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Greg Narain and I had a long discussion with the Jive Live team at BarCamp San Francisco. They take high quality video of all sorts of live events, from art openings to the Pride Parade here in SF, and then post it to their website. In some ways they think of themselves as a daily video newspaper.

We talked about using blogs and RSS and existing video communities to spread their content everywhere, to get traffic going to their site. They currently host their own videos, and Greg and I were of the opinion that as soon as they actually got significant traffic, their video costs would start going through the rough. The difficulties of success when it comes to video content on the Internet today...

A large part of the discussion centered around what we all would and would not do on the Internet, including talking about who subscribes to RSS, uses tags, etc. As I have said time and again, feel free to ignore the small part of the population that uses these tools directly....just stick the functionality on to your site, and the structured nature of RSS, the tag glue, and the automated tools and aggregators that are in place will blast your content around the Internet, which has the net effect of raising your Google ranking, which is really how everyone finds stuff on the Internet today. RSS = higher search ranking, enough said.

Blogging live today from the American Marketing Association Hot Topic: Ahead of the Curve – High Tech Trends in Marketing

Dave noted an interesting shift when it comes to consumers trying to own the brand, such as in a recent case with Southwest airlines, where Operations gets involved and takes precedence over marketing and the 'designed' brand experience. Customers tried to take control of the brand experience, Southwest's operations team shut the customers down. What's a marketer to do?

The real magic in consumer marketing is in the consideration cycle, specifically in the consideration phase, where word-of-mouth is an HUGE component. The biggest question that you need to answer for the consideration phase is:

Would my customer recommend my company/brand/product/service?

Who likes podcasting? People that have a story to tell!

How many of you have an 'audio recorder' in your home? ....hmm, let me bust out the old cassette recorder.

How many of you have a video recorder? Oh, yeah, got the video/digital/web camera right over here!

Video is powerful. And gaining traction.

Dave talks about education marketing (vs. an infomercial). Infomercial are pitching a product, where as 'education marketing' is all about getting after the things that customers are really interested and helping them be more effective in their complex purchases. It's about really helping customers through it. It's not for everyone. If you're not a category leader, or don't have a product that warrants an educated purchase, then don't bother. This is not for you.

Technorati Tags: AMA Hot Topic

From Seth Godin:

Ten things programmers might want to know about marketers.

Nine things marketers ought to know about sales people

I'm going to resist the urge to over-analyze the reasons why programmers 'might want' to know about marketing, but marketing 'ought' to know about sales. OK? I'm still mildly amused when the tech versus marketing dynamic sounds like a fight for who is getting more cake.

According to a new study conducted by California University Psychology Professor Dr. Larry Rosen (download press release here), the MySpace sexual predator reports in the media are widely overblown/unfounded (via apophenia)

Rosen's study included interviews with 1,500 MySpacers and 250 parents and found that (partial list of findings - for full findings download pdf here):

• Only 7% of those teens interviewed were ever approached by anyone with a sexual intent and nearly all of them simply ignored the person and blocked him from their page.
• Two-thirds of the parents were sure that there were many sexual predators on MySpace, while only one-third of the teenagers shared this concern.
• Teenagers spend an average of 15 hours per week on MySpace.
• One in three admits their MySpace activity has negatively affected their schoolwork, family life, or both.
• Only one-third of the parents have seen their child’s MySpace page and only 16% check it on a regular basis.
• However, 70% of the adolescents said they would feel comfortable with their parents looking at their MySpace page.

Rosen makes an interesting point when he says "MySpace is the 13th largest country in the world. Teens live in this virtual world and parents need to pay attention. It is not a fad. It is not going away. And it is not a scary place. Teenagers can live and grow there with help from their parents.”

Meanwhile, the social networking space continues to heat up, with Bebo (a MySpace competitor especially popular in the UK) rejecting a $550M acquisition offer from British Telecom (apparently they are looking for offers north of $1b).

While there is no doubt that sites with that many users should be able to monetize their traffic, it is will be interesting to follow the emerging new marketing models that will make these sites truly scalable and predictable from a revenue point of view.

[Tags: myspace bebo social networking web 2.0]

Om Malik posted a great conversation starter entitled Attack of the You Tube Clones, talking about all the video sites that are out there now from the "majors".

AOL just announced Uncut Video, their own version of online video sharing ala You Tube. (Read Mashable’s take on it.) Niall Kennedy says that Yahoo is working on something similar as well, and said so in its analyst day meeting with the financial analysts. Niall says that “The new video site includes videos from around the web and a few from Yahoo! users as well.”

With Google Video and MySpace Video already up and running, I wonder what are the exits for companies like You Tube and other such services? Will someone buy YouTube for its traffic? What are your thoughts on this?

