I just saw a great article in Wired about how Second Life isn’t adding up for the corporate sector. Coke and the NBA have been in there trying and while Second Life may have the cool factor, the cash register isn’t ringing for the marketers and their bosses!

Interesting because I have been saying this from day one. As one who advises clients on new/social media options, I checked out the blogging when it first got hot (loved it and saw great value), I checked out the podcasts (good for commuters but not everyone will have an IPod so it isn’t the perfect solution), I checked out video on Youtube and other sites (so cool and viral), I checked out Linkedin (great value but high maintenance) and MySpace (interesting but have to weed through a lot of riff raff) and Facebook (wild frontier with endless possibilities) and of course Second Life which, when asked, I said from day one it was cool but had no long term value (translates to sales) for the corporate sector.

Now at the Business Smart Tools conference in May, I invited Greg Verdino, then of Digitas, to give a demo of Second Life. With every conference, I want to present something that is way out there for those who aren’t messing around with the latest latest. He was great and it was interesting but many in the audience just didn’t see how they could use it to get their message out to their present and future customers. I agreed with them.

As Wired has mentioned, the concept of Avatars in an online community may evolve into something truly worthwhile for business, but until then, stick to the hundreds of other marketing options that exist online!

Well, the conference is over and I am finally at the point of catch up…I think.  I have great clients who ask for more…more than a blog, more than myspace, more than meebo…let’s go…can I ask for anything more?  It is a dream come true to have a client say they want to continue to move forward in the world of online communities where what a company says matters and how you do business matters even more.  Great stuff…I need to start writing my case studies.

Until then, here is something to ponder.  When the Business Smart Tools Conference was completed, we sent out a thank you to all attendees, speakers and demos along with some questions for each to answer.  How did you like the conference, did it meet your expectations…you know what I mean.  One thing that came back many times was, “where were the women?”  The only women involved were from Creative Concepts. 

As presenter of the conference, I tried to get some women involved and was very aware that there was no female participation from the podium except for myself.  I tried to contact 7-8 women and for various reasons, none could make the conference.  Some didn’t return my call, some didn’t follow up, one was going on her honeymoon (Ok that was a good one).   Maybe there aren’t that many women in the social media/corporate arena, maybe there aren’t many women who are up for the task of public speaking, maybe the women don’t see the value of getting out of the office and into the public eye…I wish someone could explain it because I don’t understand it.

Tonight I happened to be looking at info about the new markeing agency Crayon who has their offices in Second Life.  It is a mash up of talent and information….cool stuff…lots of chatter about them but where are the women? 

I know women for ages have been saying that they don’t have the same opportunities that men do…women aren’t getting paid as much…is that because women aren’t putting themselves out there in the same way?  Are they afraid?  Is it because women have families (please don’t use that one…I have 4 kids and one of them plays AAU basketball where I have literally seen every corner of CT for the last couple of months!)  Are women the innovators?  Are women the leading edge entrepreneurs who have a vision and follow up no matter what anyone says?  There is no excuse for a woman not to succeed in this new online world where the playing field has been leveled and the ones who win are the ones who get it vs. the guys who play golf and talk shop and make deals over a whiskey.

This is the biggest reason I love social media and this new online world…there is no seniority…everyone is scrambling to find the buck and make this work.  The most creative, and I mean creative in the sense of melding the business and online worlds, wins the prize.  Women have an unbelievable chance to make it here.  Where are they?  I guess you will have to come to Creative Concepts to find the perfect mix of female talent and social media know how!

Went to Podcamp NYC and had a great time.  Talked about all the reasons why a company should blog:  search engine optimization, reach out to new and old clients and create a community, auto PR when bloggers like your product/service and finally blogging as a crisis management tool.

Well last week, one of my clients, Bigelow Tea, used their blog for just this reason, to manage a crisis. 

I felt that a well established blog with loyal readers would be the spring board for keeping the lid on the media and would prevent clients from loosing faith when managing a serious situation.  This still may be so, but what I observed with Bigelow is that the blog was used first as a communication tool.  Their first official statement hit the blog and the press took notice from there.  Statements going forward were posted on the blog and these weren’t corporate speak statements.  These were heartfelt, behind the scenes, I am doing the best I can, statements from the co-President Cindi Bigelow.  You may not have agreeed with her (and many didn’t) but you had to hand it to her, she laid out her dilemma honestly and was responding directly to the blog comments and emails pouring in from the main website.  The fact that Cindi had the blog to communicate and reach out to others on her own terms was what helped Bigelow Tea get through their situation honestly and humanly which, and time will tell about this one, should only bring loyalty from old and new clients!

