I’ve just been chatting with a client about email marketing – exploring which tools they should/could use to support their email strategy. I thought I’d do a quick review of some of the options we looked at.

Click through to read the full post.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Edelman “Trust barometer” was recently announced. There doesn’t appear to be a huge amount of difference from this year to last year’s statement, but I felt it had some interesting points that related to the impact social media can have for organisations.

“trust in media is rising because the definition of media has broadened to encompass social media,”

… trust in CEOs continues to lag at about 20% in the United States, versus 43% for an average employee. “Companies need to be engaged at the intersection of the top-down and peer-to-peer models of communication,” said Mr. Edelman, “relying on both experts and empowered employees to supplement statements by the CEO.”

… Only 20% of respondents trust corporate or product advertising.

Each of these continues to point to the role social media can play within an organisation. I think the “trust in CEOs” point is interesting, because a well-done executive blog can help personalise a CEO and increase trust.

Edelman’s comment about “experts and empowered employees to supplement statements by the CEO” is also interesting – again, social media can play a role. Blogging employees are one possibility (and have achieved a lot of value for both Microsoft and Sun in terms of increasing trust).

• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers – Darren Rowse writes up his thoughts on the benefits of Twitter. His focus is specifically on bloggers, but still useful for anyone wanting some ideas as to why Twitter may be useful to them.
• what’s new on reddit: new features – reddit will soon support focused, private and semi-private reddits. I think this is important for orgs wanting to use del.icio.us except for the “public-ness” of it. We might see retooling of del.icio.us tools to support reddit if it takes off.
• Zookoda – An interesting looking (free) service – from what I can tell it takes an RSS feed and sends HTML email updates on that basis. Great for promoting your blog or creating quick email newsletters for your organisation. Will need to look into it some more…

(These links were posted to my del.icio.us feed between 19-Jan-2008 and 23-Jan-2008.)

• Zookoda – An interesting looking (free) service – from what I can tell it takes an RSS feed and sends HTML email updates on that basis. Great for promoting your blog or creating quick email newsletters for your organisation. Will need to look into it some more…
• NussbaumOnDesign Obama Vs. Clinton: What Their Web Sites Say About How They View You. – BusinessWeek – Nussbaum on Obama vs. Hillary on the web: “.. Hillary sees her supporters as a series of constituents with individual interests that she needs to meet and Barack sees his backers as members belonging to a mass movement. …”
• The more people you reach the more likely it is that you’re reaching the wrong people – “Who vs. how many.” I truly admire how Seth can distill an important idea into single sentence. Or two…

(These links were posted to my del.icio.us feed between 15-Jan-2008 and 17-Jan-2008.)