IN THIS ISSUE:
• Welcome Message
• James’s Blog: A Reason Why
• Fast Facts/Figures and Observations
• Special Offers
• Something for Nothing: Free Downloads
WELCOME
Welcome
Everyone’s talking about blogging these days. Most of the digital decision makers I know are either writing a blog, reading some blogs, subscribing to a few blogs, or threatening to start a blog.
The facts don’t lie. See the sidebar for a few figures. Currently, there over 75 million blogs. It could be your favorite media personality’s blog, a blog you read through an RSS feed, or through a media channel like an online magazine or a Website.
Like you, I’ve become addicted to reading blogs and have finally launched my own one. It’s about the changing media landscape in a global, connected world. I invite you to read it, comment often, and join my virtual community. Please check it out and bookmark it for future reading.
Best regards,
James
JAMES’S BLOG: A REASON WHY
Hi, my name’s James and I’m a blogger.
There, I’ve said it and I’m glad.
I know what you might be thinking. He works in international media. He’s a big time reader and traveler. He is working with tech marketers and publishers every day. He writes tons of emails daily and it seems like he never turns off his laptop. Maybe it’s about friggin’ time James became a friggin’ blogger.
That’s what this new blog is all about. Because now, I get it... Even though I’ve been selling media space around VNU blogs for years, I didn’t truly understand the seismic shift that has taken place in the relationship between buyers and sellers in the past few years. It seems that the blog is definitely in the eye of the media convergence hurricane.
The last three weeks have been a crash course for me in corporate blogging. It started with the “Insights into Innovators,” a speaker series at Golden Gate University with Robert Scoble and a free copy of his book Naked Conversations. After being very impressed by Scoble and his evangelistic view of the world, I began to really consider the impact of blogs, as well as emerging platforms like Twitter.
The following day, I was kindly invited to The Press Club of California’s Third Annual Bay Area International Media Summit in San Francisco. It was organized and hosted by vnunet.com UK’s resident US blogger, Tom Sanders. Here, I was treated to a Q&A sessions which included Anil Dash, Vice President & Chief Evangelist of Six Apart, and Tom Waldrop, Director Global Communications Group of Intel. So in a short two days, I was hooked and needed to truly get myself up to speed on the power of corporate blogging for myself and my clients.
The first step was reading Naked Conversations. The biggest takeaway for me was understanding the move from the “Command and Control” school of communications to “Shut Up and Listen.” Listening to customers is now more important then ever and acting to better serve them will never go out of favor. Tom Sanders highlighted the recent news from Dell that they will continue to support Windows XP, as opposed to forcing customers into the new Vista OS. In his view, this was driven in large part by Dell’s IdeaStorm, a blog “where your ideas reign.”
The next step was to dig deeper and gather more intelligence. So I plunged into a half-dozen analysts’ reports and publisher research studies on blogging and emerging media.
For example, did you know that the French are the biggest
bloggers in Europe and that the Italians love their Podcasts?
Both of these factoids shocked me after enjoying the laid-back
lifestyle in both countries on recent holidays. Check out the
side bar for more facts and figures.
The third step was to do a survey of relevant blogs and determine how the communities operate and who the players are. Our business is about international media for technology marketers. While there is much in the Blogosphere on technology marketing and emerging media, there is little covering these topics from an international perspective. As usual, it all about the US! The side bar does mention some tech, marketing and media blogs that I will start tracking.
Now I feel I have completed Blogging 101: A Quick History and Overview.
What’s next? I decided to start my own corporate blog and here are the steps I took:
- Decided what to blog about: The changing media landscape in a global, connected world.
- Thought of a title and checked its availability on Google and Technorati.
- Chose how to set it up: Based on recommendations, I decided to use Typepad.
- I started blogging
Stay tuned for further musings from James Miller. Please bookmark my blog or sign up to my RSS feed to read my frequent updates. Sometimes, they’ll be daily. Often, weekly. But I pledge to post an article when I can and I welcome your comments.
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING: FREE DOWNLOADS
– Best Practices/Webseminars: A Whitepaper
This guide provides an overview and best practices for web seminars in Europe. It includes thought leadership commentary from BrightTalk as well
as research conducted via online surveys among Business and Technology
Decision Makers in Belgium, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and the
UK.
The aim of this document is to provide international marketing and sales
executives a road map to envisioning, executing and measuring web
seminars in Europe.
Download now
– How To Reach And Influence The UK IT Decision Maker: A Whitepaper
This new whitepaper provides details of IT spending and a review of the IT decision-makers’ universe in the UK.
Download now
– How to Reach and Influence The French IT Decision Maker:
A Whitepaper
This recently completed whitepaper is intended for international marketing and advertising executives and managers operating in France. It provides details of IT spending and a review of the IT decision makers’
universe in France.
Download now
– Globalization Is a Trend, Not An End: A Survey of Global Technology Marketers
Global technology marketers like yourself are hard to find. Why not see what your peers have to say in this new whitepaper from VNU Global Media. This survey of 100 global technology marketers, jointly conducted by Ziff Davis Media and VNU Global Media, is now available.
Download now
– Media Preferences of Digital Consumers: A Survey Among VNU’s Digital Consumer Webpanel
How much of an impact has the Internet had across Europe in the overall media usage habits of digital consumers, one of our target audiences? This survey provides a summary of online interviews containing 31 questions by AC Nielsen among nearly 7,000 members in seven European countries. Download Survey
FAST FACTS/FIGURES & OBSERVATIONS
Understanding The Blogosphere
Stats about Web blogs – Understanding Today’s New Media
– 75.2 million blogs: www.technorati.com
– 50 million regular blog readers
– 75,000 new blogs a day!
– 1.2 million posts daily
– 50,000 blog updates an hour
– Audience Makeup: 18-34 years old: 59% Gawker; 64% Gizmodo; 42% Web
– Male: 91% Gizmodo; 76% Wonkette; 53% Web
– $75K household income: 47% Defamer; 46% Wonkette;
22% Web
– 20+ hours online/wk: 54% Gizmodo; 20% Web
KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann: Emerging Media Series, Issue 2 ‐ Blogs and RSS
– 4,500 global participants ‐ technology decision maker
– 80% have read/used blog content
– 53% say that blog content has already influenced a technology purchase decision
– Trust of blogs increasing with 57% rating blogs equally or more credible than traditional channels of communications
What Is A Blog?
According to Technorati, “A blog, or Weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the Web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them. ”
“Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it. ”
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