Google Ad Planner - a free media planning tool that can help you easily build online media plans by defining your target audience and relevant websites. Ad Planner gives you information such as unique users, page views, and other data for millions of websites. Ad Planner is currently in beta, but I was selected in about 2 days after signing up. The tool is still somewhat rough, but very comparable with comScore and HitWise. The interface is much cleaner and has a low learning curve.

Essential Search Engine Marketing and SEO Resources - Whether you're new to SEO or you've got some experience under your belt, this is an excellent collect-all resource for topics such as social media, blogging, link building, local search and reputation management. If you're not ready to make the time commitment to read it all, at least check out Google Webmaster tools or the Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Google, Search Engine Marketing

I'll make this quick. Overall, not the best experience in the world, but I didn't go in expecting much.
• Got to store at 5:30AM, was about 20th in line.
• Apple Employees came around about 7:30 to show off new phone, offer juice and make sure you were eligible.
• Store had the capacity to handle about 10 or so people at a time.
• Apple employees have to put in all your info in on those little handheld devices. Whoever thought of that is a damn fool.
• Number successfully ported over at about 9am, but activation through iTunes hung. Employee said I was his 4th customer and 1st were he got all (most) the way through.
• Credit card handhelds in store crash about 9:10am.
• Wait, Wait, Wait on iTunes to activate - nothing
• 10am, they say we can go home and activate them through iTunes
• Line didn't move for about an hour or more, people were getting restless outside. Employees at a loss about what to do. Head guy on the phone.
• iPhone still not officially hooked up to iTunes, but I am getting calls on it now.

ping me @onehalfamazing on Twitter if you have direct questions or concerns. I'll do my best to get to them all.

Tags: Apple, Bob Hazlett, ITunes

Today, Google announced a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. This is achieved by a special Flash player developed by Adobe that opens content within applications and translates it for search engines. The full potential is a ways off, but this is a step in the right direction for Flash websites and Google (not to mention the old adage against designing sites with flash). Flash content owners and search-engine users should notice results immediately. Read more from Adobe.

Additional Resources:
Official Google Blog - Google Learns to Crawl Flash
Google Webmaster Tools - Improved Flash Indexing FAQ's
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Tools, Google

In 2007, Mozilla held a competition for users to create a Firefox commercial. The winner would take some some cash and jubilation from the Firefox community. The video below was my entry. I didn't win (unless you call a T-shirt a prize), but I thought I'd share it on my site for the first time. I shot, edited and produced the video on my own as you can probably tell.


This was the winning entry....WTF?
Download Firefox 3.0

Tags: Bob Hazlett

This video has been on the web for a few months now. Its a mockumentary that BMW and their agency put together. It centers around a small German town that plans to launch a BMW car across the Atlantic Ocean. Initially, the car company didn't acknowledge that they had anything to do with it, but then admitted they were behind it.

What are your thoughts? Should company's be more forthright in their use of videos like this? Do you find it backhanded that they would produce something just for it to go viral?


Additional Resources:
Was BMW’s Viral Marketing Stunt Really That Risky to the Brand?
CNN - Viral Video Launches BMW

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Videos

Outtalking (a.k.a filibuster) people into agreeing with you isn't a strategy, its just plain stupid. Yes, you may get what you want at that point, but you'll never get another thing from that person.

Tags: Bob Hazlett

I participated in Startup Weekend Memphis last weekend and had a blast. It was an honor to be part of it and to work with such amazing talent. Big thanks to Eric Mathews and the founding members of Launch Memphis for all their hard work and support. Check out the following for a recap in case you missed it.

One idea, 54 hours: Startup Weekenders build real company - Commercial Appeal
Spynnr
Memphis Startup Weekend Blog
Launch Memphis Flickr Photostream

Tags: Community, Bob Hazlett

A quick thought. Create a webpage for your actual customers - the people who actually visit and use it. Find out what's relevant and important to them and then go and give it to them. Don't build a site that will help you, your marketing department, your sales team or anyone else at your organization. Take this mentality with you and see how it changes things - both online and off.

