Prediction: Recession Is Good For New Media Marketing

There's lots of news today about a possible recession. The Federal Reserve made the biggest rate cut in 24 years today to head a recession off at the pass but the stock market isn't really responding well so far. While a recession (or even the hint of one) will increase fears in many traditional sectors of media and marketing, I think new media marketers will benefit from this and here's why....

• Blogs don't cost anything to start.
• Online video is free. So is creating your own video channel on YouTube.
  
• Creating a Facebook group doesn't cost anything.
• Recording a podcast costs next to nothing.
• A basic Flickr account to engage your customers is free.
• Twitter doesn't charge to message the people most interested in what you are doing.
• AdWords only cost you something when someone clicks your ad (and you determine the cost per click.)
  

There will still be marketing in a recessed economy. There will still be marketers spending money in a recessed economy, even if there's not as much of it. What marketers will be paying for, however, is not the use of the technology, the air time to broadcast it's message, or the placement for ads. What they'll pay for is help to use the new media well. When in the face of decreased marketing budgets new media will emerge as the cheaper option because companies will pay consultants (i.e. digital coaches) a few thousand dollars to teach them how to fish the new way. This may be the tipping point for new media marketing as marketers and advertisers give it a shot out of financial necessity rather than being convinced that it's the right thing to do. Whatever the case, a recession is going to be good news for new media marketing. It's bad news for traditional advertising and marketing, but Google was already telling us that.

Web 2.0 beats traditional advertising methods...and Google Trends proves it!

I spent some time on Google Trends today as I was thinking about web 2.0 tools for marketing compared to traditional marketing methods. You may recall I consider traditional promotion strategies the big fish of marketing (and I advocate going after the far more numerous small and medium size fish.) In my first test I compared direct mail, tv ads, billboards, and radio advertising.

One note about Google Trends before we proceed...this is just showing the relative quantity of Google searches on the given search terms. It may be easy to dismiss this but as Steve Rubel said in this post, "search engines show us what's on everyone's mind," and it's therefore interesting to note the trends of the collective thinking.

Here's what the trends show over the last four years in these traditional marketing areas:

What you see here is that all but billboards are down from four years ago. Direct mail seemed to fall slowly and then hold fairly even in 2007. TV ads appear to have the most dramatic swings. Incidentally, notice the spike in TV ads early each year. Those are Super Bowl commercial searches for sure. Radio was down a little but steady for the last four years, though clearly below the other three areas.

After I looked at these four areas I included the term "web 2.0" to see if that mere term competed with these traditional mediums. Here's what I found:

Web 2.0 really didn't take off until late 2005. By early 2006 you see that it eclipses the four traditional terms and then clears them significantly through 2006 and 2007.

Just for fun I tried one more trend comparison by throwing "blogs" into the mix. I dropped radio ads from the comparison since it was at the bottom of the pile and here's what I found:

With "blogs" included it makes everything else just look silly. I was actually surprised it was such a huge difference. More surprising to me was that it was higher even back in 2004. We know that there were less than six million blogs at most in 2004 so it's a bit curious to me, but quite interesting.

So what can we derive from all of this? At the very least we know there are far more searches for "web 2.0" and "blogs" than than any of the traditional marketing methods. Even if all those searches weren't marketing related (and we know that's the case), the phrase web 2.0 is a business, marketing, and technology term. We can discern that the collective marketing and business interests are greatly interested in web 2.0 from these trends and if that's where they are, it's reasonable to look more seriously at them if you still have doubts.

One final one for kicks if you're interested. Who do you think wins in a match up of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Google, and blogs? See it here.

One Thing Bloggers Will Love About Your Website

I hadn't been blogging for too many months when I realized most websites weren't built with the notion that there may be a way to help a blogger out. That realization birthed the "three ways to get bloggers to hate your website" post. Ever since then I have sought to make sure websites I am a part of are blog friendly. Early last year I co-created MySliceofPi.com and we dedicated an entire resource page to bloggers (and any other media who might be interested.) The intention of the page was to cater to the image needs bloggers might have if they chose to write a post about the site. Since then, I have recommended similar pages to clients and over the summer one client, Modern Parables, took me up on it. They created a blogger/media page with multiple options for their logo, images from the product, images from their original films, embeddable video links, and movie stills.

