How often do you attend two truly enjoyable meetings in one day? Well, it happened to me last week. In both meetings I was discussing online marketing with teams that were hungry for it--questions were fast and furious.

What is Web 2.0? How does social bookmarking affect a company's online profile? How should we use Second Life? How do we budget for search engine marketing? Each question opened more opportunities for thought. If only I could be involved in meetings like that more regularly, but who has the time?

Maybe this blog can mimic that meeting experience. What do you want to know? What have you been thinking about? What ideas would you like to see floated? Leave a question as a comment and we'll start knocking it around here and then respond with an entry. Let me know what you think. Together we can come up with some collective solutions.

Last week's Edison Media Research report Five years later: Media Perceptions from 2002 to 2007 named the internet as the "most cool and exciting" medium beating television, radio and newspapers.

In the categories "used more lately", "most essential" and most turned to "in the event of a major news story" the internet ranked second behind television. The internet was also second in the category "turned to first to learn about new music," but behind radio. Clearly older media are still the go-to source for many things, but when you look at the difference between this year's results and the results from 2002, erosion in the usage of other media and gains in usage of the internet stand out clearly.

I imagine that in 2012's report the internet will lead these categories across the board. Then again, by 2012 the lines between the internet, television and radio may so blurred that the report will just be comparing perceptions of the internet vs. print media.

Are you ahead of this curve or just catching up? What medium do you think will be the coolest in 2012?

Ever wonder why your company's website doesn't always appear on the first page of results when you search? After all, your agency says they've "search engine optimized" it, you've paid your search engine marketing dues, what's the deal?

As the online experience continues to grow and change, companies and their brands need to use the entire spectrum of online content in order to reach their audience. It's no longer enough to just create a website; companies need to combine many elements to create an online profile--in addition to a branded website they might use blogs, bookmarking and other user-generated content, online video, photos and search engine-optimized press releases. This supplemental content enhances the primary content's SEO (search engine optimization) through inbound links and also ensures that a company's content fills search engine "shelf space," edging unfavorable and competitor content to lower rankings.

And what else? Keep tabs on Google: last week they announced their new "universal search." If you haven't heard about this, you may have already encountered it or you soon will. A search on Google now includes more search verticals (video, images, news, etc.) in order to deliver the overall most relevant results, one place. If Google determines that news articles are relevant to your search, they'll appear right next to other results like images, video, blog entries, and of course websites and ads. (Keep in mind, this isn't always the case; for many searches, websites are still the most relevant content available and that's what your Google search will retrieve.) But due to this additional content, there now may be less than the standard 10 web results on a page.

This is where your online profile really comes into play: rather than fearing that your website will be left off of the first page of listings, a wide profile of optimized online content in addition to your website can potentially increase the number of your listings on the first-page search results thanks to Google's universal search.

Let's say for instance you are a hotel chain looking to achieve results with a keyword phrase like "Boston hotel". Instead of the ten website listings and sponsored links that you would have gotten a while ago on Google, there are now just 9 results plus a news story. One large hotel chain happens to have an excellent position in the natural results. Now imagine if they backed that up with sponsored links, optimized press releases, a video tour of the Boston hotel and a well tagged photo gallery from it too? That could all now be included in the results for "Boston hotel" simultaneously providing multiple ways of reaching your audience, both through Google and other online channels where that content exists, as well as pushing competing websites off of the page. That's the benefit of multiple forms of content working together to increase and enhance the connection with your audience.

A brand can no longer focus on search engine ranking alone; a breadth of optimized media is also required. However, distributing that content in order to achieve results requires having the content on third party websites and relinquishing some control--a commitment that not every company is willing to, or can, make. But, as Google's universal search so clearly shows, an online profile is the future of successful marketing and this will only be more true as other search engines follow Google's lead. How does your online profile look and what are you doing to manage it?

