Posts made by Ibrahim88888

From a press relations standpoint, I think that the best solution to attempting to quell negative perceptions about a business is to address them directly. Find the source and the reason for the buy sales lead complaints and, if necessary, make changes to the business model to appeal to the consumer. A customer that was turned away may find a reason to come back if the company genuinely seems concerned about its perceived image.

From a search engine optimization standpoint

The obvious answer is to manipulate the search engine results page to the favor of your company. Multiple search engine optimization strategies exist for having a clean front page across branded keywords, and it would be a priority for any search engine marketing staff in the employ of the company to enact strategies that will lead to the success and seemingly positive image of the company.

It is up to you to decide what approach to take

Some companies may find that both approaches work better; some companies may find that masking the bad with some good will go a longer way. As someone who's built his personal brand on the web, I'd say being proactive in building that brand is essential. For e.g. when you google my name, the first thing you'll find is my marketing blog. In addition you'll also find my LinkedIn profile that protects my online reputation. For those who don't have the time to post content every day, a LinkedIn profile is a great way to maintain that brand with less investment of time.

As for businesses

The best thing would be to create your own online publication (a corporate blog being the easiest) that puts forth your point-of-view but also actively responding to other legitimate bloggers is also recommended. It depends on the class of negative result. For example, is there because of ignorance? Or malice by a competitor? If so, these are reasonably easy to work with and they require a direct approach to the person responsible for the information.

On the other hand

If the negative information is justified in some way, attacking the source is the wrong thing to do. You need to go back to the reasons why you are being seen negatively. Is it a systemic problem? Was it a one-off? Is the forum public? For example, if someone had a bad experience that was not typical, and the post is on a public forum, you could post an apology and offer them some form of reasonable compensation (not cash).

If the problem is systemic

can you fix it? If the answer is yes, do so and then promote your changes. If the negative information is public, add details about what steps have been taken to correct the problem and add links to your press release.

Authors run into this

All the time with negative book reviews. For the most part even a negative interview is positive since many people will buy the book just to find out if the publisher of the comment is correct. Spend less time on the negative comments and focus on the positive. I'm not sure that I would attack it dead on, especially if the site or person in question has little authority. Rather, I think I would recruit advocates to promote my business or brand. I think it having your clients or colleagues speak to your strengths holds much more weight than you doing it yourself.

We're seeing a current

Blog battle ensuing online right now between TechCrunch and BlogNation and I really believe that it's making both parties look terribly childish.
We actively pursue positive feedback and online recommendations from customer and business partners and then aggressively market those online just as much as anything else we do. You can find 11 recommendations for me on LinkedIn alone and then several other places such as Judy's Book, our website (www.TeamReba.com), and anywhere else we can post them.

One way we get the feedback and online recommendations/testimonials is by recruiting clients close to the time they've completed a transaction with us so we are still top of mind with them. We also send out feedback forms which have a section for comments that we then ask the client if we can use their remarks for marketing purposes. Most say yes. Others are even more responsive and ask us if we would like them to write something specific about our work for marketing reasons but we usually ask them just to write from the heart and their specific experience - we want these comments to be real and not composed.

While much of this can be time consuming it is very much worth the time and effort. At this stage we have our assistant help with the follow up although I will also personally ask some folks specifically for whom I'd like a testimonial.
Luckily I haven't really had to deal with this, although I have had clients who did.

The best defense may be a good offense in this case. I.e., having a Web page, blog, podcast, linked in page, etc., can push negative comments off the first page of search results.

I also recommend to people to have a blog; if someone's going to lob a PR bomb at me I'd rather have home court advantage.

If the result was somewhere where I could tell my side of the story W/O looking defensive, I might try that as well.

However, if responding stoked the fire, I might just let it rest.

