Friday, February 29, 2008

create your own booklets--FREE!

BookletCreator - is a free online tool that allows to create a booklet from a PDF document. It reorders pages so that after printing and folding the pages you get a small book. Here is how it goes:

"The original document should be in PDF format with "Portrait" paper orientation. If you have a document in the format other than PDF, you should at first convert it to PDF. You can use some free PDF creation tool. For example PrimoPDF. You upload your document to the BookletCreator website and download the result.

RSS Feeds for Individual User's Lists in WorldCat.org--from RSS4lib blog

OCLC announced today that "Public WorldCat lists are available as RSS feeds that can be monitored using any RSS-capable service or software." When you view a user's list within WorldCat.org, you will be able to subscribe to an RSS feed for that list -- so whenever that user adds an item to it, you'll find out.

Libraries that use WorldCat.org lists to generate reading lists on various topics can now embed those lists easily and automatically on library web pages -- and let their patrons know, at the same time, that there are new items of interest.

So, for example, I've created a brief list of books about RSS. You can subscribe to its feed at http://worldcat.org/profiles/varnumk/lists/53691/rss. Whenever I add a new item to the list, you'll know. If you go to my list in WorldCat (it's called "RSS4Lib RSS List"), the RSS link OCLC provides redirects you to AddThis.com, a site that provides one-click subscription or one-click bookmarking links to a wide range of RSS aggregators and social bookmarking services.

Monday, February 25, 2008

eBook blog

blog to be a "moderated discussion of the issues surrounding eBooks, for librarians and publishers.”

blog is by Sue Polanka, Head of Reference, Wright State University

http://noshelfrequired.blogspot.com/

Sunday, February 24, 2008

screencasting

one type of software that i'm looking forward to playing around with more:

http://mashable.com/2008/02/21/screencasting-video-tutorials/

effective teleconferencing

we're all using WebEx and teleconferencing much more...here's a great article about how to do that effectively:

http://www.cio.com/article/print/184550

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

catching up with social media

If you’re still unsure about blogging and new social media, you’ll want to read BusinessWeek’s Social Media Will Change Your Business. The article updates their May 2005 report similarly titled Blogs Will Change Your Business. They decided to revise the popular story because despite the rapid advancements in today’s technology, readers are still downloading the original article.

“Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.”

(from iLibrarian)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

open source ILS

Inside Higher Education: Open Minds, Open Books, Open Source

Libraries are starting to embrace technologies developed in-house or by other universities. Will they eventually replace third-party vendors?

Monday, February 18, 2008

yay harvard!

Harvard Adopts Open Access Requirement

In a positive (perhaps pivotal) development report for Open Access, Harvard University is the first academic institution in the US requiring its scholars to make their research available in the institution’s open access repository. While it includes an opt-out provision, this is no doubt a bold and progressive move by Harvard University in support of access to knowledge.

Below are today’s blog posts, both before and after the vote:

Open Access News
Michael Geist’s blog
Joho the blog
ACRLog

11 things to know about the semantic web



11 Things to Know About the Sematic Web (ReadWriteWeb)



1. You don’t need to apologize for calling it Web 3.0. Of course the Web does not upgrade in one go like a company switching to Vista. But there is a definite phase transition from current technologies. My personal Web 3.0 definition is “the combination of Web 2.0 mass collaboration with structured databases”.


1 Things to Know About the Sematic Web (ReadWriteWeb)

i'm a comic book character!

so fun!!



http://toonlet.com/archive?i=5526

US book sales

U.S. 2007 wholesale e-book sales: $31.7M, or 23.6 percent over 2006—but should they have been still higher?

ebooksales.jpg

Interesting. Read the whole post at TeleRead.

No library, educational or professional electronic sales are included and the retail figure might actually be in the $60 million range. All in, retail sales might be well past $80 million.

It's still not huge and doesn't come close to a single Harry Potter, growth is bigger with small numbers, but things have to start somewhere. I am seeing quite a few Kindles and Readers at the airport.

Stephen


**post pasted from Stephen's Lighthouse: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/02/us_ebook_sales.html

forget ppt.

mashable has another of their great lists.