They went all out and it's been helpful to the numerous bloggers who have written about their resource. In fact, today they received a note specifically about the blogger/media page:

"I am SO impressed. I just went to your web site and downloaded and saved the images in less than a minute. That has to be the easiest time I've ever had finding and saving images. Woo hoo!!!!!"

Getting a page like this up on your organization's site isn't difficult. You just have to take a little time to do it. Bloggers (and other media) will love you for it. When's the last time your site got a woo hoo?

Five Organizations That Should Not Blog

I find myself recommending blogs on a regular basis. I think it's a great idea for almost every organization but I have also realized there are organizational characteristics that would lead me to say they shouldn't blog. Here's my list of those who should not blog (or use other social media for that matter):

Organizations that don't trust their employees. If your organization doesn't trust employees then a blog strategy will constantly be plagued by the legal department's involvement or management trying to control the message. If the organization doesn't trust the employees to represent them well without micromanagement, don't start blogging.

Organizations that don't want to hear bad news. Blogging and other forms of social media are inherently interactive and conversational. Once you decide to jump in you should prepare to respond as needed. If a corporate blogger gets negative feedback or criticism on a service, product, strategy, etc. the right thing to do is respond truthfully and candidly. That doesn't necessarily mean a concession either. The organization's blogger can totally disagree with the the feedback without being disagreeable. What this interaction shows is that the organization isn't afraid to hear and engage people even when it can be negative. If you're not ready for this, don't start blogging.

Organizations that want absolute control over their message and reputation. Organizations can't, and never have, been able to control what people say about them. To think otherwise is foolish. New media tools allow those conversations that may have previously been private to be more widespread and more easily discovered. If your organization is determined to control every message about it and is under the delusion that it can also control what other people say about it, don't start blogging, it will only create frustration when the facade of control begins to crumble.

Organizations that create by committee. I have been a part of numerous "writing by committee" situations and almost every single time the final message is so diluted from the original intent it becomes a shell of what it could have been. Blogging by committee is not good for at least two reasons. First, it will take forever to get a post done by the time you get everyone involved and consider their revisions and debate what should stay and what should go. Second, it will very likely not be a candid, fully engaging post, but rather something diluted. Contributors to a blog are good, committees are not. It's not a bad thing to have multiple bloggers for a single blog as long as it's clear to all that the blog was set up that way. If your organizations writes by committee, however, don't start blogging.

Organizations that are slow. One of the true benefits to blogging is that you can create a post in a matter of minutes so there is a wonderful opportunity to respond quickly to a situation in the event that it's necessary. Depending on the industry, response time can make or break how a something is perceived. For instance, if an company had some negative press they could use the blog to respond quickly and provide their perspective. By doing so, the blog post will be part of the news and balance the original negative story. Without the blog the organization will issue a less timely press release if they respond at all and possibly miss a window of opportunity. If the organization isn't prepared or comfortable with a quick response then they will not be fully utilizing the blog. If your organization is stuck on slow, don't start blogging.

Don't Pay for Blog Comments: The Deer Now Have Guns

A few weeks ago I was speaking with a publisher about how they can work with bloggers to get more exposure for some upcoming books. The publisher quickly dismissed the idea of using bloggers because "they tried that once before and all our authors got was a lot of bad feedback from the bloggers because they were accused of being spammers." When I inquired as to what they actually did I was told that the publisher hired a company which has a staff to post comments on blogs that may fit the book topics. Instead of the positive feedback and awareness, the authors were hammered with negative feedback that they were spamming these blogs. Those authors in turn hammered the publisher and the publisher has been wary of bloggers ever since.

What happened here is that the publisher had no idea what it was paying for. In essence they were duped into thinking that comments on blogs through any means necessary are a good thing. They had no idea how their vendor's strategy fits (or actually doesn't fit) into blog culture. The end result was a disaster where the authors got blamed and the publisher lost major credibility with some of their top authors.