Posted on January 08, 2008 at 09:48 AM | Permalink

Technorati Tags: branding, conversational media, social media, spoke

This is becoming an essential part of doing business on the Net and it applies as much to individuals and it does to companies. If the negative result is about a real problem in specific database by industry company address it right away. Let the person who wrote about you know that you are handling the issue. Be willing to look at your mistakes and fix them. This can turn your worst detractors into supporters. You can work at moving negative results down in the rankings.

Depending on who the negative result

What site it is on, it may take a lot of work to move it off page one. To 'own' the search results for your name you need to create lots of good content and then link to I am as pro-active as possible, and have set up RSS feeds for my name, ActiveWords, and other ideas. I reach out instantly, and engage the writer in a conversation, offer to solve any issues, and this has worked very well. My goal has always been to turn lemons into lemondade.
We try to be brutally honest about our product

Always asking people for input and ideas

Your best bet is to get enough positive stuff out there on sites that will carry more weight/traffic than the ones displaying the negatives. Basically,you need a good SEO campaign combined with people that get viral marketing if you want to hire someone to do it.
In my case, my business is my name. The 1st thing I try to do is get past any name calling or insulting comments & determine what substantive complaint someone has. Then I think about it before answering the substance and ignoring the insult. If there is no substance as is often the case at places like Valleywag, I don't answer at all. There game is to build readership through controversy and I do not wish to play.

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There are a few options here

At one level, if information is libelous and damaging you can consider legal steps against the source of the misinformation or the site displaying the offending references. This of course is costly, time consuming, and can often backfire. In recent years, the blogging community has become a powerful voice and an alternative media that rivals traditional news sources. Many major corporations have tried bullying these sites and sending cease-and-desist letters threatening legal action.

Bloggers then post these threats

Which draw even more attention to the issue that would have probably faded away on its own. In fact, companies demonstrating a sense of humor and support of the bloggers often come away with a much better public image. One option that can be effective is to simply contact the sites directly and discuss the situation with them.

If you can demonstrate why the information is wrong

or misleading or at least offer your perspective, there is a good chance that they will either remove the offending article, or at least offer your response to get equivalent exposure.

For less-than-flattering

But not libelous information, you should develop your own statement and post it on your website. If your company was in the wrong, demonstrate resolution, discuss how you fixed the problem, or reimbursed the customer. Show that you care about your customers and are honest and straight forward with them. People understand that maybe your customer service rep made a procedural mistake, or the previous release of your software had a bug. Show the world that have or are addressing the issue. Once you’ve established your position, you can take advantage of channels to propagate this to get the word out to your customers and to the people who will see the disparaging remarks. Interviews, press releases, etc.

Finally, if negative information

Shows up first in searches the best defense is to displace it with positive information about your business. Consider turning to experts in PR, SEO, and media relations to develop a strong, positive message about your company and be sure it rises to the top of the searches. This is not in retaliation to negative references on the web, this is what you should be doing every day to make sure the best news about your company comes from you and your satisfied customers.

There seems to be a meme going around regarding the idea of personal brand building that leads to corporate brand building. It's of personal interest to me as that's what I'm attempting to specific database do at Bizzuka. Here's what some thought leaders have to say. Can personal branding take a back seat.

Mike's Points

Business and branding #3: Brand You - Des Walsh
Personal branding: Is it right for you? - About. com Marketing
My thoughts on Chris Brogan & personal branding - Global Neighbourhoods
My best advice about personal branding - Chris Brogan
A corporate view of personal branding with pros and cons - Personal Branding blog

Got some personal branding I could borrow

• PR Squared
  There are a number of questions being asked in these and other posts: Can you use personal branding as a marketing tactic to build the corporate brand? Can personal brand equity be transferred to the company? Or, is personal branding purely narcissistic? Further, what happens to the corporate brand when the person leaves? (i.e. Scoble/Microsoft, Charlene Li/Forrester)

Controversy erupted over the social network

Spoke, with allegations being made that the site was collecting and selling personal information. Following my post about the issue where I suggested that Spoke had a word-of-mouth problem, the question was raised about how companies can overcome negative brand perceptions. I went to LinkedIn and asked the following question: "When you do a search on the Web for your business name or brand and negative results show up, how do you go about changing perceptions and protecting your reputation?"

