The WSJ reports that the Boston Globe has really pulled down the financials at the NYT. BG ad revenue is off 10.4% for Q2 and 7.8% for Q1 – with August showing a 15.7% drop against last year. In a conference call with investors in June, New York Times Co. Chief Financial Officer Len Forman said that turning around the Boston Globe would be a long-term project “because they’ve had a marketplace that basically has just turned so far south….
Another great bit from Mediapost.com BusinessWeek’s article “Web Numbers – What’s Real?” provokes an interesting discussion. Again we’re asking what is a true measure of web readership. They make several good points, particularly about things like AJAX, which wreck the model for traditional analytics. But they really head down the drain when they get into talking about analytics apps, then make the following statement:
Read the article on Mediapost.com As I wrote the other day in my post “Rob O’Regan and Fake Blogging Across America” Edelman PR has gotten themselves into a “spot of trouble” over fake blogs they’ve been using to promote Walmart. It turns out, there are more fake Walmart blogs that they’ve sponsored: One blog appears on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, the allegedly grassroots advocacy group formed by Edelman last December, which is “committed to fostering open…
This one is right on the money – a must read for online community site owners (thanks to Steve Yelvington for the pointer).
David Churbuck had a great post about domain squatters today, which is definitely a must read…he calls it the “bottom of the online marketing barrel.” It’s a bigger issue…if you have children. I sat last weekend next to my daughters, 7 & 8, as they surfed. At that age, spelling isn’t exactly a strong point. As they moved around the heavily branded sites they like, such as http://www.postopia.com (Post Cereal), bratz.com, barbie.com, disney.com, they often mispelled the url. Each time I…
I’ve been doing some screenshotting of sites and I’ve found most sites that use CSS (like all Vario sites) will require a review prior to the final release of IE 7 later this month. We will begin immediately screenshotting pages for our sites and contacting customers as to whether or not they require changes. The good news is that the changes required to accomodate this new browser from Microsoft are generally minor and can be accomplished quickly. Our general policy…
AssistingYourSmallBusiness.com is now live – if you’re a small business owner, or you do business with small businesses, you should take a look. The premise of the site is to provide a network of businesses in Central Massachusetts who can help small business owners make their businesses a success. Marketing, commercial construction, accounting/finance are just a few of the area which are covered by the site, and in the coming weeks we’ll have many more professionals join us. In addition…
Fake Blogging Across America Rob O’Regan, former Editor in Chief of CMO Magazine (which had it’s plug pulled in January) posted to his (brand new) blog Magnosticism this week about a couple who have blogged their way across the country in an RV staying at Walmart parking lots (which is one of the little quirks of Walmart, RV’s are welcome over night). The rub is, they were sponsored by Edelman, the “global PR firm” at the behest of Walmart itself.
All the planning and preparation in the world can’t keep bad things from happening. It’s a part of life. That’s why flexibility is key. Adapt, change, modify and ultimately do what you need to survive – that is the skill we need. For example, read this post about a boating mishap while tuna fishing last season. Hair raising stuff, but also testimony to the need for flexibility.
If you contact your customers via email extensively like I do, you should really think about how you set up your email signature. Personally, email is one of my primary means of contact, so it’s the one thing that most of my customers will see during the course of our business. And looking at what I’m sending, it’s honestly pretty weak. The trick here is that it’s a fine line between including a little marketing message and being preceived as…