Forget PowerPoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps

Here are the 13:

AjaxPresents
BrinkPad.com
Empressr.com
Google Documents
Preezo.com
PresentationEngine.com
PreZentit.com
SlideRocket.com
Spresent.com
ThinkFree.com
Thumbstacks.com
Vcasmo.com
Zoho Show

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Top 100 Tools for Learning & Performance Technologies

really great list to keep up-to-date and for finding technology that can work for various functions

http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

ACRL professional development proposals

Calls for professional development sessions

The Association of College and Research Libraries invites proposals for a half-day or full-day professional development sessions to be held prior to the 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting or the 2009 ALA Annual Conference. Submission deadline is April 7 , 2008. ALA Midwinter Meeting workshops will be held on January 23 2009 , in Denver, USA. ALA Annual Conference preconferences will be held on July 10 2009 , in Chicago. "Professional development programs should allow participants to develop skills related to a specific topic and should focus on interactive learning through a variety of presentation styles. Programs that offer practical tips and cutting-edge techniques are especially encouraged. Proposals should explicitly outline activities that will be incorporated during the session to enable attendees to achieve the session's learning outcomes." Proposals should be submitted via the online proposal form at
https://marvin.foresightint.com/surveys/Tier1Survey/ACRL/241

university campuses abroad...

The Phantom Campus in China

In May 2006, Kean University attracted national attention for its announcement that it would “be the first American university to open an extensive and newly constructed university campus on Chinese soil in September 2007.” As the New York Times reported at the time, “Glasses clinked, toasts were made and then leaders of this 151-year-old institution were calling it the most important moment in its history.”

Well, it’s now February 2008, and there’s been no such announcement of the historic campus opening. In response to multiple inquiries on the project’s status, a university spokesman offered only brief answers over e-mail. “Kean University is continuing to pursue plans to open a campus in Wenzhou. The application was approved by the municipal and provincial governments and is now with the Ministry of Education for review,” Stephen Hudik said in one.

“We do not have a timetable in place at this time for the upcoming [opening] of the campus. We are still very much engaged with the governing bodies in China on the application. The process of opening up a new campus is a lengthy one and involves many various procedures and reviews. We are continuing step by step with the process and await the decision of the Ministry of Education,” he said in a second. That message came in response to follow-up questions about whether the negotiations were still active and what a new timetable for opening might be, if Kean’s funding offer from local and provincial Chinese governments still held, and if university officials remained optimistic about ultimately attaining approval from the Ministry.

Colleges across the United States continue to plan and construct ever-more-ambitious extensions of themselves abroad. A front-page article on branch campuses in Sunday’s New York Times, the first in a series on higher education and globalization, described the phenomenon as “a kind of educational gold rush.”

Yet, in China — where the market for higher education is sizzling hot and the quantity of potential students staggeringly large — a number of highly ambitious plans by American colleges to open full-fledged campuses have fizzled or otherwise been indefinitely forestalled. To take another example, in May 2005, Inside Higher Ed reported that the University of Montana planned to open a campus for 2,000 Chinese undergraduates in fall 2006. The hoped-for campus — which would be funded by private investors — has so far been mired in the Chinese Ministry approval process.

“In China, you never want to formally apply for anything that you know is not going to be approved,” said Terry Weidner, director of Montana’s Mansfield Center, which focuses on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. “We have never made a formal application, so what we were doing is waiting for the word, ‘You may now apply,’ meaning ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink, it’ll now be approved.’ ” To date, there’s been no (unofficial) word either way.

When asked about the challenges of establishing campuses in China, American academics point to the Chinese Ministry’s slow-paced scrutiny of foreign colleges looking to operate in the country. The Chinese embassy didn’t respond to an inquiry, but the Ministry’s scrutiny is arguably well-placed given the seemingly unending number of American institutions looking to China to build exchange partnerships, dual degree programs, and even campuses (typically if they can get the infrastructure built for them by local governments or outside investors).

“China is, as a policy issue, grappling with precisely this idea. How should they welcome foreign freestanding operations in China and how to do it; what should be the parameters? Eventually they’ll figure it out,” said Philip G. Altbach, director of Boston College’s Center for International Education. “Whether Kean University or Montana has given up the ghost after all this time, I have no idea. But I’m sure they or numerous others would like to get in on the ground floor.”

Complicating the debate further is the fact that while “academic exchange” is often the buzz-term — and no doubt that’s often part of the motivation — institutions are usually out for financial gain, too. In speaking about the planned Montana campus, for instance, the university stressed that taxpayer monies would not be used. And the fact that university officials had hoped it would be a money-making endeavor is no secret. Among the goals and objectives identified by President George M. Dennison in 2006-7: “Pursue alternative revenue sources, including the China Campus.”

“Those who tend to be nervous about Western influence are certainly nervous about the for-profit model, as well, because they have conceptions about Western profiteering,” said Weidner.