Quite a number of people

Responded and what follows is a digest of what several of the most knowledgeable had to say. (I purposely left off names and other personally identifiable information. You can see that info at LinkedIn, however.) Please feel free to submit your own.

Build my own blog to address

The issue for two reasons. 1. To eventually beat out the other listing in the serps, 2. So that anyone who ever asks me about it, I can send them to the explanation I already have written. This is actually a good thing in the Web 2.0 era. If you think about it, people keeping us businesses honest. But as far as unjustified comments, I would recommend the following steps:

Make sure that the comments are indeed unjustified

You don't want to claim something that you are not sure about, so it is essential to know whether these people are telling the truth.
Try to reach out to these people if possible to change their perceptions. See what their issues are all about and how you can resolve misunderstandings.
Try to get your satisfied customers to help you out by giving you their feedback.

Get involved in the community

But don't bash these people as that is not good. If your focus is on customer satisfaction, then you need to show it. Bashing does not help that cause. Create a blog and try to communicate.
Do not be defensive. That's what personally kills it for me. If you are defensive, you are not helping yourself or others.
The question is to know whether you have mainly negative answers, or just some. If it's just some, do not spent too much time on them, except if they appear on the very first result page. In that case only, try to find out what went wrong, comment on the blog/site where the bad news come from, join the conversation on both your behalf and your company's and try to correct the situation.
For the rest, building a reputation is a long road. Work on your client service first, and be sure to have a way to communicate directly with your customers online. The corporate blog is the ideal way for that.

There are lot of different ways

This could be happening. Without more details, here is a strategic overview. Get in touch with the creators of negative information. Create ethical, informational responses, and explore creative PR responses;
SEO (search engine optimization/optimize) for the SERPs (search engine results pages), forums, blogs and other relevant touch points;
Target influencers.

Open a dialogue with the producers

Consider at first using a third party. Find out what motivates them before attempting to address issues. Sometimes you can bring their voice “into the fold,” other times address their motivators without needing to address the issues as you see them to bring about a positive change.

Respond to individuals who have complaints

Give them expanded service, or seek to bring their voice into a feedback forum, and off of a criticism forum. Get a voice in the touch points (forums, blogs, twitter, etc.) that negative results appear in—this needs to be someone’s job. Comment with clarity, patience and humor wherever the negative information appears. Link to positive responses to boost the ranking of those responses in the SERPs. Investigate the publicity aspects of having mixed results about your brand in the SERPs. building on the old adage "all publicity is good publicity."

If appropriate to have a response of integrity

Have on your site a press release, blog, whitepaper or special section with your response. Explore other touch points to put your response onto (forums, blogs, twitter, etc. If you are making changes in response to the criticisms, promote those changes directly as well as creatively. A creative response can expand virally and overwhelm negatives as other sites take up the connections. Many options here. A few that come to mind:
If any of your sites rank well in the SERPs, you can use internal link structure shifts to boost the ranking of your responses both inside and outside that site.

This week Google announced

That they are reducing multiple results from single domains (specifically, TLDs), so having more than 2-3 pages rank from one domain, such as your main site, is no longer an option. If you have multiple sites or touch points, strategically increase the number of results appearing above the negative, where possible. Google's universal search strategy means that a blog or YouTube video with lesser ranking "juice" can show in the SERPs alongside a web site with higher "juice." This means a smaller amount of SEO is required to rank, in some cases.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about personal branding as it relates to its use in building awareness for the corporate brand. (Blogged about it too, here and here. A term I've been tempted recent mobile phone number data to use as a label, but refrained from until reading Todd Defren's post, Got Some Personal Branding I Could Borrow?, is Personality Marketing.

