Interwebers

Twittering from Mars! http://interwebers.com/?p=34 Very, very cool stuff. Way to go NASA

At 1:15 am on a Saturday night, tired and ready to go to bed, this story put a smile on my face…

The Mars Phoenix Lander is twittering. Ok, not really. It’s busy digging up red rock and all that cool stuff. But someone at NASA is twittering on its behalf. The Phoenix Lander is using Twitter, err, NASA is using Twitter to post quick updates/pics from the Lander. As of last count, over 12,000 are following the Lander’s tweets. The cute narrative adopted by the “lander” gives it a jovial touch.

This is just an awesome, awesome example of what Twitter has to offer its community. A great way to spread the message about something as extradorinaiy as planet exploration. 

Very cool stuff.

Here’s the original story: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/05/twittering-from.html

Follow the Phoenix Lander: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

An SEO music video. Yes, you heard that right.

Down on the Server Farm, The Economist

A quasi-technical look into the plans of an ever growing internet.

Here’s an article out of Tech Crunch in response to a blog post by Tim O’Reilly. 

In short, O’Reilly is essentially suggesting Microsoft “throw in the towel” in search. They should move onto something they can win (not search) and outsource their search efforts to Google. Why? Because Google has “won” search. If not won, they’re close enough to make no difference - think Hillary and her delegates.

Michael Arrington’s response in Tech Crunch hits the nail on the head. In a market, competition= for the consumer. It evokes innovation. It gives us better stuff.

The concept is so simple. The more people or businesses competing for a spot, the better the selection. They do this by innovating, developing, and providing in an effort to reach the top.

Building off one of Michael’s points, if aircraft innovation ceased after some of the first humans flew, what would the airline “industry” look like today?

Search is not perfected. We’re only getting started. We need competition. We need more innovation.

New and improved Interwebers.com! Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/4exlmr

Thanks for finding your way over to the new and improved interwebers! I’ve switched from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Now I can get my hands on some code and other wordpress plug-ins, so I’ll be able to continuously build this site into interwebing goodness. 

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to resubscribe to this blog by clicking the little orange guy on the right (I couldn’t resist bringing him along from the old site)

Thanks a lot, everyone! Check back soon!

Chris

These are some great vids to check out in case you couldn’t make it to SFO yourself last month.

I’m transferring the wordpress.com interwebers over to wordpress.org interwebers. I have to do some minor rebuilding so sorry if things are a little weird right now. 

-Chris

This is the first of a series of posts looking at blogs from a business marketing perspective. More specifically, the business marketing mix. That’s right, the 4 p’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. 

The four P’s above are controlled through a marketing manager subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment. You want to make decisions that center the circles over people in your target market generating a positive response and creating a perceived value. The further away from the center any one of the circles is the less you serve of your potential market.

Your blog is a product. Your readers are the customers. 

Re-read that. That’s probably the smartest thing I’ll say in this entire post.

The Wikipedia business definition for “product” is: anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. 

Some of the things that make up a product are:

• Brand Name
• Functionality/Usefullness
• Styling
• Quality

Brand Name: 

Most bloggers begin their interwebing careers with little to no brand value - meaning no one will go to our blog just because we write it. This presents one of the biggest challenges bloggers face: building a readership. There are exceptions. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is an established brand name with a large TV viewing audience through which he promotes his blog: ac360. He could launch his blog, plug it on his show, and get over 10,000 hits on his first day. But Anderson is lucky. He’s already a brand; brand: Anderson Cooper, and he has a large TV viewing audience. If Coco-Cola, the most recognizable brand in the world, launches a new line of cola, people will buy it the first day because they know Coco-Cola. If I launched the EXACT SAME soda under the name Cal Soda (my initials + soda) no one would buy it; at least not at first. I need to build the brand name Cal Soda before anyone will buy my product based on the value of the name alone. 

Most bloggers start with a brand value of zero. On day 1, your blog has one visiter: you. You will only have one visitor until you start spreading the word while writing good posts. Build your brand, build your product, get readers in the door.

Functionality/Usefullness:

Why do people read your blog (buy your product)? Because it has value to them. They have something to gain by visiting your site. It could be entertaining, educational, insightful, fun, whatever. If your product has something to offer someone at the right price (FREEEEEEE), they will buy it. If it’s free, err, I mean FREEEEEEE, but doesn’t provide a function/use for them, they’ll check it out once but probably never come back. 

Styling:

To add value to your product, you need to do it your way. If your product lacks its own style, it’ll get lost in the shelves. No matter what you write about, your blog is your personal creation. By adding your name and your face, you’ve begun creating something unique. If you lack web designing experience, do as much as you can customizing Wordpress or Blogger templates. They are designed with newbs in mind. 

Quality:

Most bloggers aren’t professional journalists. That dusnt meen we hav 2 right lik idiots!!!11! Would you drive a car that someone designed and built as quickly as they could without any knowledge of automobiles and mechanics and no system of quality control? If you want to have a good product, it needs to have quality. You’d better know what you’re talking about, do any necessary research, and proof read that bad boy.

When we don’t take care of the product side of marketing, we shift our product circle in a way that shrinks our market coverage and our perceived value. 

Simply put: fewer readers.