Here are some definitions for a variety of terms often used when discussing Web 2.0. Some are programming languages and techniques; others are concepts and types of media. These are my definitions and won't include every last detail or facet of the term, but they will help you understand a lot more during your next conversation about Web 2.0. Let me know if there are additional terms that I should add or clarifications to the definitions that I should make, and I'll be sure to update the Glossary.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - a development technique that allows a webpage to mimic a stand-alone application. AJAX uses XML and JavaScript and regularly exchanges small amounts of data between the browser and server reducing the need for page reloads. Examples include GMail, Flickr, Pandora)
API (application programming interface) - code provided by a program or system so that others may produce new programs that interface with the original system. For example, the Microsoft Windows API is made available to the public so that programs may be developed that work on the Windows operating system. Ease of use for an API can be critical to the success of a Web 2.0 company, increasing the amount of user-generated widgets and secondary uses of the company's product.

Blog - short for web log, an online diary or column, where entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

Chicklet - the small buttons found on webpages and blogs that are links for subscribing to the RSS feed on that page or adding the page to a social bookmarking tool.

Cluetrain Manifesto - website and later a book written by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger arguing that markets are conversations and advocating for open conversations between companies and their customers in a human voice. This concept has lead to the rise of corporate blogging and the inclusion of consumer-generated content on company websites.

Consumer-Generated Content (also User-Generated Content) - content produced by users and posted online on third-party websites. Examples include user reviews, blogs, user-produced commercials, YouTube, social-bookmarks.

Crowdsourcing - the use of an unmanaged group to perform tasks typically undertaken by an individual or team, typically in a shared online environment. Examples include iStockphoto, where amateur photographers upload images to a stock image library, open source software and wikis.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - a language that describes the way that HTML content is styled using fonts, colors, etc. This allows the content to be kept separate from the design so that the look of the site can be modified without changing the content.
For example, CSS would indicate that all text should be black, a book's title should be centered, 48 pt and underlined, but paragraph text should be left justified and 10 pt, and this would be the case whether the title was Moby Dick and the first line of paragraph text is "Call me Ishmael." or the title is A Tale of Two Cities and the first line of paragraph text is "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Folksonomy - a classification or categorization of content by the community rather than the creator, often through tagging.

Long Tail - coined by Chris Anderson and described in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, the term refers to the "power law" found when graphing the volume of items sold by the inventory of items available. The graph shows that a small number of items sell the highest volume followed by a "tail" of low-demand, low-volume products that never reaches a point with items that are never sold. The theory argues that a company with unlimited ability to handle inventory can make as much money from the tail as from the head due to the tail's length. Retail examples include Amazon.com, iTunes and Netflix.

Mashup - a combination of multiple elements to create a new or hybrid item. Mashups can be software, audio, video or text. Examples include combinations of various content sources via feeds or the use of an API, for example, a My Yahoo page, or the combination of two audio sources as in The Grey Album, Danger Mouse's combination of Jay-Z's The Black Album with The Beatles' The White Album.

Metadata - data describing an object (webpage, article, image, video, etc). For example, metadata in an MP3 file may indicate the track title and artist's name, and on a webpage, metadata would include a description, tag or keywords for a certain content item.

Podcast - a serial audio recording made available online either on a webpage or via RSS.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) - a format used to publish and distribute content online. Content can consist of text, audio, images, etc., that is often updated, such as news, blog entries, and podcasts, but can consist of other content refreshed on a regular basis. Syndicated feeds may be read using a feed reader, an online RSS aggregator and most popular web browsers. Feeds can also be incorporated into a website as a widget.

Social Network - a website of personalized member webpages connected to each other by the shared interests or ties between members. Examples are MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, etc.
Social Bookmarking - the aggregation of links to webpages selected by users and tagged to indicate the webpage's content. Links to similar content are determined by their sharing tags, and the quality of a link is determined by the number of bookmarks with a specific tag to that page. Social bookmarking has a natural search engine optimization component due to the inbound links to a page that are generated as well as the "quality" of a link determined by the fact that it was bookmarked in the first place. Examples include Del.icio.us and Digg.

Syndication - the distribution of content. Online this may be done through the use of RSS.

