Blog watching = good business

Does your business watch the blogs and other websites to find out what is being mentioned about them? According to the Washington Post article picked up by the Boston Sunday Globe, airlines are monitoring what folks are saying about their customer service. Scrunched in the packed coach cabin, J.P. Maxwell eyed the lone empty seat in first class. An elite flier on Continental Airlines, he was upset. Maxwell was convinced he should have been automatically upgraded for the recent four-hour trip. During the flight, the Internet entrepreneur hacked out a 526-word missive that he later posted on a popular online chat room, www.flyertalk.com. "I consistently pay several hundred more to fly (Continental) and this is what I get?" Maxwell vented on the site. Lurking in the chat room was Scott O'Leary, a customer service guru at Continental who spends several hours each day prowling such websites for customer complaints. O'Leary quickly discovered that Maxwell had never been told that he had been upgraded and had been left to languish in coach. With the passion of someone who had discovered a major flaw in the airline's operations, O'Leary alerted company executives to prevent similar foul-ups, ensured that Maxwell got a free upgrade, and posted an explanation for the mistake in the chat room. So does your business monitor your customers? Based upon Phil's experience, we know of at least one pizza chain that doesn't.

Rolodex strikes again

The power of the Rolodex strikes again. The Boston Globe article outlining the commencement speakers for the local graduation ceremonies mentions: Relying on a 25-year-old connection, J. Bonnie Newman, interim president of the University of New Hampshire, zipped off an e-mail to former President George H.W. Bush. She wrote on Nov. 2 that she "felt compelled to go with the best of the best," so she was inviting him and former President Bill Clinton to speak at today's graduation. Two days later, she scored. Her former boss accepted. A month later, she had a double coup: Clinton agreed to share the dais. In nabbing high-profile commencement speakers, sometimes it's all in whom you know. Behind many of the star speakers is a personal tie with a university president, a trustee, or an alumnus. Yesterday, it was the Rolodex. Today, it can be any number of online tools. Bottom line, it is a connection, a relationship that can be leveraged for mutual benefit. How do you connect? Are you a relationship geek?

Stop Cyberbullying

Andy Carvin is advocating for stopcyberbullying this Friday. I applaud his efforts and will add my 2 cents to endorse it here and elsewhere. In my advocation of this is I would not limited this to just one day. We should practice this every day. We need to treat each other with respect. We need to have civil conversations. The more we do this the better off we will all be. Read Andy's posting on this here. Technorati Tags: stopcyberbullying, respect, civil, blogging Powered by ScribeFire.

Gartner says: BLOGGING IS SO OVER

Did you see the article that caught my eye? Headlines blare that "Blogging is so over" per Gartner none the less. Go ahead, follow the link to read for yourself. I'll wait for you to come back and read what else I have to say. Waiting. Waiting. Patiently waiting. Okay, you're back now! Here we go again. Does Gartner really believe it's peaking when the demographic for blogging is basically the world? "We make it for a lot of reasons," Plummer said. "If you look at the stats on the Web, you'll see there is a life span of three months and declining on the active Weblogs out there." He said the vast majority of bloggers are coming through on their way out, as opposed to being consistent contributors. Even MySpace.com and Facebook are losing visitors, he said. "As people get out there, there is a huge explosion of submissions to these communities and blogs, and then they taper off. They realize they've gotta live a life." I don't buy this. In my cruising of the internet, I do find lots of s*p*a*m or auto created blogs. These clutter and inflate the stats and I believe lead to the analysis that Gartner ends up making. I'll go do some numbers but in the course of the time the Hitchhiker Team has been on the trail, only a small group of blogs highlighted there have gone off line. This is purely based upon my recollection of what was done and periodic check backs (digging into the archives). Now, of course, this is only a small sample of the entire blogosphere but I think is still a worthy sample. I'll get the numbers and come back. In the mean time, what do you think? Is Gartner correct?

Z-list meme, continued

Picking up from my initial post, which added to Troy's post, there are additional links added here. Long live the long tail! Creative Think Soloride Movie Marketing Madness Blog Till You Drop! Get Shouty! One Reader at a Time 100 Bloggers Critical Fluff The New PR Own Your Brand! OTOInsights bizandbuzz Work, in Plain English Buzz Canuck New Millenium PR Pardon My French The Instigator Blog AENDirect Diva Marketing Marketing Hipster The Marketing Minute Funny Business The Frager Factor Mindblob OrbitNow! Open The Dialogue Word Sell Note to CMO: That’s Great Marketing! Shotgun Marketing Blog BrandSizzle bizsolutionsplus Customers Rock! Being Peter Kim Andy Nulman Billions With Zero Knowledge Working at Home on the Internet MapleLeaf 2.0 Darren Barefoot Two Hat Marketing The Engaging Brand The Branding Blog CrapHammer Drew’s Marketing Minute Golden Practices Viaspire Tell Ten Friends Flooring the Consumer Kinetic Ideas Unconventional Thinking Buzzoodle Conversation Agent The Copywriting Maven Hee-Haw Marketing Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn Multi-Cult Classics Logic + Emotion Branding & Marketing Carpe Factum Steve’s 2 Cents Simplicity Popcorn n Roses On Influence & Automation Servant of Chaos converstations eSoup Make it Great! Presentation Zen Dmitry Linkov aialone Urban Jacksonville John Wagner Nick Rice CKs Blog Design Sojourn Frozen Puck The Sartorialist Small Surfaces Africa Unchained Perspective gDiapers Marketing Nirvana Bob Sutton ¡Hola! Oi! Hi! Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid! Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together Community Guy Social Media on the fly Jeremy Latham’s Blog SMogger Social Media Blog Masey.com 37 Days A Clear Eye Alex Halavais Blog Brothers Brand Autopsy Brand Soul Creating Passionate Users Crossroads Dispatches Doc Searls Drawn eHub FAST Company gapingvoid gillianic tendencies Good Experience Hitchhikers Guide to the Blogosphere Hobopoet How to Save the World Josh Hallett Joy of Six Learned on Women Listics Make it Great my topography New Charm School Occupational Adventure Orbit Now Pause PureLand Mountain Seth Godin Simplicity Songs of Experience Talking Story Time Goes By Tom Peters Tomorrow Today WonderBranding World Changing Tertiary Education Joyful Jubilant Learning http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ http://grasshopperfactory.com/cbc http://amediacirc.us/ http://www.podcastconsultant.net/ http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/ http://www.bryper.com/ http://www.comedy4cast.com/ http://www.henryjenkins.org/ http://conversationbase.com/blog http://profectio.com/forde http://www.dailyvodcasts.com http://www.dembot.com/index.xml http://johnherman.org//theeye/ http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog.htm http://gurubbq.com/ http://www.jasonpettus.com/inthegrid/ http://www.instigatorblog.com http://www.itsapurlman.com http://www.sooz.com http://mattgriffin.wordpress.com http://blog.network2.tv http://www.newcommroad.com http://offonatangent.blogspot.com http://peacetalking.wordpress.com http://podcamp.wordpress.com http://podonomics.com/ http://www.scriggity.com http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/ http://stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog/ http://blog.myspace.com/teachingforthefuture http://www.demop.com/thetedrap/ http://www.thicketblog.com/ http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ http://www.uie.com/brainsparks

Qumana needs your help!

If you use Blogger and Qumana, Qumana needs your help. They are getting to work on changing Qumana to work with the Blogger Beta. As I mentioned yesterday, I have provided them some info. If you use Qumana, please find some time to provide some help. You won't be able to use Qumana with Blogger Beta until they get it fixed. Read here for additional details.