The bits of setting up a video sharing service are fairly simple. Or at least, the Web 2.0 tech platform for running a community website. Of course the Drupal framework can be used as one example (this story about Bryght in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix apparently quotes Roland as saying we'll build a clone of MySpace for $100K), but Ruby on Rails or any other decent web framework can be used to easily build web applications/community sites.

I made some comments today during Steve Rubel's Gnomedex session. Steve asked, what are PR and marketing professionals doing right and wrong? What do people who blog want/need from such departments?

After much arm waving I got Steve to notice me, and I answered with three P's.

1. Permalinks: folks, this is such a simple one. Don't make your press release page be "press.php" and old news be "archive.php". Have a single, unique link for each press release, news story, product, or (*gasp*) blog post you make. This means not trying to make me figure out a crazy javascript or Flash navigation system, but simply having a clear, single link I can use to directly get to information. URL schemes like /news/2006/07/01/bigstory or /products/coolproduct/model-vw83 are some good examples.
2. Product Info: I like product info. I like permalinks to direct product info. I like tech specs, and I like easily grab-able (and even better, friendly licensed) product photos. Heck, encourage me to hotlink images from your corporate server. Include copy/paste code that includes the permalink and a caption that I can drop into any system that groks HTML. For bonus points, make a little Flash/Javascript/rotating GIF widget that I can put into a post.
3. Personality: yes, I want personality. This one is last, because a lot of corporates just can't get past legal, or want the community to bring in the personality. If you're not going to blog, perhaps upgrade your press release writer to someone with a little more human in their blood, or give me a contact that I can talk to/interview to get more of a human face to the information you're presenting.

It seems so simple. But I know how difficult this can be. Many marketing and PR departments rely on a chain of consultants, contractors, or other folks to manage their web presence somewhere down the line. PR types need to become actively vocal about the needs they have. The three P's might be a good place to start.

The 7 Mistakes That New Michigan Real Estate Investors Should Avoid in their first 5 deals:

1. Buying houses in area that they have no clue about:
You live in Chesterfield Township. You work in Sterling Heights. You just bought a junker on East Side of Detroit, which you just saw for the first time when you bought the house.

First you will kill yourself driving back and forth to the house. In two weeks you will start hating this house and yourself for buying it. Next since you have no clue about the area or the price point to buy or sell, you will probably end up buying the “wrong” house in the “bad” area to begin with.

Stick to the cities you know ‘something” about – either where you live or where you work or a city right next to them. Don’t experiement with the unknowns on your first 5 deals. Also just because you have a friend who lives in Detroit does not makes you a Detroit expert or make his opinion worthwhile anything.

2. Buying a junker that requires way too much money to fix for your first deal:
I have said it over and over again that for your first rehab deal you should draw the line at $20,000. Actually it would be better if it was $15,000 or less.

I am happy to report that best to my knowledge everybody I have told this too has ignored the advice. Typically I get emails / faxes and calls after the fact – they have bought it, are fixing it and now regretting it.

My rule is this - for your sixth deal it may be O.K. but not for your first five deals. Rehab that takes that much money also takes a whole lot longer time to complete, that means you cannot sell the house till it is done. It will also suck every single OPM you have accumulted so far which at this point is probably not too much to begin with.

Last point – I don’t care if your contractor is rubbing your shoulders as he is giving you a quoate and smiling assurances - $40,000 rehabs don’t get done in one month. You are looking at 3-4 months easy unless you are sitting in the house 9-5 by yourself managing them and working with them. Which is probably something you cannot do. The more expensive the rehab – the longer it will take to get done.

3.Buy an expensive house to sell:
That ties up with #1. For an example right now it is not a good idea to buy houses in the city of Detroit that have a high sell price. Anything over $150,000 will take longer to sell in Detroit than say some house in the $100,000 range.

Why? Because the property taxes, homeowners insurance etc make an expensive house in Detroit even more expensive than the suburbs. You will have a comparatively harder time finding a qualified buyer.

Similarly there are hundreds of “good deals” available in Oakland county in the $300,000 and above range – you don’t even have be to too smart to find them. They are everywhere. Problem with a $400,000 house is it will take one year to flip.

The money is in this business is made when you buy and also knowing what the conditions on the ground are when you go to sell. Good economy; Bad economy does not matter – the $100,000 - $125,000 house never ever goes out of style. Stay in the “safe” price range and you will be be able to buy and sell Michigan bank foreclosures without sitting on turkeys.

4. Fixing houses like it is a Home and Garden Television event:
If you live in a $360,000 home in Farmington Hills and you just bought a $100,000 ranch in Oak Park – you don’t need to remodel the Oak Park house in the image of your home. Really! Unless you have a crew from HGTV following you.