I first realized that comment spam is an issue back in February but didn't dream that it could go to the level of paying a company to post comments on blogs. That simply shows both a lack of awareness of blog culture and a pressure that companies now feel to be using new media in their marketing strategies without a proper understanding. This publisher's vendor is preying on the sense of urgency companies have to "just be doing something" in new media. You must have a proper understanding of new media before you launch into a marketing strategy with new media elements. You cannot carry over the same old mindset, methodology, and cultural approach of traditional marketing. If your organization views bloggers like deer and you're just going out to hunt for the biggest one, you're missing a very crucial shift in the hunt: the deer now have guns too...

3 Reasons Why You Need Bloggers

My friend Chris is one of the more creative people I know. Not in an artsy kind of way but in the kind of way where he has ideas that challenge conventional thinking and go against the flow enough to be different but still fit within mainstream interest. He recently began an endeavor to eat all 51 sandwich combinations at a local Which Wich? sandwich shop and blog about each sandwich. Chris also lets his readers vote on one of five sandwiches each day in the comments and the winning sandwich of the day is the one he eats at lunch.

At first he was doing the reviews and his friends and family were commenting on the sandwiches for the day. Then he started to get noticed by the folks at his local Which Wich as the guy who blogged about their sandwiches. The next thing he knows there's a stamp on all the sandwich bags like the one seen here. Then a bunch of widely read blogs start talking about the story and days later he gets a call from the founder of Which Wich who wants to fly to Nashville to have lunch with him and today I learned that all Which Wich shops across the country will likely be stamping their bags with the "Will Chris Make All 51?" slogan in a week or so.

So what can you learn about your need for bloggers from all of this? Here are three things that come to mind immediately:

• Bloggers provide free publicity. Until Chris started the Which Wich challenge I'd never even heard of the place and I live in a metropolitan area with two locations. I even noticed the downtown Which Wich just yesterday for the first time and I've driven by it dozens of times. Blogs are the ultimate in word of mouth marketing and provide the holy grail of publicity at the most fundamental levels. They influence people either on the basis of an authentic and objective opinions or with a personal relationship you'll never be able to match.
  

• Bloggers affect your Google results. As I write this, four out of the first ten items on a Google search for "which wich" are either from Chris' blog or about what Chris is doing. In this case it turns out to be good PR for Which Wich but if Chris had a bone to pick with them and consistently talked about it that could be news for Which Wich as curious Internet searchers would find all kinds of negative commentary right off the bat. Have you Googled your organization recently? Have you checked both the Google image search and the Google blog search for your organization's name? Got Google alerts set up for your organization and key leaders? If not, you might want to see if you've got a fan (or foe) blogger out there.
  

• Bloggers will keep you sharp. The most fundamental thing you can do to get bloggers to talk about you has nothing to do with bloggers at all. If you do what you do well, a blogger will find you and tell other people about it on his or her blog. If you do it well consistently you might even get a person like Chris to generate a lot of genuine interest your way. If that day comes, take a note from the Which Wich playbook and support that blogger all the way.

Tracking the growth of blogs

I've been interested in the growth of blogs and keep track of Technorati's updates. Every several months they come out with a new "state of the blogosphere" with very interesting information about blogs. Here's the most recent report.

I'll show some of the highlights from the report below, but I'm especially interested in this list of blog growth according to Technorati's previous reports:

Worldwide Blog Growth:

• January 2004 – less than 2 million blogs
• July 2004 – 3.5 million
• January 2005 – 6 million
• July 2005 – 12 million
• January 2006 – 24 million
• July 2006 – 50 million
• October 2006 – 57 million
• March 2007 – 70 million

The sheer growth in 2006 alone is unbelievable. There are some equally unbelievable numbers and data in this most recent report. Here are the highlights:

• 70 million weblogs now
  
• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
• 1.4 new blogs every second
• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
• 1.5 million posts per day, or...
• 17 posts per second
• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8%
• Italian fourth at 3%
• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
• English the most even in postings around-the-clock
• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

So just think, in the time it took you to read this post 63 new blogs were created and 765 new blog posts were written but you probably can't read over a third of them because they were in Japanese. Seems to me, translators like Babel Fish are going to be increasingly important.

Mark Driscoll responds to Bill Hybels criticism

What happens when public criticism around a theological hot-button issue involving two well known Christian leaders meets blogs and YouTube? This.

There are many interesting things to observe here like the number of blogs that will speak to this in the coming days or whether Bill Hybels will issue any kind of response to Mark Driscoll. There will be blogs vehemently for and against each of these guys with another share of people taking the middle ground stating they respect both of these guys and don't want to take sides. Few if any people will change their views on the topic and some people will become emboldened and others will be dismayed. But here's what I'll be watching: the views.

I'm going to be watching the view count on the YouTube video over the next few weeks. There are currently 3,820 views as of 12am CST on Monday, April 30. Could this break the 100,000 view mark over the next few weeks? Are there enough people who care about this issue? Will they watch just to see what got Bill Hybels upset? I don't know exactly what we'll find, but the pace of growth may tell us more about the perceived importance around this discussion in Christianity than any of the bloggers will.

Video of the Week: The Gift of Language

I discovered this video on the blog Media:nation Station via slice 23 on MySliceofPi.com. (Shameless plug, I know...but hey, I really did find it that way!)

This video is certainly not politically correct...but that's where the humor is.



Here's the link for the feed readers (and feed emails):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncirovhlQcw

Diversion: My Slice of Pi

I've been working on something with a friend for the last couple months called MySliceofPi.com. MySlice is going to be an interesting experiment in online property. Think of it as a little online billboard an owner maintains with a message and link of their choosing. We expect some people will see a monetary and/or promotional value in this to promote a product, blog, website, service, organization, etc. Others may use it as a messaging system to make a simple public statement...maybe something that makes sense to everyone or perhaps something that is really only for their friends to understand. We've come up with a bunch of ideas ("Pideas" actually) for ways people may use this.

We've already had some questions about why a digit is purchased rather than given away. The answer is twofold. First, we'd like to make some money off this. I'm personally planning to give 100% of my share to my church for at least the first 2000 digits that sell. The second reason is that if this thing takes off then the people who got in early will have something of a higher value than the people who got in later and the money is a barrier to people erroneously claiming a bunch of digits and turning this into a massive spam page. We have, however, made some digits free for the taking. All the zeros are free so check the site regularly to see when the next zero is available.

We know people have lots of ways to communicate online. We've got MySpace profiles, blogs, instant messages, YouTube, Facebook, email, photo sharing, etc. Sure, you don't need another way, but we think there will be some people who'll gravitate to the unique nature of this and get on board. If you're one of those we encourage you to grab your slice of Pi.

Web 2.0 stats - Fascinating growth in blogs, video, MySpace

I recently pulled stats for some work we're doing at White Post that cover the growth in blogs, online video, and MySpace. These are all really interesting and I'm going to let the numbers speak for themselves...for now anyway.

Worldwide Blog Growth (source: Technorati)
January 2004 – less than 2 million blogs
July 2004 – 3.5 million
January 2005 – 6 million
July 2005 – 12 million
January 2006 – 24 million
July 2006 – 50 million
October 2006 – 57 million

Worldwide Online Video Growth (source: ComScore via Reel Pop)
October 2005 – less than 25 million online video views per day
January 2006 – 125 million online video views per day
July 2006 – 700 million online video views per day

United States Online Video Viewers (sources: eMarketer; US Census Bureau via Business 2.0)
2003 – 52 million (32% of U.S. Internet users; 19% of population)
2004 – 69 million (41% of U.S. Internet users; 25% of population)
2005 – 89 million (51% of U.S. Internet users; 32% of population)
2006 – 107 million (60% of U.S. Internet users; 38% of population)
2007 projection – 123 million (67% of U.S. Internet users; 43% of population)
2008 projection – 137 million (73% of U.S. Internet users; 47% of population)

MySpace.com registered users (sources: MySpace, Blog Herald, Business Week via Joe Suh)
May 2004 – 2 million
April 2005 – 12 million
October 2005 – 33 million
January 2006 – 48 million
July 2006 – 90 million
November 2006 – 131 million
February 2007 – 160 million

Comment Spam - Are You Guilty?