We've always had celebrity spokespersons

Pitch men/women (animals too, for that matter). Whether it's Robert Wagner touting reverse mortgages, Michael Jordan wearing his Hanes tagless T's or Reese Witherspoon speaking on behalf of the Avon Foundation, celebrity spokespersons have been a staple in our culture for years and years. (See list of Tweets below for more.)

Along comes social media

Its own set of rock stars. Why shouldn't corporate brands latch hold of them and leverage some of that personality for themselves. Microsoft did it with Scoble (or, rather, Scoble did it with Microsoft, then Podtech and now Fast Company), Chris Brogan is doing it with CrossTech, Doug Haslam with SHIFT, the many analysts of Forrester...and the list goes on and on. The use of personalities has always been a marketing/advertising tactic.

Todd is one of the forward-thinking

Entrepreneurial execs who understands how to maximize the value of the personality - "We run a talent agency, not a PR agency," he says - and offers some practical tips in his post. I'm fortunate in that my CEO, John Munsell, is equally forward-thinking.

He sees value in my participating

The conversation via this blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc, so long as it doesn't preempt the service I provide Bizzuka. (Of course, compared to the likes of those previously mentioned, I'm a bit player, but grateful to have the opportunity to play a part.)

My office is in the same wing

Our building as the production department staff. They remind me of worker bees churning out Web sites and billing by the hour. I sit in my office, listen to their chatter about one client site or another and admire their dedication and perseverance, all the while writing blog posts, interacting on Twitter, and otherwise engaging myself in ongoing virtual conversations. Mine is an enviable position and I understand the unique nature of my role. (That's not all I do, mind you, but it does comprise a healthy portion of my day sometimes.)

Personality Marketing pay off

Terms of measurable ROI? I hope it's having a positive effect on behalf of the company, though I suspect the jury is still out on that one. Like Todd's blog says, "It may be the future but you still gotta eat." And as my Twitter friend

Albert Maruggi said in a recent tweet

So long as companies have quarterly earnings their vision will be obstructed. Relationships take time." And that's essentially what all this personal branding stuff is about, building relationships...or fandom, one or the other.

I hate writing press releases. I'm terrible at putting words in someone else's mouth (my term for the task of creating quotes telegram data someone else supposedly said, usually the CEO) and equally as bad writing in classic press release style.

Frankly, in this age of conversational media

I don't see that they have much relevance. I mean, if I can reach consumers directly using, say, a blog, why should I have to write something expressly targeting the media? After all, journalists reference blogs as source material anyway. Can you tell I'm not a PR guy? Tho't so.

Someone who is a PR guy, David Meerman Scott

Author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, says that "mainstream media and the trade press must be part of an overall communications strategy." (Yea...well...OK) He goes on to assert that the primary audience is no longer "just a handful of journalists. Your audience is millions of people with Internet connections and access to search engines and RSS readers." (Now, he's talking my language.)

David suggests the "new rules" of news releases are

Don't limit new releases to "big news" items; find reasons to send them regularly
Create news that appeals directly to buyers
Make release copy keyword-rich
Place links in releases that lead to specific landing pages
Optimize news releases for searching and browsing

Add social media tags for Technorati

Digg, del. icio. us and others. That's why I love PRWeb so much; it gives me the ability to do all that right inside its interface. While it won't write the copy for me (and, oh, how I wish it would), PRWeb enables me to add relevant keywords, Technorati tags and provides outlets for sharing via social media.

None of this comes free

even cheap depending on the size of your budget. A "social media visibility" level release costs $120. Here's what you get. Create additional online buzz by adding distribution to industry-specific news and blog sites to the offerings from the Standard Visibility package. PRWeb TrackBacks, social bookmarking and Web 2.0 site links are also added to your press release page providing traction in the blogosphere."

My favorite is the SEO visibility level

Release which costs $200. In addition to what you get with the social visibility release, this level adds "keyword discovery and analysis, add anchor text links, monitor distribution with advanced SEO statistics and select up to ten industry targets."