I stay away from perfection in my business and life. Perfection is a good thing – but not in rehabbing houses. You want good quality work but not at the expense of going overboard in fixing your houses or taking 5 months when it could have been done in 2 months.

Putting granite counters in a $150,000 house where a Formica counter would have done just because you want to, it is a dumb idea and most likely to cost you money that you cannot afford to blow up when you are new to the game of buying and selling Michigan bank foreclosures.

5.Not giving yourself enough time to sell:
It is easy to sit and whine about a house not selling. Much more harder it is to admit that you have done absolutely nothing so far to sell it. There is a checklist in the Inner Circle members area for things you can do to sell your house. If you are a member, download it, print it and tape it to a wall on top of your computer.

If you are want the biggest mistake that pretty much everybody makes is to wait for the house to finish up renovation to start the selling the house. You just wasted 60 days for nothing. Whether it is running an ad or contacting loan officers – it has to be done way before the house is finished.

A smarter way to handle sellling houses is to make your business partner or significant other involved and 100% responsible for selling the house. So you can concentrate on findinding, financing and fixing – they are focused on flipping. If you are by yourself then use robots (AVS, websites, hotlines etc) to replace manual labor on your part to sell the house.

6. Doing Random Marketing to sell your foreclosure:
Whether you are running ads to sell houses or attract leads – they have to run consistently. For some reason everybody I talk to runs an ad for a week. Stop. Wait two more weeks. Run an ad again. Stop again. This is not the way a business is run.

First of all you never want to call in and run an ad randomly. It is too expensive. I have said again and again to sign a contract with a newspaper for at least 13 weeks to get the best possible rates. Putting color or running a bigger ad all sounds good but I rather have a consistent black & white ad, boring but running over and over again.

7. Being Distracted By Other “Stuff”:
If you are working on an REO deal well that is all you should be thinking about all day long. Not about getting private money, not about Short Sales, not about Apartment Complexes, not about wholesaling.

Your whole business plan at this time should be – fix this house and sell this house. And that is all you need to know about real estate investing in Michigan at this point. The Short Sale, lease option, apartment complex, etc does not go away. It will all be here tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

You need to sell the deal you have and get your first check. That is all you should be thinking. Same way if you are working on a Short Sale deal – well that is all you need to be doing. One deal and one check sounds much better than 4 deals and no check. This is yet another piece of advice that nobody wants to hear.

Listen up – you can hibernate in a cave for 60 days up North – come back and there will still be foreclosures / apartment complexes / short sales / lease options / REO’s / OPM – available for you. It never goes away. One a side note it also does not matter if you sit on the sidelines or do a deal. Your desire / ambition / intent to do something is really irrelevant because somebody else always acts upon theirs.

What you really really need to know and remember:
Almost everybody puts way too much effort in buying and fixing and practically none in selling the house. Actually it should be other way around. Tons of deals available. Don’t buy houses that require too much time to fix. Wait till the right deal comes around if you have to. Wait 30 days if you have to. But follow the above 7 rules and you will sleep better and happier.

Put the effort, the thoughts and the money toward selling the house. Espeically if it is your first deal. Get the check. Don’t look at another house. Don’t try to get private money. Don’t try to build an investor network. Don’t try to do a Deal Finder business. Don’t try to look at apartment complexes. Don’t try to write a blog.

Sell. Sell. Sell your first deal. Get your first check.

Everything else is unimportant.

Web services are still really big at Microsoft. I can't wait for the public releases of Indigo to make this all much easier to do. On the MSDN and SDK teams there has been a lot of talk about exposing web services, adopting RSS as a standard syndication mechanism, etc.  I distinctly remember in the V1 .NET Framework when Jeff Richter worked with Jim Gray to create the TerraServer web services.  This is really a great use of a simple API backed by a huge system that provides real value that you would never want to try to build yourself. Looks like they are still up at http://terraservice.net/webservices.aspx  The API is pretty much the same as in 2000... that is goodness!!

Google seems to have a pretty straight forward set of APIs via a web service too.  http://www.google.com/apis/  It is great to see them support VB with their samples.  I can't seem to find the MSN Search web services...maybe someone can point me to them.

Where are you successfully using web services?

What are the next big ideas for the services in the consumer space?

Thoughts, rants, and raves welcomed. -Bret

I have been using the MSN Search service in its beta form for several months. To be 100% honest here, I started using it primarily because I work for Microsoft, but I was also very curious to see how the MSN search folks were doing. I know some of the folks working on that team and they are really pushing the Windows platform hard to make this competitive.

