S&MM SoundOff

Marketing Guru Scott Hornstein Sounds Off: The Purpose-Driven Blog

I understand the derivation of the term “blog”, and I am actively engaged in postings, but I’m here to tell you it’s a horrible word.

It is absolutely inelegant. It sounds like an intestinal virus or perhaps an act of criminal mischief (“they blogged him from behind and took his wallet”). A blogger sounds like Cockney for “creep”, or a curse that Malfoy might hurl at Harry Potter during a heated quarter of Quidditch (“Blog you, Harry Potter”). B-log might be the handle for an interactive rapper (a new angle, like the Hasidic ska guy). Or, short for a blithering ogre.

What variations occur to you?

But whatever the name, its potential to deliver meaningful ideas and be a conduit for dialog, whether with peers, prospects or customers, is virtually untapped.

Blogs have an important future contributing to the maintenance of brand and competitive differentiation. Their immediacy and interactivity will become a powerful lever in establishing trust and respect in customer communications. And trust and respect answer to a higher calling than simple satisfaction. As a wise man once said, I am satisfied with my laptop. Do I trust it? No way.

Read the S&MM article "Express Yourself" about how managers are using blogs.

It's All About Community

Recently, I came across a blog post referring to marketing expert Guy Kawasaki’s top ten list of ways to build community around a product or service.  

He’s a self-proclaimed user-group junkie. A user group is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually (but not always) computer-related, according to Wikipedia. Kawasaki’s tips are based on the creation of these online communities.

I can relate to his post because I am addicted to online communities. They’re a great way to connect with people, including customers. I use online communities for everything from career networking to arranging playdates for my mini Schnauzer (pictured above).

Sales and marketing professionals would benefit from building a community on the Web. It’s an easy way to reach out to customers. Online forums can help you learn what works or doesn’t. You can make improvements on your product based on real customers' reactions.

For more details, check out Kawasaki’s top ten list. Plus, learn how to generate sales through the use of community service events.

A tip of the hat goes to Misoapbox.com for their informative post on free-forming communities.

Marketing Guru Scott Hornstein Sounds Off: The Cognitive Dissonance of Spam

A cognition is an element of knowledge or belief.

Cognitive dissonance, as proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger—and loosely defined by me—is when your knowledge, as evidenced by your day-to-day life, is directly at odds with what is otherwise reported to be reality. This dissonance caused by the contradicting cognitions initially stuns, then pushes us to process the data some more.

I’m a-swamp with cognitive dissonance. Specifically, I just don’t understand why spam still exists. I suspect greed.

On January 28, 2004, Bill Gates predicted that spam would be a “thing of the past” within two years—I hope you weren’t holding your breath. Judging from my inbox, it’s very much alive.

JupiterResearch reports recently predicted that “the volume of spam messages per customer will steadily decrease by 13 percent a year from 2005 to 2010.”

Is this your experience? It’s not mine.

Let’s face it, there’s only two entities that could squash spam, I mean really step on it hard, once and for all: The federal government and the computer/software giants. Personally, I take any federal intervention or oversight as unabashed bad news for industry.

So that leaves those with the clout to deliver the k-o, like the IBMs, Microsoft’s, Intel’s, Dell’s, etc.

In processing my cognitive dissonance, I think the reason that Bill Gates’ prediction hasn’t come true is that the industry giants have simply determined that there isn’t enough money to be made in eliminating spam. Would it deliver lots of happy loyal customers? Yes. Immediate profits? Probably not.

What do you think?

From Marketing Guru Scott Hornstein: Time for a Rant

I was the only one in the office this holiday season and it was glacially slow. All except for online fraud. In fact, I was appalled at the tsunami of spam, phish, spoof, and general BS that is crashing into my inbox and washing over my head daily. Seems that updating my spam filter is an unending commitment to my sanity, and sending alerts to my host (and the companies being defrauded) is an increasing commitment to the survival of our industry.

And I resent the hell out of it. Not just because of its impact on me, but because of its impact on all of our customers and all of our businesses. To succeed long-term, and I intend on doing just that, we must establish and nourish trust and respect with our customers. With e-mail as a preferred communication method for many, this is as if we are dealing with cyber-insurgents planting IEDs (improvised explosive device) to erode customer communications for nihilistic gain.

Enough talk. Where is the leadership of the industry giants who could squash this like the annoying parasite it is?

My Boots Weren't Made for Walking

It's day two of the transit strike in New York City, and all I can say is, thank goodness for telecommuting. Without a home Internet connection, I'd have to brave a four-mile trek in below-freezing weather—which I may have to do at some point, but for now, I'm toasty in my heated apartment.

Staying at home, however, got me thinking about what it means to set up a proper home office. What I have right now—basically just a laptop, a cell phone for long-distance calls, and a cable modem—is good for the occasional work-at-home day, but I'm far from being a true telecommuter or member of the mobile workforce. For instance, having a proper hand or headset would be good to have for calls longer than a few minutes, and my company's Web mail isn't optimized for Macs, which is what I use, making it hard to check and respond to e-mails from my corporate address. But perhaps the worst thing about working from home? The ability to hit up the fridge whenever I feel like it. Hopefully, the transit issues will be resolved soon, and it will beback to commuting to work as usual. Until then, I'm enjoying the respite from cubicleville.

Not sure if working from home is right for you? Here are some tips to think about when working from home, or how to tell when working from home simply isn't working.

E-Mail: Now and Forever?

I read an opinion piece last Friday where the author opined that e-mail was at a tipping point. She believed that problems like spam, phishing, and viruses devalue e-mail because they make it hard for recipients to know which e-mail was legitimate. In fact, she cited a survey that said respondents could correctly identify fraudulent e-mails 82 percent of the time— but on the flip side, they could only identify legitimate e-mails 52 percent of the time. As a result this has raised skepticism about e-mail use in general, in her opinion, and if industry standards on protecting e-mail are not put in place, the medium will be seriously impacted.

While I agree that there should definitely be industry standards in place for e-mail so that spam and phishing are not proliferating our inboxes, I don’t believe that users will ever want to give up on e-mail. They have accepted spam and phishing as part of their daily routine, and I think people accept the fact that there is a chance their e-mail may not be opened because of spam. I’ll even go so far to say that even if there isn’t much done in the way of standards put in place, people will still use e-mail because we have become very dependent on it as a primary form of contact. Just look at CAN-SPAM Act—has that really done much to curb spam? I haven’t seen a difference in my inbox.

Do you think e-mail will go the way of the Sony Betamax because of spam, phishing, and viruses? What do you think the government and/or companies can do to curb spam and phishing?

For tips on how to avoid phishing and other hazards Read our feature: Top Tech Scams for 2005