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Customers

Micro-blogging service Twitter is all the rage these days. It allows you to stay up to date with friends and family no matter where you are or what you may be doing. It's fun and it's engaging, but in my humble opinion, the application lacks certain features. Where Twitter lacks, the open market has filled in. Check out some of the services below to get more out of your Twitter experience

Find more people - Sure, you're following lots of cool people, but even they get boring from time to time. Find people in your local area with Twitter Local. Still not exciting enough? TwittEarth, TwitterVision, TwitterHolic or TwitterPoster are a few of the most popular sites that let you see what's going on worldwide at any moment. Find out who's got the most followers or discover new people twittering about subjects that interest you.

Mobile - Yes, I know that Twitter already has features for updating through your mobile phone, but to me it still lacks something.
Hahlo, PocketTweets or BrightKite are three easy ways to update and interact through your mobile device.

Coordinate with a group - If you're following a lot of people on twitter then it may be difficult to cut through all the clutter to find those conversations that are most beneficial. GroupTweet allows you to interact and broadcast your message to a selected group of friends through one main group account. This could be very useful for small teams or even communicating with family members.

Search - Interested in hearing what other people are saying about a certain issue, product or article? Punch your query into Summize and find all related Tweets. This service can be especially helpful for business owners hoping to listen in on the conversations that are going on about them. For more ways to capitalize on Twitter in your business check out my past article - Using Twitter and other Micro-blogging services to Advertise to Your Best Customers

Polls - Want to get feedback on a question or dilemma that's been on your mind? Check out Straw Poll Now or TwitterCensus for informal polling and feedback.

Software - Wouldn't it be nice if you could interact with Twitter in other ways beside your browser or mobile? Spaz and Snitter are two good looking Adobe AIR applications that can sit right on your desktop.

• TwitBin and TwitterFox integrate nicely with Firefox.
• Rather get your Tweets through email? If so try out TwitterMail
• Update your status across multiple networks including Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Pownce and Bebo with HelloTXT

Fun - Life's too short, have some fun with Twitter. Check out Overheard or get a sense of what people are feeling at Twistori. If you're rocking a Mac, then there is a hidden feature that will show your Twitterverse within your screensaver.

Additional Resources:
What is Twitter? - 2
Twitter in Plain English
Using Twitter and other Micro-blogging services to Advertise to Your Best Customers
OneHalfAmazing on Twitter

Tags: Twitter, Tools, Bob Hazlett

There are lots of amazing tech events happening in Memphis this May. Here's the rundown of events that I'm getting excited for in the coming weeks. Hope to see you there.

Social Media Breakfast - The 3rd Memphis Social Media Breakfast happens on Wednesday, May 7th at 7:30 AM. Presented by LunaWeb, Social Media Breakfast is an event where social media experts and newbies can come together over breakfast to learn, share ideas and meet other marketers, entrepreneurs, bloggers and new media fanatics. You can find out more information and topics at Social Media Memphis Facebook Group or through the LunaWeb Blog.

TechFuel: Technology Meets Cocktails - Presented by LaunchMemphis, TechFuel is a kick-off event designed for technologists, entrepreneurs, media (bloggers), investors, and others to meet, and share ideas in a fun and open atmosphere. The event is open to the public and includes free food and drink specials. TechFuel is set for 5-7 p.m. May 8 at the Fox and Hound, 5101 Sanderlin Ave.

Startup Weekend Memphis - Startup Weekend is slated for the weekend of May 30th - June 1st. Over the course of the weekend, 100 members of the community come together weekend to found a new technology startup company in Memphis. At last count, I think there were a little over 20 seats still available for Startup Weekend Memphis. $40 is a small price to pay for the ability to work with some amazing people and the opportunity to take home a piece of a startup at the end of 3 days.

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Community, Web 2.0

1. Google recently announced and effort to allow local businesses to add their YouTube video to their listings on Google Maps. Videos will be viewable in Google Earth and Google Maps (press the Photos and Videos tab on the information bubble of you listing). This is one of those simple online marketing efforts that costs nothing to implement, yet sets your business miles apart from your local competitors. Here are 2 quick ideas on how to make your video and entry stand out.

• Offer a coupon code specifically for that video. Make it exclusive yet measurable.
• Show your expertise. If you're a landscaper, then plant a tree. If you're a chef, then show how easy it is to cook a delicious meal.

