Imagine you’re a public relations professional in search of a job. You’re clicking through Craigslist when you see this ad:

“PR manager sought to execute association media campaign. Duties will include: contacting at least 7 radio stations per week (between 10 am and noon); purchasing banner ads on sites selected by PR director; launching a print ad campaign with the tagline “Building a Better Future”; pitching stories to the press (scripts will be provided). . . . . and other tasks as dictated by PR Director. Office hours are 8 – 5 pm; lateness will not be tolerated. For consideration, send cover letter, resume, five writing samples, six letters of reference, certified college transcripts, and Social Security Number.”

Would you respond? My guess is probably not. Not even in this lousy economy.

A job ad is the beginning of a dialogue between the employer and the eventual employee. This ad opens the conversation with a tone of micromanagement and mistrust, and eliminates any promise of autonomy. Most talented candidates wouldn’t bother to reply,

Think of your RFP as a want ad for a vendor. It’s an opportunity for you to outline your needs, identify your challenges, and articulate your goals. It should give potential vendors a solid understanding of what you want to achieve with the project and what their role will be. Here are a few tips on what to do, and what not to do the next time you sit down to write an RFP.

Continue reading "Writing an RFP for Results" »

Iron Chef - Bing vs. Google edition

I haven't found much that Bing is better for - or maybe Google is just a habit. But this feature could be seriously helpful. Bing has added a recipe search that might help you decide what's for dinner.

Assigning authority to the Twitterati

In indexing Tweets, are re-tweets more important? Does it depend on who said it initially? Or who passed it on? Apparently so, according to Technology Review. Google is working to identify "reputed followers" which will presumably work like inbound links and PageRank to give higher authority to certain information on Twitter.

No RSS feed? No problem!

You can now use Google Reader to keep up with changes on any webpage. So if there's a product you've been keeping an eye on and want to know if the price or description has changes, Google Reader can now create a feed for that page and let you know when content on the page has updated. I tried it out and it's incredibly easy to use.

Content is King

The Online Marketing Blog offers 10 Tips for Content Marketing Success, and they have some thought provoking statistics. 900,000 blog posts are published every 24 hours and 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube, so creating compelling content is essential.

Facebook Privacy Changes

We've written extensively about Facebook privacy settings in the past, but some new changes were made recently and it's important that you understand the changes and why you shouldn't automatically accept the Facebook defaults. Here are 3 Facebook Settings you should check now, from the New York Times. (More to come on this topic.)

Usually, I glance at these sponsor emails quickly before deleting them. Occasionally, I may sign up for a webinar or download a white paper if the offer seems relevant.

This time, the subject line caught my eye immediately.

But it was for entirely the wrong reasons.

Instead, I paused for a moment and read the subject line in slight disbelief. I could see instantly that it contained not just one, but three mistakes. When I opened the message and saw what was inside, I realized that it contained a fourth error, too.

What's worse, each error was a different kind of mistake.

I won't be responding to the call to action in this particular message, but it was a valuable email nonetheless, because it reminded me to avoid making these four email subject line mistakes.

Continue reading "A Tale of Email Subject Line FAIL and How To Avoid It" »

Move over Oprah! We’re kicking off 2010 by starting the CDG Book Club. Every month or so, we’ll be reading a book about the web industry and posting our raves, rants, and other unsolicited opinions.

At least a few times a year, I like to rip myself away from screen time and consult a good ol’ fashioned book about the web industry—specifically about content, web writing, and usability. Unfortunately, a lot of the books I’ve picked up are not all that great. They’re either fairly simplistic guides geared toward web newbies or highly academic exercises that are not only a slog to get through, but have precious few practical takeaways.

There are, of course, a few notable exceptions—books that I not only recommend to fellow web professionals and clients—but that I find myself referring to again and again. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug is one; Gerry McGovern’s Killer Web Content is another. And now I’ve found another gem that I’m going to rely on for years to come—Content Strategy for the Web. This book is absolutely a must for anyone who is involved in conceptualizing, creating, producing, and managing online content. Insightful, practical, and fun to read, Halvorson's book had me striking my forehead I-could’ve-had-a-V-8-style more times than I can count. Nearly everything Halvorson says should be self-evident to content professionals, yet she presents it in a way that’s completely revelatory.

I could go on about the book’s merit’s at length, but for the sake of brevity, let me paraphrase some of my favorite takeaways from Halvorson:

Continue reading "CDG Book Club: Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson" »

As the year comes to a close -- and CDG Interactive's offices close for the Christmas/New Year's week break (thanks, Scott!) -- the CDG bloggers take a moment to look back at the Top 9 things we learned in 2009.

(For those of you keeping track at home, that's 3 lessons each.)

What we learned ranges from how to continue to stay inspired when writing to why cute animals will always drive blog traffic.

Continue reading "Top 9 Lessons We Learned in 2009" »

After all of the preparation and planning, creation and implementation, you’ve reached the end of the process to start your corporate blog. You can relax now, right?

But in fact this last step may be the hardest; starting a project is one thing, but continuing it on, consistently, is your true goal.

So what can you do to keep up with blogging and incorporate it into your regular marketing activities?

Continue reading "How To Start a Company Blog: Ready, Set, Go!" »

So you've identified your blog's goal, and an overall editorial calendar for post topics. Now it's time for the "who," the "how often"--and even the "how."

To begin with, you’ll want to think about how frequently you can commit to posting. It’s better to have a lower frequency schedule you can commit to than an unrealistic schedule that quickly hits obstacles of availability.

Keep in mind that a corporate or organizational blog doesn’t have to be the work of just one contributor. In fact, team or group blogs are often better as they can represent the ideas, recommendations and knowledge of a variety of subject matter experts. And dividing the work among several people makes the individual time commitment much less onerous.

Continue reading "How to Start a Company Blog: Who Writes and How Often" »

Last week, we covered the steps for establishing a clear purpose for blogging—answering the question “Why start a corporate blog?”

With your goal or goals determined, you can begin the work of creating your organization’s blog.

But before you worry about any specifics of software or design, you should first map out the most important part of your blog: the content.

Continue reading "How To Start a Company Blog: Content Strategy" »

As with all marketing channels, you need to know what you want to achieve with blogging before committing the time and resources to doing it.

If you don’t know why you’re starting a company blog, your audience won’t, either.

First, define your goal. Do you want to drive sales leads? Recruit personnel and encourage resume submissions? Improve your site’s SEO? Demonstrate your company’s expertise on a particular subject matter? Or simply have a mechanism for updating your site’s content more frequently?

With a defined goal, you can begin to describe the type of blog personality and content you would like to have. Here are some business blogs that provide good examples of meeting various goals.

Continue reading "Why Start a Company Blog?" »

The big day has arrived. You're responsible for marketing your business or organization and you're ready to take the plunge into social media. 

You've talked the board into it. You've talked your boss into it.

Now what?

Wouldn't it be nice if you had a Starter Kit? 

This is CDG Interactive's kit. These are five steps we take with our clients -- and that any business can take when getting into social media.

Continue reading "The Social Media for Business 5-Step Starter Kit" »