The Basement

Howdy all! I'm back safely from Palo Alto and the New Comm Forum. I have some to post about that but don't have time at the moment. I had a great time though and really enjoyed meeting some wonderful folks.

You may have noticed that my blog has been having some technical problems since Friday. Sorry. I'm working on it. I hope it will get better soon, please keep checking back. ;)

In the meantime, you can listen to what other folks had to say about the New Comm Forum here.

Bob P. has been a loyal reader of and commenter on this blog from the beginning. Bob also happens to be an offline friend and an all around great guy. Over the last couple of months, Bob's been asking for a comment spell checker. The thing about writing about listen, engaging and responding to customers is that you're kind of obligated to put your money where your mouth is.

Here's to you Bob. Enjoy your new comment spell checker. Sorry it took so long.

For the geeks in the audience, I used the open source project Speller Pages for the spell checker. It uses aspell on the server. It's easy to implement and seems to work pretty well.

I've been getting and increasing amount of comment spam. Typically I get 30 to 40 per week, but in the last few days it's gotten much worse - nearly 200 in less than 24 hours. So I've added a math question to comments. This would be pretty easy to defeat but the spammers would at least have to try harded. I tried to set up one of those number image things (SCode was the name of the plug-in) but I couldn't get it to work. Oh well.

If you leave comments, double check your math because if you're wrong, your comments floats off into the ether, never to be seen again. Sorry for the trouble. Comment spammers suck!

Hmmmm. I love blogging, but from time to time I suffer from stat depression. You know... people don't click as much as they used to or folks stop leaving comments as much as I would like and I begin to wonder if I've lost my edge... assuming, of course, that I had an edge to begin with. Self doubt is the devil's playgound.

So, I've decided to stop moping and test. So here it is...

Would you recommend this blog?

Please leave your answer in comments for this post, a simple yes or no will do, but anthing else will be greatly appreciated. As an incentive, I encourage you to include a link to your own blog or website. Post anonomously if you like. Just post. I'm curious if by asking I can increase the number of comments I get.

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for participating.

-Matt

Pete posted today about Bob Garfield's Listenomics piece from Ad Age. Pete ads that what he thinks is missing piece - integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and more importantly the consumer affairs/relations department. Meanwhile, Steve Rubel, in an uncharacteristically long but very welcome post (Steve - I know you keep tallies, my vote is fewer, longer posts) calls on PR folks to get Cluetrained and help their clients figure out the action part of actionable.

In a upcoming article for New Communications Blogzine, I wrote a lot about the CGM analytics space. I talked with folks from Inteliseek (Pete himself in fact), BuzzMetrics and Umbria Communications. I found that there is a core set of stuff that they are all saying - one of which is mumbling the word actionable over and over again like a broken record. Actionable is usually followed by "(insert any word here) intelligence". You know...

actionable business intelligence

actionable market intelligence

actionable competitive intelligence

actionable military intelligence

actionable alien intelligence

actionable artificial intelligence

actionable ignorance intelligence

actionable reactionable intelligence

actionable quilionsexesto intelligence

Okay, so I'm exaggerating, no one really used the phrase "actionable military intelligence". But Max Kalehoff of BuzzMetrics went as far as to say "If information is not actionable than it is worthless." I would say that if you don't act on actionable information then you are worthless. Maybe marketing folks just thinkg actionable means something else.

So I couldn't agree more with Steve and Pete (paraphrased) - Take an action, any !@#$!!@ action! DO something... anything, but please, please, please stop using the word actionable unless you plan to actually act.

One of my favorite quotes from WOMMA - "Do. Don't discuss." One of my most unbelievable realizations at WOMMA - corporate America is absolutely petrified with fear of online posters. Why? I have no idea. Think about it, marketers expect us to let them ooze into every pore of our lives though television ads, product placement, print media, radio, sidewalk chalk, telephone solicitation, tattoos on the backs of our eyelids, but they won't take the time to pay us any attention when we come to them as a willing audience? WTF!

Okay, I'm gonna type real slow now so even you folks in big corporate marketing can follow along...

You use to be able to buy the attention of the consumer. You can't do this very well any more. Today, you have to trade attention for attention.

Say it with me now, come on, I know you can... trade attention for attention.

Now, repeat that in the mirror each morning about a biscillion times.

So how do you give the customer your attention? Sure, integrate your CRM and ABC and XYZ as Pete suggests. He's right of course. But by the time you agree on how and when to do this, Pete and I will both be dust. My suggestion - do something right now. For example, get up from your comfy office, go down to the call center and get on the phones. Stay there for a week. Keep a notepad with you. Write stuff down. My bet is that this stuff is actionable. So take some action. The poor slobs you have on the phone have to take brow beatings every day because they have no authority to act. But YOU do. If you don't, then find another job.

Sure, I'm being radical, overly simplistic and naive to the limitations of corporate America. But I'm also right.

If anyone out there knows anyone at Volkswagen, please forward them a link.

This post is to assure all those concerend that I'm not dead. I've been working on a article for New Communications Blogzine and I'm WAY past my deadline.

I noticed that I was quoted on the WOMMA testimonials page. Check it out. No, really, go there it's worth the click.

Stay tuned for my New Communications article. I'll link to it when it's up. Then back to regular posting - I still got some WOMMA goodies left over.

