Stonyfield Farms: they instituted blogging right after the 2004 presidential elections after their CEO saw the power of blogs in that process. They were a small organic yoghurt company that had, until then, not generated much media attention.
 
SunMicrosystems: CEO Jonathan Schwartz attributes the revival of their brand entirely to their blogging.

Microsoft: tech evangelist Robert Scoble became a blog star and changed the face of the ‘evil empire’.
     
Skin MD Natural: a small privately owned company that used online PR to launch a new product.
 
StormHoek Wines: launched their wines in Europe and the US using blogs. They doubled their sales in less than 12 months.

(see the whole article)

it’s official – more people are now visiting myspace than google in the us (see figures).

are we seeing a shift in habits for internet usage? less searching for information and more sharing of interests. youtube apparently gets around 8 billion people a day watching its videos.

the demographics have to be partly at play. myspace generally appeals to a younger audience – just the kind of people who spend a lot of time online. these are also our future, and if they carry their current habits with them (and pique them as time goes on) then maybe the broad landscape of the internet is due another shift.

what started out as primarily a bunch of academics wanting to share ideas morphed into the heavy commercial platform we have today (do I say that because I’ve been marketing big corporations for too long?). are the sands shifting to a situation where the dominant force on the ‘net is the entertainment-driven social networks?

will the sleek grandiose facade of the corporate website have to give way to something more organic – more human? a collection of voices, some talking about the research their doing for future products, some talking about how people are using the stuff they sell and others talking about handy tips. oh, and the ability for the voices of those that use the products and services to have their say – what works, what doesn’t, what they would like. so what you are left with is a network of people (dare i say social network), the glue holding them together being the company’s products and services. btw, there are other voices in the wilderness.
mm, go myspace!

the boy laurence recently waxed lyrical (as is his style) about what websites know about you when you use them, and what happens to that information.

if you want to know the basics of web analytics, then i could think of much worse places to start.

The elements of a successful PPC campaign:

Ongoing campaign optimization also isn’t trivial for most PPC search marketers. There are several areas where both skills and technology can be vital to campaign success. Below, the skill areas needed regularly in a campaign:

• Campaign analytics and report interpretation: You need this not only to look at reports but also to formulate responses to the data.
• Advertising creative development: Both ads and landing pages must be regularly optimized, more so for seasonal businesses. SEM copywriting is a special skill, similar to headline writing.
• Testing analyst: To truly know which creative and landing pages are working, one should have a testing analyst to conduct and recommend tests to improve conversion rate.
• Project manager: Someone must keep track of all current initiatives.
• API (define) specialist or technology integration specialist: If you’re building your own links into the engine APIs or simply integrating into a third-party reporting or Web analytics tool, you need someone who can execute specific tasks.
• Bid strategist and manager: If you don’t use a highly sophisticated campaign management solution, someone must monitor either the bids or at least the bidding strategy settings in the tools you do use.

As reported by Kevin Lee.

the largest corps in america have been slow to introduce blogging to the cannon of communications channels.

just as with the mainstream print press before them, take-up has been slow, and if that story is anything to go by, there will be a huge take-up with everyone jumping on the bandwagon at the same time.

read more about corporate blogging..