Tag - a metadata keyword describing an object (article, image, video, etc.) typically made up of 1 or 2 words. In Web 2.0 parlance, a tag is a keyword applied by a user that is then used as an alternate form of categorization so that an object may be categorized by multiple tags using a content aggregator, such as social bookmarking or a tag cloud.

Tag Cloud - a graphic representation of tags listed alphabetically and sized to indicate tags that refer to greater numbers of items.

User-Generated Content - see Consumer-Generated Content.

Vlog - a video blog.

Web 2.0 - the second phase of online activity where websites act as tools to make content accessible to more people, typically through the aggregation and categorization content and users' modification and comments on that content.

Widget - a independent sub-program developed to function within a larger program or system that is typically focused on the performance of one basic task. Apple OS X Dashboard and Windows Vista Sidebar (gadgets) manage widgets within desktop operating systems. Many websites such as MySpace and many blogs incorporate user-produced widgets.

Wiki - a collaborative website that allows users to add and update content to it.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) - a markup language that describes content and its structure. In the context of a dynamic website, XML can be used to keep design and formatting separate from the underlying content so that one can be changed without affecting the other. It also allows the content to be easily used across multiple media.
For example, in an XML file of books, one book may have a title of Moby Dick and paragraph text "Call me Ishmael." but nothing about the size of the title, color of the text or whether it is right or left justified.

So you can't convince management to let employees blog, and including user recommendations on your site is even scarier to them. A social network makes no sense for your business, and the marketing budget certainly won't include a new site built with AJAX. So how do you keep your Web 1.0 site relevant in this Web 2.0 world?

First of all, it's important to remember that people are still looking for information about your company, its services and products, and a Web 1.0 site is probably still be the best way for you to deliver that. Then take advantage of inexpensive and free Web 2.0 features to help your audience find and access your content.

Use social bookmarking tools like Del.icio.us and Digg to increase your search engine visibility and lead visitors to the most useful content on your website. Create RSS feeds and syndicate new content to your visitors so that they can access it where and when they want it, keeping your message top of mind. Create a company or brand profile on social networks and join the conversation including links to your site.

These are just a handful of ways that you can use Web 2.0. Do you use them? Do you have others? Share your Web 1.0+ experiences.

"Web 2.0"--a funny buzzword for "we fixed the bubble." There are many advantages to learning from our past, but the number one thing I think coming from these times is a movement to separate content from design.

If you do nothing else in evaluating a potential web vendor, make sure they separate the content of the site from the design. What does this mean?

By separating the content (words, pictures) from the design (look/feel, functionality) you gain better control of each. That way, on the content side, if you need to change anything from one misspelling to a full article, you need not "crack open the big egg" to fix it - you don't affect the design at all. Furthermore, when you graduate to a new brand or a new site, all the previously existing content is available for you to flow into the new site.

As an example - see any of the blogging sites/software out there: you can write to your heart's content and then change the "theme" of your site whenever you want -- without affecting the long list of posts.

Our crew took a stand years ago to make it a policy that, whether the client asked for such control or not, we build all of our web solutions with this in mind - allowing fixes and changes to website to take only minutes, instead of hours or days. It has saved both us and our clients an enormous amount of time, and time is money.

A month or two ago I was asked about the use of YouTube and MySpace in the 2008 Campaign. I opined that unlike the enormous impact that blogging and Meetup had on Howard Dean's campaign in 2004 I felt that in 2008 we were unlikely to see a candidate who would not exist, but for YouTube or MySpace. Because these sites are mature today compared to the state of blogging 3 years ago, most campaigns will take advantage of them, but some more successfully or others. Using online marketing in a campaign is not newsworthy, but mistakes like the hacking of John McCain's MySpace page or a "Macaca moment" are. This week though I saw videos from two candidates that clearly showed how one campaign "got" the medium and another didn't.