Don't have a YouTube video or entry on Google Maps? Don't worry, I've got you covered with two previous posts - Adding Your Business to Google Maps and Upload a Video to YouTube

2. Google AdWords Conversion Tracking - You can now define and track several different types of conversions that are important to your business. Different types of conversions can lead to different ROI's for you business. Knowing how well a particular keyword performs can (and should) influence your bid. Keywords that perform and convert well may be worth a higher bid than those keywords that aren't as hot.

3. Google Website Optimizer - You can now use your Google Analytics account to access Website Optimizer and test designs, headlines, and graphics that lead to the highest conversion rates on your site. Another easy way to squeeze every penny out of that already small online marketing budget. Read their blog for more details and ideas.

Tags: Google, Small Business, Tools, Bob Hazlett

Do you remember when.....

• there wasn't such a thing as an iPhone, let alone a cellphone. Remember when you actually had to plan a time to call someone?
• you had to be home at 8pm on Friday night to catch your favorite show because there was no TIVO or on-demand?
• there was no Starbucks?
• you had to visit each of your favorite sites on a regular basis to see if they were updated because RSS hadn't been thought of yet?
• there was no mapquest or turn-by-turn GPS?
• only the rich and privleged had access to Harvard, Stanford or MIT?
• AltaVista was your search engine of choice?
• you taped your favorite song off the radio when it came on?
• there was no way you'd fill up a 20GB hard drive?
• voting in a presidential election you had the choice of one old white guy or another old white guy?
• it cost too much to quit your job and do something you loved.
• you lost track of friends because Facebook and MySpace were still figments of imagination?

My point is that things change. Business models come and go. Ideas spring from all walks of life.

A majority of the things above weren't even around 10 years ago. What are you doing right now to prepare your business (and yourself) to be successful in the next 10 years? Do you have a plan? Your business could be gone in the blink of an eye (just ask Blockbuster). Why are you still sitting on that great idea? Get out and get moving. Take action. Talk is cheap.

Tags: Bob Hazlett

I'll be attending Memphis Social Media Breakfast #2 tomorrow and have been asked to talk on measuring social media success. Trying to get a grasp on the current social media landscape and tools available is no easy task, thats why I first believe you must discover what's important to you before you can implement and strategy. A quick overview of my thoughts follow. Let me know what you think and what's important to you.

Your Goals
What your overall marketing goals? Do you want to push sales, drive engagement, increase awareness? What is considered a success? In the end is it the number of people who took an action, products sold, satisfaction index, mainstream media coverage, subscribers/listeners?

Your Tools
● Buzz – See who is talking about you. Go to blog search engine Technorati or get feedback from Google Alerts. Use existing functionality located within your online blogging platforms (WordPress dashboard). Use the old SEO trick by searching for your domain in Google, Yahoo and MSN with the following: link http://www.mysite.com. It’s not an exact science and many of these are very rough numbers, but will serve as a good indicator to see who is talking about and linking to you.

● Content Consumption – Measure who is reading your blog, where they are coming from and what content they are reading. Web analytic reports will show you the most popular content on your site and/or blog. This data will also show you how long they were on that particular page, where they came from, and also the bounce rate. Also consider vanity urls.

● Content Contribution – A quick and easy metric would be to monitor the number of visitors who are actually interacting with your content such as commenting or pinging back to your original post.

● Social Bookmarking – See who is adding your site/article/posts to sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon. Create profiles in each of the bookmarking sites and search for your urls.

● Subscribing to a RSS feed – Measure the number of your readers who are actually subscribing to your RSS feeds. Feedburner gives your readers lots of options to subscribe to your feed with useful stats on the backend

● Emailing posts – Use your blog platform tool like to see how many emails are actually being sent through your form i.e. forward to a friend.

● Profile Engagement - Profiles on Myspace, Facebook, or Mybloglog can give you some of the same metrics mentioned above; as well as monitor the number of friends that you have, total profile visits, etc.