There's even a higher level

The "media visibility" release at $360, but I don't even think about that one. Even the very basic level release gets you in front of 1000's of journalists and bloggers, as well as syndication on Google and Yahoo! news.

I've used PR Web for a number of years. At my present company, Bizzuka, we've done two releases using PR Web at the $200 level and I've been very happy with the results. Here's a screen shot of the stats on a recent one:

Bizzuka release stats

These numbers impressive, considering we are a small business, and I'm quite certain we would never have achieved them simply by syndicating the release using traditional methods. However, the thing that's most impressive is how quickly the release made its way to a Google front page SERPs using the search term "bizzuka."

Bizzuka google serp

Sure, we post releases to our Web site's news room page, but it took PRWeb to get the release this kind of attention. This is one of the best reasons to use PR Web, in my estimation -- link love and Google juice. You just can't beat it! Now, I'll admit I'm not guru when it comes to writing SEO-optimized press releases (I'll leave that distinction to Lee Odden's company Top Rank Marketing.), but one can't argue with the results. Part of our online marketing strategy now is to write one such release per month and syndicate it via PRWeb.

Not sure I get that exactly, but I've been called much worse. Don't know about Richard, however. Or, maybe the person didn't like the book, calling it a dog. Or, maybe I'm having some whatsapp lead fun with you (yes, I am) and this is nothing more than just a link from a splog (spam blog), which it is. (but, hey, we'll take all the links we can get don't cha know.

Realty Blogging

The book written in 2006 by my former business partner Richard Nacht and I is now available in the new Kindle edition. If you happen to be one of the lucky ones to have gotten one of the devices in the short window of time before it sold out, why not purchase your copy. It's less than $10, so what do you have to lose. I'm a tech gadget wannabe. I'd love to have the latest and greatest, but, alas, my budget won't allow for it. Something about paying a mortgage and car note I'm told.

Still, that doesn't negate

The fact that I'd love to have an Amazon KindleClick to launch this SmartLink! Unfortunately, there is a seven month waiting list, according to one eBayer. Get this. this guy is offering a Kindle for auction that he doesn't even own!

The most amazing thing

though, is that he has 29 bidders with over 13 hours to go at the time of this writing, and the bids are up to $550!

Of course I've set up a watch on this item

I'll be bidding on it of course. It's only for the pure pleasure of seeing how much people are willing to spend on a gadget they'll have to wait months to own. That being said, I have added the Kindle to my wish list for Christmas. I figure they'll have made plenty by then.

There's an interesting discussion

Taking place among the LinkedIn Blogger's group, with some seeing virtue and some seeing vice. Lacking any conclusions myself at this point, here's a brief roundup of some of the conversation taking place. Huge Companies Form Blog Council - Shel Israel ANBT The Blog Council.
Josh Corporate Bloggers Form Blog Council - Rick Calvert
The Blog Council: a How NOT to Corporate Blog Guide - Marketing Pilgrim
Corporate Blog Council Should Swallow Hard and Learn from Critics - Paul Gillin. A search among my RSS feeds for the term "Blog Council" generates 159 returns to date.

Blogrunner has a thread going on the topic

Several posts have been aggregated at Social Media Today. Add to that a Google search and one at Technorati and you have to conclude that the brains behind this venture, Andy Sernovitz, who founded WOMMA, certainly knows how to put philosophy into practice and generate significant word-of-mouth, albeit mostly negative at this point.

I admire men like Sernovitz

Even if their efforts are misdirected, as some would conclude, at least they're doing something noteworthy. In the spring of 2005, I attempted to start an association of bloggers that was not too dissimilar in its goals, that of bringing professional bloggers together in a conclave to discuss items like blogging best practices and ethical standards. It built up a small head of steam, but nothing of substance ever materialized. (My fault)

Back then, the idea of a best practices and standards scenario for blogging was met with some derision, and perhaps rightly so. But, these days, with blogging moving into the mainstream (at least that's what we keep telling ourselves), perhaps that time has come -- at least where large corporations are concerned.