The second interesting thing about the blog as a crisis management tool was that many didn’t even read what Cindi said, they came to speak their mind based on what they heard in the press (and the press didn’t get the story right half of the time and you would know this if you read the blog entries).  It was the one place where the commentors weren’t censored…the one place where they could go to vent and they knew they were being heard.  A community was created as divided as they were.

So my belief in blogs is deeper than before.  Blogs, in my mind, are not just a “new” media tool or a social networking pastime…this is real stuff that is here to stay.  A forum and a tool whose mere structure is, will and should be the backbone of every web presence for the corporate sector!

I have been to a lot of conferences and presented to my share of interested and disinterested individuals so I have the experience to say that Podcamp NYC was a total joy to be a part of!! 

The other conferences I have been to (and I have reviewed them or at least made comments about them on this blog) have been empty in the sense that a bunch of people make themselves out to be the innovators and leaders of new media.  I realized that the others (participants from OMMA to Ad Age among others conferences) were in it to make money or make a name for themselves vs. many at Podcamp NYC who are truly the leaders because of their curiosity, their passion and the fact that many are starting out from ground zero vs. the already successful agencies who are just trying to keep up if they are keeping up at all.  So interesting….so great to be a part of Podcamp!

On the speaker side of the equation, it was equally great to be in a room presenting information about corporate blogging to people who not only cared about it but understood many of the principals we mentioned and then wanted to know more.  The questions were intelligent and nonstop (and thank you to Anil Dash for contributing and adding to our presentation)….what a thrill for Sabine and I to be a part of the great energy at The New Yorker Hotel in NYC.

Here are the promised slides from Creative Concepts’ Podcamp NYC 2007 session on corporate blogging (1 MB pdf file). They’re in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format for those who don’t have or won’t use MS PowerPoint.

Yes, I know so many people are on linkedin (an online business networking social media tool)…so many people are connected, and that is great.  I hope that it changes how people do business.  I hope that it turns the business world upside down with the social media/networking capabilities!

But here is one of my biggest problems with these start ups and many other small businesses.  In order for any business to grow, you have to make the customer happy.  You have to make any process easy whether it be signing up, changing a password, or changing your service.

Well, guess what?  Linkedin has made signing up very easy but when it comes to tweaking your subscription package, they make life very difficult.  First, you can’t downgrade your account online (even though you can upgrade, change your password, enhance your profile….).  There is no 800 number to call…all you can do is send an email and hope for the best.  I made my request through an online cust. svc. email and it took about 24 hours for a response.  The response that came back claimed they were cancelling my subscription.  That was it…no futher explanation from Loretta at Linkedin.

This is not what I asked for!!  I sent a reply email and again no repsonse so I went back online to go through their cust. svc. email.  I got an email back which said that they were not able to do downgrades.  They had to cancel my subscription and then I would have to sign up again and pick the package I wanted.

Reid Hoffman, CEO, Allen Blue, VP Product Strategy, Keith Rabois VP Business and Corp Dev and other Linkedin staff…I thought the scare tactics went out when social media came in!!  Don’t tell me that you can’t do what I ask cause that is just stupid with the technology you have involved in your service. 

What is apparent to me is that Linkedin doesn’t care about their customers and their needs.  What is my motivation to sign up again…I can’t get anyone on the phone, they don’t respond in a timely manner, they lie and say they can’t do something they can do.  I am no longer a strong advocate for Linkedin.com!

As I have stated before, high quality customer service needs to be the new marketing tool (especially for linkedin).  The best way to maintain and get new customers is by listening and acting wisely.  Just ask Dell who is trying harder at customer service!  Just ask the Creative Concepts clients!

Greg Verdino over at Digitas has a great blog!  He writes about trends among other things and is now being quoted in the press.  One of the latest subjects has been about Second Life.  Greg talks about how Starwood Hotels got a lot of hype for creating “Aloft” which was an online resort in this online world where you can live a second made up life, buy things (with Second Life money) and now, experience violence.  The draw for many is that any player can recreate themselves and be anything they want to be.  Well the problem with Starwood is that they carved out a spot for themselves but didn’t work their new place after all was said and done…they have a hotel but no greeeters or staff which in the real world wouldn’t be good for business and in Second Life amounts to the same.

As Greg points out, when any company makes a bold move into these new forays, you can’t just create it, walk away, and think you are getting anywhere.  As with anything else in business (or life for that matter), make a choice, stick with it and work it the best you can.  This applies to blogging, podcasting, press releases or just keeping up with the bookkeeping.  If you let things go, any initial effort is a waste of time and money!  Consistentcy with every campaign or any effort will win the prize at the end of the day!