Download this as a PDF

Tags: Bob Hazlett

Here's a great example of what to do (right) when you mess up. Netflix had some problems with their shipping system recently and instead of the usual corporate spin, they turned it into a positive. They (1) gave a sincere apology, (2) admitted fault quickly and (3) made it up to the user. Take a note, wheather your business is offline or on, people want to be treated fairly and will remember memorable experiences.

Tags: Bob Hazlett

I was lucky enough to be invited to Memphis' first Social Media Breakfast tomorrow by Dave Barger from Lunaweb. As of right now I think we have about 15 attendees coming, so we're off to a good start. I'm really excited to meet new social media Memphians and from the looks of the video below, I have some work to do tonight to prepare for tomorrow.

Social Media Breakfast - Memphis #1 (Prep)
Uploaded by lalunablanca

Additional Resources:
Understanding the UnConferences
100 Idea Topics for You to Cover at PodCamp
What is BarCamp?

Updated - Social Media Breakfast #1 Flickr Photoset ~ Official Social Media Breakfast page ~ LunaWeb

Tags: Community, Tools, Bob Hazlett

So let's say you're a Mom and Pop ice cream shop or even Ben & Jerry's for this matter. What could be a better promotion than embracing social media and integrating it with the latest cultural fad? Not only do you get your customers (and potential customers) involved with your brand, but you also make it fun for them and leave a lasting impression.

This is how I see the promo set up, but feel free to add you own twist on it. Start a YouTube page for your business - they're free. Encourage your customers to upload their best performance of one of the greatest lines from There Will Be Blood - "I drink your milkshake." Promote the effort on your website, company blog, in-store promotions and to your best clients. Have a definitive start and end date in mind. At the end, have the community vote on they think gave the best rendition of the movie. Have a screening of the movie for all participants, give away prizes such as a years supply of milkshakes or let the winner be in your next company commercial.

Not only to get free PR out of the effort, but you create goodwill and get your customers talking. They'll share their story and videos with their friends. Their friends will want to take part in the promotion and before you know it, you've got life-long engaged customers. Now the tough part comes when you have to do your next promotion.

Tags: Free Trade Ideas, Videos, Bob Hazlett

I'm currently away at the Online Marketing Summit in beautiful San Diego. Just wrapped up the education portion of Day 1 and I'd give it about a 7 on a 1-10 scale. The day started out real strong with a presentation by Catfish on SEO. The guy is brilliant and the education I picked up from him more than paid for the entire conference.

In all, there are about 400 online marketers in attendance so lots of great networking opportunities. During the Q&A session for an advanced paid-search presentation (advanced was a very loose term at this particular presentation) I was speaking to the lady who happened to sit next to me. She pointed out something very interesting trends in the questions coming from the audience. Everyone wanted the magic pill. They wanted actionable and measurable things that they could do right now in order to be successful. The waters are so murky in the online marketing world that these people are in over there heads and don't know who to trust. They read one thing, but the data tells them another thing. They're on short budgets and need results fast. The sad thing I realized is that things are better than they used to be, but I don't see them clearing up anytime soon.

Hopefully next week, I'll be able to share with you my findings and give you some great insight that you can actually use right now in your day-to-day business. Stay tuned.

Tags: Community, Bob Hazlett, Google, Tools, Search Engine Marketing

No one knows for sure how search engines actually rank your site, but there are things that you can do to optimize your website for a better ranking. I've outline a list below of the 4 most important things anyone can do to understand search engine optimization and rank your site better.

1. Keywords - Keywords are the very foundation of your search engine strategy. I refer to a "keyword" as a word that your typical user will input in the search box when searching for specific information about a product or service. You may have put many efforts on fine-tuning your web pages for a better ranking with the major search engines yet it become not enough if the right keyword phrases are not targeted. Even if you achieve high search engine rankings, you may not get relevant traffic if you select the wrong keywords. The most significant keyword steps for search-engine optimization are (1) identifying your target audience and (2) keyword phrase researching. I've outlined some of the best ways to analyze and collect this search engine data below;

Search Engine Analysis
a. Brainstorm within your group. What keywords do you think embody your site? What are the obvious words and phrases?

b. Check your logs (I'm assuming you have some sort of web analytics program). What terms are bringing people to your site? Companies often make mistakes with their keywords because they choose based on how they, rather than their customers, think about their products or services.

