Archive for September, 2006

Traffic, traffic, and more traffic…

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Copyblogger has a great list of resources regarding the ever-lingering and ever-changing concept of building Web site traffic…nice job on this post!
One strategy involves linking. Honeymoons, for example, are a good target.

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A blog about refrigerators?

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

Businesses still scratch their heads when thinking about how to build a blog for their business. It’s often challenging to think about how to connect your product to the interests of consumers.
Let’s say you make or sell refrigerators. You might say, “who would ever want to read a blog about refrigerators?” You might stop there and then dismiss this whole blogging thing altogether. Not if you’re refrigerator-maker Sub-Zero.
This company, maker of ultra-cool refrigerators/freezers of all types (who can forget Owen Wilson bragging about his “twin Sub-Zs” in the movie Meet the Parents) decided not to make a blog about refrigerators (how many refrigerator enthusiasts do you know?). Instead, they recently created a blog about taking care of wine. I bet we all know several wine enthusiasts.
The blog is pretty cool–and sound from a marketing standpoint. It focuses on that which is of interest (wine) and then subtly touts that which protects that interest (their product). I think it’s a great example of corporate creativity and corporate blogging that truly connects.

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Ford Motor Bares its Soul

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

I was told today about a new blog/community site launched by Ford Motor Company. The site is called Bold Moves. As many know, Ford has been struggling uphill in terms of sales, profitability (or lack thereof), and stock price. This kind of circumstance is very tough on an organization of this size and scale; trying to turn around a company this big is a monumental challenge.
This new site appears to be a site for employees, customers, analysts, and otherwise to truly communicate the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is compiling news feeds from different sites that are both positive and negative toward Ford. Most noteworthy, though, is the series of video documentaries which literally take you into company meetings, conference calls, and insider conversations.
What’s so intriguing about this whole concept, as you’ll notice, is that Ford is letting it all hang out. It’s putting out very negative information about itself…negative analyst comments, negative press, and negative customer feedback. They’re attempting to be very transparent–acknowledging the difficulties they face in an effort to truly turn around the company. You see small companies taking this path fairly often, but not so many in the corporate/publicly traded setting.
It should be interesting to see what kind of impact it has. If nothing else, I think it is a great device for the Ford employees to stay abreast of the changes/tactics so each one has an understanding of how that should apply to them as individuals.

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Posted in Business Blogging | 1 Comment »

Simple System Maintenance

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

A lot of computer novices don’t realize that their computers require maintenance, just like your car, truck or SUV. Windows tends to store many files unnecessarily and over time, those unused files pile up causing things to slow down. You’ll notice it takes longer for Web sites to load or programs to open up. Rather than doing extreme solution of reformatting the computer, a few easy to use freeware utilities can be used to optimize your system again.

  • Ad-aware – One of the best anti-spyware programs for the money. A few clicks and spyware is gone. It is important to make sure you keep the program up to date which it tells you if you are or not. Depending on how much time you spend online, you should run this program either weekly or monthly.
  • HijackThis – Not the prettiest program out there but HijackThis is great at removing unwanted toolbars and buttons from Internet Explorer. If you see something you don’t know about, I recommend looking into what the program is through Google. Run this program as necessary.
  • CCleaner – A very simple to use program that will eliminate many old files and clean up your systems registry. I recommend running this weekly or monthly depending on how much work you do on your computer.

After using these programs, defragmenting your hard drive is your next step. This is built into Windows, just go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools and choose Disk Defragmenter. This should be done about once a month. Restart your computer and things should be running a little snappier just like your vehicle after its 30,000 mile maintenance.

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