Micro Persuasion

Trust in Peers Trumps the "A-List," Study Finds

There's an ongoing debate online and in marketing circles as well over who "matters": the super node influencers or basically anyone that a particular peer group looks to for information, entertainment, inspiration and more.

This meme got kicked around in the 'sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there's new data that to me may just reveal that Watts is right. The key factor, once again, all comes down to trust. This comes as more of the action shifts to micro communities like Twitter or Friendfed and the quality of blog content, some say, slides downhill.

Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace "friends." Nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."

This new batch of data largely backs up what my employer's Edelman Trust Barometer found earlier this year. Some 58% of opinion elites 35-64 in 18 countries said they trust "a person like me." Meanwhile, only 14% trust bloggers - a figure that has largely remained flat since 2006. (See chart below from our latest study.)

Source: 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer

On a similar thread, Louis Gray, who's blog by the way is amazing, crunched some numbers and he found that the top tech blogs extended their reach in feed subscribers as well as on the TechMeme leaderboard. That may be true, but who cares?

The question of targeting super nodes vs. smaller groups is all coming down to trust. While the marketplace - both marketers and publishers - continue to focus on reach, they are missing the big picture. Trust is by far a more important metric, one that clearly rules when it comes to influence.

Spring Conference Line-Up

Spring is around the corner and so is the peak conference season. Here's a run down of events at which I will be speaking. Here's hoping that I get to meet some of you at these.

Euroblog 2008 (March 13-15 in Brussels)

This symposium features communication academics and professionals for a discussion of social media and the future of public relations. Edelman is co-sponsoring the event. I will be participating on a few panels. You can register here.

AdAge Digital Conference (March 18-19 in New York)

Great line up of speakers and case studies. This includes a keynote by Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. I will be moderating a panel on "the next new thing."

PSFK Conference (March 27 in New York)

A day-long event dedicated to trends, ideas and inspiration. This includes a In a 'new guns' versus 'marketing gurus' debate on how the social web will change in 2008 and how companies can best leverage digital.

Next08 (May 15 in Hamburg)

Features entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, consultants, founders, bloggers and venture capitalists and 1,000 participants talking about the future of the web. I will be a keynote speaker.

Mediabistro Circus (May 20-21 in New York)

A two-day summit about the digital platforms and trends that are changing media.

The IABC International Conference (June 22-25 in New York)

Features a great line up of speakers, including Nicholas Negroponte and Seth Godin.

Three Bookmarklets for Happier Mobile Browsing

With smartphone sales soaring and Citigroup projecting year-over-year growth of 50-60%, it's a safe bet that a lot of you are increasingly surfing the web from your mobile devices.

Still, even with the iPhone, the mobile browsing experience leaves lots to be desired because of the bandwidth and reception issues. Enter bookmarklets. These utilities add one-click functionality to your mobile device and they're terrific time savers.

Here are three such links I use constantly on the go. Drag the first two to your bookmarks/favorites and sync them to your device and you're all set. For the final bookmarklet, you need to first visit each service to configure them.

Mobilize This!

Google, Mowser and Skweezer are mobile transcoders that take any URL you throw at it and strip away the graphics for faster browsing. I prefer to use Google's version since it also gives me the option to browse the feed. The next time you want to get to a page quickly and your browser keeps loading the page. Stop it mid-stream and simply tap your Mobilize This! bookmarklet.

Wikipedia This!

Need to settle a bar bet like the name of Boba Fett's dad? Wikipedia of course has all the answers. Access this bookmarklet, enter your search term and you'll be whisked away to the answer.

ToRead and Instapaper

The great thing about the mobile web is that it's always with you. The downside is that sometimes it's hard to read a long story. Enter ToRead.cc and Instapaper. Both of these sites help you bookmark articles for the future. In the case of ToRead, it will email you the full text of the page. Instapaper assembles a reading list you can access from anywhere.

Happy browsing, travelers!

Study: 25% of Entertainment Will Be Created by Peer Groups

A fascinating new study from Nokia predicts that by 2012 a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media.

What's unclear in my mind is where the boundaries are. In other words, what constitute peer content vs. pro content when the lines increasingly blur. Still, this is a big number and there's a lot of money at stake here to those who can create sustainable platforms that enable it all while monetizing.