I'm waiting to hear what pundits like Debbie Weil, who arguably wrote the book on corporate blogging, and Seth Godin, who wrote the book on just about everything else marketing related, have to say. The fact that neither have said anything may be telling enough.

I've been selected, along with some 274 others, to participate in the sequel to the wildly successful The Age of Conversation, a book phone number lead about emerging media and marketing, collectively written by more than 100 authors from around the world.

Todd Andrlik calls the sequel

The most massive authorship undertaking in history. We’re talking Guinness Book baby!" It's not often one gets to help make history. Needless to say I'm very honored to take part.

In a subsequent post

I'll explain the purpose of the sequel in further detail. For now, I want to mention that tomorrow, Saturday, March 29, is what's being called Age of Conversation Bum Rush. The idea is to generate as many touch points around the web as possible so that it will be hard not to spot the Age of Conversation activity.

Buy the Book & send others

This is the #1 call to action, because this is where we want to see the most impact. NOTE: Please buy 1 copy at a time because Amazon counts bulk orders once, and please use this affiliate link, which will help us in tracking sales. Remember, all the proceeds from the book sales and referrals will go to charity.

Blog About It

Make sure you have a prominent link to the Amazon listing so that readers can easily purchase the book. (Remember to use the affiliate link above. All of these earnings will go to charity as well. Twitter Commentary - You can follow @Freshpeel, @DrewMcLellan, @servantofchaos for tweets on this tomorrow. Also, any tweets you do on the topic, please use code #AOC so that it can be picked up by Twemes. com.

BTrackback or Comment

The post that Chris Wilson leaves on his Fresh Peel blog March 29, at 12am CST, so that everyone can follow the conversation and help promote exposure on social sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, Del. icio. us, etc.) Digg the posts listed on Chris' site and send emails and shouts to friends requesting Diggs.

Stumble the posts listed

Bookmark your posts on Del. icio. us. Add your post to other social media outlets ( Technorati, Ma.gnolia, Furl, BlinkList, Newsvine, Facebook, etc.)
Send an email to your friends about the Bum Rush for AoC.
Keep talking - Get on ooVoo, iChat, Aim, or where ever you like to talk, and start talking.Dr. Wilson said that, if you looked closely at the wall, you would notice cracks between the blocks of stone that comprised it. He referred to them as "niches." He said the pilgrims would stuff these niches with slivers of paper, which were their prayers.

Dr. Wilson went on to recommend

That we do the same thing in our marketing; rather than trying to scale the entirety of the wall, we should find an unfilled (or partially filled) niche and fill it. Brilliant!
I incorporated both the principle and his illustration into the book Realty Blogging, suggesting that blogs are good niche marketing penetration tools. Now that we've morphed somewhat from blogs to other forms of social media, I want to suggest that the future of social networks is in the niches. Broad-based networks like Facebook or MySpace my have won the network wars in terms of the massive amounts of traffic they garner every day, but my experience has shown them to be largely ineffective for niche marketing purposes.
For example, most Facebook groups go unattended with very little participation. You'd think groups of three, four or five hundred (or more) would be a beehive of activity. Most aren't.
I think a much more effective model is the creation of indigenous, self-standing niche networks like the Society for Word of Mouth, which maintains a focus on using WOM for marketing purposes, The Workbench, a small business network started by John Jantsch, or one I just learned about this morning, E.Factor, a niche network for entrepreneurs. To me, these hold the greatest promise for mining the goldmine of intellectual capital contained among the members and truly proving themselves to be viable, worth the investment of time. And, using tools like Ning or KickApps, the things are so easy to start.
Social media strategist Paul Gillin holds similar views. He says ">vertical market sites are where the "more interesting" opportunities lie, citing niche communities for healthcare, the elderly and moms.

