Software to track video engagement

There was a post by Erick over at TechCrunch today talking about a company called Visible Measures. Visible Measures offers data-collection software to capture every play, pause, rewind, and e-mail-to-a-friend button that viewers click on while watching videos on a given site.

As you know video is a hot thing and for us marketers we are always interested in engagement of our stuff. Let me know your thoughts if you have tried this thing out.

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Change

I dropped my son off at school this morning like any other morning. However, instead of taking the same route back to my home office I decided to branch out and take a scenic route. Sure I went totally out of my way and burned more gas than usual, but it was refreshing. I was able to crank some music, chill, feel the road and enter a different but relaxed state of mind. It was a change and it was great.

If you are a software marketer or just a marketer in general and have taken the same path home with your prospects or customers each and every time, a change can sometimes be refreshing. It could backfire and people will get freaked out, but sometimes branching out and doing something different even if its minuscule can make a world of difference. So change your newsletter up a bit. Market that white paper using non traditional media. Make a vidcast or a podcast series to reinforce brand. Do something goofy to get the sales folks engaged with marketing.

Think about this….can you imagine the person over at ad agency that introduced the whopperfreakout? At first pass you would think that is stupid…pretend you are not having your biggest product anymore and secretly tape peoples reactions. How would that ever push brand and Burger King? Sometimes new ideas and change work and sometimes they don’t. I would rather try and fail than not try at all.

So go ahead….take a different road today…let me know how it goes.

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The Future of the Web: What to Expect in 2008

Brian Suda over at Sitepoint has a great article on the future of the web and what we can expect in 2008. He goes on to list 10 things and I think the thing that excites me the most is #3 in which he states that Pull is dead and that Push is the new king. You will have to read all about it, but Brian gives some great insight into the future.

Here is my prediction for the web in the next 4-6 years. A microchip or tiny PC which you will be able to embed in your head which you can switch on and off via brainwaves and surf the net in your head. Basically you have the abilityy to be the internet and view things but just staring off in space. Ok, I know is sounds a bit nutty, but how cool would it be to wake up at 2 am, turn on the net in your head and see if their are any breaking news stories or check overseas markets without turning on a light or even using electricity to power anything.

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Google Phone by February?

APC is reporting that we could see a Google Phone look as early as February.

They are also reporting that a touchscreen blackberry is on the way as well. Guess its time to trade in my old school blackberry once this comes out.

2008 is shaping up to be a really cool year for the gadget freaks.

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JetBrains Omea Reader vs. Sharpreader

I am an RSS junkie. I have used only 2 news readers in the past: Feedreader and Sharpreader. I have used Google reader for some other feeds/reputation monitoring purposes, but sometimes find it a bit clunky and unreliable in terms of handling lots and lots feeds. I am talking ALOT of feeds. Currently have hundreds and hundreds of feeds tracking hundreds of keywords, blogs and general news stuff. At times, I have over 30,000 items in my reader that I look through. Up until now, I have used Sharpreader and really liked it. Sharpreader did its thing and I went along my merry way.

Then last night I downloaded the personal edition of the JetBrains Omea Reader and my RSS/feed addiction has been taken to a new level. Without question, this is the best free reader on the market. Its laid out well and has a ton of features nor normally found in many readers. I especially love the “subscribe to search feed” feature. If you are in the market to switch or just want to try out a new look and feel of your seemingly boring reader you need to check out JetBrains Omea Reader….as you will not be disappointed

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rss, rssreader, news aggregator, googlereader, google reader, jetbrains, omea reader, sharpreader, feedreader, aggregation, blogs, reputation monitoring, atom, jetbrains.com

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Stretch your ad budget with these metrics

Reid Carr over at iMedia Connection has a great article on what really matters most in terms of metrics and the almighty Ad dollar. He tells us to go beyond the frequency and impressions metric that alot of people rely on as a success measurement.

I know that my organization is interested in taking that next step. We do measure the CPL and conversion rates, but we need to take that next step in terms of ROI.

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The Official 2008 Web 2.0 Buzzword Forecast

Pete Blackshaw over at ClickZ has an interesting article title The Official 2008 Web 2.0 Buzzword Forecast. I love “shamsparency”. Pete offers up a bit of humor in this article and its well worth the read.

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Holiday SEO Poem

My good friends over at Webbed Marketing have this funny as heck holiday SEO poem that is a must read. It’s scary to think that my inner dork comes out and laughs at this stuff. For all you SEO nuts out there this is for you.

I will reprint some of it for you guys, but its best to go to their site and check it out for yourselves:

Twas the night before an algo change and I’m at my house
My laptop is on and I’m clicking my mouse
My title tags are crafted from keywords with care
In hopes that the Googlebot soon would be there

My keyword density was optimized to the specs
While my homepage featured rich visible text

With ma pouring link juice and me in whitehat
I’d just uploaded a new Google site map.

When out on the web there arose such a clatter
I checked my page serve time to see what was the matter

Away to my toolbar I typed on a mission
Searched on my keywords and checked my position

My site pages were slipping – it must be a new algo
Page two, three, four and five, and some further below,

When, what to my site should suddenly crawl
But an indexer, a bot, spider, a combination of them all

Rolling across the web with a new algo so hot
I knew in a moment it must be Googlebot

More rapid than eagles the SEOs they came,
And he crawled, and indexed, and called them by name;

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TechTarget Online ROI Summit

I am attending the TechTarget online ROI summit today and tomorrow in San Francisco and have been sitting through a number of sessions where alot of industry experts are talking about things from lead nurturing, new media, marketing to CIO’s and predictions for 2008 in online advertising.

After sitting through several sessions and talking with a few vendors today something has become abundantly clear to me.  It has occurred that the IT marketing landscape is in a state of change and either you as a marketer adapt to this change or be prepared to face some tough realities in the marketplace. I work in an organization which has 100+ people dedicated to marketing and while some of these folks have a decent vision of the current marketing landscape and what it will take going forward, I am becoming increasingly disturbed at the fact that some people are not aware, (nor do they care to be) that this IT marketing landscape is becoming more collaborative, transparent and nimble.  That marketing in IT is not about how many “leads” we can give sales. Its not about feeding the funnel and writing a white paper with substandard content and a huge product pitch.  Its not pitching the latest buzz coined thing of “aligning business to IT”.  Its not about giving things away to feed the sales beast with unqualified leads.  Its not about alot of things…….and yet IT marketing organizations still believe that what we did back in 2004 to get business will work today.

To me its so much more……its about identifying the customers pain points and offering a solution to solve that pain point. Its about subscribing to the new media platform such as videos and podcasts to produce relevant and meaningful content so that the audience can identify you as a thought leader.  Its not about quantity, its about quality.  Its giving things away such as knowledge so that organizations can leverage your expertise to their business and not a particular solution set.

I can go on and on and on, but one thing that has come about in my one of being here, that my philosophy of openness, transparency, collaboration, nurturing, new media and relevancy has never been stronger. It was strong before I came here, and I will leave with an even bigger mantra to transform how IT marketing departments approach the world of marketing to IT professionals.

Look out.

Google is 9 today

On September 7th 1998, Sergey and Larry officially opened its doors for business.

Happy Birthday Google.  You sure a pretty mature 9 year old.

A Google Phone?

A completely unsubstantiated rumor surfaced today indicating that Google is 2 weeks away from the launch of a GPhone.

Some are saying that it would be a marketing disaster, but I think it would be a marketing homerun. Nothing like keeping things a secret and then springing it on everyone. Look at the iPhone…it was hyped for months and has done well. If Google wanted to hype this thing, they would have been overdshadowed by the iPhone hype.

If this rumor is true, Google will hit a homerun.

What are your thoughts?

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Google Reader…

I have been playing with alot of the features within Google Reader these last few days. It makes an excellent companion to providing some services for folks when it comes to reputation monitoring. Thru the use of technorati watch-lists or bloglines searches and feeding them into the reader you can create a web page to feed this info to folks that are less “technical” or “feed or rss” savvy.

I am trying out a few pilots within my organization and should have a full on report/idea on what the heck I am doing in a couple of weeks.

VIVA REPUTATION MONITORING!!

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Google Docs and Spreadsheets

I had a chance last night to test out Google Docs and Spreadsheets and I am very very impressed. At my current position, I use a laptop with all Microsoft goodies on it. However, personally I use a MAC and I refuse to install any Microsoft based products on it.

With that in mind, using google docs and spreadsheets is breeze. I was able to upload, print, save and create both word processing docs and excel sheets with ease into the UI. The program itself is very intuitive and like most Google stuff is pretty dummy proof.

If you have some time, I encourage all of you to check it out as you will not be disappointed. Congrats Google…..you have made my life easier once again.

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google, microsoft, google docs, google spreadsheets, word, excel, spreadsheets, open office