To that point, TV Week conducted an analysis and found that while it's easy to get attention for your work, making money is a tougher climb. This might keep the figure from going higher than 25%.

Simple Ways to Go "Media Green"

Like lots of people I have become more aware of what I can and should be doing to help the environment. (Thanks, Al.) Now I am taking this to the next level by getting toward what I call a "Media Green" state. Basically, I am converting all the media I consume (and there is a lot of it) into the most environmentally friendly format I can find, without sacrificing too much of the experience.

This is the last big piece of my effort to get more green. I bank and pay bills online. Earlier this year I traded in my small SUV for a very efficient hybrid car. Further, I am more conscious of little things that I really ignored until recently - like turning the thermostat off when I leave the apartment.

In addition, thanks to my extensive use (or maybe that's misuse!) of Gmail and IMAP, I have already moved 100% of my work stuff, like meeting notes and documents, to bits. People are amazed when they come into my apartment or office and see no paper at all. I don't even know how to add the network printer at work! Media was the last frontier.

Here are the three steps I took to go "Media Green" ...

In: Audiobooks | Out: Printed Books

I "read" somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 books a year - mostly business, nonfiction and sports. However, nowadays I rarely buy printed books and instead download audiobooks from either Audible.com or iTunes. Now that MP3 players are ubiquitous - and cheap - their selection has grown a lot over the years.

For starters, I love that I can carry several audiobooks with me at once. Try that with bound books. You'll break your back. I keep two or three at all times lined up on my iPhone ready to go.

Second, audiobooks fill tons of unusable time - such as when I am waiting on line at Whole Foods or at the security checkpoint at the airport or when I am driving to client meetings. In addition, if you get an Audible subscription they actually cost less over time than hard copy books. I wish publishers made all of their titles available in audio format. Still, many of the more popular books are available as audiobooks.

If you have an iPhone, it gets more fun. Sometimes when commuting by train into the city I take notes via Gmail IMAP about what I am listening to. Of course, you don't need an iPhone to do this. Audible supports tons of devices, including Palm Treos and more.

My next step is to start storing audiobooks in Gmail or Box.net so that I can access them if I am out of content or space on the iPhone.

In: RSS, IMAP-enabled GMail and the iPhone | Out: Printed Magazines and Newspapers

Years ago I used to read three daily newspapers - the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Newsday, my local paper. I also used to buy dozens of magazines on computers, business and sports. I used to store them in a snazzy rack. Of course, I read lots of trade pubs too - AdAge, AdWeek, PR Week, etc. Now, however, I have almost completely ditched print in favor of reading online. (I just have to cancel a few remaining subscriptions.)

I now subscribe to the RSS feeds for every publication mentioned above plus hundreds of blogs. The beauty of this is that I only subscribe to what I care about and ditch the rest. So, for example, for the Times I subscribe to top news, NY, business, tech, NBA and football feeds but not the movie reviews.

Once I find articles I want to read, I clip them by emailing each into the Gmail Personal Nerve Center using a special email address so they get filtered. Then the articles show up in my "Reading" folder on my iPhone as well as on the desktop and web thanks to the new IMAP features in Gmail. This will work with any modern cell phone that supports IMAP, not just the iPhone.

In: XBox Live, DVR, Apple TV/iTunes/iPhone | Out: DVD Movies

I am not a huge movie buff, but I enjoy a flick every now and then. However, I have found that between the three boxes I have connected to my set - an XBox, cable box w/DVR and an Apple TV - I am more than covered. (This tip is not for hardcore movie fans who love DVD extras.)

XBox Live Marketplace (an Edelman client) is one of my favorite services. They have 350 movies for rental with more added all the time (subscribe to the feeds here). Many of them are in HD. Basically, all you need to do is sign up for an account and rent the movies online via the console. Movies begin to download and after about five minutes you can start watching. The rest of the flick downloads as you watch. After a few days, they expire and no longer work. It's a very elegant system and cheap too.

A lot of people have DVRs these days. Here's how I use mine. I scan the listings online a few weeks in advance and flag the movies I want. Then I record them and keep them stored for a rainy day when I want to watch a movie. I keep a library of about five to ten movies. As a next step, I may add additional storage to my DVR.

