Andrew Lark

List Of The Fortune 500 Blogging

This site began as a collaboration between Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine) and Ross Mayfield (Socialtext). A post giving the background of the project is here. Original data compiled by Wired Magazine. You can read the list here.

Getting to #1 On Google...

Read Harry's post on how he got to be #1 on Google. Lots of SEO wisdom and smarts:

"I'm telling you this so that you will:

1. Integrate your weblog into a coherent and scalable sales process that tightly conforms to how your ideal prospect actually buys, and ...
2. Invest in a URL that clearly telegraphs your unique selling proposition to that prospect..."

    Technorati : PR, SEO

Tom On Things Learnt...

Tom has a great list of things learnt in 2005. I especially like his first three:

1. Blogging is the most honest form of self-promotion bar none because if you can't walk the talk you won't get the clicks.

2. Content will be king because all those links have to point to something of value--otherwise they are pointless.

3. Every company is part media company--it is both publisher and publication and tells stories all the time.

Aside from being a pretty good bloke, Tom was one of the first hacks to jump ship and become a fulltime blogger.

Technorati : Blogging, PR

Big Brand Campaings On The Way...

Will be interesting to watch how SBC/ATT and Intel handle their new brand efforts and what, if any, role Participatory Communications will play in that. The WSJ covers how Intel is about to embark on a major transition:

The changes include a new version of the company's blue logo -- without the dropped "e" that has long been a part of Intel's branding -- along with a new tagline "Leap ahead," which emulates such campaigns as "Think different" from Apple Computer Inc. or "Just do it" from Nike Inc.

Intel will no longer use the well-known "Intel Inside" logo but is keeping the related marketing program that provides incentives to companies for using its products. - WSJ

Technorati : BLogs, Brand, PR

Alaska Air's Near Disaster Unfiltered...

I Hope Jeremy has big bandwidth and a big server because his account of the Alaska incident is scarry - and it's going to attract zillions of eyeballs. Via Jeff Jarvis. Compare his account with news reports- some of which are featuring Jeff's photos.

"Citizen Journalism" in action. Jeremy P makes a really interesting point that one lesson for any PR practioner facing a crisis is that you are going to need to manage transparency. It seems that Alaska employees are going nasty-comment-happy on Jeremy's (the Jeremy on the plane) blog. Assuming he would never know I guess, they commented away. Jeremy simply looked at the originating IP addresses, which were from Alaska. And he was gracious enough to suggest that they might have been hackers using Alaska's IP addresses. Not likely mate!

So, if your communications policy doesn't cover commenting on blogs as an employee - then you might want to make sure it does.. and then make sure employees know it. And, if your crisis communications plan doesn't feature monitoring of and communications with the blogosphere - better get on that as well.

Technorati : Alaska, Blogs, PR
Del.icio.us : Alaska, PR, Travel

The Great Triangulation...

Awhile ago I wrote about how one of the key tenets of the Participatory Age is "triangulation". Using Google or Yahoo, you can pretty much triangulate any content on the web, skirting around the charging (business) models and formats in which the orignial content resided. Content gets repackaged and "place shifted" (taken from one format, say, a chapter of a book - and represented, say, in an online guide).

Steve has a great example of this in his post on O'Reilly's Hacks Books. I'll leave it to you to read - you'll get the idea pretty quick. The other value of triangulation is the other content that gets connected to what you were orignially looking for.

Biting The DRM Dust

David was glad to see Dave Winer say that, in his opinion, the problems people were having with their iPods and iTunes are DRM-related. I was glad to see David get into the issue of what the "R" in DRM really means. It means restrictions.

Until CDs vanish, I continue to buy my albumns via amazon or BN. If I ever want a single track, I'll maybe use iTunes. The reason is simple - I want to own the music. Really own the music. David raises some fair questions related to this:

• Buy someone a specific song through an online music store the way you might buy someone a CD? You can't and pretty soon, once CDs are gone (and they will be), we won't be able to buy each other music (you can and will be able to buy gift certificates to online music stores…. but how impersonal is that?)
• Down the road, when there are no more CDs and all music is bought online, pass your life's music collection onto someone else when you die (the way you can LPs and CDs today)? You can't.

Something to think about as you drool all over that iPod Nano.

Technorati : Blogs, DRM

So, You Got An iPod for Christmas...

... and you are wondering how it all works. Especially how can I tell if all the stuff on my PC is on my iPod... Well, Dave Winer takes the iPod to task. It's for the most part pretty fair from a user perspective.

When is something on the iPod? How many copies of the music do I have? Where the fcuk are they? How do you delete something? Is it really gone? Why does it wipe out the contents of the iPod when I don't say it's okay to?

Although I quite like the interface I did run into most of these scenarios trying to get my Aunt's iPod up and running on her PC yesterday. Paul flags one of the more friendly responses, which is pretty useful in answering these questions.

They Say Things...

to make you laugh and cry... Wired covers hillarious tech exec remarks from 2006, including:

"Screw the nano." -- Motorola CEO Ed Zander

"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

"Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle." -- President Bush

Via tech.memorandum..

Lafley On Marketing

Thursday's edition of the FT had some telling quotes from P&G Chief, Lafley:
<blockquote>"Just as I believe the consumer has power in the purchase chain, I think the consumer has the power in the consumption and media and message chain. So she's the boss - or he's the boss. And so the world is shifting from a 'push' to a 'pull'. She and he have a lot more choices."</blockquote>