Just checked my RSS feed at NetVibes and saw that Cathy Resmer over at Seven Days has posted her BlogRoll for the day.
There's a link to my earlier post from this morning! I've already posted it in the course room for the Online Visibility students.
Now THAT'S what I'm TALK'N ABOUT!
SWEET!
As always...Thanks Cathy!
It is no secret that I'm a college professor who teaches a series of classes in e-Business Management and Marketing at Champlain College. One of the classes I'm currently teaching is an online course that lasts for five weeks. Online Visibility is the subject. Here's the "official" course description:
Creating online visibility for a business, service or product is becoming more complex as more and more tools become available. Moving outside the realm of advertising and building websites, this course will provide students with hands-on experience in using the web to disseminate information about their product or service in this examination of PR-oriented online tactics. E-mail marketing, RSS feeds, news release distribution, viral marketing, and referrals will all be explored and utilized as students disseminate information utilizing online tools.
One of the key components of the course is setting up blogs so that students can explore the use of RSS Feeds, subscription and the effect of linking and tracking key words in order to measure online visibility.
Students create blogs for their business, organization, business idea and even a hobby. Part of the work is learning how to write for the blog, link, track success, and see what happens when others subscribe and mention their blogs.
So this post, besides setting the context for what we are doing and why, is part of the assignment I gave the class. Today I have successfully signed up for almost everyone's blogs and they are ported into my NetVibes. And now I'm doing part two of the assignment, which is to write about each blog and see what gets picked up!
The first blog to get picked up in my Google News Alert for "Champlain College" was Welton Mountain Tech. This blog emphasizes the challenges facing web security. In one of the posts, the blog linked to Champlain College and mentioned one of our faculty, Gary Kessler.
Another blog in the class features a tribute to the Red Sox -- I believe they are a soccer team, right? This blog, aptly entitled Just another Red Sox Fan, portrays the interests and links that one who follows the Red Sox might care about -- the post that provides links to other sites might be useful to some.
Vermont UnBoxed is a blog that supports a business idea of one of the students to have a website where people can order and learn about vermont-made products. While the website is still an idea, the blog is "real" and this post on a local farm stand is one way to highlight Vermont at its finest.
If you are interested in BMW's then the this blog from our resident BMW Ethusiast provides some questions about where to find parts and the experiences the blogger has had with rebuilding and updating the cars.
Another business idea for creating more opportunities for people to find their favorite movies can be found at K Movies. The idea behind this blog is to link it with a website and drive people to purchase movies. While there isn't a website yet, this experiement will surely reveal some of the opportunities and challenges that come with linking e-commerce to blogs.
The world of Online Education is examined in the Continue Your Education blog from Champlain College's own Division of Continuing Professional Studies. One post highlights some student work at the South End Art Hop from several weeks back!
Another addresses the use of Web Analytics -- and links people to one of our other one credit classes in..Web Analytics!Advice on Online Visiblity comes in many forms. In How to Acheive Online Visibility for your Business the focus is on advice for highly specialized business to business clients so they can augment their personal selling with a push from the web. It's a tough nut to crack for B2C -- imagine the challenges with B2B! Branding is important no matter what, so this post should resonate with many!
What an amazing array of options -- don't you just love the Blogsphere?
I interrupt the social media analysis on presidential candidates for some important side notes.
I would like to take this moment to declare to the entire blogosphere in an unabashed, proud and down right enthusiastic "voice" that I am a member of the CULT OF THE AMATEUR!
Ok, well...maybe not. Perhaps I fit into that elite group of experts who so carefully monitor and dole out snippets of information that is easily digestible by the masses of people with little to no intelligence who need the big companies to tell us what to think and when to think it.
What IS she talking about, you may wonder.
Here it is in a nutshell. Many thanks to PBS and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer this evening for the interview they conducted with author, blogger, and former silicon valley exec Andrew Keen on his book: The cult of the amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture. I caught just a piece of the interview, but then HAD to check it out online. A Google search revealed a blog by Andrew Keen which he is using to promote the book where he is writing about his interview experiences and other musings. I'm getting the book. I think I'm actually going to use excerpts in a class I'm developing for the spring semester. The excerpt I read on the website and the interview I heard have revealed to me that Keen clearly is a capitalist at heart. He likes the status quo where "experts" get paid to be experts, and where information is pushed out to the masses by trusted gate keepers like news editors, music executives and others we can trust who are paid by advertising revenue that supports jobs and, well the economy. He also clearly finds the concept of consumer generated content to be a threat to the well-ordered way it has always been and that information created by the masses (read amateur) to be read by the masses is creating a culture where truth no longer exists and it's a great big free for all. Welcome to the chaotic world of Web 2.0!
Bloggers and YouTubers and Social Networkers beware! You are a blight on society. You are killing our culture with your opinions, anonymity, and lack of expertise.
This is as far as I have gotten. When I get the book and read it I am sure I will enjoy it even more. It will fit perfectly into my course here at Champlain College, which is tentatively titled Technological Innovation, Cyberculture and Identity. I've been told the title needs to be jazzed up. Anyway, we'll be exploring the points of view of many individuals who have written about technological innovation and how they see it affecting our culture, society and individual identity. From Mumford and Zuboff and Vinge and Birkerts and now Keen -- what a rich and diverse group of perspectives. It will be fascinating to explore and adding a point of view like Keens will make this even more fun and provocative.
By the way, for more information you should check out Keen's blog! I suppose his blog is ok, since he is an expert and all. Certainly isn't one of the masses engaging in mindless blogging for no reason except to get his name out there and "publish" his opinions.
Now...on to making new friends...
One of the blogs I do follow every day is written by Rohit Bhargava, Vice President, Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Public Relations. His blog, Influential Marketing provides great insight into the social media space that is unfolding every day. It's a moving target that I'm trying to keep up on and translate for my students and his blog helps me do that. Well I popped on to the blog today and saw that he has a facebook profile now! So, on a whim, I send him a FB message. Not to long after that he responded. I'm now "friends" with Rohit and I'm really psyched! He just posted that he is trying to figure out Twitter, so I am now following him there as well.
He's in the process of writing a book about social media and he's interested in what professors of marketing are doing in their classes. Well, it will be very interesting to correspond with him and to continue to watch and read as he makes progress on that book!
In the mean time, I've got to finish up these social media analysis before the election!
Well the news keeps on a roll'n! Yesterday, September 6th, yours truly was LIVE on Vermont Public Radio's noon Vermont Edition with Jane Lindholm. The topic? Social Networking of course! Jane and the production team at Vermont Edition interviewed Marketing major Dan Bergeron (of the Seven Days story) on campus the evening before and kicked off the show with him talking about how students are using Facebook to communicate and stay connected.
Then it was my turn! It's been a long time since I've been in the studio -- and this was a lot of fun! Jane did a great job and I enjoyed the conversation. The other guest speaker was the Director of Student Life from Lyndon State College, Jonathan Davis.
Listen to it HERE.
By the way...if you are around checking out the South End Art Hop this Sunday I'll be on a panel of local experts at the Digital Tools for Artists discussion sponsored by Last Monday [interactive]. We'll be over at the held at the Vermont Community Access Media studios at 208 Flynn Avenue from 1 - 3. The goal is to provide artists with information about how to use digital media tools in different ways...and I'll be addressing MARKETING and Online Visibilty and Social Networking. Hope to see you there!
Wow! I'm on a roll! That's what happens when you turn in your dissertation for edits, you are all prepped for class, and it's Labor Day Weekend!
On Wednesday (Aug. 29th) Seven Days (my FAVORITE Weekly!) ran an article about Facebook and College Students and how they are using it to as an outreach tool to incoming frosh. The article highlighted Middlebury (it's ok, they are a good school too!) but also quoted yours truly AND Marketing Major extraordinaire, Dan Bergeron.
Nice article Cathy!
Cathy has since started a Vermont Media Group in Facebook. I wonder if she would like to be a guest speaker in one of my classes...perhaps even in on of my class Facebook Groups...hmmm...could be VERY interesting!
Website: Fairly basic site, although there is NO SPLASH PAGE! What I like about this site is it is very easy to very quickly figure out gravel’s stand on many different issues, as they have clear statements right on the home page. They are also pulling in a lot of blog and news information that is very current. Big focus on YouTube at this site. It is very very easy to navigate and has few bells and whistles. Clear and straight to the point, much like the candidate himself.
Right at the top on the home page is a call to enter in your email address. When I did that, and clicked submit, it took me directly to their donation page! This is the first candidate website to do that.
There’s an RSS feed for the news items, prominent placement for the official YouTube site, and he has a podcast going. There are no readily apparent links to MySpace, Facebook or any other social media off of the home page. However, hidden under the tab “meet like minds” is a list of the different social media sites that Gravel is involved with. ActBlue, MeetUp, Google Groups, MySpace, Virb, Facebook, YouTube, DFA-Link and Second Life! This is the first candidate I’ve run across who is using Second Life.
ActBlue: Seems like a general site where individuals who have donated money to the campaign can interact with one another. You can see who is supporting the candidate and how much money he has raised within the space. So far, 54 supporters, $2,407.
MeetUp: This is the meeting organizer site that allows people to set up meetings and see who is coming to them. Looks like this group has been in existence since January and they are moderately active. It’s a good site to link to from the main candidate site and I’m surprised that others haven’t done the same.
Google Groups: The first candidate as far as I can tell that is using Google Groups – or at the very least, linking to it. A low use site, it looks like they are feeding in news items, but not much else is going on there. Too bad. Interesting idea to play with, but you need more people involved to make it worth while.
YouTube: Very ACTIVE YouTube site. Links to campaign videos – some of the most interesting and off the wall that are available for any candidate – and links to supporter videos too. One of the best YouTube sites not so focused on the rich TV ads, but more real and focused. More than likely this is due to the fact that the campaign doesn’t have a lot of money. But they get how to use YouTube. 2,686 subscribers
MySpace: Fairly basic MySpace site, although they do link back to the main site, have a focus on getting people to donate and there is the ability for people to cut and paste code onto their own site. There is also a YouTube pull in. Could they do more? Yep. Just not a lot going on here at all. 9471 Friends
Virb: Another social networking site. This one has a clean feel and one that is very easy to navigate. The campaign is using this space for some good general information about candidate, and pulling in a lot of the YouTube video. 42 friends.
DFA-Link: Used by Democracy for America. Only 24 supporters listed here, and very little action. Is it worth linking to? Probably not.
Facebook: Interesting Facebook site. On the surface, fairly normal, and yet, here’s a campaign actually trying to get people to join a group “Rock08” and actively encouraging participation there. They are also using several different applications: “Ask Me Something” and the NewsVine candidate supporter. The Ask Me Something is a clunky application. It looks like the campaign wants to use it so the candidate can ask people questions and get feedback. It’s just recently launched and it will be interesting to see how it goes. Newsvine is a great application – interesting that the Campaign hasn’t placed in on their Facebook! Two groups “Rock08” and “Mike Gravel 2008” are highlighted on this page – there are 2,834 people on the Mike Gravel 2008 group and 16 members of Rock08 (this one is fairly new from the looks of it). This has been the one candidate who has really pushed the group option and formalized it. There are links to MySpace and YouTube as well. 4,607 supporters.
SecondLife: There are some great screen shots of the campaign HQ within Second Life. Since I’m blogging from home…and not at work, I can only go by the screen shots, as I don’t have the system resources to buzz around second life. This is an interesting one to utilize and I would say that this is ahead of its time a bit – not enough people have access or interest in this space to really use it well. However, the campaign should get points for trying! I would say, that they could be publicizing this a lot more aggressively than they are. How? Given their reliance on YouTube, why not a YouTube from within Second Life? If you consider the importance of linking your social media together so each plays off of the other, then this makes a lot of sense.
Blog: There’s not a clear link to his blog on the site, and it looks more like it is being used as an information posting site more than anything else. So the information from the blog is populating the “news” column on the home page, but the word “blog” isn’t used. There could be a lot more here, and it is unfortunate given the candidates outspoken nature that they aren’t doing more with this. For example, there should be more direct postings by the candidate (although I’ve been pointing that out to all of them, haven’t I) and it should be clearer that this is a blog. I think the real issue is that this is more of a forum/discussion area and less of a blog format. Too many clicks to see the postings and responses is a bit of a challenge from a user perspective. It is current though, and that is a bonus.
Search Results: I’m impressed. I expected a much different result when I plugged in “Gravel” in the search bar at Google. First item up was the official campaign website. Next item was the campaign issues page and the third item was WikiPedia.com. It was after that that the stone and gravel sites came up! At Yahoo! there are sponsored ads for rocks, and the WikiPedia.com entry for stone first, but then the WikiPedia.com for the candidate and then the campaign site is listed. MySpace is #9 on the list. Over at Live there are similar results, with the WikiPedia.com entry for the stone first, then for the candidate second, then the candidate site and the MySpace and a YouTube entry as well.
Recommendations: Like many of the candidates, Gravel has some strong points and some weak points when it comes to using social media. The campaign is taking advantage of several different social media outlets, with perhaps their strongest showing in YouTube. They should be doing more cross-linking, and certainly moving the social media sites of Facebook and MySpace to their home page along with YouTube. They should also adjust their site to put more emphasis on the blog. Their SEO is really good and I’m impressed that with a name like “Gravel” they were able to get the top spots. The campaign probably cannot afford to do any CPC, so must really focus on viral and word of mouth – especially given the challenges he is having in getting into debates (but there, folks is a totally DIFFERENT blog posting!). Overall, some good things going on here. Strong YouTube/video but more needs to be done to connect them all. Put your limited resources into the properties with the highest coverage (i.e.: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook) and push those hard. Move away from the others because they are a waste of resources at the moment.
My plan was to do a full review of the Giuliani social Media, however, the main campaign site is down, the MySpace is set to private and I cannot find anything on Facebook, save for an application. I will have to revisit this site analysis at a later date.
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