It took me a while of switching back and forth between the MSN search beta and Google to prove to myself that I wasn’t wasting time using MSN search.  I wasn’t. Here are my approximate, unscientific results:  about 60% of the time I find what I am looking for on either site on the first page within three searches, about 20% of the time I find it faster on MSN and about 20% of the time I find it faster on Google.  I also use the site tag (site:msdn.microsoft.com) on either search for MSDN specific searches. 

So for now, I am 85% switched to search.msn.com and my theory here is that that they are still just learning how to make search work…so MSN should be better a bit faster rate, right?   I still like the fact that it is easier to type “google” + Ctrl + Enter to get to Google (especially on other peoples machines), but now that the MSN search is the default on the “msn” + Ctrl + Enter… it is a wash.

I use them both a lot and can’t imagine trying to write code without them any more. So I am basically a convert and use http://search.msn.com most of the time.

So, without meaningless rants, what do you think is good and bad for developers about either MSN or Google search?  What can we ask them do to make our lives better? 

It’s been 11 days since I started my Google experiment, and I’m ready to declare it a success on all fronts. Not only did Gmail, Calendar, Finance, Search (and my browser of choice, Camino) live up to expectations, but I discovered some features and found the whole experience liberating and efficient.

Here’s a recap — tool by tool, again.

Camino

This little sharp-shooter didn’t miss a beat as my home base for email, calendering, stock quotes, and other daily information needs. In addition to the Google products that I was officially evaluating during this experiment, I ended up leaving Basecamp (for work) and Backpack open in Camino most of the time too. It was nice to have all of this information in one spot.

(Techie sidebar: Unlike Firefox and Safari, Camino’s memory footprint stayed nice and small over the course of the week. Even now, after running non-stop for 11 days, it’s using 581 MB of virtual memory and 85 MB of real memory. Not bad!)

Gmail

Did you know that Gmail has keyboard shortcuts? I didn’t. Other pleasant surprises include smart reply behavior, excellent handling of attachments and great built-in search (okay, that’s not a surprise, but it is pleasant!).

Perhaps the only downside to Gmail was getting weird looks from my co-workers. (Them: “You’re one of those now?”) Guess I’ll have to get used to it, because I’m fully converted! So long, Mail.app; it’s been fun.

Google Calendar

All around, Google Calendar feels like a nice step up from 30boxes. I barely used the Quick Add feature, instead opting to drag my events into place the “old-fashioned” way. I also appreciate the custom view (mine’s five days), Gmail integration and snappy performance at all times of the day and night.

Everything else

• I ended up using Google Local/Maps a lot more than anticipated. One handy feature is the ability to send business info (from Google Local) to your phone.
• Speaking of Maps — I used a couple of Google Maps Mashups a lot in the past week. Gmaps Pedometer is an oldie but goodie for figuring out how far I rode, and Yelp’s Maptastic is killer for finding a place to eat in a certain part of town.

All in all, a resounding success. Bravo Google! Imagine if they could apply this kind of innovation and quality to their advertising business… then they’d have something. (Kidding.)

For those of you playing along at home — how did it go? Any grand successes or failures?

According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (requires subscription or can be purchased), you could and you should strive towards integrated sales and marketing departments as the benefits of having both groups work in harmony are plentiful.

Stop marketing departments who spend on advertising without tying the results to sales, stop sales departments that only fulfill demand instead of (co)creating it, and stop managers for whom marketing is nothing more than selling and sales support... p.l.e.a.s.e!

The authors see two main sources of friction between sales and marketing - one economic and one cultural. The economic one has to do with the power distribution between sales and marketing in three of the four P's - promotion, pricing, and product. The cultural one, which may be even more entrenched, has to do with the fact that the two departments attract vastly different types of people - with different educational backgrounds, skill sets, etc.

The article offers a few suggestions to better align the marketing and sales departments:

• Encourage disciplined communication - and that does not mean more communication, which is expensive.
• Create joint assignments and rotate jobs
• Improve sales force feedback

Once you have your sales and marketing departments aligned you can go a step further and work towards achieving an integrated relationship. The authors suggest the following actions to achieve integrated departments:

• Appoint a chief revenue or chief customer officer - a CRO or a CCO
• Define the steps in the marketing and sales funnels
• Split marketing into two groups - strategic and tactical groups
• Set shared revenue targets and reward systems
• Integrate sales and marketing metrics

While some of the advise and terminology may seem a little staid or even passé (after all, is marketing still about the 4 P's? and is the buying process still a funnel?), the advise is solid and practical and should benefit any company with dysfunctional marketing and sales departments.

[Tags: sales marketing hr organizational behavior]