the machines.
Technorati Tags: ATM | B2B | B2C | CRM | customer communications | customer service | design | electronics | engineering | English | intuition | machines | marketing | bank | Retail Banking | UI | User Interface
November 6, 2005 in Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Brand enhancement, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Robert Scoble Wakes a Monster
Microsoft technical evangelist and prominent blogger Robert Scoble was invited to speak to Monster Cable about blogs and blogging. Monster is aware of the marketing challenge they have. Their site does not show up very well on search engines. They were unaware that the blogosphere is talking about Monster and boy will they get an earful when they tune into the conversation. Monster products are not well liked. A good blogging strategy might be able to stop the bleeding and perhaps turn the tide. Read the comments on Robert's post to get an idea of the tone of public opinion of Monster products.
I dare say that more and more companies are waking up to the fact that they need to be listening to what blogs are saying about their companies. At the same time corporations are at a loss for how to effectively use blogs for positive PR and crisis response. It's a delicate balancing act that requires experienced hands. A good reason to consider outsourcing your blog design, management and content creation. BeTuitive can help with all that.
Scobleizer: Visit to Monster Cable
Technorati Tags: WOMM | blog | PR | PR Crisis | Monster Cable | Robert Scoble | Scobleizer | word of mouth | BeTuitive | outsourcing
October 28, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning magazine, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Blogging Tools, build credibility, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, CMO, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two Things
This month's review for the BeTuitive Business Book Club is up over at the BeTuitive Blog. Another good review, Susan.
I also want to remind you to go ahead and add yourself to the map of BeConnected readers on Frappr.
Technorati Tags: BeConnected | BeTuitive | blog | book | book club | book review | customer insights | Frappr | mapping | maps
October 26, 2005 in award winning magazine, Award winning publications, Books, build credibility, Business newsletter, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack