05/25/2007
Friday Fun is Diva Marketing's virtual happy hour from cosmos to
Jack to lemonade. A waiting for the weekend 'playground' time to be
sophisticated-silly. Or sometimes just plain silly.
.. The Learning Doesn't Stop!
A few weeks 
ago Drew McLellan, The Marketing Minute, invited a group of talented marketers to write a few Insights From The Other Side to help give College Grads A Fighting Chance as they enter the competitive job market. The free little eBook is a quick and inspirational read. Download a copy and use as a graduation card.
Insights is also great for anyone who is between gigs or just needs a shot of atta girl .. you can do it! Special thanks to Drew for inviting me to join in on this project. Toss of the pink boa to all of the authors who contributed!
Aaron Potts Andy Brudtkuhl Andy Nulman Andy Wibbels Ann Handley Ann Michael Anne Simons BeckyCarroll Bob Glaza C.B. Whittemore Carolyn Manning Chris Cree Christine Brown CK Darren Barefoot
David Reich Delaney Kirk Derek Tutschulte Designer Mike Doug Karr Doug Mitchell Drew McLellan
Joan Schramm Kevin Hillstrom Lewis Green Liz Strauss Mario Sundar Mark Goren Mark True
Mary Schmidt Nick Rice Patrick Schaber Paul McEnany Phil Gerbyshak Roger von Oech Rosa Say
Seth Godin Sharon Sarmiento Stephanie Weaver Steve Miller Steve Sisler Terry Starbucker
Toby Bloomberg Tony D. Clark Valeria Maltoni
Shh! Here's a secret weapon for every person entering or in the job market now. I have to whisper this one Girlfriend because this could be what helps set you apart from the maddening crowd. Although it's not very bloggy, I don't want to tip off your competition.
Penelope Trunk at Brazen Careers. Penelope's blog is over flowing with down-to-earth advice and information on what to do on your way to your career, on the job and in between gigs. But there is more. Penelope writes in a story style (Valeria you'll appreciate this blog) that is engaging, fun, smart and oh so well .. Penelope Trunk.
Penelope Trunk's just released book Brazen Careers is more than just advice to the job seeker. If you want to understand what is important to Gen X and Gen Y in the workplace and how Gen X and Gen Y defines success this book is a must read.
June is book tour month. Drop by and say hi, pick up a copy of Brazen Careers and be prepared for a fun, smart and oh so well .. Penelope Trunk time.
June 4, Atlanta
A Cappella Books
484-C Moreland Ave NE.
Atlanta, GA 30307
404-681-5128
June 7, New York City
Tequila Jack’s
1668 Third Ave
Between East 93rd and 94th
(212) 426-1416
June 11, Boston
Location TBD
June 18, Tampa
Inkwood Books
216 South Armenia Avenue
Tampa, FL 33609-3310
(813) 253-2638
June 21, San Francisco
Location TBD
Sidebar: Interested in the youth market? Fleishman-Hillard's blog The Nex Great Thing focuses on that very subject.
business astrology for fun -
from The Astro Divas Paula Dare & Donna Page
Mercury enters Cancer Mon. 5/28. It can be difficult for the mind to be objective in the watery emotional sign of Cancer. Feelings may get in the way of logic and be the cause misunderstandings especially with family members. If you have siblings, don’t be surprised to hear “Mom always did like you better!” It maybe difficult to concentrate on work as your thoughts may drift to the past around home and family or to thoughts of all the housework you need to get done.
The Full Moon in Sagittarius falls on Thurs. 5/31. Are you taking care of your physical being? The body needs the proper nourishment and exercise for optimal health. We need the wholeness of body, mind and spirit. It is a good thing to try and achieve a balance of the left-brain and the right-brain.
Look for activities that stimulate the reasoning and logical side with the creative and intuitive side.
This Full Moon is a Blue Moon. It is when there are two Full Moons in a calendar month. It only occurs approximately every 41 months. Since it doesn’t occur often, hence the expression “Once in a Blue Moon.” Since this Blue Moon occurs May 31 in our time zone (Eastern), it may occur in June or July depending on where you live.
01/29/2007
Is Atlanta becoming the social media mecca of the Southeast or is it just a coincidence that within the next few weeks there are four events that focus on blogs, podcasts and consumer generated media? If you know of any others please let me know. Oh, and Peter Flaschner, the creative divo
behind the design of the Diva Marketing Blog skin, recently told me that he's
receving more than a few inquires for blog creative projects from Hot' lanta .. which I must tell you is not living up to it's "hot" name today - brr!
Sidebar: Checkout the excellent free ebook from The Blog Studio - A Guide To Business Blogging. Bloggy disclaimer - Diva Marketing is listed as a resource.
AiMA (Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association)
Date/Time: Jan 31, 2007 6:30p-9:p
Online Registration Deadline: Today! Jan 29th
Digital Disruption
Executives
from Tivo and Cox Media discuss how they are allowing the "2.0
Consumer" to be in control of some of their advertising experience and
the early indications of success.
Social Media Club
Date/Time: Jan 29, 2007 6:00p-8:30p
First Atlanta Meeting
Social Media Club is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media.
The roundtable will dig into what Social Media really is, review some of the activities at the other Clubs, discuss goals for 2007, in addition to covering other topics suggested by the Atlanta participants.
SoCon07
Date/Time: Feb 9 (dinner); Feb 10 (event) 8:30a-3:30p
A free unconference that will explore affordable, easy-to-use online tools of Web 2.0 and the opportunities that they are creating.
Note: Over 250 registered .. registration is closed. Awesome!
Podcamp Atlanta
Date/Time: March 16 (7p-9p) March 17 (9a ->?) March 18 (Morning -?)
A free 2-day unconference experience dedicated to the sharing of information around new / social media (audio and video podcasting, blogging, more).
I'm excited to see Atlanta on the social media track but please do keep in mind that as spiffy and cool as the new marketing technology may be .. without a strategy that supports your master marketing plan, a business/marketing blog, podcast, vlog is just a "me too play toy." You might appear cool at your next cocktail or Superbowl party but what is it doing to help move your brand or develop those important relationships?
Diva Charlene Li and her Forrester Research team have developed a few ideas on how to incorporate ROI. Smart ideas that will serve to reinforce the positioning that, we have been working hard to promote, .. social media is a credible marketing strategy. I particularly like how Forrester has tied metrics to value.
Sidebar: If you enjoy the Forrester concept you may be interested in the following ROI ideas, from a post I wrote for Darren Rowse when I was guest blogging at probogger last summer - Blogs Must Earn Their Keep. As with any marketing strategy, for metrics or accountability to be meaningful, as a component of your social media strategy, they must tie back to the goals and objects of your initiative.
Social Media Accountability Metric Suggestions
Website/Blog
- Search rankings
- Visitor hits*
- Page views
- Trackbacks *
- In bound links - general*
- In bound links - “high ranked” blogs/sites*
- Comments* such as customer feedback/new ideas
Conversions
- Newsletters subscriptions
- Sales
- Leads
- White paper/other down loads
Buzz
- Speaking engagements
- Podcasts, vlogs and other interviews
- Media mentions/quotes
- Mentions and links on other blogs/websites
Intangibles
- Customers’ emotional involvement with the brand
- Increase in brand loyalty
- Providing customers with the opportunity to talk with people within a company and ensuring that customers are heard, responded to and respected by those people who are assuming the role of the public “voice” of their company
*May be measured by unique or total posts
Sidebar: Shameless plug. A successful social media/blog strategy is more than a well-written post .. and it should never be a me too play toy. If you need help crafting a social media strategy or a sherpa to navigate the blogoshere a Diva Marketing approach might be the way to go!
09/20/2006
Fard Johnmar, Healtcare Vox, pulls no punches in his new Free eBook, Envision Solutions E-book:
From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage:
A New Healthcare Communications Strategy For A
Social Media World. He kicks off his theories with a powerful statement.
The healthcare industry will have no choice but to engage and develop
social media if it is interested in helping people find accurate and
helpful information online.
Although there has been some dabbling into blogs, podcast and vlogs the healthcare industry, as a whole, as been reluctant to take the big leap into social media. Fard explains that part of the hesitation is a reflection a culture of tightly control of information.
In industries such as
pharmaceutical and biotech and hospitals which are all heavily regulated it is understandable that offering an open commincation forum may appear like a walk on the wild side. However, healthcare providers that have entered into this world
understand that providing an open dialogue is critical in educating
consumers of healthcare.
From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage examines two models of communication strategy. The traditional Command and Control where information is carefully crafted and messages are spoon fed to the media and other stakeholders in a more or less 'pure' form. Although this model may appear to increase the odds that what is communicated = what people actually hear, in the social media world, it no longer works. Consumers of healthcare are online searching, talking and exchanging opinions about healthcare products and services.
I agree with Fard'd position that it is fool hearty for healthcare organizations to bury their heads in the sands of denial. As in other industries, ranging from technology to packaged goods to services, no company controls their messaging or the brand experience. The internet changed the rules of the game. 