c. Examine your competitors

d. Make sure you don't forget the misspellings

e. Synonyms, Split & Merged Words, Singulars & Plurals, Hypens

Keyword Suggestion Sites:
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion
Free WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

2. Content - Stuff (text) on your website. Good content is simply a well written paragraph or page which communicates to your readers, exactly what you hope to get through, with no ambiguity, while it also offers info to the search engines so our site is categorized properly within their database. Content on your site should be the first thing you think of when optimizing it. You must convey to the search engines that your site is worthy of ranking, and that you are here to offer something of value to the masses. Content is king and a very important factor in getting a high search engine ranking.

3. Links - There are 2 types of links in the eyes of Google - Inbound and Outbound links. Both are important, but Inbound links carry much more weight in the eyes of search engines. An inbound link (from someone else's site to yours) basically tells the search engine your site is worthy and other people should visit it. The crucial way to ensure Google finds your site, is for your site to be linked from lots of pages on other sites. In essence, its a vote from their page for your site.

Things to consider about links
a. How relevant is the website that is linking to your site? Is it targeting similar keywords and about similar subjects? If that inbound link comes from a site with relevant content, a high page rank and has been around for a while, its an even bigger vote of confidence to your site.

b. Find and resesearch other websites with relevant content. Join the conversations on that site. Establish your expertise. Be the first to link to them.

4. Time - The older the site is, the more recognized and regarded it will be. Sites that have been around longer are given preference to younger sites.

Additional Resources:
WebConfs SEO Toolset
35 SEO Tips Simplified According To Value And Importance
The Blogger's Guide to Search Engine Optimization
SEO TOOLBOX - 30+ Tools and Services to Improve Your SEO

Tags: Search Engine Marketing, Bob Hazlett, Search Engine Optimization

• Smashing Magazine - 100 of the best free Wordpress themes
• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers - Also see my free trade idea post on using Twitter for your business
• The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook
• How to Sneak Social Media into the Enterprise
• Best of Adobe Flash Tutorials
• How To: Effectively Talk to Execs and Clients about Social Media
• You Suck at Photoshop

Tags: Design, Search Engine Marketing, Photoshop, Tools, Web 2.0, Bob Hazlett

Hey Chickens, the Indie Playlist is back. Enjoy this set of music. I plan to make this a regular monthly installment in 2008. Contact me if you know of a band that I should check out or if you'd like your music featured here.

Rock N Roll - Remi Nicole
Deathray - Clear Tigers
Outsiders - Franz Ferdinand
Boy with a Coin - Iron & Wine
This Car is Hot as Hell - Ride Your Bike
Traveling - Chucky Danger
The Hollows - Why?
K.I.D.S - Tiny Masters of Today
Worst Case Scenario - The Hoosiers
Two Ghosts - Boy Eats Drum Machine
When I Say Go - The 1900's
Guns are the Tongues - Richard Thompson
The Count of Monte Christo - The Noisettes
Hospital Drama - Help She Can't Swim
Banned from The Roxy - Jeffrey Lewis
Ring My Bells - Sufjan Stevens
The Miracle That Never Came - Straylight Run

If you are the copyright holder of any of the above files and would like them removed, please drop me a note. My contact information is at the bottom of the page.

Tags: Download, Indie Rock, Playlist, Bob Hazlett

Here is an excerpt from an actual conversation that took place today at work.

Meeting Leader - "Mr. Executive wants our official corporate MySpace page to have all our friends turned off (this isn't even an option) so people can't add us as a friend or even comment on our page."
Web Guy Who Gets It - "That's like removing search from Google."

I know Social Networking and Social Media is scary to some. There are huge risks to many organizations, but there are also a wealth of opportunities. What do you do when the person in charge doesn't get it? How do you show value in creating a conversation amongst your fans?

Additional Resources:
Five Starter Moves for Introducing Social Media Into Your Organization
How To: Effectively Talk to Execs and Clients about Social Media

Tags: MySpace, Community, Bob Hazlett

Yesterday, Apple dropped a Hiroshima-like atomic bomb on Blockbuster.

