Alan Gutierrez

Recently esetablished blog for Southwest Airlines. I trust that Southwest will get it right.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » I gotta take more days off

Speaking of fun stuff, yeah, Microsoft did the iPod box design parody video. Yes, we can laugh at ourselves. The marketing team did it to challenge the box designers for our products to do better. We need more of this stuff. Microsoft is a consensus culture and consensus (which means everyone has to sign off on things) does avoid trouble, but it also makes for uninspired products and marketing. That is our internal challenge to figure out, that’s for sure!

Microsoft can laugh at itself now? That’s not the Microsoft we all know and loathe. The iPod packaging parody was one of the funnier things I’ve come across lately. Pleased to hear that it was an internal production. What an excellent way for frustrated creatives to make a point to the company at large, by being creative.

In case you missed it, here’s the iPod box parody video.

Add this to the recent Microsoft blogger invervention to fix Hugh’s Wifi. A Microsoft blogger Kieth Combs caught his rants and troubleshot his hardware. Turned out to be hardware issue, not a Microsoft issue.

Microsoft is uniquely poised to leverage the blogosphere for customer service. They’ve been snapping up talent these many years, and now their setting these folks loose.

It’s customer service mayhem.

The Flash Legacy

Many customers in New Orleans have been sold on Flashy gew-gaw web sites. They have a Flashy gew-gaw design already, or else they point to a competitor’s Flashy gew-gaw site, and say they want on that even more Flashy, with even more gew-gaws.

I turn them onto to the importance of text and search, making a powerful case about the importance of text. Once the customer can percieve the value, I return to the issue of interactivity, though they may have forgotten.

Explaining True Interaction…

My web site is very interactive. Here come take a look at it again.

I know you’re probably thinking, what’s he talking about? I don’t seen any baubles or gew-gaws, or winky-dinkies that say click here.

Well, no you don’t. But you do see interaction. Look over here at the side bar. See that? It says “Recent Comments”.

Look at all the people who’ve left comments. Look at this one here with 10 comments. Look at this long, insightful comment that someone left.

You see? People do interact with my blogging web site. They read the open letters, and then they write a response, right there, in the web site. That’s interaction!

The folks who read my blogging web site don’t interact with my web site, really, no. You’re right.

They interact with me.

The Global Microbrand has been working well for John T. Unger.

john t. unger studio: The Power of Blogs

I’ve done three interviews for magazines and websites this week. The Sprint Ambassador Program is sending me a free cell phone with six months of free service. School children write emails from overseas asking about my art for school reports they’re doing. HGTV contacted me a while back about possibly featuring my work on their show, Offbeat America (it doesn’t look like it will happen this time, but it’s still pretty cool to be asked). I’ve also met a lot of incredibly cool people this year that I consider to be good friends despite never having seen them in person.

Almost all of this has come about because of the time I’ve put in writing blogs. The only drawback has been that at times, the response becomes so overwhelming that I don’t take the time to post about it here. I’m working on that.

This comes via Hugh MacLeod and his post John T. Unger and Global Microbrand. Hugh MacLeod has been kindly producing top notch marketing material for my new web design business in New Orleans. When I talk to people about the power of blogging, I show them English Cut, for starters, and Stormhoek. Now I’ll add John T. Unger as a case study.

This is timely since I’m working on creating a blog for a New Orleans artist, Adam Farrington, and his gallery the Farrington Smith Gallery. (A shameless plug, but with no Google Juice, since the site isn’t up yet. We’re going to hurry.)

Can’t wait to share this with Adam, Scott, and Amy over at the gallery. Thanks John and Hugh.

AccMan Pro in Thingamy - part 2 - CRM v.2.0

After Ric’s remarks I had another thought. Could blogging become the Web 2.0 CRM package of the future? Why did that thought occur? Because if I can tie Thingamy apps to content management system based websites (blogs/wikis) for document management purposes, then I can link my blogging activity to sales of product and back into the capture mechanisms I need for running my business - which could also manufacture at the same time.

Ric and Dennis, the answer is yeah, baby! CRM, baby! That’s where corporate blogging has got it all going on.

Blogging is a conversation, and conversations produce relationships. If you are a producer of goods, or a provider of services, some of those conversations are with customers, and that puts blogging in customer relationship management.