We're not in Dr. Kildare's world of the 1960's! The sooner healthcare providers shake off the grains of sand the sooner they can begin to use social media as a competitive advantage to build stronger relationships with their customers.
Fard offers a solution in a social media communications model he calls Engage & Encourage.
Engage & Encourage - A New Media Communication Strategy
Phase I - Engage
Aggressively working with influential developers of social media to encourage them to talk about healthcare issues, products/service
- Conduct research to identify influential social media
- Monitor the conversation www.boardtracker.com sphere.com
Phase II - Encourage
- Collaborating with social media to encourage the accurate transmission of healthcare messages
- Producing social media that will help enrich and expand online healthcare dialog
Stage I - Research Social Media & Develop Messages
Stage II - Engage Traditional and Social Media
- Advertising on blogs, podcasts,wikis, bulletin boars
- Public/social media relations - developing messages to journalists and creators of social media and encouraging them to tell your story
- Posting Multimedia on a Video Sharing Website
Stage III - Social & Traditional Media Deliver Messages
Stage IV - Encourage Accuracy & Dialog
- Develop your own social media e.g., blog, podcast, vlog, discussion board to help shape the dialog
Stage V - Measure Audience Response
- Media coverage, advertising reach, audience response
In addition Fard encourages healthcare organizations to get into the game by producing their own blogs, podcast, videos, wikis an/or message boards.
The eBook is an easy read and offers tips on how to begin the development of a social media communication strategy. Although written for the healthcare industry the concepts are applicable to any industry. The end quote brings it home.
Remember, we may live in a new world, but the old rules still apply. Powerful communications has always been about getting people to pay attention and take action. The engage and encourage strategy is just another means of achieving the same objective.
Sidebar: Fard Johnson's definition of social media - The term social media refers to a group of technologies that enable people to collaborate, interact or meet via the internet.
Sidebar: Cross posted on The Medical Blog Network
02/25/2006
The Blog Studio is offering free blog templates.
MailChimp is offering free email templates.
11/26/2005
Toss of two pink boas...maybe three of four to Marianne Richmond, Resonance Partnership Blog, for doing what Lynksis, Earthlink and Microsoft and Mozilla could not do ... connect me to Google.com.
For the past few days I couldn't access Google via a browser. I couldn't access Google via a website. I couldn't access Google via an email link. I couldn't access Diva Marketing Google Search either.
Played dodge ball tech support -- referred from one company to another to another to another -- with major corporations. One company even told me to contact Google's help support. Dah ha ha ... how would I do that if I couldn't access the site. Another company suggested that Google had "gone down." Yeah right. Can you imagine the blogopshere buzz if that happened? Not to mention the fun Yahoo! and MSN would have if Google were to shut down for days.
I'm sure Diva Marianne wouldn't mind sharing her advice. Drum beat please ... "Disconnect your router for 10 seconds and plug it back it." Sometimes simple is best. Perhaps Marianne can add geek training to her repertoire.
Tit for tat! Can someone please repay the favor and help Marianne figure out why Technorati Tags won't work on the Resonance Partnership Blog?
Technorati Tags: Google, Tech_support
04/11/2005
Internet-based live radio programs and telconferences are great resources to keep up to date on the latest and greatest in your industry. The big bonus - you can ask those questions that are keeping you up at night and receive a response on-the-spot.
From the speaker's viewpoint, it's a great strategy to reinforce thought leadership positioning from the comfort of your office...or living room... or even pool side (if no one hears the spashes or the clink of those umbrella drinks!).
Want to know how to play in the Google Sandbox or find out what Google's fresh link filter is all about? Tune into Search Engine Radio and listen to one of the smart guys of search - Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World, puts "...complex SEO theories into plain English, so we can all understand them."
Date: April 12th
Time: 12 noon Eastern
Where: Search Engine Radio
Paul Chaney, the southern gentleman of blogs, Radiant Marketing, is the kick-off guest for a new teleconference series on blogs called Conversations With Experts.
Date: April 13, 2005
Time: 8:30p Eastern
Place: Conversations With Experts
By the way, Wayne gets around ... join him on April 27th at Conversations With Experts.
More Live Learning
Easy Bake Weblogs
AMA Webcasts
ago Drew McLellan, The Marketing Minute, invited a group of talented marketers to write a few Insights From The Other Side to help give College Grads A Fighting Chance as they enter the competitive job market. The free little eBook is a quick and inspirational read. Download a copy and use as a graduation card.
Penelope Trunk's just released book Brazen Careers is more than just advice to the job seeker. If you want to understand what is important to Gen X and Gen Y in the workplace and how Gen X and Gen Y defines success this book is a must read. 
business astrology for fun -
