Publishing Today Report

Going Mobile

2010-01-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

I just caught a webinar today on Mobile Marketing. We have been following the explosion of mobile devices and the need to connect your communications to your audience. That said, it's a rapidly changing environment to say the least. Most people are aware of text messaging - the stat that really opened my eyes was that there are 3 BILLION text message users in the world. We think Facebook is big & growing fast with 350 million + users, that's nothing compared to phone/text message users. 2010 is said to be the year of MOBILE and we are following with a keen eye on the opportunities. Mobile email, SMS, Mobile websites and Mobile SEO - you'll be starting to see more of these terms creep into your marketing radar screen.

I just tried a new service called Mofuse.com

They allow you to convert your blog to a mobile blog for FREE.
I just put my SkiDayBlog on as a test.

Here's the regular Blogger site: (sorry, Blogger wouldn't allow a new window to open)
http://skidayblog.blogspot.com/

Here's the NEW mobile friendly version:
http://skidayblog.mofuse.mobi

Seems to work pretty well - even the Youtube video feeds!

Mofuse Free version is ad driven so you will have some sort of ad popping up. The premium version can be ad free. There is also some revenue sharing opportunities like Google Adsense.

Stay tuned as we play some more here at PTR Labs --

Fast Start 5 Series - Start Looking & Listening

2010-01-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

We've heard it all too often from clients & prospects who tell us they 'want no part of Facebook', and 'twitter is a waste of time',and 'who's got time for blogging'?

We'll I'm here to help you get a new viewpoint.

Facebook is exploding and could surpass Google for daily visits in the near future. Twitter is just jamming with all kinds of info and opportunities. There are millions of blog posts added each week. LinkedIn is growing and becoming a must have service for business people.

So today's post on the Fast Start Series is about 'looking and listening'. Before you go charging off into the land of social media it's quite helpful to get a look around, learn the etiquette and listen to what going on in your industry - not to mention what's being said about your company.

#1) go try out Twitter.search.com
Plug in your company's name, your keywords or the main problem you solve. See how many people are talking about your target words. Find your competitors on twitter, who's following them?

#2) Blog search. Go to Google Blog Search and plug in your industry, your keywords, even your name - what do you find? Probably lots of people talking about 'your stuff' ! As you get your website up and running and you begin to seek out linking opportunities to build your credibility and page rank, you need to find blogs where you can comment and hopefully develop relationships and quality backlinks to your website or blog.

#3) SEO Basics. It's about time for a good quick read. Google SEO Basics and start with Googles report. You'll need to understand how SEO works from an 'On-Page' perspective and on 'Off-page' perspective. Much more on this later, but start to build a knowledge base on this important subject as it will be critical to the survival of your website!

#4) PR search. Finding good PR opportunities is another key component in online marketing.
Getting yourself showing up on news articles, blog interviews, even Radio & TV is a HUGE accomplishment. All those articles you see in the newspapers or online don't neccessarily magically appear. Someone likely worked hard to sell a story to the news outlets or media. When you show up with good PR your are percieved as 'the expert' and it brings an additional level of credibility to your efforts. We follow HARO (help a reporter out), HARO sends us multiple updates per day with reporters looking to find info on stories that have deadlines and need immediate help - you can provide that help!

#5) Advanced Search. This will turn into multiple blog posts as it's such a big area. On the social media side, you can dig much deeper into both LinkedIn and Facebook by doing more advanced searches. In Facebook you can look for companies and see who works there that you know. Same goes for LinkedIn. Twitter too can bring you down some interesting search pathways as you investigate who follows who. Then there's Google and Bing. You can find anything you want if you search for it correctly! As you get deeper into SEO, understanding the difference between Broad - Phrase - Exact matches will tell you a lot about how your site is doing for ranking on keyword phrases that drive traffic to your on-line sites.

Pre-Season Fast Start 5 Update

2010-01-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

If you are familiar with the 30 Day Challenge, you understand what I mean by 'Pre-Season'.
As for the PTR, I have found that many of my beta-testers are having issues with just getting their computers and web browsers to work correctly. So this post is a pre-emptive strike to get folks alert to what they are doing with their computers. Again, learning how to do this yourself is a critical outcome - if you are having trouble - 'just Google it', and see if you can find the solution.

