New Contributors This Week
We have two new contributors this week: Chris McGrath who brought us the Penn State intranet case study and Brad Grier who debuts by curating this week's WIR post. Welcome to both of you!
Thanks to Our Sponsors!
- Our lead sponsor this month is eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Toronto and SMX Search Analytics in Toronto. They are being held March 29 to April 1.
- CommuneMedia show us how to write killer Web headlines.
- ThinData gives us the first half of 10 Tips to grow our list of email subscribers!
This week's WIR curator is Brad Grier. He blogs at blog.bradgrier.com and tweets up a storm as @bgrier.
Seen Around the Blogosphere
- Excel Data Mining: Measuring Customer Support Costs –a somewhat technical article about using Excel to calculate and measure the cost of providing customer support. Another way of thinking of it, is how much is it worth it to you to engage that customer to keep them, vs finding a new one. Excel is your friend.
- Planning a website redesign? Great, but what about the meat and potatoes…the content? It's great if it 'looks purty', but if there's nothing for Google to crawl other than old content from a previous version, you may be doing more harm than good.
- Twitter Tips: one of the best Twitter resources on the planet. Frequency: Daily or more. I discovered this site this week and have thoroughly enjoyed the sage content.
- If you're still uncertain if Twitter is right for your organization's marketing activities, maybe it's time to Hedge Your Bets. Neville Hobson thinks so in this interesting item that includes an amazing number of references.
- Great site: Marketing Charts. Scary Numbers: Failing Economy Shutters 525 Magazines in 2008
Heard on Twitter
- Can't not lead off with this one: National Post reporter has total Twitter Meltdown: "what the f***. I called you for comment two days ago. What did you expect when you called me back? Don’t post that s*** online." Speechless.
- Dali Lama imposter escorted from Twitter
Interesting Bookmarks from the Backchannel
- Joss Whedon's Plan to Monetize Internet Content (Watch Out, Hollywood)
Knowledge@Wharton
Releases, Announcements and News
- CanadianSEO opened it's virtual doors this week. An Edmonton-based
Search Engine Optimization boutique with particular expertise in
linkbuilding. - Twestivals in Canada: Check out the fun and festivities for a good cause. On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world hosted Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water. Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Kelowna, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver
- Twitter to Charge Brands for Use – finally, plans revealed regarding business monetization
Other Tidbits
- What if they gave a tradeshow, and nobody came? [cartoon]
- NYTimes:Personal Tech:David Pogue's item on his adoption of Twitter, and some of the things he's learned along the way.
- Just when you thought it was safe to send your child into the school book club: Video games find new retail space: in-school book sales. "Scholastic's book clubs have become a Trojan horse for marketing toys,
trinkets, and electronic media—many of which promote popular brands,"