He added that “it’s sort of obvious that there is disagreement at the highest level on the Chinese side” about what to do with its American suitors.

“I think the Chinese probably know they’re the No. 1 market on the planet. It’s not news to them,” said Don Olcott, chief executive of the London-based Observatory on Borderless Higher Education.

Citing the momentum that drives the desired expansions, Olcott also mentioned the often understated risks. “I think it is risky. I think it’s probably more risky than most institutions who have engaged in it will admit, because there are so many unknowns as the international market has been in flux.” It’s very difficult, Olcott added, to find out from institutional leaders what they’ve spent in funding their overseas (ad)ventures. While foreign governments or investors in some cases offer to pay for the physical plant — making the prospect seem palatable even to cash-strapped state universities — programs and campuses abroad can swallow significant administrative resources during the negotiation process alone.

“I’m entirely convinced,” Olcott said, “that there are institutions that are trying to play in this market who have no business being in it.”

The Players and Their Market

In China, the particular challenges include significant financial risks — “figuring out how much money can go into this” — as well as regulatory, logistical and cultural hurdles, said Robin Matross Helms, who just began researching an article on branch campuses in China (and who works in the University of Minnesota’s provost’s office as coordinator of faculty awards). Government regulations require that foreign educational entities have a Chinese college as a partner in order to operate in the country. But that can be easier said than done — even when both sides seem willing. Having lived in China, Helms said, she was particularly struck by “how much people will tell you what you want to hear, whether or not it’s true.”

“They take you out; you get wined and dined. You think you’re ready to move on with this partnership and then it goes up in smoke,” she said. “You have to choose your partners very carefully.”

Given these challenges, by far the dominant model for international education initiatives in China is much smaller in scale, with joint degree programs being one popular approach. As of August 2006, more than 1,300 joint programs were operating with 378 more at the candidate stage, according to a report from the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, “Sino-Foreign Joint Education Ventures: A National, Regional and Institutional Analysis.”

Some universities have been successful in setting up centers in collaboration with Chinese institutions, like Johns Hopkins University’s longstanding center for Chinese and American Studies at Nanjing University. Bucking what has become the dominant model, the Universities of Liverpool and Nottingham both established full-fledged campuses in China. As outlined in a recent discussion paper from Agora, a British think tank focused on higher education, “British Universities in China: The Reality Beyond the Rhetoric,” Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University opened in 2006 as an independent, stand-alone institution rather than a Liverpool outpost. It more than quadrupled its enrollment to 800 students in two years.

Nottingham’s 2,850-student overseas campus — the first Sino-foreign university to receive approval from the Chinese Ministry of Education — operates in partnership with Zhejiang Wanli Education, a Chinese education company that paid to build the campus. “[B]ut Nottingham has been careful not to disclose precise details of how the control breaks down between the two partners.”

In his essay in the Agora paper, Ian Gow, pro-vice chancellor at the University of the West of England and formerly the founding provost for the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, wrote it is “unlikely that any other institution will negotiate the sort of freedom that the University of Nottingham and the University of Liverpool achieved. It is much more likely that institutions will come in and teach and research what the Chinese want them to teach (science and technology) and where they want them to teach it.”

And even in its case study of Liverpool’s initiative — enabled by agreements with Xi’an Jiaotong University and the American for-profit education company, Laureate Education Incorporated — the Agora paper indicates that “[i]t may be significant that this university started life as the Liverpool-Xi’an Jiaotong University and has now quietly shifted to Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.”

In this climate, some other American universities that earlier announced grandiose plans have since backed down to focus on smaller-scale endeavors. Oklahoma City University, for instance — credited in the Observatory report on Sino-foreign joint ventures for establishing the first joint degree program in China in 1987 (a master’s of business administration with the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics) — announced in May 2002 that “it has been invited to become the first American university to establish a campus in the People’s Republic.”

“The OCU China campus will be part of the Oriental City of Universities, a consortium of universities located in Lang Fang, China, 30 minutes north of Beijing. It will be set on 65 acres, and will be built to OCU’s specifications.”

Asked about the fate of the campus last week, Vince Orza, the business school dean, had to dig up the information himself. He later clarified the matter over e-mail, indicating that leadership at OCU killed the project “upon further investigation, questioning.” He added: “In short when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

A Matter of Scale?

