Lots of Great Reading

Recently I have been doing lots of great reading, well listening to learn more about the way the Internet works and how it is changing our world. You can keep up with my reading list in full using my LinkedIn Profile and the Amazon Application or I tend to blog about books I am reading here.

I read - Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe that examines how businesses and nonprofits can use the crowd (the 1 Billion Internet users) to communicate and interact in the new world. This book was a bit long but provided a lot of great examples.

John Brackney, president and CEO shared with me a book called Tribes. This is a short must read for anyone who is in business and those who want to know what the business world is doing. We are all in Tribes, our family, our city, our companies, our HOAs, PTA, Churches and Temples and everywhere else we are in tribes and we are looking for leadership. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin paints a very clear picture of what is happening and what we all need to do to move with the tides and not be pulled under by the current.

Right now I am working on two books - Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World by Pete Blackshaw a leader in understanding consumer generated content like this blog post about these books and The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman who shares why the world is becoming flatter and flatter with technology.

Each of these books have great information and their authors are well versed in their fields. I look forward to sharing my findings and gleanings on this blog, my sessions and in my Email Newsletter.

The Future of Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is the most popular office productivity application in the world. Other vendors have been trying to break into this market by providing tools at less cost or with new features. Collaboration has been a primary feature in the fight for the most feature rich application.



Google has been a primary combatant in this war (and part of why Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo). Google apps give users the ability to collaborate on text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.



Microsoft has some collaboration tools now but they require expensive licences and the full application to be installed. Since Microsoft Word is a very large application this limits what can be done. Accessing Microsoft Word and other documents in Internet Explorer or another browser will vastly open up the pool of people that can collaborate on a given project and potently shore up Microsoft as the office application winner.



You get more information in thisMicrosoft Release about Browser based Office Support or this video from Microsoft.

Firefox Targted by Malware

Users are often told to feel safer (including by me) if they use Firefox because of its more secure design and because less spy ware and malware is made for it. Today it was released that there is new Malware (malicious software) that "[the malware uses technology to] identify more than 100 financial and money transfer Web sites, including Barclays, Wachovia, Bank of America, and PayPal along with two dozen or so Italian and Spanish banks. When it recognizes a Web site, it will collect logins and passwords, forwarding that information to a server in Russia." http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/120408-firefox-users-targeted-by-rare.html?netht=rn_120408&nladname=120408

The issue here is that the threat of malicious Internet users effects everyone. It does not matter what security software you have it is how much you pay attention to what you click on and install. Use safe Internet practices and have a good security program like AVAST! and you should be fine.

What to Blog On

At least 2 or 3 times a day I see things that would be worth blogging on but I cant blog on every technology article I see, the books I read, the new products I see. This is a challenge for me many bloggers. I want this blog to be high quality information and a lot of information but I don't want to post too much.

I wish I had a magic formula for myself and other bloggers to say this is what you do but I do not. I think the key is to think would I want to read this if I was on this blog or would the people who read my blog want to read this.

One key to blogging is to try and have constancy. If you blog 5 times in one week and then do not blog the rest of the month no one will know when to expect new content on your blog. Also, adding content to blogs and websites helps with Google and other search engine rankings.

If you have something you would like to see me write about comment on this post.

LinkedIn Ads

Denver DataMan will be hosting a Email Marketing seminar on 12/2 and I am trying to expand the audience for the session. To do this I started looking at LinkedIn events and I posted the event and then decided to connect this with a LinkedIn events ad.

Creating the event was very easy once I figured out how to get into the interface. I had to click on another event and then it showed me a main page for LinkedIn events. You can get into LinkedIn Event at http://events.linkedin.com. Like the rest of LinkedIn you are very limited on formating. You can see what an event looks like at http://events.linkedin.com/pub/15457.

I like that the events are linked to the person who created it so you can see their LinkedIn profile information. I also like that you can see the public profiles of people who are attending.

After you create an event it asks you if you want to buy adds for the event. I did not want to buy an add for the first event I posted - http://events.linkedin.com/pub/15453 - because the event is free but when I posted my e-mail seminar I chose to buy an ad.

Ads on LinkedIn are sold by impressions (number of times the ad will be shown). You can filter out who you want to see the add by geography, industry, gender, age, company size and similar demographic information. As you do this the size of the population of users you will reach is updated as well as the price. For example I paid $16 per-1000 impressions.

There is a $25 minimum order - and unlike other Ad tools there does not appear to be a way to set budgets. For example on Google you can say I want to spend up $50 over the month. Here you are pre-paying for impressions.

Overall I like the interface for both LinkedIn ads and LinkedIn events. I look forward to seeing how effective either will be for the promotion of events.

Whats in a Name?

eMarkerter Daily released a report this morning from a November 2008 study done by MailerMailer, that found that email open rates for commercial email has fallen. Though this may sound like bad news for those of us who use email as a marketing tool however don't fret we just need to return to core principals and we can beat the odds.

For example eMarketer sites that "Subject lines of less than 35 characters yielded an average open rate of 19.6% and a 3.1% average click rate. E-mails with subject lines of 35 or more characters drew average open rates of 14.8% and average click rates of 1.9%."

Getting your email opened is the first step, getting people to read and click through is the next. Value added content is the key! Define yourself as an expert and share information that your clients and prospects want to read.

Face-to-Face

Last week I read Judith Briles article in the Denver Business Journal called Tech devices are fun - but face-to-face talk is better. I would have to agree with every major point in her article especially her point to "Let technology enhance - not dominate - your personal and professional life."

I am writing this post a week after I read the article because I was thinking about this when I was on a webinar this morning. We had a quasi personal meeting with the person giving me a tour of their product and answering questions but it is not the same as meeting in person.

This just stresses how important it is that we make the most of the relationships we have with the people we are in front of and use technology to augment not to replace to face-to-face contact. Well, I am off to lunch with a another business person and it will be good to be face-to-face.