On a more local note than Disney, I headed over to the offices of the Fairfield Metro Center for a light cocktail party this evening.  What a project that is going to be between corporate and retail and a train station…it will change Fairfield in a great way!

Ran into a good friend, Michael from DesignSite.  He and his buddy Joe are making it big with podcasting in the music industry…more specifically Capitol Records.  They created The Pet Sounds 40th anniversary podcast series.  It got a crazy big number of hits on iTunes..check it out.

It has also been a big day of blogging and websites.  Working with a host now where we are having problems uploading a simple blog design for a corporate client.  They are working hard at solving the problem but come on..my client is waiting…other solutions are waiting in the wings on Friday that is for sure.

Bigelow Tea sent out an email blast today to 49,500 of their biggest supporters….56.41% of the visitors to their blog were new today…love those multi level communications to get the word out…blogging, email and search engine press releases (those are coming)…you can’t get any better than that.

Ok, I am done for the day!

Hello everyone and welcome to 2007. I have started out the year with a bang by dropping a new blog design for your pleasure…it matches more closely with the Creative Concepts website and was designed by my web guys at Fat Free Studio. Enjoy!

So with a new Year comes the all mighty and very tiring predictions. Every email and every article I have read today talks about Google, AOL, MySpace, Social Media, Online Networking…the predictions list goes on and on! Where are we going, how are we getting there, who is doing what …you know how it goes.

One article by Bart Cleveland was a bit unique. He talks about how the small agencies need to embrace social media. He says, and he is right, that the small agencies often have the flexibility to be the innovators but they may not be keeping up with the social media revolution because it is moving so quickly and they can’t keep up because of lack of staff, lack of time, lack of faith in successful outcomes….this could be true for many but not for Creative Concepts.

We work hard at staying ahead of the curve at Creative Concepts but it doesn’t come quickly or easily. We research and study the trends and the marketplace, we listen to our clients who are thankfully asking us to help them with the online world which includes SEO, blogs, podcasts, video, optimized press releases, websites and more, and we make a decision about what works and what doesn’t which often comes through hard work, courage and a lot of business know-how.

As a small agency we are proud to be offering something to our clients that they can’t seem to find elsewhere! It is our goal and ambition to use these social media tools to enhance what already exists in the PR and Marketing worlds. The ability to guide our clients through the new and ever changing internet terrain is not only our mission but our pleasure as we continue to be ahead of the pack by merging the old tricks with the new plays.

I won’t even attempt to make a prediction for 2007 other than we are looking forward to an exciting year with clients who are willing to take the internet ride! Yahoo!!

I am proud to say that Creative Concepts has successfully gotten the Bigelow Tea Blog off the ground.

Why is the blog successful? Cause many players from the ground up to the top have a hand in the blog. The blog is honest (and so is Creative Concepts with full disclosure on the about page) and insightful from bringing health tips and info about tea to the co-presidents message about her life as a Bigelow family member, as a female running a business, as a person loving her job and career.

And please let’s not forget about Bob, VP Sales and Marketing…he has brought on some of his heros to help support Bigelow Green tea in the marketplace…sports greats like Joe Torre and Phil and Chris Simms not only talk about Bigeow on Imus in the Morning and do photo shoots for ads but they choose green tea for health reasons and choose Bigelow tea cause the company makes a high quality tea that people can count on (check out the pictures where Joe and Phil recently visited Fairfield, Conn. headquarters of Bigelow).

There are many more stories to come from Bigelow…this blog shows that within any company there are many personalities and many interests and all can successfully fit under one roof…all can come together to produce a product they are proud of…all can blog about it in a way where we can learn, share and enjoy all that this company offers.

Take a look and enjoy!

So what is a flog? It is a fake blog (writers from PR firms who pretend to be blogging honestly about a product or company in order to start a buzz) created by the geniuses at marketing and pr firms. Just kidding about the genius part. Edelman PR, one of the largest firms in the world and most recently Zipatoni have mislead their clients into believing that they know the best way to get exposure and get new clients and they know what is going on with emerging technology and viral marketing…for this Wal-Mart and Sony pay the big bucks.

Well if any of these men and women from these firms took the time to truly learn about blogging and its effectiveness within its communities and if these men and women were clear about doing business ethically, then the word flog would never exist.

Corporate blogging is a highly effective communication and marketing tool. eHobbies is a toy site. Once they created a blog, sales increased by 2-4% which is the trend for retail sites with blogs. There are many reasons to blog for business: increased search engine rankings, new clients get a feel for the business, reaching out to past and present customers…the list goes on and on. And yes PR and Marketing firms can be involved but only if there is full disclosure!!

As with everything else in life, there is no shortcut. Success comes from honest hard work.

Read about Sony’s flog debacle here.