My site was down for a spell there; it seems I may have inadvertently made a boo-boo while test driving new FTP apps on my new Mac (Yes, there is a learning curve).
But I’m back up now (thanks Gwyn and Rob) so to get caught up, here’s a quick ‘news’ post:
Apologies for the quick catch-up post; we’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming soon 
.
I’m pretty excited to report that Tell Ten Friends is in The Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs (Week 58)!
We’re just in, with our 521 links. Too bad we’re not measured by the links to the home page here: www.telltenfriends.com. To that address, we have 1091 links as of today on Technorati. Note to friends: link to the blog!
It’s great to be recognized, especially among so many other talented and insightful marketing thinkers.
Here’s a little link love for the list:
1 - Creating Passionate Users - 8,460
2 - Seth’s Blog - 8,452
3 - Gaping Void - 3,728
4 - Logic + Emotion - 1,406
5 - Daily Fix - 947
6 - Converstations - 914
7 - Drew’s Marketing Minute - 800
8 - The Viral Garden - 742
9 - Jaffe Juice - 736
10 - Church of the Customer - 710
11 - Diva Marketing - 706
12 - Duct Tape Marketing - 701
13 - Servant of Chaos - 671
14 - What’s Next - 666
15 - Influential Interactive Marketing - 651
16 - Hee-Haw Marketing - 648
17 - Brand Autopsy - 618
18 - Community Guy - 571
19 - Flooring the Consumer - 563
20 - CrapHammer - 560
21 - Customers Rock! - 547
22 - Shotgun Marketing - 534
23 - Coolzor - 532
24 - CK’s Blog - 525
25 - Tell Ten Friends - 521
Cheers!
Here’s a link to it online. To subscribe, mosey on over to the newsletter page and sign up.
While I was in Korea, things seemed to change at a mile-a-minute. Google bought Feedburner, David Meerman Scott shipped the first review copies of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” (thanks, I got mine David) and some guy built a Flickr slideshow app that lets you embed a Flickr slideshow, just to name a few.
And while I was still groggy from the jet lag, etc. I made a few changes of my own. For starters, I test-drove the aforementioned slideshow app, see the result here, using some of my Seoul pics:
Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
Also, I’m quietly launching a new site dedicated to my way-too-big ego, using Wordpress, and mapped it to www.jordanbehan.com. The amazing thing is that the whole site cost a mere $18 USD/yr. And it would have been cheaper (package deal for domain and mapping) if I had bought the domain from Wordpress and not Yomamma. I mean, Godaddy. Today’s lesson: for just $15 USD, you can have your own Wordpress blog, including your own domain name. What are you waiting for, world?
That new site will be home to some video podcasts, and all of the rants that I hold back from here. I felt like I couldn’t goof off on the company site as much as I do in general, so the more personal, reflective and downright silly side of me will be published on the new site. I will continue to publish marketing and PR news and tips here, hopefully at a steadier pace than I have of late.
And if I don’t publish a newsletter soon, I might as well board up the shop; I get an average of four or five subscribers a week, and I have neglected them for months. Bad me!
It has been a good long while since I offered any updates on client work that we have done; namely because we’ve been so busy with it all. Blog post frequency has suffered as well; a sin I intend to atone for.
A few weeks ago, we launched a new Wordpress site with a Paypal shopping cart for Barbara M. Siemens, author of The Piano Workbook, a 10-part series of handbooks that helps piano teachers and students with the study of their instrument.
Rob Masefield designed the site, which seamlessly incorporates the blog, a tool that Barbara is getting great use out of. We’ve already received a ton of great feedback on the site, including a glowing testimonial from Barbara. Here’s a quick excerpt:
“Throughout the development process, your courteous nature and willingness to answer all questions, great and small, created a pleasant working relationship. I very much appreciated your interest in addressing my concerns and incorporating my suggestions into the final product. It was a relief to be able to trust the task of dealing with the bewildering world of the internet to a reliable professional.”