Last but not least, I have an iPhone and Apple TV. I purchase movies off of iTunes and download them for later viewing. The selection of movies on iTunes is not that great. XBox Live is better. However, I like the convenience of viewing them on my iPhone when I travel. I even take a cable with me so that I can plug my phone into the hotel TV (this works with iPods too). I may also explore storing movies on Box.net so that I basically increase my iPhone storage, provided wifi is plentiful.

These are just three simple steps I took to go "Media Green." If you have other ideas, leave them in the comments.

Search Wikipedia and RSS News Feeds via SMS

Lately I have been experimenting a lot with text messaging services since it's the primary way people interact with data on their cell phones. Plus, as you know, I am into the whole microblogging revolution.

You can do a lot with SMS, including send them from your desktop, query the Web or even use it to find a clean public restroom believe it or not. Here's another one I really like.

GoLiveMobile has set up a way to query Wikipedia via text messages using their Text2WAP technology. All you need to do is send a text message to the number 23907 with the word ABOUT followed by your search topic - e.g. ABOUT WIKIPEDIA. You will then get a link back to a special mobile-friendly version of the Wikipeida entry.

In addition, the company has a news search engine as well that scans RSS feeds. Simply text NEWS [Search Term] - eg NEWS MINNEAPOLIS - to 23907 and you will get back a link to a special formatted web page.

The service is free but typical SMS charges apply. Handy stuff.

Surf Wikipedia with Keyboard Shortcuts

I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia but when I do I use these handy keyboard shortcuts. You don't need Greasemonkey and they work on any browser. In Internet Explorer hit the Alt key followed by the command listed below. In Firefox 2 for Windows, use Alt and Shift. On the Mac hold down the control key.

Key	Command	Description
+	Start a new discussion	Allows you to add a new section (talk pages only)
. (period)	My user page	Opens your user page if logged in
=	Protect	Allows you to protect the current page (sysops only)
	Unprotect	Allows you to unprotect the current page (sysops only)
c	Content page	Shows the content page associated with the current article
d	Delete	Allows you to delete the current page (sysops only)
	Undelete	Allows you to undelete the current page (sysops only)
e	Edit this page	Allows you to edit the current page (non-protected pages)
	View source	Shows the source of the current page (protected pages)
f	Search	Allows you to search Wikipedia
h	History	Shows the current page's history
j	What links here	Shows all of the pages that link to the current one
k	Related changes	Shows recent changes in pages linked to the current one
l	My watchlist	Opens your watchlist (logged-in users only)
m	Move	Allows you to move the current page and its talk page (non-move-protected pages only)
n	My talk	Opens your user's or IP's talk page
p	Show preview	Shows a preview of your changes (on edit pages)
q	Special pages	Shows a list of all special pages
r	Recent changes	Shows a list of recent changes to the Wikipedia
s	Save page	Saves the changes that you have made (on edit pages)
t	Discussion	Opens the current article's talk page
u	Upload file	Allows you to upload images or media files
v	Show changes	Shows what changes you made to the text (on edit pages)
w	Watch	Adds the current page to your watchlist (logged-in users only)
x	Random article	Loads a random article
y	My contributions	Opens a list of your user's or IP's contributions
z	Main Page	Goes to the Main Page

Two New Ways to Mine for Twitter Gold

Two new tools have launched that make it easy to search and mine Twitter for conversation data.

The first, called Twittermittent, pulls geo-tagged data and charts from the last few days. You can also compare terms. Here's a chart I pulled using Twittermittent for the search phrase lunch. Clearly a lot of us like to eat around noon. So Twitter may be bigger on the East Coast than it is on the West.

The second comes via Download Squad from Emily Chang and friends. Twitterverse identifies the biggest memes and organizes them by tags. It too has a search tool.

Both Twittermittent and Twitterverse are useful, however, they only capture a sliver of the micro blogging conversation. Buzz around Jaiku is starting to build significantly. Over time, all of these utilities - including Technorati blog search - will get rolled up under aggregate live web search tools that grab it all. I would bet on one or more of the big players to make that happen through time-based sorting.

How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips

A few weeks back I wrote two posts (Part I, Part II) on how to transform Gmail into your personal nerve center (PNC). These and other similar how-to posts are consistently among your favorites, so I plan to keep at it. They might not seem immediately relevant to marketing and PR, but believe me they are. We all need survival skills like these to keep up with our increasingly wired customers, the torrent of data they generate and our hectic lives. As you read these, think about the applications for your job.