Sometime yesterday, I logged the 10,000th visit to this blog since I started tracking in late June.

Thanks to everyone who has visited, and especially to those who told someone else - through your blog or otherwise.

Thanks again to WOMMA - without whom I suspect I'd still be quite aways from 10,000!

Virginia Zimpel of LaunchSquad wrote me about a corporate blogging survey they are working on for the upcoming BlogOn. She writes...

[The] survey [is] focused on corporate blogging that Guidewire Group (producers of BlogOn) is doing with a corporate blogging company called iUpload. The goal is to shed light on market demand for corporate blogging solutions, emerging best practices and the role of blogs in key enterprise functions, as well as to identify barriers inhibiting adoption in the marketplace.

We’re going to be announcing highlights of the survey at next month's BlogOn conference. Participants of the survey can register for a chance to win an iPod nano or a complimentary pass to the event.

The survey is short and sweet. Please take two minutes and participate.

In the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of posts that I've been meaning to write about and haven't yet had the chance. I still plan on writing about them but in the meantime they should not go unread by anyone who hasn't read them. They are both from folks at Intelliseek – but from opposite ends of the organization.

First, Matthew Hurst, research scientist, wrote a great post called When Worlds Collide. He sums lots of the stuff that's, well, colliding to make blog analytics so exciting and powerful. Matt has also been prolific after his recent conference and it looks like he has some wonderful newer posts too...

Second, Pete Blackshaw's piece on Protect the Marketing Commons over on Clickz. Pete is concerned with the ethical use of WOM Marketing techniques. This is an area that is in dire need of some deep thinking and quick action if marketers want to be in the conversation instead of banned from it. Oh, for the three of you that don't know – Pete is Intelliseek's CMO. He also has a great new blog focused on, what else, Consumer Generated Media (CGM). Me thinks I smell a book.

So there you go... go read and make up your own rant. Hopefully mine will follow shortly.

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:2b342e75303e31167d71583b390d5dfa

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:30403c5eb4b051a250987c76cf579724

Please ignore this post -just finally getting around to claiming my feed.

Jeff Jarvis on BuzzMachine:

Why the hell would any sane person put a cell phone number on the internet?

And from Robert Scoble's Blog:

I don't know what this says but it links to The Basement. I'm not sure who I expected to read this when I started a few weeks ago, but some things are more surprising than others.

I don't know what the hell you said Francesco, but thanks for the mention!

I just completed the MIT Weblog 2005 Survey. Not only do I think this research is important, this is one of the nicest looking online surveys I've taken - beautiful UI. If you blog, make your voice heard.

By way of Dustbury - Philosophy, et cetera is proposing an inteteresting "open source" research project where bloggers post results from the IPIP-NEO personality test and the Political Compass quiz. Read all about it here, including instructions.

At the intersection of blog-based market research and political commentary how could I resist?

Here's my results:

Survey:

Age: 34
Gender: Male
Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma USA
Religion: None
Occupation: Computer Geek
Began blogging (dd/mm/yy): 13/06/05

Political Compass results
Economic Left/Right: -3.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.74

IPIP-NEO results

EXTRAVERSION 68 
Friendliness 65 
Gregariousness 38
Assertiveness 73
Activity Level 49
Excitement-Seeking 56 
Cheerfulness 90 

AGREEABLENESS 43
Trust 92
Morality 29
Altruism 69
Cooperation 18 
Modesty 18 
Sympathy 52

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 24
Self-Efficacy 24
Orderliness 12
Dutifulness 28
Achievement-Striving 35
Self-Discipline 36
Cautiousness 56

NEUROTICISM 17 
Anxiety 27 
Anger 52 
Depression 22 
Self-Consciousness 1 
Immoderation 38
Vulnerability 28

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE 94 
Imagination 81 
Artistic Interests 92
Emotionality 43 
Adventurousness 97 
Intellect 79 
Liberalism 79 

Track List:

1. Philosophy, et cetera - pixnaps.blogspot.com - pixnaps97a2
2. Pharyngula - pharyngula.org - pharyngula3128d2f0
3. World Wide Rant - www.worldwiderant.com - wwr1004ao
4. dustbury.com - www.dustbury.com - dburyokc12
5. The Basement - www.thebasement.com - thebasement42

Well, this blog is a week old and I have to say that I'm astounded. I haven't done much promotion because there's not yet much here.

As I've mentioned, I am a huge fan of the Creating Passionate Users blog and it has begun to influence that way that I think about everything. As such, I did email Kathy Sierra about my blog and she was kind enough to mention it.

I've also told a few friends and co-workers – mostly people that don't read blogs on a regular basis and probably won't read mine after a week or so.

With this little effort, I got my first trackback on Friday from Ben Griffith. Mr. Griffith is in London (I think) and is the CTO of Revieworld, creators of Reevoo. He has also worked at Thoughtworks and ActiveHotels. I don't know Ben and I don't have any idea how he found my blog but I'm tickled pink that he did. To me this is the real power of blogs and why the corporate world, marketers and advertisers need to take notice.

Over the last week, I've also started a Bloglines account. Bloglines already reports 8 subscriptions to my blog (one of these is me). This is particularly interesting when you consider that Bloglines does not yet seem to index my blog for searching.

This is really encouraging and is more than enough motivation to keep me writing. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to stop by.