Hilary Clinton's campaign produced a Sopranos parody to tease her selection of a campaign song. The video is a dead-on fit with the YouTube audience and medium. It also serves the campaign. No more a Rhodes Scholar shrew, the Sopranos parody shows that Hilary doesn't take herself too seriously. She shares the pop culture fixation on the Sopranos series finale and pokes fun at her family just like we all do. Of course, the video is about the selection of the campaign theme song, hopefully not the issue that we are using to select the next president.

Then there is Mike Gravel's campaign, which has two videos, one of the candidate staring at the viewer then throwing a rock into a lake and another of Gravel collecting wood then sitting by a fire. Gravel's videos are completely baffling to me. Neither has any voiceover or explanation. They remind me of the original zen-like Infiniti commercials and have the same result: interest but no sales. The ads have gotten Gravel some press on CNN and the Daily Show, which have both run mocking pieces about them. Gravel's got name recognition now, but for the wrong reason.

Personally, it's too early for me to be thinking seriously about presidential candidates. But whether you are selling a future president or a product you need to use the appropriate tone in the online medium of choice and make sure that you position yourself correctly. Where have you seen style and medium clash online?

I've shown off Twittervision to just about everyone that I can...I figure that I ought to include it here in the blog. Careful though: I find this so addictive that I've interrupted this blog entry four times so far to see what is being posted.

If you don't know Twitter, it's a micro blog platform where users write what they're doing in "tweets" of 140 characters or less. Twitter's tipping point seems to have been at SXSW this year, closely followed by a New York Times Magazine article which catapulted it into the spotlight.

Twittervision is a geographic representation of posts to Twitter in real time that indicates where on the globe those twitters are from. To me, watching the posts on Twittervision brings back the wonder that I felt reading early websites back in '94, especially in those serendipitous moments when a group of people from different parts of the world post about the same topic like being hungry, tired or getting out of work.

I've been pitching Twitter as a medium to keep audiences in contact with brands and disseminate updates. Hopefully these ideas will bear fruit in the next month or two. Until then, enjoy the view.

I was in Minneapolis the other day visiting a client, and while my client rented a car, I tried out the rental car company's new kiosks where you can print out directions to your destination. These kiosks should be a win, win, win. I get accurate directions customized to the detail that I want, the car rental company employees are more efficient because they don't have to talk me through my route and millions of pink highlighters are saved from marking my path on a map that never had enough detail. But the kiosks don't deliver on that promise. The reason is poor usability, which was bad enough that eventually an employee took pity on me and printed out the directions himself.

So what made the kiosk so difficult? In order to get directions of course you need to indicate where you are going and the interface made that near impossible. The home page provided a few most popular destinations, which was great, but when the hotel that I was staying at wasn't included in that list the functionality broke down. Getting to a complete list of locations was unclear and the names of those locations were not in alphabetical order. To make things worse, the name of my hotel in their listing was different from the name of the hotel in my reservation, so I just hoped that I picked the right place. I'm 6'3" so I'm used to hunching over at ATMs, but the screen on this thing was at about waist level and angled to make reading and touching the screen really difficult. Finally, the directions were printed on thermal fax paper. I didn't know they still made that stuff, but if you were wondering they do and the print quality has not improved.

I'm sure that when the interface was developed the designers felt like it was perfectly clear how to find a location. But when we design interfaces, navigation or tools we invariably get too close to the design or do not understand the audience well enough to avoid all the usability pitfalls. I know this because it happens to me too. The solution to this situation doesn't have to be expensive or complicated usability testing, nor should it be; the biggest issues are uncovered by the first 5-10 test subjects which leaves you time to revise and retest to make sure that you actually fixed the issues that were uncovered. You just need to do the testing and then have the motivation to actually address those issues even when they conflict with previous decisions and impact the budget.

I hear all the time that my clients can't afford usability testing, and in those cases I do it quickly on in-house subjects. But doesn't this example illustrate why you can't afford not to usability test and thereby resolve problems in advance? For this rental company, poor usability resulted in an opportunity for customer experience enhancement squandered and the significant investment in hardware and software wasted. Finally, the employee time savings that they probably hoped for was lost; especially when we returned the car and an employee was stationed at the kiosks while a line of customers waited to check-in.