This post is the third in the Gmail PNC series. Most of it will work with other systems, including Outlook and Yahoo - with some tweaks. Like the others, this post has several parts...

• How to turn Gmail into a business diary (Gmail + Jott/Callwave + GCal or Yahoo/MSN  calendar)
• How to annotate books with Gmail as you read them (Gmail + Amazon.com + Google Toolbar)
• How to get critical alerts in Gmail exactly at the right time (Gmail/GTalk + RSS + Feedcrier)
• How to use Gmail into a searchable river of news-style RSS reader (Gmail + GReader + RSSfwd)

Turn Gmail into a Business Diary

Knowledge workers attend lots of meetings. We also have tons of loose bits of information that need collecting during the day. It all needs to be processed. To jog our memory, we take notes. Most of the time this is with pen and paper - unless your culture is laptop/Tablet PC friendly. Many aren't. I use David Allen's GTD system and now buckle it into Gmail as my sole collection bucket.

I long for a searchable record of my meetings and important notes. This has led me to experiment with numerous systems over the years. Ideally, I want my data available 24/7 from any computer or mobile device. Even better, I wanted it organized by date with a list of my meetings on top - e.g. like a paper-based business diary. If you combine an online calendar with Gmail, you can make this a snap.

We have an Exchange Server at work. I use it for group scheduling but I also keep it in sync with Google Calendar. GCal and other systems like it can send your daily agenda to you via email. Mine arrives precisely at 4:38 every morning, often just before I get up. Using Gmail's filters/labels I automatically have these tagged Diary.

Once the message arrives, I keep it in my inbox all day. Then, as  take notes, I reply to the email, but change the address to my own. Then as the day goes on, I keep adding to the conversation thread with replies to myself. These all get threaded as a single conversation.

It gets better. If I am on the go, I will write down the notes in a Moleskine and then call my Jott or Callwave number in between meetings. These arrive in my inbox too (either as text or an audio file). Later, when I am back at my computer I append the note to another reply to me and archive the entire conversation thread. Finally, at week's end I go through all seven notes as part of my weekly review. (The fIgure below is from a weekend - when the review is conducted.)

Annotate Books as You Read Them

I buy a lot of books and audiobooks. Almost all of them are about business or sports. I draw lessons from every single one and I want a way to capture it all. Once again, Gmail is a lifesaver here. This technique builds on the one prior.

Using the Google Toolbar trick outlined in Gmail PNC Part I, I find the book on Amazon.com and send my self a snippet of the title, author and summary to steverubel+secretword@gmail.com. I automatically label these "booknotes" using Gmail's filters. Then as I go, I simply keep replying to myself with the notes I want to keep on the book. These all get archived as a conversation for later search/retrieval.

Get Critical Information When You Need It

Let's say there's a traffic jam on the highway you drive home everyday. Or worse, there's a tornado or even God-forbid a tsunami on the way. You'd want to know about it I bet. You can instantly by combining Gmail with GTalk, some RSS feeds and Feedcrier.

I have Gmail and thus the embedded Google Talk client open constantly when I am at my computer. When I am on the go, I run Google Talk and/or the Gmail for Mobile application (unless I am on a plane). However, I don't miss critical information thanks to Gmail/Gtalk. The key is that it needs to live in an RSS feed.

For example, I pump local severe weather alerts from the National Weather Service into Feedcrier, which sends pings through IM. The premium version of the service will even send these to you when you're offline. You can also do the same with Yahoo Traffic feeds or tsunami alerts.

Turn Gmail Into a Searchable River of News Reader

I use the Google RSS Reader. However, I check Gmail more frequently. Again, this is even more true when I am on the go running from meeting to meeting.

I keep a group of my favorite feeds in a GReader folder called "Faves." You can browse them here. This special aggregation page has its own RSS feed. I take that feed and run it into RSSfwd, which will send you feeds to your email account. Another good service is R-Mail.

As the feeds arrive, they get labeled "Feeds" and archived. However, RSSfwd has a handy threading feature that keeps all of these posts together as a single Gmail conversation. The result is a giant river of news in Gmail! Even better, if I drop and add feeds to my Faves group, I don't have to re-import them into RSSfwd plus they're completely searchable. This technique will also work if you share your feeds with Newsgator Online too.

