Another free download from MarketingSherpa: Dirty Dozen Email Newsletter Mistakes

MarketingSherpa is offering a free download, Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes. Find it under Email Marketing Resources on this page, along with other free downloads.

My favorite mistakes (which I see all the time): Lame 'Welcome' Messages [see my ClickZ article from October 2001: Leveraging Your Confirmation Emails] and Ignoring Your Blackberry and Mobile Readers.

The free guide is but a small taste of what they offer in their annual door-stopper (328 pages): MarketingSherpa Email Marketing 2008 Benchmark Guide. I've reviewed these annual mega guides in the past (see 2006 review). They're chock full of charts and stats and really helpful if you're looking for metrics to gauge the success of your email programs.

P.S. Full disclosure

Yes, I'm a MarketingSherpa affiliate and receive a small commission if you order through my link above.

Free download: MarketingSherpa's 2008 Wisdom Report

One of my favorite free downloads is available now from MarketingSherpa. It's an annual report the MarketingSherpa editors put together by polling readers on their top challenges as marketers. I contributed a tidbit that appears as item #27 in the Web 2.0 section. Other topics include email, search marketing, advertising, metrics, business-to-business and -- a new one I haven't seen before -- office politics!

Here's part of what I wrote:

"I can tell you from experience that creating a corporate blog for a Fortune 500 company is one part big idea and nine parts down in the trenches parsing each word for tone, content, nuance, legal ramifications, etc."

-- by Debbie Weil for MarketingSherpa's 2008 Wisdom Report

Download a copy of this 42-page free report here. (They will also mail you a hard copy.)

Meryl K. Evans' 5 Quick Tips to Building a Better Blog

Be sure to grab a copy of Meryl's manifesto for ChangeThis.com: 5 Quick Tips to Building a Better Blog.

I really like Tip #3 on Readability. She recommends giving font size control to your readers (and advises on how to do that).

Full disclosure: Meryl was the researcher extraordinaire for The Corporate Blogging Book. She seems to  have omitted that from her interesting bio, which is also part of her "manifesto." Go Meryl!

Top 25 most influential authorities on the topic of business blogging - BlogWrite is #8

According to an "influence index"  released yesterday in a report by UK firm Onalytica, this blog is #8 in a list of the top 25 most influential authorities on the topic of business blogging. See below. Puts BlogWrite above the New York Times (meaning the Technology section?), eMarketer, Seth Godin and Steve Rubel's Micro Persusasion.

Onalytica's report explains that the results are based not on "popularity" (often measured by number of visitors to a site) but on a measure of indirect influence/authority/relevance - akin to the rating system used in academia.

Download the report:
"Who are the most influential authorities on business blogging? [PDF] to learn more.

Blogging 101, Podcasting 101, RSS 101 for Marketers

Below is an update of my original 101 list. If you've got a great resource page or article - of specific interest to marketers - leave me a comment below and I might add it. No promises.  :)

Blogging 101

Blogging 101 by Rebecca Blood (on MSN Spaces)

Blogging 101 by Kari Chisholm

Blogs 101 by Rich Meislin in New York Times' Technology section

Blogging 101 by Technorati

Blog knowledge center by Cymfony

Business Blogging 101 on the NEWPRWiki

Business Blogging Resources by Dave Taylor

Global Voices' Intro to Blogs

Weblog Basics on About.com

Wikibooks' Blogging 101

Wikipedia definition of Weblog

Blog marketing resources from Paul Gillin

Podcasting 101

Podcasting 101 on MacZealots.com

Podcasting 101 on TechWeb

Podcasting 101 by Merle Stinnett

How to Record a Podcast by Glenn Fleishman

Creating a mini podcast in 30 minutes (how I did it with Stephan Spencer)

How to Podcast Video Tutorial

Beginner's Guide to Podcast Creation

The Real Beginner's Guide to Podcasting

If podcasting is 2005 word of the year, why isn't it as easy as blogging?

RSS 101

RSS 101: "Really Simple" 5-Step Guide to Get Started

RSS 101 Screencast by Alex Barnett

RSS 101 for Marketers (Forrester report, July 2005)

RSS Beyond Blogs (excellent round-up of corporate RSS feeds by Toby Bloomberg)

The Business Case for RSS (free PDF download)

RSS Marketing blog by Rok Hrastnik

Seth Godin on What Is RSS?

About Feeds (XML, RSS, Atom) by SixApart

RSS Tutorial (includes tech details)

Round-up of RSS studies & charts (August 2005)

Technorati: corporate blogging; blogging; rss; podcasting; podcast; debbie weil

Download MarketingSherpa's Marketing Wisdom for 2006

Just out today is MarketingSherpa's 2006 Marketing Wisdom report. It's a great example of using your customers to create content for you. The Sherpa folks sent out a survey link in December asking the 100,000-plus readers of their email newsletters to submit a lesson learned or useful anecdote from 2005. The results - from 110 readers - are compiled in a nifty looking PDF report.

Also clever, the report has an upscale sponsor, search marketing firm Omniture. This kind of "free" download is a win-win all around. Passalong or word-of-mouth marketing for Sherpa, in addition to sponsorship revenue. The glory of being published if you're one of the contributors.

The readers who contributed are from small companies and big, including American Red Cross, CompUSA and The Motley Fool. Entries cover everything from email and search engine marketing to growing and managing clients if you're a consultant or agency.

Download the 2006 Wisdom report here.