In a continued effort to get a personal handle on this bucking bronco called web 2.0 I've noticed the emergence of a shift and I finally feel like I've seen enough evidence to confirm my earlier observations. The shift is this: the definition of spam has evolved and expanded and there's a chance you might be a spammer and don't know it.

Let's start from the beginning and then talk about a shift: spam as we have come to know it over the last several years is unsolicited promotion from someone you don't know and 99.9% of the time we're referring to email as the medium by which that spam distributed. As people have gained an understanding of what email spam is, it has become more widely recognized and there are more protections in place for the average person against it. Likewise, all upstanding websites have confirmed opt-in email lists and the consequences for being labeled a "spammer" have created terror in the heartland for reputable marketers. None of this, unfortunately, seems to have led to much of a decrease in actual spam (according to my Gmail spam folder) but the filters are much better and our own ability to recognize spam is also better than it was even a few years ago.

That being said, spam has moved beyond email into web 2.0. There are spam blogs, spam MySpace pages, spam videos, etc. This seems to have been the natural progression of spam and although I don't like it, I'm also not really surprised either. The shift, however, is that a comment on a blog or website may very well be considered spam now too. A spam comment (do we call them spamments?) is one in which a person comments and leaves a link to something outside of the discussion they're commenting on.

For instance if I saw a blog post about iPods, a potentially spammy comment could say:
"Hey, I wrote a review of my recent experience with an iPod that died after six months. Check it out on my blog MicroExplosion."

Whereas a clearly non-spam post saying the same thing would be:
I just had an iPod die on me after just six months. What's the deal?

If you're skeptical that this shift is taking place take a look at a few things here...
This guy made a pretty innocent post (but crossed the line as described above) on Digg and got drilled for spamming.
This PR professional talks about it happening on his blog too.

Today I was reading Chris Thomas' blog where he's giving away an iPod and a guy posted a potentially spamish comment there too.

It feels like the rules have changed and there was no formal announcement to let everyone know. I've seen this shift emerge just over the last year, or at the very least it's begun to show itself more clearly over the last year but I can't help but wonder if the same feelings we have now for email spam will soon be the same for comment spam. I know I've been guilty of this kind of commenting in the past and I really think twice now before I comment on a blog. There are no rules or guidelines here so it's hard to grasp in some ways but if this is the way the spam tide is turning at least you can now say you were given the heads up here.

Stats: Worldwide blog count & daily web video views

On Monday I had the opportunity to talk to two groups about how understanding web 2.0 can help their organizations. The first group I spoke to were the good people at Katcher, Vaughn, and Bailey, a PR firm in Nashville (thanks for the invitation Steve). The second group was the marketing department and some editorial staff at Randall House, a publishing company here in town.

In both cases I gave an overview of the six categories of web 2.0...the "massive Volkswagon" acronym MASSVW. We also discussed some additional terms like RSS, wiki, AJAX, and tags. One of the things that seemed to get everyone's attention were some stats about blogs and online video. You may find them interesting too if you haven't seen any recently. Here's the breakdown on both with the data I had:

Worldwide Blogs Count (source Technorati)

• Jan. 2004 - less than 2 million
• Jan. 2005 - 6 million
• Jan. 2006 - 24 million
• July 2006 - 50 million
• Jan. 2007 - 60+ million

Online Video - Average number of views per day (source ComScore)

• Oct. 2005 - less than 25 million
• Jan. 2006 - 125 million
• July 2006 - 700 million

I haven't seen any more recent data than July 2006 but I wouldn't be surprised to see that Jan. 2007 online video views reached 1 billion per day.

So what does this mean for you? First, if you're not one of the 60 million bloggers you might want to consider starting one. Blog writers are blog readers and the number of people who will read your blog is higher now that it's ever been. Second, how are you using online video to help you? Are you creating opportunities for people to embed any video you put online? If you're not, you are missing a tremendous opportunity.

YouTube clearly trumps web 2.0 technologies

One of the blogs I read daily is Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel. He had an interesting post today about a little data mining he did with some web 2.0 terms like widgets, Second Life, podcasts, blogs, and RSS feeds. It was interesting to see that blogs are the clear front runner in popularity among these areas but the surge in Second Life interest was exciting as well.

What was noticeably absent from the list was any reference to online video. I did the same search as Steve did but dropped the RSS feeds and added YouTube. What I found was staggering. YouTube makes the other technologies look like nothing. I expected YouTube to be a contender with blogs but not trounce it the way it did. I was just telling someone today that there's been a rise in online video interest over the last year. This data suggests that it's not a mere rise, but rather a massive surge. So what's the moral of the story? If you're not thinking about online video right now you're getting behind very quickly.

Just another PS3 enjoying the holiday season

I've always thought my friend Chris was creative. Not in an artsy kind of way but more in an "everybody does it like this so let's do it like that" fashion. He just recently put up an eBay auction for a new PS3 for a friend of his...and true to form, he did it a little different than the average eBay seller. Rather than the standard four or five photos and description, Chris put the PS3 in a number of different holiday scenarios like sipping hot cocoa with a female companion and lighting some Christmas candles. You can check out the auction here. His account of this venture can be found on his blog PourOut.com.

Here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment. Be sure to click on the images to read the captions...

Web 2.0 Design Elements Dissected

One thing I really like about connecting with people through blogging is that you build relationships that are mutually beneficial. One such relationship for me is with Jon Haarstad. Though we've never met and live thousands of miles away (he's in Portland, Oregon while I'm in Nashville) we've traded numerous emails and exchanged a lot of ideas.

He recently sent me a link to a Pixel Acres blog post that dissects the visual elements of web 2.0 design. I recognized some of these elements in a previous post but didn't go to the sheer depth or show examples like the Pixel Acres post. It's certainly worth a look for anyone trying to understand web 2.0 better and for the experienced person it will just solidify a lot of things you've already observed. If you want to go all out on web 2.0 just do everything they outline here and you'll be set for your beta launch in no time.

If you thought banner ads were bad three years ago...

A while back I said that friends don't let friends post banner ads. I've also discussed that banner ads are a bad idea...so if you weren't clear as to my general thoughts on them...I not exactly a fan. Last week a friend sent me a link to a study that was taken nearly three years ago that gauges people's perspectives of various Internet advertising formats. What is most interesting is that despite all my disdain for banner ads...they're actually the most favorable form of ads on the entire list. The most obtrusive ads, like pop ups, are ranked the lowest. Here's the link if you missed it.

Two things came to mind when I saw this:

• With the way technology has changed and the influx of text ads since this study was taken, I cannot believe that the numbers would be any better now. Three years ago people wouldn't have been as familiar with text ads (and therefore not known there was a better, less annoying way to do online advertising).
• Let's say these numbers are still valid...look at the percentage of people who are not "very positive" about the selected ad methods. In every single case you are more likely to get a negative response than a positive response...so why would you do it?

I talk about all of this to say that if you're considering spending money on Internet advertising, particularly the forms mentioned in this study, there are better things you can do like blogging which won't cost you anything but will take some time to develop...and therein lies the problem.

Many organizations and marketing departments actually have more money than time. Yes, they'll say they don't have any money but what they have even less of is time. They have deadlines, timelines, and deliverables that they're trying to manage and all the while they can say (quite honestly) that they don't have time to set up blogs for the very products or services they're spending all this time on. The downside to blogs is that they aren't usually quick impact promotion elements, which are what many marketing people need...after all, it's in their timeline. So when they choose these methods, are they really saying that they prefer to annoy a segment of customers with minimal opportunities for return on their investments in order to fulfill their well prepared (though ill conceived) plans? Possibly.

The impact of blogs for promotion will rarely be immediate but you won't be frustrating people either. In the long run you'll connect to more people for longer through the blogs but you have to be in it for the long run.