What hacks work for you? Share them in the comments.

Pump Your Productivity with "Mini Me" Bookmarklets

Tabbed browsing has been a staple of the modern browser for awhile now. The feature is built into Firefox and Safari. Moreover, with the launch of Internet Explorer 7 it's now available to pretty much all.

However, tabbed browsing is sometimes a pain when you want to look up something quickly - for example the weather, sunrise/sunset times, a sports score or your RSS feeds. Of course you can simply open another tab to accomplish this. However, I am now using a new hack that combines bookmarklets, pop-up windows, widgets and mobile web sites in a way that has made me a lot more productive. I use these to look up information a lot.

I know about as much Javascript as I do Japanese. Zilch. But, I do know how to make small edits to code to get by, just as I know how to say sayonara. That's all I had to do to put this system into place

Hawk Wings has two handy bookmarklets that spawn separate "distraction free" Gmail and Google Calendar windows. Once you bookmark them they pop-up in front in IE and Safari but for some reason they load in the back in Firefox.

I have cloned these bookmarklets and adapted them by changing the URL they open and the window size. Each bookmarklet is assigned to either a) mobile-friendly versions of one of my favorite sites or b) a Google widget. The result is instantaneous information! When I want to look up say a sports score, I pop the window. In addition, sometimes I minimize my main browser window and keep "Mini Me" open. This makes it easier to look up Wikipedia articles, for example, while I work on a document. (See screen grab below)

To start using these, simply right click on each one and add to your Favorites/bookmarks. Depending on the browser you're using you might get a warning. Just click ok. If you use Firefox you can even assign keywords to these. If you clone the WeatherBug or sports scores widget and change it to the URL for any widget in this directory, you can run widgets as pop-ups. Most work.

Answers.com Dictionary

CBS Sportsline Scores

Digg

Google

Google Reader

Google Talk

Techmeme

Technorati

WeatherBug

Wikipedia

Survey: 43% of Employees Web 2.0 at Work

There's a common myth that the entire Web 2.0 movement doesn't have a big impact on B2B and  their enterprise purchasing decisions. Nonsense. Workers are knee deep in these sites. According to a new survey by Clearswift, some 43% of employees access Web 2.0 sites multiple times during the work day. Think they're publishing too? Nod. Studies have shown that most blogging takes place during the day.

More stats from the survey....    

* 51% spend an hour or more a week on Web 2.0 sites; 13% spend five hours or more    
* 46% have discussed work-related issues    
* 46% regularly access Wikipedia during work hours    
* 50% believe they have a right to use work computers for personal internet access

The Long and the Short of Media

Poynter is out with their latest Eye Tracking study. In a nutshell, they track how people interact with news in different formats. They found that people read farther into into online stories (77%) more than they do when perusing print (roughly 60%).

The findings are surprising. Further, it gets me thinking about the ramifications on PR. If a client appears at the bottom of say an AP news story that runs online, it's actually more valuable than the same story that runs print. Think about that.

Online Primetime

MarketingVOX reports that comScore Media Metrix found that 5-8 pm is the primary viewing time for online video. Some 123 million people in the U.S. viewed 7.2 billion videos online in January. Naturally given its two huge properties, Google was the top streaming video site for the month. For more, including charts and graphs, hit the MarketingVOX site.

AttentionMeter Compares Alexa, Quantcast, Compete

Here's a neat web application that triangulates traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. It's called the Attentionmeter. I am not sure about the name but I can live with it. Even better, there's a handy dandy bookmarklet (yum, I love bookmarklets) so you can track any website you're browsing. Just drag this to your faves. Thanks to Jay Meattle for slipping that one to me via del.icio.us.

Highrise Set to Rock the Contact Management Biz

Highrise is a brand new contact management/CRM tool that will soon be released by 37 Signals. If you're not familiar with 37 Signals, they are the brain trust behind awesome tools like Backpack, Campfire and Basecamp. Highrise is a tool that's designed both for groups and individuals. It is basically a place for you to track and share all of your key relationships.

Jason Fried from 37 Signals gave me an early look at the product. There's more on their blog. As is par for the 37 Signals crew, Highrise is impressive. It is a particularly invaluable, simple, lightweight tool for PR, marketing or sales professionals. It streamlines a key part of the business that requires lots of tracking.