The game has changed and Blockbuster just received the biggest wake-up call in their companies' history. It's not as if they didn't see the writing on the wall. Apple has been begun putting distribution channels out of business over the past 5+ years. Not to mention the beating Netflix has already put on Blockbuster.

In my opionon the main advantage that Apple holds are low overhead and scalability. The costs of resources that Apple has remain fairly fixed and will continue to be so. Users downloading an additional copy of iTunes costs them next to nothing. In addition, the advantage of the web makes selling 1 copy vs 1 million copies of a single movie nearly the same.

Blockbuster on the other hand is crippled with fixed (and escalating) costs of doing business. Not to mention store upkeep and such, but also purchasing an additional copy of a movie for the local store is much more than the cost Apple incurs. Blockbuster has a limited number of physical movies that are available in each store, this isn't the case with Apple and iTunes.

I can remember about 10 years ago when Blockbuster was opening stores almost every 24 hrs. What if they would have taken some of these resources and devoted them new technologies and initiatives? Would Blockbuster be sitting in a better position?

Lessons you can learn from Blockbuster

• It's not the smartest of the species that survive, but the one that is most adaptable to change.
  
• Bigger is not always better. some may say that small is the new big. No longer can you compete on size. In the current business environment, companies that rely on being fast and nimble are much more likely to be successfull. Apple should keep this is mind as well, as I'm sure more and more companies and startups looking to take them down.
• Your business can evaporate in the blink of an eye. Now, I'm not saying that all Blockbusters will shut down overnight, but I firmly believe Apple will tighten the noose and Blockbuster's current business will cease to exsist. Netflix has seen the erros of those that came before them. They will survive and continue to fight Apple for market share.
  

What would you do if you were the CEO of Blockbuster? How do you modify your business plan? What should other businesses take away from this situation?

Additional Resources:
The Internet Changes Everything
Blockbuster, Netflix shares fall following Apple's movie rental service launch

Tags: Apple, ITunes, Blockbuster, Bob Hazlett

Yesterday, I got the chance to take a tour of the wonderful Stax Museum of American Soul Music here in Memphis. As the tour tour finished, my uncle says to me "You know, all this creativity came from poverty and absence." It struck a cord with me. He was right. All too often we think we will be more productive with more more bells and whistles, but this is hardly the case. Yes, its nice to have a nice Mac Book Pro, an iPhone and whatever else you can throw in your bag, but at what time do you get to the point of diminishing returns?

As you think on this, I encourage you to get to the raw essentials of your day. If you want to make game changing things, get to the core of your essence and use those gifts that your were given and developed over time. Use your raw creativity and your raw energy to do the things you love and see what you get. I can bet it will push the boundaries of all the things your competitors have ever done along with all the things you've ever done (with your Mac Book Pro).

Tags: Bob Hazlett, Tools

I've just added a new section to my site called "Where I Go." It's very similar to the old Links page that many sites used to contain. Within it I've added a list of blogs, podcasts and sites I love. These sites are the community and the people who share ideas, push the world forward and make the story better in the end. If you'd like to be part of One Half Amazing, then you should be on this page. Email me and give me your URL, and your RSS feed.

Tags: Community, Bob Hazlett

I want to hear what things you are looking forward to in the New Year. What are the most pressing issues in relation to online marketing, social marketing, social media, etc for your business? How are you planning to implement these features into your overall strategy? Do you see this as the year in which social marketing finally steps up and becomes an integral part of every businesses marketing strategy? What are your thoughts, predictions, fears and anticipations for 2008?

I write this site for you; your feedback helps me shape what I post and give my attention to over the next year. Leave a comment, contact me or drop me an email with your thoughts.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

Tags: Community, Small Business, Bob Hazlett

Work and the holidays have really been taking a toll on my mood and energy levels. With that in mind, I'm taking a break for the next couple of weeks to relax, touch base with the family and reenergize. I promise to come back stronger, post more often and with better content in 2008. If you're still looking for great social media and marketing minds, check out the sites below.