To say that we are merely proud of feedback like that would be an understatement. It was a tremendous pleasure to work with Barbara as well, and to see her embrace blogging like she has is also very satisfying.
We have also put the finishing touches on www.champlainheights.com, an area-specific niche real estate website for James Hampton; the top performing Realtor in the area, and mentor to my brother Wes. When you search for Champlain Heights, you find James. Cruise through the Champlain Heights tour, or see the slideshows for any one of the 22 building developments in the neighborhood. That’s right; floorplans, images and stats for all 22 of them. Smart guy!
James’ site is built with Ubertor, a real estate CMS software application that makes managing sites incredibly easy. With a number of Realtors (and one brother who’s an agent) on our client list already, partnering up with Ubertor to help even more Realtors just made good sense. Stephen Jagger, who blogs daily on the subject of real estate marketing, (see his Real Estate Channel interview here) is Co-Founder of the company, and has introduced us to such terrific clients as Mike Andruff of Team Andruff, and Ian Watt of the Ian Watt Real Estate Team.
For Team Andruff, we created one of our trademark SEO campaigns, which included a keyword-rich re-write of much of their site, and of course a number of social networking sites to help them connect on a personal level with a bigger audience using the tools of the web. Mike is an avid blogger, and has devoured every last bit of advice and strategy we’ve presented him with. Mike and the Team can now be found on their blog, on Squidoo and on Technorati. They also have their own YouTube channel for video home tours, we created a very cool photo-tagging project on Panaramio to show some of their sold properties, and Mike even has a Facebook profile he updates regularly (no link, Facebook is private folks). Lastly, we also created a stand-alone social networking site for Team Andruff using Ning, a very user friendly site that deserves a blog post of its own. We have it set up with a forum, a slideshow of images and their YouTube videos. The whole thing took just minutes to set up, and has more functions than most other social media sites out there. Watch out for this one.
That’s all for now (or all that we are allowed to talk about without being restricted by NDAs) but there will certainly be plenty more news to come, plus a newsletter very soon as well.
Be forewarned: My apologies for the number of times this item will appear in my feed over the next few weeks, more explanation below.
Update #1: In the spirit of full disclosure, I spent most of yesterday and today convincing myself that I didn’t have time to do any of this stuff, and then I realized how RIDICULOUS I sounded, and got down to it. This post is getting some traction, and I made a commitment. See new crossed-off items and notes below.
Update #2: After a busy week that included a PR campaign, I can cross off even more items.
I’m incredibly late to the dance on this, but I couldn’t help but join in on the fun.
Ben Yoskovitz of the Instigator Blog is embarking on a buzz marketing project, pulled straight from the pages of Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing, by Ron McDaniel.
This concept is very much in line with what we do here at Tell Ten Friends, so not only did I think it would make a great blog post and experiment to share with readers, but it will also be good for business, and for generating buzz for our company.
The experiment itself consists of a checklist of ethical and effective activities to start a bit of buzz. No fanfare, no fluff, just good old fashioned conversation starting and web marketing; two of our favorite pastimes here are at TTF.
What follows is the list, with crosses through the activities I’ve been able to complete, and where applicable, a few short notes. In some cases, I have already done the activity several times over, (ie. Squidoo lens) but in the interest of the exercise, I’m making myself do them again.
I’ll update this several times over the next few weeks, hence the number of times it will be appearing in the feed.
Here’s the list of ways to generate buzz, copied directly from Ben:
I welcome any and all of you to join in with me, and share your experiences; either through comments, or as trackbacks from your own blogs. Some of this stuff isn’t easy, so don’t be surprised if months or even years later, the list still isn’t finished! 