Further, while I can't disclose pricing, I assure you it will rock the media contact management business, which includes big vendors like Bacons MediaMap and Vocus. Unlike these other vendors, however, Highrise does not come with media data. You need to upload it into the system. So it could be a great complementary product that lets PR teams track their key folks more closely, either by themselves or within a small work group.

Each Highrise screen can include contact notes, tasks, images, recent emails and more. This last part is awesome, particularly for PR pros. Everyone on a team can bcc: a special Highrise email address for the page that tracks a particular journalist they are following. You can do this right in Outlook and your emails - as well as others -  will automatically get attached to the page. There's also a special dashboard that brings all the information together. (See screen grabs below.)

In addition, the platform includes rich tagging capabilities, contact groups, search and more. I have long been a fan of 37 Signals Backpack product. Backpack and Gmail - which I combine by the way - run my busy life.  This product is a winner for individuals and teams. Further, if 37 Signals can begin to integrate this baby with Campfire, align with a data partner or two, it will radically change the PR business and allow greater collaboration between clients and teams. Kudos to Jason and the crew.

More Ways to Use Gmail as a Personal Nerve Center

Since my last post about my unorthodox uses of Gmail, I have been thinking there might be more ways I could be using it as my Personal Nerve Center (PNC). And in fact, there are a bunch. Time on the road away from my computer helps! Many of these work well in other web clients too by the way. Here's another round. (Note: as of this writing, Gmail is acting up. Murphy's Law. However, I have found that 99% of the time it is fine.)

* Create a Mobile Searchable Database of PDFs (Gmail + Adobe PDF Conversion by Email)
* Archive Your Weblog and Comments and Make Them Searchable (Gmail + FeedBurner/FeedBlitz)
* Import a Searchable Version of Your Calendar (Gmail + Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar)
* Build a Weather or Sports Almanac (Gmail + Windows Live Alerts)
* A round up of other ideas

Create a Mobile Searchable Database of PDFs (Gmail + Adobe PDF Conversion by Email)
Like many of you, I have gobs of PDFs on my computer. Most of them are research reports written  by analyst firms like eMarketer, Pew and Forrester or even PowerPoints. Sometimes I need to pull up a nugget of information from them in a split second. Often this occurs when I am away from my computer or logged out of the server at work. In fact, my colleague Leah was asking me about one of these nuggets today. Now I have a solution.

Although Google extracts text from attached PDF files, it does not index the contents in the Gmail database. This limits its utility. Thankfully, Adobe (which I should note is an Edelman client) has a free service that will take care of this for you.

All you need to do is email your PDF to pdf2txt@adobe.com and they will send the full text of the PDF back within minutes. These files can be searched from within Gmail. Then set up a filter from the Adobe address (noreply@adobe.com) and have the messages archived and automatically labeled. Now you have a searchable database for your PDFs - oh and it's fully accessible via a mobile too.

Back Up Your Blog and Make it Searchable (Gmail + FeedBurner/FeedBlitz)
Feedburner and other services like Feedblitz can take your RSS feed and convert it into an email newsletter for readers who don't use RSS.

I have been using Feedblitz on my blog for years and I subscribe just to make sure it is working correctly. I used to delete these emails but now I figured out they can actually be quite useful. I set up a filter, as described above, to archive these emails as soon as they arrive. As far as I know, Google doesn't place a limit on the number Gmail filters.  Now I can search my blog quickly from the PNC by using the from:Feedblitz command and my search keyword. Plus, I automatically have a backup for my entire blog.

By the way, if you use Blogger, you can configure it to automatically email your posts once they go up. Here's the result when I searched for from:Feedblitz ajaxy newsgator. (Bonus tip: you can create a searchable archive of all your comments by archiving the email alerts and mining for them later.)

Create a Searchable Version of Your Calendar (Gmail + Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar)
I don't know about you, but I a few years back I started saving old versions of my calendars - even from when I was in another job. I keep them on my desktop and occasionally search them.  In fact, just the other day I referenced an old calendar to find a hotel I once stayed at in San Francisco.