Other large-scale projects have also stopped looking so promising upon further investigation and questioning. In July 2006, the State University of New York participated in negotiations to open a 5,000-student campus, “SUNY-Nanjing,” in cooperation with Nanjing University and the Jiangsu Provincial Government. Students would spend two years in China and two years at a SUNY campus. SUNY was expected to send over top-flight faculty — cherry-picked from its campuses’ Web sites by Chinese government officials who identified specific senior faculty they wanted in Nanjing, said Ray M. Bromley, vice provost for international education at SUNY Albany.

Upon approaching the U.S. consulate, they were told “no way” would the consulate process an estimated 1,000 extra visas a year for students in the program as they headed off to SUNY campuses, Bromley recalled. How would consular officials know that the students ever intended to come back to China? (One of the requirements for a student visa is to illustrate “nonimmigrant intent.”) SUNY administrators were in the process of drafting a revised academic program that would include one year in China, two in New York, and then one more in China, so students would have to return to finish the program, before Kermit L. Hall, SUNY’s lead negotiator and the president of the Albany campus, died in a swimming accident.

Without a leader, “Questions began to arise. What would the New York Legislature think about this?” said Bromley. He pointed out that the Chinese provincial government, which would be paying for the campus buildings, had mirror-image questions from those of New York’s state legislators. While the Chinese wanted to know they’d be attracting first-class faculty and major investments, New York lawmakers would want to know that top-flight faculty were working with in-state students and that no taxpayer monies would be routed to the initiative abroad. “The net result is you’re educating people who are taking our jobs,” said Bromley. “That’s put in some crass terms, but imagine a provincial politician making a speech on the floor of the house.”

SUNY Albany accordingly redoubled its efforts at East China Normal University in Shanghai, where it maintains a number of collaborations. And on a systemwide level in Nanjing — the SUNY system signed an overarching agreement with Nanjing University in 2005 — eight students are currently enrolled in a pilot dual degree program in which students split their time between Nanjing and the SUNY campus at Stony Brook. Kavita Pandit, senior vice provost for the SUNY system, said it’s her sense that there were never clear, precise plans for the 5,000-student proposed campus, which she described as “a really ambitious collaboration.”

“It’s a much more modest beginning,” Pandit said of the Stony Brook pilot. “There is a lot of groundwork to make these relationships work. We have the vision — now the hard work.”

“We’re talking about small stuff now,” added Albany’s Bromley. “And I’m not sure the big stuff was ever feasible.”


http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/12/china

Saturday, February 9, 2008

more about RSS

Alertle Wants to Make RSS Mainstream

Written by Sarah Perez / February 8, 2008 12:24 PM / 2 Comments

Alertle isn't your typical start page. A web-based RSS reader at its core, Alertle is really a new way of surfing the web. The service allows you to "visit" various web sites by clicking on the web site's icon which is located in a panel at the top of the Alertle home page. The 3-panel layout of this page, with icons at the top and what is essentially an RSS reader below, makes it easy to find and read content.

You know Alertle is trying to be unique from the moment you sign up - the registration process itself is slightly odd as you are prompted to enter your email and password way up at the top-right of the page instead of under the "Click here to signup" button you just pressed. An unobservant new user may even miss this and think the button was broken.

Once logged in, Alertle has pre-subscribed you to over 1000 feeds, already broken down into categories like News, Tech, Life, Travel , Autos, Amazon.com, Sports, Health, Videos, Gaming, eBay, Weather, Gossip, Nasdaq, Funnies, Business, Food, Digg, and NYTimes.


As you click through the tabs and click on the icons for the various web sites, you have a good portion of the internet at your fingertips without needing to enter URLs in the address bar to visit the sites themselves. Of course, techies may not see why this is any more useful than Google Reader or Netvibes, but then again, we're not the target market.

Says Varun Mathur of Zytran Corp., Alertle's parent company, their goal with this product is to "extend the concept of RSS to the mainstream user."

Not a bad idea.

So I showed Alertle to some "mainstream" users who have never heard of RSS and they got it right away without much explanation needed. What's more, they thought it was "cool." From the first sign in (yes, I did have to walk some of them through that due to the odd placement of the text entry boxes), my Luddite friends quickly figured out how to watch videos, read comics, and catch up on the the latest news. They also jumped onto the eBay and Amazon tabs, clearly amazed that you could browse through auctions and products without having to actually visit these web sites.

Although you can customize the content by adding your own feeds and removing others, this wasn't something that really caught their eye upon first glance. (Apparently, a mainstream user's first thought isn't "how can tweak this to make it better?") Alertle also offers a customized view that combines all feeds into one view. Unfortunately, they decided to call this view the "Sigma View" and made it accessible via a button with that Greek letter on it. This was a little too offbeat for these typical non-technical users to pick up on, so that didn't really work. But overall, Alertle was received positively by this group.