#1) go check if you have the latest windows updates! If you are not up to speed here you will not be able to upgrade your browser. It's very important to have the latest security patches on your machines.

#2) go check your virus software! Do you have any? Is it up to date? It's easy to ignore it until you download a virus and then you can't get into your machine or online to get the latest update to kill off that virus. I have had great success with Avast. They even have a free home addition.

#3) go check your spyware protection. Do you have any? Is it up to date? Same thing goes here, keep it up to date and it will save you some huge problems. Whether it's a virus or a 'malware' problem - it will ruin your day (& your computer if you are not up to speed with the latest updates. I have had good success with 2 programs, Super Anti-Spyware and MalwareBytes. They have saved the home system a number of times.

That said you should have these all on auto-updates so you get the latest & greatest as it happens. When I get a virus, I run one program after the other until they give me an 'all clear'.
There have been times it's taken multiple cycles to quarnatine the problems.

#4) Update your Internet Explorer browser. You should have IE8 on your machine and have it up to date with the latest patches. When I hear about sites not looking right or slowness problems, here's a good place to start.

#5) Do you have backup? I bet ya don't! My computer guy turned me on to Carbonite after testing out a couple of others that sounded great. Carbonite is VERY cost effective and gives you off-line backup to cover worst case scenarios.

#6) BONUS. Go get an additional hard drive. Hard Drive prices have plummeted! Years ago we bought a Terabyte back-up server for $800. A couple of months ago I picked up a 'Tera book' backup for $99 & the shipping was FREE! Yea!

You'll be SO HAPPY when you can access your back-ups after the big crash and get yourself going again quickly. How many songs do you have on iTunes? How much is that music worth?

Publishing Today Report Newton Conference

2009-12-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

We met at the fine facilities of the Newton Public Library on the morning of December 29th. We've made significant progress on the PT Conference and Report project. Our strategy for integrating a superior crm/web site platform with social media execution and education to drive effective marketing for small business is looking good. Initial feedback from our beta testers is encouraging and when we talk to small business owners about the video programs they are very interested.

Driving qualified leads to your business is vital in this market and there seems to be a lot of need for that these days. Getting leads and traffic for your business is the main concern we are hearing from owners trying to get back into growth mode. For many, the whole internet/social media puzzle is just that, competition is fierce in a shrinking market and everyone's time is already stretched to the max.

It takes a coordinated effort across multiple channels and you must map your marketing & selling efforts to the buyer's process. Getting traffic to your site is great but then you've got to convert it, all the way to closed sales, with marketing and sales working hand
in hand. The more you can automate the better.

Our video program will consist of a series of FAQ videos posted to multiple video sites with a lead generation system that captures and opts-in the prospect in a series of educational messages that allows them to get to know you and your company and make a buying decision in your favor.

Next week will have the pilot program in place - stay tuned for updates.

Fast Start 5 Series - Round 2

2009-12-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

Hey Folks - Round 2 just out of testing - thanks to my beta testers for vetting the process and supplying the feedback.

This next round starts to get us out of the Google basics and on to some of the major social media providers. But we're not straying too far from Google's realm, both with our first visit to YouTube and my last Step in this series; #5, a Google "You Pick" - 5 additional steps on the Google path, some basics/some fun/some Waves, you pick which ones to try (I suggest all of them ;-)

As always, this will not be a step-by-step guide yet, so 'Google' the term mentioned to get to the start page and follow the instructions. Send me an email if you get stuck or have a question, and if you're a client - pick up the phone! (maybe do a WAVE?, see offer below)

Now that you have a gmail account, you've opened the door to all Google offers.

So #1) One of the most fun, interesting, & powerful places on the internet is Youtube. You can login in & set up an account with your Gmail account. I assume someone has gotten you here before this, so take a look around at the business side of Youtube. Youtube is the #2 search engine after Google (who owns Youtube). Do a search for videos using your keywords. Search for your competitors on Youtube too. Look up some of the channels.
I bet you'll find some interesting stuff, nothing like seeing your competitor all over Youtube and you're not there yet. There will be a Youtube Channel in your future....

#2) Facebook. I've seen the spectrum here - from those people who totally embrace Facebook (my sister), those that are curious (my Dad, who's 84 and has to be one of their oldest users) to numerous business associates who say they hate it and want no part of it! (to those folks, please have a closer look!)
Once again, find the start page, start an account, READ the terms of service and the help sections so you know what's going on and fill out your profile (you can also 'google' or 'youtube' some how-to's on Facebook so you can get off to an informed start). I have some favorite How-to places I'll share in later postings across a fuller spectrum of social media. Pay close attention to the Privacy sections - you can control what's seen on your Facebook account.

