I will be launching have launched a B2B Marketing blog in the new year. Instead of creating and managing a third blog I’ve elected to replace the Marketing Superhero blog I’ve been writing with this new one. There may be a Marketing Superheros section on the blog, but this is yet to be determined.

Recently my posts on this blog have been random at best [UPDATE: I'm committed to steady posts for both blogs in 2008]. I will continue to randomly post to this blog but my focus in the short term will be set up and contributions to my B2B Marketing blog.

I will keep you “posted”.

Chris

I was trolling around Technorati and came across this banner ad with the call to action to make a blog post. I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was an ideal lab experiment if I ever saw one! Since Technorati has both my blogs indexed would my post go on my blog? Well, I was wrong. Here’s what happened.

I filled out the fields in the web ad below

Which resulted in my post going on their official site. You’ll notice that the post makes reference to my one of my Web 2.0 lab experiments and not the actual movie. I may study this on my Markeitng Superhero blog.

As a blogger I like to know how many folks are visiting my blogs, what posts are popular, how they got to my site etc.

Out of the box analytics is a KEY factor for non-technical folks. As far as I’m concerned it must be provided by Blog providers in order to be taken seriously. But more importantly, it must be provided out of the box with no configuration or add ons or extensions…etc.

So, here’s two examples of out of the box analytics from Typepad and WordPress. I pay $150 USD for Typepad and $0 for my WordPress account.

Typepad:

One word: Sucks

WordPress:

Note – to view this clearly click on the image, then click on it again and you’re good.

This shows number of visitors, page views, trends and search terms used by a person to get to my blog.

And there’s more!

This shows how many RSS feeds are being capture by RSS readers.

So, what am I getting for $150? Good question. Typepad, care to answer this question for us?

The story about Starbucks rescinding their Iced Coffee offer was the result of a viral campaign gone amuck. This campaign would have been successful had it been better thought out. The result of this muck up is a considerable amount of bad press! However, there is always away to learn and turn things around. I’ve posted a way they can do this on my Marketing Superhero blog.

[TO VIEW FULL PAGE: Put your curser over the screenshot above>right click on your mouse>select view image. You should then be able to magnify the image to full size - I'm using Firefox.] 

I’ve spent way too much time figuring out how to use Performancing blog traffic stats reporting for my Marketing Superhero blog which uses Blogger.

WordPress includes blog and feed stats and below is a screen shot from today’s results.

We need to remember that ease of use is critical. WordPress may not report as much as I will want one day, but they’ve wet my appetite for blog analytics. It may make sense for them to offer an enhanced service for a small fee.

Here’s the Agency.com “viral” video that’s getting alot of attention. See my earlier post here (I didn’t know how to embed a YouTube video then).

Here is how you post a YouTube video using WordPress. All it takes is cut and paste!

Each YouTube video has a URL address. The URL for the one above is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8eV6OuC8Oo

To embed the video all you need to do this is enclose the URL address with [youtube=]. Just put the URL address after the equals sign. An ease factor of 1(smile).

The genious of YouTube is they let you post their videos on your blog. You’ll also notice that at the end of the video there is “share” option. This is how viral marketing works – whether it be positive or negative based.

A couple of things for us newbie bloggers! WordPress allows you to track your blog traffic statistics. It tells you how many unique visitors you’ve had, what search terms were used that resulted in someone going to your blog and what sites referred people to you. Pretty cool!

For example, Mack Collier mentioned my blog (among others) in this post on Beyond Madison Avenue’s blog. The reason I know this is WordPress has a referrers section on its Blog Stats page. It tells me that people clicked links from this referring blog to get to mine.

The result?

• Well, while the visitor who was referred will judge whether my blog is of value and worth their time, I received a pretty good “endorsement” from a popular blog in Marketing and Advertising.
• I also, have the opportunity to reach out to Mack to thank him for the post and to perhaps keep in touch on matters of mutual interest.

I’ve asked Mack how he heard about my blog as I’m interested to know this.

[UPDATE AUG 28: Mack found my blog by searching Technorati (a blog search engine/directory) using the search term "marketing"]

David Maister is a consultant that provides advice on strategy, management and marketing. His recent article entitled: Adventures in Modern Marketing is an excellent case study and conversation on this topic. I won’t summarize the article becasue I won’t do it justice. What I will focus on is David!

Here is an example of a consultant and executive that “gets it”. Based on what I know about David, so far, he would rephrase this to say that he is “getting it”. David’s podcasts, blog posts and articles have been extremely useful to me at various levels.

1) He is showing me how a consultant is using web2.0 tools and services to communicate and help his customers be successful.

2) His podcasts and articles on marketing, managing and strategy are of great value to me.

3) He is engaging with his customers and I’m learning how he is building a community of loyal readers, listeners and customers.

I strongly suggest you read his article, click here.

Agency.com may have sunk it’s chances with Subway due to backlash from YouTube viewers. Subway is conducting an Agency of Record search and Agency.com was asked to pitch. They decided to “pre-pitch” by recording their creative planning sessions and field research and then posting it on YouTube to create some viral buzz. It seems that the social networking community is not impressed and that this contrived approach to “viral marketing” has backfired.

The power of social networking, viral experiences and web 2.0 could very well have sunk Agency.com’s chances. We will see but feel free to be the judge yourself. Watch the video.

I am really impressed with leaders who try new things, freely communicate and who participate in web2.0 stuff. They take risks and put themselves in the mix and muck. Two examples are Phil McKinney and Erik Kintz from HP.

Erik is a Global VP of Marketing who’s Marketing Excellence corporate blog gives you updates on what HP is doing when it comes to web2.0 stuff. Recent campaigns have been geared to consumers around the theme of the personal computer becoming personal again. Erik provides us with the opportunity to learn what HP is doing. He is also immersing himself in web2.0 stuff personally and professionally. A new “convergence” perhaps?

Phil is a VP/CTO at HP and he has a Blog and Podcast Series called Killer Innovations. His podcasts are awesome! They educate me on real world things he does with respect to innovation. His podcasts provide insights, ideas, mechanisms and tools used to help cultivate ideas and innovation.

These two gentlemen are living examples of leaders that “get it” and “do it”. HP’s “tagline” is “Invent”. These guys are demonstrating that the HP brand is all about invention through their actions and contributions.

For all you execs who don’t listen to podcasts start with Phil’s. Many CEOs are saying their companies must innovate. My question to the CEO is what are you doing to innovate? How are you adopting social media for your own professional development? If you’re not living by example how useful are you to your customers, employees and shareholders?