So does Alertle appeal to mainstream users? Based on my unscientific, extremely small sample, yes, I think it does. Will they ever hear of Alertle and go sign up for it? Doubtful. If I hadn't asked people to try it, they would never have known of its existence and I don't think that will change.

Still, it's worth mentioning that Alertle does have something unique to offer - an autoplay option. With this feature, you can click a button and your feeds play like a slideshow. You can customize the delay between items from 2 seconds to 2 minutes. (This would be a great feature to have in Google Reader!)

But in the end, Alertle won't be likely to lure you away from whatever services you're using now. Still, you might want to show it to mom and dad.


http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/alertle_wants_to_make_rss_main.php

Friday, February 8, 2008

Look out Google Docs!

Box.net Adds Collaboration, Takes Aim at Google Docs

Written by Sarah Perez / February 7, 2008 8:41 AM / 4 Comments

After being in development for months, Box.net has officially released the beta of their new collaboration functionality. With this new feature, any Box.net user can invite collaborators to any folder in their account. The collaboration feature is also fully compatible with all the OpenBox services, which extends online collaboration beyond just word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, like Google Docs currently offers.

To use the Box.net collaboration feature, you just right-click on any folder in your Box.net account. There, you will see an new menu option to "invite collaborators." You can then enter in the email addresses of the person or persons you wish to collaborate with. As you type, the email addresses of anyone who is already listed in your Box.net Contacts List will appear so you can select them easily, if desired.

Collaborators can be given either "Viewer" or "Editor" rights the folder, a setting you select before sending the invite. After the invitation is sent, those users will then see the same folder appear in their accounts. Every time a new file is added to the folder, all subscribed users are alerted either via email or in the "Updates" section of their Box.net homepage.

Along with collaboration, Box.net is also releasing Version History for any file on Box for users with a premium account. With Version History, any file that you or the collaborators edit will now have a complete record of versions, which is great for un-doing changes, recovering deleted content, and rolling back to previous versions.

The killer feature of the collaboration offering is that it's fully compatibility with Box.net's OpenBox services. With this functionality, collaborators can choose to edit documents online, like they can with Google Docs, but users can choose to use either Zoho or thinkfree to do so. Where Box.net trumps Google Docs is in the fact that Box.net collaborators can also edit photos online with Picnik or Snipshot. Once the edits are finished, Box.net makes it easy to then publish files online to any of the OpenBox services. The full list of these partnered web services includes: Autodesk Freewheel, blog posting (to Wordpress, LiveJournal, or Blogger), Echosign, eFax, facebook, Myxer, picnik, Scribd, Snipshot, thinkfree, twitter, Zazzle, and Zoho.

Although the collaboration feature makes Box.net a worthy adversary in the realm of online document sharing and editing, the Google Docs solution is still a more robust offering overall as it also includes business-oriented features like email, calendaring, IM, web page creation, and administration features.

The Box.net collaboration beta is available now to all members and everyone can participate in as many folders as they are invited to. However, free account holders can only create up to three collaboration folders.


http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boxnet_adds_collaboration_take.php


Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Library 2.0 Debased


Excerpt:


You can’t buy Library 2.0

…And vendors, you can’t sell it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted. I think perhaps there is an expectation that real-life should somehow mimic the success of the software plug-in model. There may be something to be said for the “object-oriented” library, but that is a far cry from stuffing a new product into an already-awkward, malformed, and ill-suited portfolio. For example, third-party OPACs, as they are currently being sold to us, are likely to fail. Not because they are inherently bad products–some are, some aren’t, but because the companies producing them are only mimicking the Web 2.0 widget–the deliverable. What they are not doing is reevaluating their business and development processes with the goal of realigning them with the interests of libraries. I discussed the pressing need for significant development partnerships back in the July 2007 issue of LJ’s NetConnect and I still believe that that particular model for collaboration is the only way to significantly improve our ability to embed technology in the library. It’s not a long-term viable solution to sell the concept of development partnership when all it really is is just the opportunity to report bugs on software that is not quite ready for prime time.

As libraries, we need to realize that the answers to our larger questions cannot be found out on the exhibitor’s floor. That’s where we find solutions to specific needs that have been identified by a thorough self-examination.


Link to full:

http://www.blyberg.net/2008/01/17/library-20-debased/

Google Gen. study

This newly released study is being widely circulated in the academic environment.