What bad usability experiences have you had? Where have you noticed employees doing more work when customers can't use new devices? Have you been guilty of skipping usability-testing? Have you learned your lesson?

When I first joined broadstreet, my friend Paul was using this word combo all the time. It sounded a bit jargon-ish, a bit B.S., and it was even funny the way it came out of his mouth, "Agg-NOSS-tic." I love Paul. But I've come to understand why this description is important.

When developing marketing or communications initiatives, it's important we "plug-in" to our clients' culture, policies or back-end technology. Adapting the message, media or technology to suit what will work best for the client is true partnership.

In an event, this might translate to partnering with an internal team or other vendor to drive an experience that is "familiar enough" while "different enough." In an interactive solution, this translates to building a website that can plug into our clients' backend of ASP/.Net (Microsoft), JSP (Sun) or Apache.

Say it with me: "PLAT-form Agg-NOSS-tic."

I was in a meeting a few days ago pitching the addition of a blog to a client's site. I was talking about the blog's structure, design, features, etc, but the suggestions and questions that I was getting were just a little off. I couldn't figure out what it was until we started talking about the blogs that we read. Of the eight or so of us in the meeting less than half read blogs on a regular basis. This got me to thinking, is the whole blog thing overblown?

Personally, I love blogs. I love that they have made it so easy for people to have their say online. I love the amount of content this leads to. I especially love how these two factors make available to the rest of us that niche of content that each of us is an expert on; whether that is your own life, brand marketing, bhangra or Battle of the Planets.

So I'm not asking if blogs are good or useful... they are. But according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project of the 147 million Internet users out there, only 57 million read blogs and 12 million write them. That's a lot of people, but blog readers still only make up 39% of Internet users. Another survey tells us that 3.1% of respondents read blogs once a day, 4% read them several times a week and 4.5% read them about once a week. In their list of top online activities, visiting blogs was number 20 with just 6.7% of respondents, below activities like reading news, watching video, paying bills, and obtaining medical information. To put those numbers in perspective the Newspaper Association of America measured daily newspaper readership at 49.9% of adults in 2006. Most sobering is the fact that 52% of Internet users never read blogs and 16% don't even know what they are.

So it wasn't so odd that half of the people in my meeting had very little experience with what I was proposing. My expectations were overblown by the thousands of articles on blogs in Wired and Fast Company, the experience of watching Wolf Blitzer on election night 2006 follow the reactions of a team of 20 bloggers at the Internet café Tryst in Washington DC and of course my personal experience that was just a focus group of one guy from that 3.1% who read blogs daily.

It's always good to have your assumptions tested and be reminded that they are just assumptions and not the truth. If I want to live in a world with more blogs and more readers then I need evangelize, promote and work for that cause, but always remember who the audience is that I am preaching to. Not that this will be a hard sell though; of the 22 online activities ranked by Mediamark Research, reading blogs had the second largest increase in users from 2005, up 163.9%.

What do you think, are blogs overblown?

Update: Ad Age has a nice overview of who blogs and who reads reads blogs.

The way to connect well with clients in the financial sector is by strategizing with them to help them solve the business goal at hand...even at the risk of determining a solution that doesn't involve you.

Jen and I were recently approached by a prospective client who said, "We need a CD-ROM--do you guys do CD-ROMs?" Well, of course, we do CD-ROMs, and we showed some examples. But then we asked them what their business goal was, and why they thought the solution was specifically a CD-ROM. Turns out they just wanted their communication to stand out - but they also wanted to keep the communication affordable, changeable (editable) and approachable by the target audience. So it may not be a CD-ROM.

I take pride in the fact that our team does not offer an off-the-shelf solution, whether it's a "cost-efficient event" (pipe-n-drape environment) or a static website (one-off short-term solution).

We focus on the business challenge at hand, hone the message, then develop a custom solution--keeping costs, timelines and target audiences in mind.