web

We have been meaning to update the appearance and functionality of the site for some time now. We are currently in the process of updating our theme and there will be some bugs to work out over the next few days and possibly weeks. Thank you for your patience and feel free to email or comment on any errors you find in the mean time.

Apparently I missed out on Blog Action Day last month. Check it out for some good posts related to impacting the environment from some of the most popular blogs on the net.

Since I missed it I will share one of the posts that I really liked from one of the blogs I monitor - Future House Now. John Commoner is the author of a great post for the blog action day about the current green movement and what it means to him and what he blogs about. What I like about the post is it is a very down to earth viewpoint that is straightforward and rarely heard from many of the “green blogs” and proponents of green on the web. Without giving more of my thoughts on it, check it out for yourself and see what you think about it. If you have time scroll through the rest of the blog as John has some great posts on the future of modern housing.

I just got back from Boston last night where I attended a great new training called New Rules of Marketing. The training is a new course offered by Pragmatic Marketing who specializes in product marketing training for product managers in technical companies. I have been to all of Pragmatic’s other courses so when I saw they had a new offering covering a subject I have been doing a lot of research on lately I jumped at the chance. I was not disappointed and found that this course could apply to anyone in a marketing or PR role for a company of any size.

The course was lead by David Meerman Scott who recently wrote The New Rules of Marketing & PR which he so graciously provided a copy of to each attendant.

In one short day, David covered a bunch of topics on how to reach both customers and press by utilizing new online tactics. In a time when journalists have become inundated with daily emails David told us how to get through to both traditional journalists and bloggers. He went on to cover current topics like blogging, viral marketing, social media, SEO and press releases.

My biggest take-aways from the course were his covering of press releases and e-books. Used properly and following a few simple guidelines David laid out these can be powerful and extremely cost-effective marketing methods. Check the links at the end for a few of the e-books referenced in the training.

David also has a great blog, Web Ink Now, which I subscribed to today and added to my blogroll. I’m pretty picky about blogs I add to my Google Reader but once I read a few of David’s posts I could tell that this would be a valuable resource for my marketing efforts going forward. I also found in my research for this post that his new book has recently been added to a list of The Best & Worst Business Books from bnet. He is in pretty good company in this list along side some of my favorite business books. I look forward to reading it and will try to post a review when finished.

E-books from the course:

Marketing Apple: 5 Secrets of the World’s Best Marketing Machine (download this now!)

The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly