James Clark over at the “Capture the Conversation” blog has a great post on syndicating your own press releases. Many of us forget that having a “press release” area on our websites is a great way to draw targeted traffic.

Making your own “press” area is a nice departure from the rat race of trying to get other media outlets to pick you up any way. Besides, many potential customers will go to our websites as a part of their research.

Why not make sure to have a copy of each press release right there on your website for potential customers to easily find and read?

Looking for help on the ins-and-outs of formatting your press releases? I would recommend the Duct Tape Marketing press release tool for starters.

At Promethius, we’ve done a whole lot of searching for ideas to improve our service and our customers’ experience. After much experimentation and testing, I feel very confident recommending these tools to any business manager:

1. Basecamp - This very intuitive project-management software by 37signals is a very affordable way to immediately gain control over multiple projects and staff members. It even has restricted login functionality for clients as well.
2. Zoho CRM - One of the great stable of products coming out of Zoho. It’s free for up to three users and is quite affordable as you add more users.
3. Netvibes - If you do one thing this quarter, get netvibes and learn how to use it! A savvy manager will make it his browser Home page and will fill it with relevant RSS feeds, bookmarks, gmail and so much more.
4. Omnidrive - This universal web storage platform lets you easily store, access and share files of any size over the web.
5. Google Analytics - Google is at it again with its great web stats tool. Just drop a little code behind each page of your website and you’re off to the races. This tool is especially good if you are running an Adwords campaign.

Why should you worry about bettering your managerial skills? Ron over at Buzzoodle had a great post yesterday about why this should be your number one concern!

Tony

Tony Valle
Promethius Consulting, LLC

I was in the rare circumstance of being without my iPod during my commute the other day. I decided to flip on the radio for a change. What I heard coming out of my car stereo was so foreign, and frankly so fowl, that I almost couldn’t believe my ears.

Did I used to listen to this many commercials? How could anyone put up with this stuff today now that podcasts are so easy to get?! I really was shocked. If you gave up radio a long time ago in favor of your iPod, I would encourage you to go back to radio for just an hour or so. It’s utterly suffocating.

I was so moved by this experience that I decided I would do a little experiment. I wanted to see exactly how much the radio was “jipping” us out of the real content that we tuned in for in the first place.

Let me say up front that I’m no scientist and this hardly qualifies as a true experiment, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I basically listened to an hour of radio and an hour of a podcast and took detailed track of several segments:

1. How much time was I hearing the actual program I tuned in to hear or at least content that was interesting me? (not a commercial, etc.)
2. How much time was spent listening to commercials?
3. How much time did I spend searching around trying to find something better during lulls in my program?

Here are my records:

For these next two, I dissected the actual time that I was getting real “broadcast” as opposed to commercials. I considered something to be “on-topic” if they basically stuck to the spirit of the program. A particular sports radio show I listened to contained several tangents between the on-air talent having nothing to do with sports.

As you might guess, the podcast was much more on-topic.

These radio numbers might not look so bad, but remember; the radio only gave me 33 minutes of real broadcast time in the first place.  In the end, I look at this and say:

How can radio ever hope to compete with these numbers?!?!?!  It surely will only get worse.  Podcasts are simply a much more efficient use of my time.  I have no doubt that more folks around the globe are waking up to this fact daily.

I recently posted a list of common mistakes to avoid when planning a corporate podcast. The post appears to have enraged several Digg readers who particularly took offense at my fictional, albeit stereotypical character “Dale the Computer Nerd.”

To you loyal defenders of Dale and his personal hygiene habits, I say this: STAND DOWN, DIGG READERS!

I must admit that I was a bit surprised to get such a backlash from the Digg community. Is using the “computer nerd” stereotype to make a point really that offensive?

And another thing… I know you mean well, and I know you all are very bright in a certain way, but I think your comments on Digg really support my original point.

Let’s review the top corporate podcast mistake to avoid like the plague: “1. Don’t Let the Computer Nerd Do It.”

What I’m warning against here is a natural inclination for management to see podcasting as an IT function because it involves a certain amount of “whiz-bang” technology. I am trying to make the point that podcasting is a marketing function, and to encourage decision-makers not to go with their first instinct of letting Dale the computer guy take on the entire project.

And now to review comments from some of the well-meaning Dale defenders on Digg:

If you want to podcast from within a corporation effectively, don’t hire a podcasting consultant. Just get yourself set up, find the people with the passion within an organisation who are passionate about the product or service that the company provides and let them talk about what you are doing honestly to your customers.

This is the first comment left on Digg. I actually agree with much of what this young fellow is saying. Simple, straightforward talk to your customer base can be a very successful approach in many cases. But I’m afraid his “techie” mindset shines through loud and clear here. “Just get yourself set up.”

A common problem that Dale defenders have is that they are used to knowing more than non-technical folks about the way things work. They have probably tinkered around and read enough to know how to get a crappy mp3 file posted to Odeo and iTunes. What more would you need?!

This is why going to the “computer guy” first when seeking advice on setting up your corporate podcast is so dangerous. He will nearly always tell you how incredibly easy it is. Just know that he means well, but he is coming at it from his own perspective, not a Marketing or PR perspective. Skippy can create his own “podcast” with his laptop and a Radio Shack Skype headset, but that doesn’t do you much good.

So basically this atricle is an ad for ‘podcasting consultants’. God, companies will hire anyone these days, won’t they? Also, how can he call Dale a ‘nerd’s nerd’ is he doesn’t know anything about speaker cable?

I won’t lie. I do hope someone reads this “atricle” and considers hiring my company to produce their podcast.

Again I’m afraid that you make my point for me. You assume that any self-respecting nerd would know much about “speaker cable.” My article specifically said “audio cable,” which anyone with a decent audio engineering background would assume to be referencing balanced vs. unbalanced, etc. used in a recording studio. In fact, one very rarely uses speakers when producing a podcast.

I could go on but I won’t. I would like to appologize to any folks that I may have offended on Digg. I hope you understand that the writing style used in my article was meant to be fun and a bit toungue-in-cheek. I do stand by the advice given though.

Tony

I’ve had a couple blog reading all-nighters within the past week, and suddenly a truism comes to me as I sit here sifting through dozens more fascinating blogs: Simplicity is King in the blogosphere.

John Moore from Brand Autopsy has a great post about simplicity. You really should read it.

What’s more striking to me, in terms of the idea of simplicity, is not John’s post but the entire Brand Autopsy blog itself. It’s so darn simple, yet very effective and attractive.

I would argue that within 30 seconds, the average blog reader could easily figure out how to do the following on their first visit to Brand Autopsy (note, in the world of blogs, 30 seconds may be all the time you have to sell a new visitor on the merits of your blog. Past 30 they are already off to something else if your blog doesn’t speak to them):

1. Purchase the book “Tribal Knowledge“
2. Download their free whitepaper PDF “Manifesto“
3. Subscribe to the RSS feed

These are probably three of the top goals of this particular blog, and the fact that one can so easily find how to do these things is absolutely key. Have a deeper look at this blog. In my opinion, they do a whole lot of very savvy things that one could and should model for their own blogging “bag of tricks.”

Now lets look at a blog on crack. It hurts to even look at it, doesn’t it? Here’s one on MySpace crack (MySpace blogs are a rare combination of utterly simplistic and stunningly ugly). Finally, I just had to throw this one in there for good measure. Very popular and very annoying.

As an afterthought, I do believe that Adwords tend to degrade the visual effectiveness of a blog. That’s to be expected and it’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s worth it to use them. In our case, we have decided not to in favor of selling books and audio courses down the road. Of course our main revenue stream from this blog is consulting business that finds its way to our company as a result of our content.

I suspect this is the same model that John Moore at Brand Autopsy uses, and that’s why we don’t see any Google Adwords cluttering up his great-looking blog.

Tony Valle
Promethius Consulting, LLC

To podcast effectively is not an easy thing to do. To podcast ineffectively is incredibly easy, costly and time-consuming. While I continue to be absolutely bullish on the marketing and PR benefits of corporate podcasting, I can’t say that I see many organizations getting it right yet. If your company is planning to podcast, avoiding these common mistakes can mean the difference between huge success and utter disaster.

1. Let the “Computer Nerd” do it. Sure, Dale the computer guy is the only one in your organization that knows what “RSS” is. Sure he understands the difference between an mp3 file and a .wav file. But Dale doesn’t bathe, he’s not particularly good at talking to people and he CERTAINLY doesn’t understand your marketing message. Corporate podcasting is a marketing and PR effort. Dale needs Brenda.

2. Let the “Marketing Nerd” do it. Brenda in Marketing is certainly on top of the message. She understands your customers and what makes them tick. She understands how to get your customers emotionally involved in your products. But Brenda just blew a fuse for the fifth time this month by plugging her desktop Mr. Coffee and her flat-iron into the same power strip, and she’ll accidentally do it again several times next month. She will never understand setting up an RSS feed or tweaking the audio file’s kilobytes-per-second sample rate. Brenda needs Dale.

3. Don’t bring in help. Even if Brenda and Dale work together, which they must, this still leaves a gaping hole in the collective knowledge of your team. Although Dale is a nerd’s nerd, he likely knows nothing about audio cables, microphones, sound production etc. Brenda won’t have any clue about on-air vocal technique and proper mic usage. A good Podcasting Consultant can help plug the holes in your collective knowledge of Corporate Podcasting and get you to the finish line with much less pain than you otherwise will experience.

4. The single-episode tryout. “Let’s just try one and see how it goes” says the big boss. Well, podcasting doesn’t work that way. It’s a low-level investment that builds up steam and return on that investment (ROI) over time. Trying one episode out to “see how it goes” will gain you nothing. Try it for six months. If you’re not willing to give podcasting a serious place in your marketing plan, then forget it. Save your money. Stick it in some bold-faced lettering on your Yellow Pages listing this year (and watch the world pass you by) instead of one podcast episode that will net you nothing.

5. Don’t Promote Your Show. A corporate podcast is not a perpetual motion machine. Listeners don’t “grow on trees.” You have to market your podcast consistently just like anything else. Promoting a podcast is vastly different than most other marketing approaches. At the very least, set up a blog and an RSS feed. Here again is where a Podcasting Consultant can save you scads of time and money.

If you haven’t guessed the reference, I’m currently reading Seth’s very enjoyable book Purple Cow. He makes the very convincing argument that you have to be absolutely remarkable to gain lasting success in today’s market.

Now I’m seeing everything through purple glasses, which brings me to the real topic of my post:

I made a minor post the other day suggesting Zoho Polls for companies wanting to get feedback from their customers. Almost immediately I received a comment from someone at Zoho thanking me for suggesting their company. That was nice… and kind of unusual.
Then I got to thinking. I had posted to my MySpace blog several months ago a brief comment about my very positive experience with Zoho CRM (which I still use to this day). A Zoho intern politely commented with thanks in that case as well.

What in the world?!?! It seems clear to me now that Zoho at least keeps a very close eye on the “blogosphere” to see what is being said about them, which is surely more that many companies can say. But they apparently go much further than that. They participate promptly in other people’s blogs.

Let’s face it - my blog isn’t anywhere near the top of the charts yet, but the Zoho staff noticed and took action right away. That’s impressive. That’s unique. That might even be purple. It means a lot to a blogger, and I’m sure they understand that.

When is the last time that Microsoft commented on YOUR blog? Don’t hold your breath. What’s sad is it doesn’t have to be that way. They surely have the resources to go the extra mile, probably to the tune of at least 100 support staffers to every 1 Zoho staffer. (Just a guess).

To further test my hypothesis, I looked up some recent blog posts relating to Zoho:

Zoho makes good… (Zoho commented back)

Lightweight project management (Zoho commented back)

Kathy on success and management (Zoho commented back)

To be fair, I did find some blog posts relating to Zoho that didn’t contain replies from the company, but many of them looked to me to be more “formal” reviews of the company. I could imagine that they might be afraid of appearing overanxious with a “serious” review site.

All-in-all these guys are to be commended. I know I wouldn’t be writing this if their software wasn’t fairly exceptional as well, but it just excites me to see that these guys haven’t stopped at just having great products. They appear to me to be attempting to be a great company.

So here is my question to you and to myself: What three things could we be doing today to absolutely set ourselves and our organizations apart from all others?