Pages 26-28 discuss the future information environment:

-unified web culture

-inexorable rise of the e-book

-more content explosions

-emerging forms of scholarship and publication

-virtual forms of publication

-the semantic web

http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf

4 P's of Marketing Online

4-p3.gifWhen Neil H. Borden came up with the Marketing Mix and Professor E. Jerome McCarthy grouped the Mix into “the 4 Ps” they were probably not considering 21st century marketing and promotion channels on the Internet.

After all, this was in the middle of the 20th century and Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.com search engines and Internet Social Networks did not exist at that point. Still, this enduring and universal marketing concept applies to the web.

I’m always focused on how the 4 P’s of Marketing apply to Internet Marketing.
So how do the 4 P’s apply to the Internet?

1.gif
The first P in Marketing: Product

Product can be an actual product or service that you are delivering to you the market weather direct to consumer (B2C) or to businesses (B2B). On the web, it’s crucial to show your product on your website. If you are a retailer with an E-Commerce site, make sure you spend the money to show your products up close and in detail. Spend the money to get good photos of your products and make a great design on your site. It doesn’t need to be flashy (or Flash!), but make sure that a potential customer can come to your site and see the main products that you offer and see them in detail. Take the time, spend the money effort and resources to accurately describe your products and services.

If you are selling a service, this is something that a customer cannot touch or feel, so make sure you have some case studies on hand. Show your case studies, trials or demos on a website and please make sure you do all of the above in a search engine friendly manner. If you leave out the search engines in the equation, you losing a big opportunity on Placement and Promotion; P’s 3 and 4.

2.gif
The second P in Marketing: Price

Don’t be afraid to show your prices online and in your Internet advertising. In most cases, displaying a price on an ad, whether a PPC, Contextual, Banner, or even in your organically listed search links in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you’ll get better click through rates and likely more inquiries and conversions if you come right out and display your pricing.

In high-end service businesses this can be a bit tricky, but even there, to grab a potential customer’s attention, it can be valuable to display your price. Who cares if the competition sees your pricing. If you have a high quality product or service you can stand by…your going to win. Further, in a high end service business, by displaying your price, you can thwart contact from unwanted customers who don’t fit into your requisite budget ranges.

3.gif
The third P in Marketing: Place and Placement

Placement on Major Search engines - Google, Yahoo, Live etc…Placement from a discovery perspective is controlled on the web really through search. When someone uses the web, it’s critical to make sure you show up in search for relevant terms. If you are not on the major search engines for terms related to your business, you are not taking care of placement and you’re likely to not be found or discovered in this important pull-marketing channel.

Placement on vertical search engines / guides and Local Search - finding the right vertical search engines like a business.com can make or break your placement. Trade and business directories and vertical search is one of the most important channels. Don’t miss this. Localized search submissions to places like www.local.google.com can make all the difference in being found and being successful as well.

Placement through affiliates - working with affiliates and developing a large and profitable network can be tremendously productive for many businesses.

Promotion through Display Advertising – Media buying for display, banners on CPM or CPC basis and email drops can be tremendously effective if properly placed and designed with the user and target audience in mind. Create outstanding design, powerful and unique copy-writing and make sure you have effective landing pages (tested with a group) to handle your display or “push” types of Internet advertising.

4.gif
The fourth P in Marketing: Promotion

I don’t care if your business is retail B2C or B2B, you need to leverage nearly every promotion channel and strategy online.

Promotion on topical, industry and trade sites - seeking out the right industry sites is ever more important as the web user becomes more and more specific with their bookmarks and areas of the Internet that want to visit over and over. Get in front of the target audience in an effective way.

Promotion through Search Marketing - Put a big focus on search weather SEO, or SEM / PPC, it’s crucial to have strong search engine promotion and placement (full disclosure – we do SEO). On the organic side, Strategic Link building and high quality directory and article submissions can go a long way.

Promotion through Social Media – levering groups on the major social sites, promoting viral content and developing and strong following in social media is critical to long term success and properly placing your product or service in front of the right people.

Promotion through Public Relations – PR and reputation management is important. Don’t be shy to get out in the media and blogs and be mentioned for what you do and the quality of your products. Leverage the newest and best available channels. Make sure you are paying attention to the most influential corners of the Internet. As a side note, Steve Rubel did a fun post about the 4 P’s of Blogging which is worth a read.

Nowadays marketers are considering 7 P’s, but I figure if you tend to the “original” 4 P’s, it’s a good start.



http://www.10e20.com/blog/2008/02/06/product-price-place-promotion/