Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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Amazon Kindle Blog Directory – 30% rev share

Image by tnkgrl via Flickr

Submit your blog or podcast show notes to Amazon’s Kindle directory. They offer 30% rev share on your blog if they choose it for inclusion – and since you’re blogging ANYWAY, you may as well get some incremental revenue if you’re chosen to be worthy of inclusion!

Apply here.

Compensation terms:

6. Subscription Royalties. For each calendar month during the Term, provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you royalties (“Publisher Royalties”) equal to thirty percent (30%) of Subscription sales revenues actually received by us from sales of Subscriptions to your Publications during the month, net of any bad debt, credits and returns. Subscription sales revenues means only amounts actually received by us for the sale of Subscriptions to your Publications and excludes any fees paid for any product or service other than a Subscription, even if sold together with or required to make use of any Subscription. If we sell a Subscription together with any other content subscription at one undistinguished price (the “Single Price”), Subscription sales revenues for such sale will be allocated on a pro rata basis based on the then-current stand-alone retail price for each individual title included as part of such sale (after taking into account any discounts accorded each participating title in the Single Price sale).

7. Payment Terms. All payments will be due as of the date ninety (90) days following each calendar month of the Term or portion thereof in which Publisher Royalties have accrued. We will, concurrently with payment, provide statements providing detail regarding the amounts of Subscription sales revenue for your Publications collected during the applicable months. All payments shall be made in U.S. dollars. If Publisher is unable to accept Electronic Funds Transfer (“EFT”) payments, we will pay by check, but we will charge a fee of $8.00 per check and will issue checks only if the amount payable is at least$ 100; if Publisher needs to be paid by check we will accrue and withhold payments until the total amount due is at least $100. All statements shall be conclusive, final and binding, unless Publisher gives Amazon written notice stating the specific basis for objection within six (6) months after the date rendered. You shall not maintain any action or proceeding against us with respect to any such statement unless you commence that action or suit within six (6) months following the date that you provide Amazon with the written notice referred to in the immediately preceding sentence. Any such action or proceeding shall be limited to a determination of the amount of monies, if any, payable by Amazon to you for the accounting periods in question, and your sole remedy shall be the recovery of those monies with no interest thereon.

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June 19, 2008
Seth Godin is a National Treasure For His Amazon Kindle Idea
Image via Wikipedia

Seth Godin is a National Treasure For His Amazon Kindle Idea

From his most recent blog post:

What happens to reading habits when you can buy all the books you want for $40 a month? What happens to book consumption when books become social objects, commented upon by you and your participating friends or network? The conversations surrounding books are often a prime driver behind book sales (“You haven’t read it yet?) and the conversation-enabled Kindle takes that to a whole new level.

Imagine what our nation – our WORLD – could be like if you had all you could read for $40/month? Imagine what would happen to literacy if books became as cheap and as prevalent as every other form of media?$

Answer: hard to say, but having a world swamped with good reading is a problem I’d like to have.

We’re seeing this happen with eBooks to a degree already. eBooks have a near zero manufacturing and distribution cost, which means you can make a lot more of them for the same money as a regular book. Imagine if a forward-thinking college professor simply aggregated all the eBooks from a particular industry as a course’s textbooks – no books to buy, no trees to kill, just knowledge.

Food for thought: a recent study in Britain (whose URL eludes me) showed that placing things in a buying position in a cafeteria increased sales of whatever it was that was in the buying position. Junk food sold as well as healthy food, so a cafeteria manager swapped out fried whatever one day for fresh fruits and vegetables, and saw the fresh, healthy food sell as fast as the fried stuff had in the days before.

Imagine if we could get free or low cost eBooks to be as widely available and as convenient as a song on iTunes. Put books in the buying position, and consumers might just buy ’em because they are there and priced right. The societal benefit of increased literacy and increased consumption of knowledge would be vast and far-reaching.

Seth Godin, I hope Amazon reconsiders your offer, and I hope someday to read every book you publish for40/month.

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June 19, 2008
MySpace Bots Updating Now

For those marketers using MySpace profile management software, chances are the redesign broke it – expect manufacturers to be issuing updates soon.

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June 18, 2008
Proud to be an American?
Image by denmar via Flickr

Proud to be an American?

Today’s CNN front page story? A group of physicians ascertained that America committed war crimes by subjecting prisoners to torture, from electric shocks to beatings to sodomy.

“There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.” – retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba

It’s difficult to be proud to be an American when you realize that you are the bad guys. If life were a movie, we’d be the villains. Yes, we started out fighting evil people like Osama Bin Laden, who made it no secret that they sought our destruction, that they wanted and still want to kill as many innocents as possible.

When I was growing up, Superman was still popular. Truth, justice, and the American way – all things good, all things worth fighting for.

But we’ve lost our way. Literally.

I wonder if Superman would ever repudiate the American way. Truth, justice, and… ?

How do we fix this? An apology would be a start, followed by holding accountable the commander in chief of the United States military for war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib. After all, it happened on his watch, by his order, and ultimately, he is responsible.

War crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court, which includes:
1. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as:
  1. Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health – guilty.
  2. Torture or inhumane treatment – guilty.
  3. Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property – guilty.
  4. Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power
  5. Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial – guilty.
  6. Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer – guilty.
  7. Taking hostages
The United States – our country, my country, is guilty of 5 of the 7 major war crimes established under the Geneva Convention and the International Criminal Court. The leader of a nation and commander of the military that is responsible for the commission of war crimes must be held accountable.

Will that ever happen? I doubt it – and until it does, we’re still the bad guys.

“Loyalty to my country? Always. Loyalty to the government? Only when it deserves it.” – Mark Twain

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June 18, 2008
The Most Effective Marketing A Non-Profit Can Do Is Build The Database

The Most Effective Marketing A Non-Profit Can Do Is Build The Database

I’ve been seeing more and more “brand awareness” campaigns, especially for non-profits and social good organizations lately, and I genuinely have to ask – what’s the value of that? From tweets on Twitter saying “Raise awareness of the plight of…” to advertisements on MySpace like the one to the right, awareness campaigns seem to be everywhere.

What’s the value of awareness?

What’s the return on investment of awareness?

If I were a marketer for a non-profit, a social justice cause, or just about anything like this, I’d have to think long and hard about the value of my limited marketing dollars going towards headshare versus more actionable marketing.

Let’s take this Zimbabwe campaign, for example. Ask the average American to locate Zimbabwe on a map and you’ll have an appallingly low success rate. Heck, ask them to locate the continent Zimbabwe is on and you won’t do much better. Why advertise an awareness campaign on a predominantly US-centric web site to an audience that likely can’t even find the target, and advertise in a way that has no action?

If I were trying to market this campaign, here’s how I’d approach it. If MySpace is the venue where in fact the audience for this campaign exists, fine. I’d put up a simple widget, maybe some scrolling scary pictures of what Mugabe does to his people, and have a “sign the petition” form with slots for name, address, email, etc. right below it, and the requisite opt-in to the mailing list checkbox, pre-checked for your convenience. Maybe make it a Flash widget that scrolled and displayed the last 50 petitioners’ names and locations.

This widget would in turn feed a nice SQL database that would aggregate the petitioners’ data and dump it into a mass mailer like Blue Sky Factory (disclosure: BSF is a sponsor of one of my podcasts, Marketing Over Coffee) and start soliciting donations. Sure, we could print out a list of petitioners and drop it on a politician’s desk, but I’d bet it would be far more effective, once a huge house list was amassed, to offer a politician’s PAC an email to the constituency on their behalf in exchange for their vote/support/introduction of legislation.

Forget spending money on awareness. We live or die on our database. The database is a tangible asset that has real, stored value which we can use for barter, trade, or sale (assuming you have the permission of the audience to do so). If you have scarce marketing dollars, if you have scarce resources, building up a marketing database is one of the fastest ways to add value to your non-profit, stay in touch with your constituency, drive donations and funding campaigns, and make real change in the world.

Yes, you have to use your database wisely, perhaps sparingly, always with the privacy and security of your constituency top of mind, but having an effective database is an incomparable value.

In the information economy, the non-profit with the most information, effectively used, wins.

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June 17, 2008
Current Blogola

Image by lemoncat1 via Flickr

A post by Chris Brogan inspired me to put a widget on my blog here describing what blogola I’ve received lately, as a way of disclosing potential conflicts of interest. You’ll see it on the side, under the photos.

Blogola is a portmanteau of blog and payola, the practice of paying off DJs at radio stations by record companies to spin certain records. Blogola is stuff people have sent me for evaluation and, I would imagine, recommendation.

If you’d like to send me blogola, that’s fine, but be aware it will be fully disclosed and a positive review is not at all guaranteed. If your product or service sucks, you will know about it. Just ask Snapple.

I reserve the right to “re-gift” any blogola. If you’re not okay with that, please don’t send it. (no, I won’t re-gift opened food) I also keep whatever you send, so if you’re not okay with that, again, please don’t send it.

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June 16, 2008
Virtual Reality Cannot Yet Replace Real Life Presence

Image via Wikipedia

Virtual Reality Cannot Yet Replace Real Life Presence

I’ve seen some discussions on various mailing lists about attempts to virtualize conferences as a way to save money for participants, given outrageous travel costs these days. Believe me, as an avid conference-goer, I and my wallet couldn’t agree more about travel costs. However, technology isn’t there quite yet, at least not for what makes conferences and other social meetings important.

The talking head portion? That’s easy. You can, and in fact anyone can, record a talking head session, where the presenter gets up in front of a crowd and chats about whatever. In fact, for PodCamp Boston, we have an mDialog channel that does exactly that. You can watch pre-recorded talking heads in advance of the conference, get whatever you can from those presentations (if you have recorded sessions from other PodCamps, please post them to this channel!), and then show up at the actual event with a better idea of what questions you need answers to.