Which means we need to prise blogging from the marketoids and put in the hands of the customer representitives, human resources, and tap into all the other people in your organization who can take time out to tell the story and make things right.

If Ric is watching, any further thoughts on blogging as CRM?

The Web Enabled Business Card

I’m talking to folks in New Orleans about blogging. I’d like to make a business of helping business reach new customers through blogging.

I have to start from a strange position, however. People are talking to be because they want a web site, not a blog.

When folks around here think web site, they think business card. To them, a web site is a business card, but on the web. They want a web site so they have a web address to put on their business card.

I’ve noted before that New Orleans has little use for social networking software, since they have so much social networking hardware, the cafes, bars, restauraunts, churches, corkboards, etc.

People here don’t use the web much. They tend to expect a brochure, or if they’ve been sold flashy gew-gaws in the past, splash screens and animations.

Before I can help them with creating a content based web site that will help their business, I have a lot of explaining to do.

A Special Kind of Web Site

You’ve got to start with Google. Blogs are because of Google. Google begat blogging.

I ask a fellow New Orleanian, “what search engine do you use to find something on the web?”

They will say “Google.”

I’ll reply, “So, you don’t type http://plinkityplinkityplonkplinketyplonkplonk.com/ do you? You go straight to Google and type in the first words that come to your head, right? That’s what most people do these days.”

Then we look at were they sit in the Google rankings. Given the web sites most folks have around here, it is usually quite low.

The genernal explaination of the value of blogging is as follows.

Once your web site is attracting Google, it’s going to attract people who might never visit New Orleans, who might never visit your shop, or meet you personally. Google searches information you see, so it needs to search text not pictures and flashy gew-gaws. You need to place more and ever changing text on your web site and you’ll attract new customers, and keep in touch with visitors to New Orleans.

I’ll explain that a blog is a special kind of web site that lets you attract Google. It’s not a diary, although they look like a diary. It’s a format that is easy to update for the author. You choose a subject and write an open letter. It’s an open letter to the people that may stumble across your web site. It’s an open letter to Google.

Over time, if you keep writing these open letters, you’ve got a lot of information out there. People will keep finding that information though Google. With comments in place, they can respond to your open letter.

Then it’s a quick run down of the basics of what Google likes and why.

1. Ever changing text means something going on here.
2. What the links say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Google Juice is another word for links, of course.

Here are points that I make in the course of the explaination.

• If Google can’t read you, then Google can’t find you.
• If Google can’t find you, no one can find you.
• Google can’t watch a flashy gew-gaw and say, oh that’s a cartoon hammer, this must be a web site about roofing.
• Google likes what people like, information.

A blog is a special kind of web site. One that is easy to update frequently. One that attracts customers and retains the interest of existing customers.

Life Outside The Conferences

You all know this isn’t shinola. It’s all old hat to you, the blogosphere.

Tell me California, how do you preach when there is no choir?

I’m trying to get people to see importance of content for their web site. That it’s not a brouchure, a one shot.

A web site is not for advertising, its for communication. You don’t want to show your customers a buch of cartoons. You don’t want to bore them with advertising copy.

You want to invite them to communicate with you.

Instead of a web site, create a web log. Talk to your customers. Be open. Speak in the first person.

Then listen carefully to their responses.

It’s a CRM for the poor boys.

It’s a way to engage with customers, not to broadcast at strangers.

Since I’ve arrived in New Orleans, my interactions with the city have lead me astray from the Java and XML programming I was so engrosed with during my Ann Arbor sabattical.

An opportunity has consistently presented itself, the opportunity to put something interesting about New Orleans online.

When I tell people that I am a “Computer Programmer”, “Software Developer”, or “Computer Systems Analyst” in New Orleans, they invariably ask if I “do web sites”. Initially I demured, but now I can see that if it’s what people want, I may as well give it to them.

One of the points that I’m driving home when I talk about web sites is that people don’t want to watch Flash cartoons, they want information. It’s an easy point to make when you talk about how people find information through search. It’s not as great a leap as one would expect, but people who don’t use the web regularly are not too aware of this.

While stressing the importance of content, I’m going to offer customers solutions for the development of content. I’m not going to focus on design as much as copywriting, blogging, photoblogging, and Podcasting. The emphisis will be on content generation.