I met John Jantsch via the blogosphere several years ago when there weren't that many of us small business bloggers. He was promoting a referral marketing program called Duct Tape buy telemarketing data Marketing via his blog and Web site. It began to gain traction among small business owners and, before you knew it, DTM was a book, and a best-seller at that. John was on his way to becoming a household name within the small business marketing community. His approach was practical, hands-on and something that could be put to use immediately.

Now, he's taken Duct Tape Marketing

. He has been working with Palo Alto Software for about a year and today announced that Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing is ready to go. Here are some links to give you background on the rollout: Press release annoucing the launch. Tour of features of the program. Palo

Alto founder Tim Berry

Talks about the program Palo Alto announces launch on blog Announcement on John's blog. I know many of you are fans of John's system. If not and you're a small business owner or entrepreneur you should be. Anyway, congratulations to John.

His is an American success story

And the stuff entrepreneurial dreams are made of.I finished reading Groundswell last night, the book co-authored by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff and former analyst Charlene Li. I have to say it's one of the most important books on the subject of social media that I've read this year.

Research - The opinions shared

Suggestions made and advice given are based on solid research. What else would you expect from Forrester, right? Everything is well-documented and appended. Case studies - Charlene and Josh support the research with real world examples showing how organizations both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors are using the tools.

Social media to accomplish marketing

Business communication purposes. They showcase larger organizations like Dell, Best Buy and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, but do include a few references to small business. Writing - The book is very well-written. Again, you'd expect no less from Forrester analysts.

Only read one book

Social media marketing this year, Groundswell should be it. However, let me also suggest a short list of others. New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott - If I were teaching college courses on social media marketing, this would be the text book I'd use for the 101 class.

Gone by Geoff Livingston

Brian Solis. Citizen Marketers by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell and of course. The Cluetrain Manifesto - It would be the text book for the social media marketing philosophy course! There are any number of books I could recommend. These are just the ones I've actually finished.

Bizzuka, the company I serve as marketing director, recently rolled out its own blog component, part of its more comprehensive web content management telemarketing data system. Big whoop you say. In the world of all things blog, it probably isn't, but to us it's a big deal.

The platform doesn't pretend to offer

The same level of functionality as WordPress or Movable Type. That was not its intended purpose. Rather, it's designed to be a light-weight, but highly useful blog that's completely integrated into our CMS.
While I use the term "lightweight," the blog component still offers a good level of functionality, including:

Categorized content

RSS feeds at both site and category levels (working on a bug fix here)
Social media sharing via sites like Digg, del. icio. us, Technorati and Facebook Comment moderation Prurient word filtering Tell-a-friend

Multi-media file embedding

Multiple format file attachment
WYSIWYG and HTML editing - And we have a kick-a** editor; much better than many
The first Bizzuka client to use the component is Cox Communications of Acadiana with the site Innovate Lafayette. (At the time of this writing they only have a welcome post up, but will be engaging in more active posting shortly.)

It's our hope that several

our clients will find the component to be useful. And, if they have questions about how or why, they're welcome to call me. I'll give 'em an earful!
Today, I'm starting a contest called "You Judge the Pitch," where CMM blog readers get to rate the quality of PR pitches sent to me.

The first entry

Mike's Hard Lemonade viral video campaign. So, go ahead and play along. Follow the link and You Judge the Pitch! Here it is. Hey Paul,
Thought you might enjoy the new viral campaign by Mike's Hard Lemonade. It's a "newscast" of you getting saved by a cat, “eaten” by a street sweeper, or stuck on a Carnival ride! Simply enter in your name and a photo of your face, and VOILA instant excuse from work!

Let me know what you think

Cheers,
For some background, prior to receiving the pitch I'd never heard from this person, nor have I ever drank Mike's Hard Lemonade or ever written about it to the best of my recollection. As such, I don't really see what makes me a candidate. Anyway, "You Judge the Pitch!" by leaving a comment citing your up or down vote, plus any insights, analysis and/or critique you care to share.

UPDATE: I did try out the campaign and guess it's funny. You can be the judge of that too by clicking here.