Here’s why technology still fails at the most important parts of presence. First, there’s a technical limitation. Our human sensory systems are calibrated to three dimensional space, to perceive five different senses, and to do so all in parallel. Virtualizations like Second Life and Google Earth deliver more or less two of our five senses, and omit a tremendous amount of data.

Second, there’s a contextual limitation. Have you ever been to a conference in which another participant catches your attention? How much of that was a verbal, obvious gesture and how much of that was non-verbal communication? Even with Qik, Seesmic, Utterz, and all the other forms of rich media communication, our devices and our use of the devices is still so poor that we miss most of that data.

Second, there’s a metaphysical limitation. Think about it for a second. The technologies we use to represent sight and sound on computers are calibrated to a very narrow spectrum of visible light and audible sound. As a result, we automatically get a diminished experience. For example, no virtualization currently transmits infrared or ultraviolet wavelengths – thus, you never feel that sensation of body heat when you get closer to someone at a virtualized conference. Think that’s not important? Watch when a conference gets underway, and see how many times people touch – shake hands, hug, pat each other on the back, and so forth. Part of touch’s magic is the infrared spectrum.

The computer can’t deliver ultraviolet, either. Classic example: you can put up a picture of the sun on your 34″ Apple Cinema Display and you will never get a sunburn. The virtualized experience can’t deliver because we’re not transmitting that data.

How much other data don’t we transmit? How much else is lost? If you believe in the power of prayer and the ability for someone to spiritually heal another person, you can bet our technology does not transmit the extra data that the in-person experience undoubtedly contains. If you believe that chanting Sanskrit mantras has power, how much resonance do we create when we chant that’s outside our range of audible sound but is still very much a part of the experience?

This is why conferences still matter. This is why even though MP3s are ubiquitous, the live musical performance is still irreplaceable. This is why human intimacy is still desperately sought after even with the most robust technology solutions we have available to us.

It’s foolish to believe that technology can replace the full experiences of being there in person. Absolutely, there’s benefit and gain to be had by recording, podcasting, and streaming events for those who are there and those who can’t make it, but don’t think for a minute that current technology can replace the in-person experience.

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June 15, 2008
The Online Marketer's Web Strategy

The Online Marketer’s Web Strategy

I had the privilege of attending and presenting at the MarketingProfs conference over the past two days, and it was a phenomenal conference, full of lots of good ideas. However, one thing stood out among the various discussions that I wanted to make a point about. There is a definite structure and strategy to online marketing that you need to follow to improve your likelihood of success.

During a number of sessions, folks were talking about all the social media stuff available to marketers, about how to choose and how to get started. Social media was the buzzword at the conference.. Social media is sexy. Social media is the hot new thing.

Social media comes LAST, gang.

That’s right, last.

What comes first?

You first must have CONTENT. Something worth talking about. If you want to be in social media, the social part is conversation and discussion. If you have nothing worth talking about – and nothing worth others talking about you – then any effort you put into social media will largely be a waste of time.

Once you’ve got content, USER INTERFACE comes next. Make a web site that’s attractive, easy to navigate, easy to find stuff on. Hire a professional designer or information architect to help you with this if you’re not so good at it, or use a proven templating system. Whatever you do, focus on putting your content into an easily managed format that is a pleasure to use. Make sure you have at least one way of converting a visitor into a database entry somehow, whether it’s a simple mailing list, or a complex lead generation system.

If you’re marketing online, you’re marketing with a web site. Do your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION next. Make sure your web sites validate with W3C standards, at least minimally. Make sure you optimize your sites, build some links, do all the basics. Check out Hubspot’s Web Site Grader for a great starter tool. When you set up profiles on other social networks, make sure you link back to your web site, always. SEO is all about capturing passive traffic, capturing people who are looking for your content.

Only after you’ve completed the steps of great content, user interface, and search engine optimization are you ready to dive into social media. There’s no way you can win the road race if your car is lacking tires and an engine. Content, UI, and SEO are the basics you MUST have in place prior to diving into social media, or else you’ll be wasting time, energy, and the limited slice of attention your audience is giving you – and they won’t give you again.

Photo credit: CC Chapman

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June 11, 2008
Re-syncing Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

For fun, I logged into Twitter tonight and checked the followers page. To my great surprise, it seems as though about half of the people I thought I was following are not, so it’s an evening of re-syncing Twitter to follow friends old and new who I thought I was in sync with.

The scale of it almost makes me think that Twitter did a database rollback of some kind. Very strange.

I’m also taking the Chris Brogan philosophy of Twitter following, too. Unless you’re an obvious spambot, I’ll follow back whether or not I think you’ve got anything of value to say. This is the surest way to de-fuse the criticism that I follow some and not others (and yes, some people have actually said that!) – by devaluing my Twitterstream to near uselessness, I achieve equality of everyone’s voice. No one’s voice is greater than anyone else’s, because I can’t hear any of it. Not that I could anyway, with Twitter’s reliability being in the toilet lately.

Short summary: if you suddenly got a notice saying I was following you, this is why – re-syncing Twitter.

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June 9, 2008
Seriously, what are those guys smoking?

Reality is a harsh mistress.

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June 6, 2008

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