3 ways to get bloggers to hate your website

Ok, so let's say you're not interested in bloggers talking about your organization. In fact, you're more than not interested...you don't care if they like you or not so you really don't want to make their lives any easier. If you think bloggers are annoying little wannabe writers with nothing better to do than sit in front of their laptops while sipping double chocolate mocha latte frappuccinos this is the post for you. Here are three ways to get bloggers to hate your website (but what do you care?):

No permanent links: Bloggers love to post a link to the exact part of a website or story they're talking about. If you don't have a way for a blogger to reference it as a permanent link there's no way they can be guaranteed their reference link will still be there a day later...they'll hate that about your site and may purposefully avoid talking about you.

Bad image files: Bloggers love to spruce up their posts with pictures or logos of the people or organizations they're talking about. Most of the time they'll grab the image from the site to post to their blog. You won't want to do that for them...that would make their lives too easy. In fact, if you can prevent them from copying the images at all that would really get them to hate your site.

Don't give personal email addresses: Bloggers are natural connectors and will occasionally want to ask questions or make a one-on-one connection to the people/organizations they're talking about. If they can't find a personal email address on your site (or at the very least something like info@yourwebsite.com...which will annoy them a bit but not get them to hate your site) they'll never be able to connect with you. Undoubtedly bloggers talk about their connections which can only perpetuate the discussion about you and your organization. Since you're not interested in that just give them a generic form to fill out or an 800 number with an automated voice that answers the phone.

If you are interested in bloggers talking about you (and maybe even loving you) do the opposite of everything above.

Do you know what bloggers are saying about you?

Last week I talked about attack blogs and some ways to survive them. One thing I thought of after writing the post is that there are some proactive measures that can be taken prior to a crisis situation to monitor the blogosphere for both good and bad things that might be said about your organization. Here are a couple of things you should do (and they won't cost you anything):

• Search for your organization's name in Technorati and Google's Blog search. You want to do blog specific searches rather than just a simple Google search. This will cut out all the miscellaneous references from non-blogs.

• Search for key leaders names in Technorati and Google's Blog search. Same reasons as above.
  

• Set up an RSS feed in Technorati for a search for all of the above. If you don't know what RSS is check out this post. If so, Technorati has a cool feature that lets you retain any search as an RSS feed. If you do this you won't have to keep doing the two bullet points above. You can bring the search results to you as often as you like.
  

Even if you're not concerned about any type of crisis situation pertaining to blog discussions about your organization, I suggest you monitor this anyway. It will be a great way to learn for yourself what some people are saying about you (if anything) whether good or bad. It will also provide an opportunity to reach out to some like minded individuals.

If you're doing this type of search for a business organization, you might find you've got some big fans of a product or service you provide. You should really try to tap into those people and build a relationship with them. They're obviously natural evangelists. If you represent a church, you may discover some people in your congregation with unique gifts or compelling insight that would be an asset to your ministry. The point is you never really know what you're going to find so keep an eye on it on a regular basis. All it will take is one good find to make it worth while.

Don't want to blog? Then Vox.

I came across a short interview with Mena Trott, the president of Six Apart on Pod Tech last night. Mena was talking about their release of a new product called Vox. Vox sounds pretty interesting. From the sound of it, Vox wants to be a bit more family and friend focused than blogs and is therefore trying to corner the market on that type of blogging...or voxing. One of the key features it has is that it allows you to designate a privacy setting on each individual post. So if you want to make some posts public to the world and others limited to friends and family you can do that easily within the same interface.

It's clear from spending a few minutes within Vox that they have focused on design in all areas. The template choices are much more graphically enhanced than about any other blog templates I've seen. Even the interface to post is highly stylized, which ads up to an inviting and engaging experience. Many of the designs seem to be aimed toward a female audience but I think it will appeal to a wide range of people. It doesn't appear to have RSS feeds built into the posts, so that's one strike against them in my view, but overall Vox makes a great first impression. I've set it up for my family and may start using it when our baby is born (and that may be sooner than we think). I'm looking forward to keeping up with Vox to see how it develops.