#3) LinkedIn. Same goes for here. I talked with a BizDev guy the other day & he had only 5 connections - YIKES! Nathan Kievman, founder of the LinkedStrategies group on LinkedIn has THOUSANDS of contacts and MILLIONS of connections because of his huge network. That gives him tremendous reach to a huge audience! LinkedIn has become the social media site for the business audience. Building a large network has become a necessity. Leveraging the powerful search and networking capabilities is a must have skill for business people today.

#4) Twitter. Twitter really sets people off! Many swear by it as their best source of information, and others want nothing to do with it and consider it a waste of time. You have to pay attention to Twitter for a growing set of reasons. There is search & listening capacity - quick messaging - large audience growth - viral communication - website traffic generation & your competitors are on it...(that usually gets some movement from the business world) First step here is try 'twitter search' (go ahead, Google it). Plug in some of your keywords, who's saying what? Now, start an account, READ the terms of service, how-to's etc., set up your profile, pick a username that uses your keyword phrase of business name and start learning about this new social media. Remember, listen 1st, learn what's going on before you jump in.

#5) A Google "YOU PICK":

5a) If you have a webcam on your computer, set up Google Video Chat, find a friend to chat with & go for it. (My neighbor uses it to talk with his parents back in Greece so they can see their Grand Children. Bruce & I have been using it too for our Publishing Today efforts.)
5b) Read Google SEO Basics, it tells you exactly how to be found in Google. And the more you know about that the better.
5c) Get a look a Google Docs. Another cool product - who needs Microsoft? You get spreadsheets, word processing, forms, surveys, presentation and online storage accessable from any computer & it doesn't cost a cent! Wow.
5d) Set up Google Picassa. If you got Blogger going, you'll be eventually connected to Picasa once you put in some photos. Picasa is Google's equivalent to Flickr (Yahoo). Using photos for SEO for your business is rapidly gaining ground!
5e) Google WAVE. Maybe the future of communications? The emergence of Web 3.0! Were you still waiting to figure out Web 2.0? We have been testing it out and are pretty excited about the possibilities. It's like an Instant Messenger/email/Wiki all rolled into one. I've got a number of beta test invitations - contact me if you'd like to test it yourself.

The New look of PTR

2009-12-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

Hey Bruce,
Thanks for the logo update.

Wednesday is the target day to build some test videos for Lead Gen. We are very excited with this strategy test. The PT Conference should really push the concepts into actual testing - can't wait to pull it together.

2nd Publishing Today Conference announced

2009-12-16T21:22:00.001-08:00

Bruce Jones & Lew Sabbag confirmed the 2nd Publishing Today Conference will take place just after Christmas 2009 on December 29th. Key Agenda for the conference will be the topic of editorial calendars for multi-channel communications. We'll establish topic sets and publish dates for video, facebook, twitter, blogging and website applications.

Beta Testing of Fast Start product sets will continue and be on the conference agenda.
E-book development for small business will also be explored and updated.

2 core values for the Publishing Today conference are Education & Enthusiasm which we find to be abundant even in such a challenging business environment. One other notable value we look for in our clients is the idea of 'going for it' vs. 'sitting still' and the strategic & cultural differences required to make the former a success.

Google Wave testing

2009-12-04T05:48:00.000-08:00

I got a Google Wave invitation the other day from my friend Bruce Jones. It sat open in my browser until this morning. It was the blog post from Chris Brogan that got me going on it. Chris had his usual insightful commentary and a few links to provide perspective. The demo video he linked to from Gizmodo with the Pulp Fiction theme really put it in perspective (cover your ears, there's lots of bad words & shooting ;-) . In my contacts box were 2 other people I know who are actively involved in all things internet & social media. I have pinged them to see how they respond and I started my "Fast Start 5" series (or Wave) to test out this cool tool.
Stay tuned for updates - it should be FUN.