Chris Brogan - Chris Brogan advises businesses, organizations and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value.
Jeremiah Owyang - Jeremiah discusses how web tools enable companies to connect with their customers.
Seth Godin

Tags: Bob Hazlett

As the writers continue to strike in Hollywood, I can't think of a better time for them to change the game. As media and the content providers continue to change, the writers could easily pick up their ball and go play somewhere else. Is this the time that television and movies distributed and viewed primarily online finally make the turn? There is money to be made if someone wants to take the risk.

The best time to change the game is when you're losing and behind.

Updated 12/12/07:
Looks like Paramount is one of the first studios to take the plunge by offering the new Jackass movie free online. It may not be the best content or optimal situation, but at least it's a start.

Additional Resources:
No Writers at the Network? - People Powered Media takes off!
NY Times - Web Videos Stealing TV Viewers, and Marketers

Tags: Community, Web 2.0, Bob Hazlett

Sorry for the delay on the music. My job has transitioned, I'm moving to a new apartment and Leopard decided that it didn't like my iTunes library, so I basically had to rebuild all my playlists. Any who, to make it up to you, here's a extra helping of indie tracks for the holiday season. Most of these are pretty recent, but there may be a few older tracks that I've been rocking out to.

Nantes - Beirut
Sunrise - Yeasayer
The Con - Tegan & Sara
Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
Music Is My Hot Hot Sex - C.S.S.
Tranquilize - The Killers
Hummingbird - Born Ruffians
People Have a Way - Matt Pond PA
Cake Parade -Georgie James
Wait for the Summer - Yeasayer
Sherry and Her Butterfly Net - The Most Serene Republic
Saturday Night - Kaiser Chiefs
Supergirl - Minor Majority
Sweet Marie - Timo Raisanen
Passing The Hat - Cold War Kids
2080 - Yeasayer

If you are the copyright holder of any of the above files and would like them removed, please drop me a note. My contact information is at the bottom of the page.

Tags: Indie Rock, Download, Playlist, Bob Hazlett

Yesterday, Google along with a host of other major social networks (MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle) announced OpenSocial – an initiative to share an open API amongst across multiple sites. This will allow developers to create applications or widgets that can efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks.

What this means for you?

• We no longer need to have a MySpace strategy, a LinkedIn strategy, etc, but rather we can develop one application or widget that can be accessed throughout all services. A standard API will greatly reduce development time.
• Harness existing communities. We don’t have to go out and build an audience, but rather we can leverage what’s already there.
• Combined, the core group of networks involved represents over 100MM subscribers.

Challenges

• The open API was just released yesterday, so bugs may occur
• Inconsistencies may emerge – not all applications may behave the same across all platforms
• No two networks are the same. LinkedIn and MySpace have 2 different user bases.
• Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft haven’t bought in yet.

This is a major announcement and something that I feel could really benefit your online strategy. The possibilities are endless. I suggest sitting down in the coming month with someone who actually understands this and how it can affect your business (or contact me) and see how you can be proactive and tackle this head-on. Trust me, its going to be worth it.



Additional Resources:
Wired covers the aspects of Open Social
Open Social FAQ's
All the Children are Insane courtesy of Magnus Kjall

Tags: Community, Google, Bob Hazlett

Social Media Marketing Essentials
A few ways to be successful with social media are to interact with participatory communities, create and promote viral (and beneficial) content and research the key influencers in a certain industry. When you or your company successfully incorporates these tactics into your social media marketing plan, you can increase brand awareness and increase traffic to your site or subscribers to your blog. These can also lead to increased conversions and sales for your company. SMX NY Session: Social Media Marketing Essentials

What's Your Social Media Strategy?
Chris Brogan has a great way of taking complex social media theory and breaking it down into digestible chunks. In this article he gives you some overall thoughts on what you should consider while developing your social media strategy. What are you doing with it all? What is your plan? How are you tying this all together to make it meaningufl, useful, and/or otherwise impactful conversations with your community?

Is Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Passive or Active?

Measuring Your Social Media Efforts
I firmly believe that when talking to a CEO or any other high level decision maker who doesn't understand Social Media, you must be able to show the value first and foremost. Chris takes on this issue. Wouldn't it be great if someone could actually make a system to measure all of your social media efforts?

How to write a Social Media Press Release

Tags: Bob Hazlett