Archival calendar data on the desktop is useful,  but it's even better on the web and it's awesome when you roll it into your Gmail PNC and it's mobile. So even though I manage my calendar on the desktop, I export it into Google Calendar every few days and make sure that it sends me my daily agenda via email every day. Yahoo and MSN Calendar have similar features. I have a filter whisk these out of site and bingo - I have a quick way to search my calendar right from Gmail - and, most importantly, on the go.

Build a Weather or Sports Almanac (Gmail + Windows Live Alerts)
Quick, what was the score the last time the Bears played the Jets? What is the W-L record of the Dallas Mavericks against the Phoenix Suns the last three years? Finally, what was the weather on your birthday the last five years? If you care about this stuff, set up your Gmail PNC so it can quickly fetch it for you.

The secret is to sign up for alerts and have them archived. In my last post I mentioned Yahoo Alerts. Microsoft has a bunch of good ones too - including Fox Sports - and they are sometimes more reliable. You should configure these to alert via email and for the final score. (Disclosure: Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

For weather, check out Accuweather and Weather.com. They too have email services. You can also take any RSS feed and run it through a service like Rmail to create all sorts of archives.  Once you're set up, all you need to do is filter, archive and search and your good to go.

What other types of information can we store in a Gmail PNC? Some of the ones that come to mind are a but more manual. Movies is a good one. Using the Google Toolbar method described in my last post you could clip and save movie information from a bunch of sites and annotate them with your own reviews. Some folks store recipes in Gmail. Combine this with a recipe-a-day email service and it becomes even more powerful. Share your Gmail PNC ideas in comments.

Tagging Gains US Fans

AP reports that Americans love tagging. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 28 percent of Internet users have tagged content, and 7 percent have done so on a typical day. Get the full report here.

How to Break LinkedIn Connections

It's a little known fact, but did you realize you can easily break LinkedIn connections? Boy I wish I knew that a long time ago. LinkedIn is a fabulous business social networking tool, especially for people in a line of work like mine who are interested in talking partnerships. However, if you add contacts just for the sake of doing so, its value diminishes.

I have been reading Jason Calacanis' and Guy Kawasaki's posts on how to use the service but haven't invested the time to use it since I had a lot of dead wood in there. (I made the mistake two years ago of letting lots of people into my network who I don't know.) Now that I can eliminate people I don't know well, I am looking forward to exploring.

Oh and if I know you (as in we've traded more than a few emails) and we're not connected, please go ahead and invite me to connect.

Tags: LinkedIn

Forrester Creates a Model to Measure Blogging ROI

Forrester today is releasing new research that offers a roadmap for measuring the risks vs. the potential return for starting a corporate weblog. I was given an exclusive first look. The report was written by Charlene Li and Chloe Stromberg.

Late last year I was interviewed for the report as was my colleague, Michael Wiley, who was formerly with GM. While he was there Michael pioneered their popular Fastlane blog. Forrester also spoke to nine Fortune 500 companies that have blogs: Microsoft (an Edelman client), BMC, Dell, HP, Southwest Airlines, Sun Microsystems, Starwood Hotels, Verizon and Wells Fargo.

In Forrester’s interviews, the most frequently mentioned benefits of corporate blogging were: greater brand visibility in mainstream media on the Web, word of mouth, improved brand perception, instantaneous consumer feedback, increased sales efficiency and fewer "customer service-driven PR blowups."

When measuring impact they advise using metrics that everyone is familiar with and then to associate each with a dollar value that quantifies the benefit. One idea that they outline, which I like a lot, is to estimate how much the company would have to pay to achieve a similar outcome. So, for example, they suggest benchmarking a blog against services like Buzz Agent. (See chart below)

Forrester also published supplemental material where they take a closer look at GM's Fastlane blog. Forrester estimates that GM saw 99% return for 2005 for its investment in blogging. In other words, the GM Fastlane blog generated $578,000 in value on an investment of $291,000.

FInally, the research firm also put together a terrific model for assessing blog risk: a) identify the three things that could happen, b) model the scenario and c) estimate its probability. This is very similar to preparing for a crisis in PR and good advice when venturing into a blog program.

Tags: Forrester

RSS Tips Galore

Two sets of RSS tips worth checking out. The first, from Wired News, covers rolling your own feeds, merging them and more. It's for all platforms. The second, from Macworld, covers how to maximize your experience in Mac OS X.