Fast Start 5 Series

2009-12-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing business owners totally mystified with what to do with all this crazy social media stuff exploding around us. For all the people in love with Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. there's twice as many who know nothing about it. Same goes for the basics around effective websites, and Search, and getting found or not. As a fan of the 80/20 rule and all its variations, I'd say 80% of the websites on the internet are totally dysfunctional.

So here's the beginning of my Wave series to help people get a handle on what's going on out there on the internet, and most importantly, translate that knowledge into actionable steps to help drive their business forward.

Google is such an integral part of everything internet I think you need to get yourself going in the world of Google first.

So I'll start with what I call my 'Google Fast Start' -

(One premise of this plan I am working from is this; just go 'Google' the app I am talking about, find it, follow the instructions & get it working. A second premise is that's there's only 5 steps to take - making it a bite size mission that you can accomplish with a minimum of time)

It's pretty simple really - Try it / you'll like it!

1st - Get yourself a Gmail account.

2) Next, set up an iGoogle page for yourself so you have a place to call home and manage all the cool Google stuff you can use. Download a Google toolbar while you're at it - at the very least I'd want you to be familiar with the google PageRank meter on the toolbar. (more on the importance of that later)

3) Go over & find Google alerts. (BTW - have you Googled yourself lately? ;-)

Set up only 2 or 3 alerts for now. Put your name in, your company, your main product or keyword phrase. You'll have to fine tune this to get a good stream of info - too broad a term will get you a lot of unneeded info -work it a little to get it right.

4) Now go get Google Reader set up. This is an amazing tool for sending yourself a targeted stream of information that's focused on the subjects YOU care about. the second part of this step is now go to google blog search - plug in a topic you are interested in and look for some info feeds. Find one or 2 you like and add them to your reader. You can put your Reader right into your iGoogle page for easy access.

5) Finally, go over & find Google Blogger. Your Gmail account gets you in and you can set up your first blog literally in minutes. Think of this first blog as a journal - what are you thinking about? What are some key topics running around in your head about your business that you need to get into a written form?

Got any pictures on your laptop or phone? Try a first upload. How does it look?

Try it - You'll like it!

...and have some FUN with it - when it's fun, it's easy and automatic to keep at it.

Publishing Today Conference a Success

2009-11-30T15:53:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, November 24, 2009 Bruce Jones & Lew Sabbag; the founders of the Publishing Today Conference and Report, met at Babson College to organize a plan for helping small business owners effectively market themselves in the rapidly evolving world of Online Marketing.

Our goal was to review all the marketing strategies and tactics we've been learning, testing and deploying for clients and ourselves. We found that a coordinated effort across multiple media channels has become the "must have" strategy for effective marketing no matter what size a company may be. We also agreed that educating and enabling small businesses needed to be a continuous part of the process. All the hot marketing systems are technology tools that really enable people to do amazing things but, without some good process controls, plus an engaged owner or company team, it all breaks down.

The core components start with the company website or blog. Website development with the newest CMS (content managed system) websites that can be easily updated should be a key criteria for most small to medium size business. Adding a CRM database that captures & tracks all customer interactions across your channels is essential as well. Analytics rounds out the core - If you can't measure it and improve it, why bother?

We have seen so often the struggles many small business people go through to get website changes done or pull an email and mailing list for a coordinated sales/marketing campaign.

The lost opportunities around basically capturing data and following up effectively are huge.

Once you have a solid foundation, branching out to social media marketing is the next step. Depending on the audience and business objectives, the most likely starting points are Linked In,

Facebook, Twitter & Youtube. Blogging and commenting become additional social marketing steps to engage your audience, show your expertise and create opportunities to build relationships and links.

Now that the database is growing and under control, the tribe needs to be engaged. Email marketing done well is still the workhorse for effective marketing communications. Using the appropriate email platform, complying with regulations and delivering a relevant, consistent message will make your email program a profitable practice.

So where is all this content going to come from?

THAT is the biggest challenge for small business!

Effective training in social media marketing must include how to use the tools that enable content productivity. Google Reader is a great starting point, not to mention a handheld digital camera that can capture video content that can be repurposed for blogs, YouTube and your website.

So What Now?

Our next steps with The Publishing Today Report will be to "build a road map to Internet Marketing Success" for small business and entrepreneurs. Teaching small business how to integrate and monetize the web is the what so many small businesses need to grow and prosper.

Testing for our Google FAST Start is underway as well as an email bootcamp program.

Stay tuned for updates

Lew & Bruce