P.S. You'll see an entry from yours truly on page 19 about RSS vs. email as a channel to reach your audience.

Best Free Downloads of 2005: blogging, RSS, email and podcasting

Well it's that time of year... time for a "Best Of" list! So many free guides, so little time to cull through them. Here's my quick pick of the most informative on this year's hot topics: blogging, RSS and podcasting. Plus the most notable stat of 2005 and of course the best new blog.

AND let's not forget email. Oh, and white papers themselves. They're both still in play as powerful marketing and communications tools for companies large and small.

Update: this blog entry also appears in the current issue of my e-newsletter, WordBiz Report. If you're not already a subscriber, please do sign up!

I generally publish once a month although the schedule has been interrupted the past few months because of writing the book. Subscribe now and you can download immediately my Top 7 Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog.

Blogging

To Blog Or Not To Blog by The Content Factory [download page]

Added: my earlier pick: Seth Godin's e-book on blogging Who's There [PDF]

My riff about it here.

RSS

The Business Case for RSS by Rok Hrastnik [PDF]

Podcasting

Beginner's Guide to Podcast Creation [Article]

Email

DoubleClick's 6th Annual Consumer Email Study [PDF - just released Dec. 2005)

EmailLabs Best Practices Quick Tips and Guide [Download page]

White Papers

2005 White Paper Writer Industry Survey [Download page - free until Dec. 31, 2005]

Most notable stat of 2005

Pew's Report on Teen-Age Content Creators [Download page]

Not sure whether your customers are hanging out in the blogosphere? They will be soon. 57% of teen-agers who use the Internet have created a blog, uploaded photos, audio or video or re-mixed online content to create new stuff.

Best new blog

This one was easy! Scott Adams' Dilbert Blog

 

Seth Godin interviewed on "Internet marketing"

Read the Q.  & A. with Seth in E-consultancy.com's December 2005 briefing. As always, he boils it down. Real simple. Incisive. (Scroll to the bottom of the interview for a good explanation of Squidoo, Seth's new venture.) I like this sound bite:

Q. (Chris Lake) Should every business use the internet to communicate? What are the basics of an internet communications strategy?

A. (Seth Godin) You should only use the internet if you want your communications to be FAST and you want to reach LARGE NUMBERS with no intermediaries. If you can't handle that, though, you shouldn't try.

And this one (valid question, BTW, as Seth made his name as the king of permission marketing):

Q. You've written about permission marketing extensively, yet intrusion is still a big part of the average internet session. Does this frustrate you?

A. (Seth) Not any more. Like everyone else, I ignore it.

What a waste.

And this, perhaps the most profound thing Seth said. Think about it. If you send out an e-newsletter or publish a blog or offer a downloadable white paper, it's because you're expecting a response. Not a sale right away. But a tiny step, a forward movement, a conversation starter, the beginnings of a  relationship with that prospect. Or to get more tactical, if you're putting an AdSense ad in front of someone it's cuz you want them to click on it. Right?

Q. Does online advertising have to be purely about response? What about the brand benefits?

A. (Seth) There's zero evidence that you can build a brand with interruptions online that don't lead to action. Zero.

Speaking of Squidoo, Seth's new venture... It's out of beta. Go build a lens (start here) and fool around with it. Here are two of my lenses so far. They need lots more stuff in them: Debbie Weil and Yoga Vacations. I'm still figuring it out.

Download Seth Godin's e-book on Why Blog?

Been meaning to post this. I love the way Seth Godin writes. He inspires me to... just say it. Take out all those clauses and that clutter.

From the intro to his new e-book: "This is not a faq and it's not the blogging bible and it's incomplete... " Of course he packs plenty into 45 pages.

Interestingly, (for those of you out there wondering what to do with all that stuff you write in your blog) he pulls a fair amount of this e-book straight out of his blog. As well he should. A blog is the perfect place to test out your ideas and just "get it down."

Included are his riff on CEO blogs and his riff on why "small is the new big" (his most popular post ever, he says). And of course lots of useful tips on blogging and why it's good for your business.

I'm wondering if he's a "dog person" as opposed to a "cat person." (They're very distinct, IMHO.) The reason... he identifies three types of blogs:

Cat Blogs
He writes: "A cat blog is about your cat and your dating travails and your boss and whatever you feel like sharing... "  Hmmm... being a dog person myself I'm wondering if a dog blog is yet another category.

Boss Blogs
He writes: "A boss blog is a fantastic communications tool. I used one when I produced the fourth-grade musical. It made it easy for me to keep the parents who cared about our project up to date... " Another way to describe internal blogs whose purpose is project and knowledge management.

Viral Blogs
These are business or corporate blogs, of course. Seth: "These are the blogs that are changing the face of marketing, journalism and the spread of ideas... they're viral blogs because the goal of the blog is to spread ideas."

Download Who's There here. Read Seth's riff on it here.

   

Best new downloadable white papers on corporate blogging

Get 'em here:

The Content Factor's To Blog Or Not To Blog (download page)

Edelman/Intelliseek's The Rise of Employee Bloggers (download page)

Free download: Primer to Corporate Blogging

Grab a copy of the  Beginner's Guide to Corporate Blogging by CorporateBlogging's Fredrik Wackå. This is a well-organized, well-written 16-page PDF. I like his notion of the "six types of corporate blogs." CEO thought leadership blogs fall into the "external" category whose purpose is relationship and brand building.