Any time something exciting happens as a result of one of the items on the list, I’ll publish it in a separate blog post.
marketing, great ideas, PR 2.0, word of mouth, new media, social media, tell ten friends |
15 Comments »We’re in here having a great chat, and we want you to join us.
You see, now you are not just welcome to join us for lively conversation here on the blog, but now we can get a little more interactive, in the brand-spanking-new Tell Ten Friends Forum. A truly “2.0 enabled” chit-chat spot. Check out the separate RSS feeds for individual topics and threads. Oooh! Aaah! Marvel at the cleanliness of the design; the ease of use.
Why a forum? Because sometimes, blog posts are too one-way, even with comments enabled. Not only that, but this way our questions and discussions can be discussed within a community, effectively “crowd-sourcing” for a more cohesive, collective uber-answer. Or something like that.
I’m creating two “topics” to kick things off; more on that in a bit. First, I have pay special thanks to the Architect of this new, fully-functioning fantastic forum. For real.
Rob Masefield, our Creative Consultant here at TTF, built it for us to show off his talents. If you haven’t done so for a while, have another poke around our site, and then check out his own blog and portfolio while you’re at it. Both are excellent examples of sites with Wordpress built in; something of a specialty of ours, thanks to Rob’s considerable talents.
I used to think that he was a rare commodity in the fact that he could design incredibly well and manage code intuitively too. Now, I’m beginning to think they broke the mold. And I’m not just saying that because he built me such a stunning new forum.
Please, pop in for a chat. Just click through to register, log in and start posting! Two topics to get us started:
We are growing in numbers. We are are extremely polite, almost to a fault. We say “eh” a lot, even if we try not to. We work in Marketing and Communications and we are…
We spread the word about new media marketing and PR tactics, and we evangelize the things we love. We get to know one another through generous linking to one another, and then of course, we say thank you. A lot.
Big thanks to Sean Moffitt for creating the list of 150 ‘MARCOM’ bloggers in Canada. It’s a great list, and one that I sure am proud to be part of. Click the image above the read the list over at Buzz Canuck.
marketing, web 2.0, great ideas, cool stuff, the blogosphere, PR 2.0, word of mouth, new media, social media, memes, tell ten friends |
2 Comments »2007 is going to be a great year, I can just sense it.
For one thing, my sister moved to town, and that means more quality time with family, plus a consistent running partner to keep me in line while training for the Vancouver Marathon this May. Call that my New Year’s resolution, but longtime TTF readers will recall I committed to this several months ago, and after a (admittedly light) season of occasional runs here in Vancouver last year, I’m ready for the real deal this year. The big one. I can feel the burn already, and I’m still a bit “festive” from the wine at dinner. This should be interesting.
Also of note: I got a new camera (yeaaaaah!) from my wife for Christmas, an Olympus Evolt E-500. And I’m loving it. Two seconds out of the box and it took me right back to my days as a sports shooter, firing away like mad on my 35mm SLR hoping I got the puck (or soccer ball, etc.) in the frame. I’m back behind the lens again, and this time it’s not a betacam, DV or a video camera of any kind, but my beloved still photography. I missed it, so prepare for an increase in the number of shots coming through my feed (pardon the duplicate, in this case). But sentimentality aside, it will have great business applications as well. Add photography to the list of services available from your favorite boutique marketing firm
Still, since Vancouver has been a rainy mess (surprise!) the past few days, I haven’t been able to snap much of anything that’s ‘flickr worthy.’ So I’ve defaulted to the obvious cop-out in times like these, where the first shot has to tell a certain story…and so here is a shot of my new camera, by my new camera:
Did I mention how terrific Mrs. Behan is at giving Christmas presents?
Have a terrific and prosperous New Year, all. I’m back in the saddle, so posting should resume just as sporadic and inconsistent as ever. Cheers!
What was going to be a newsletter is now a hastily composed blog post. I have precious few hours before we travel home to spend a few days with family and way too many hors d’oeuvre. Yay!!
(Merry Christmas…by Flickr user Tio)
And so, I wish thee all a very Merry Christmas (that’s what celebrate in my family) and I will see you all again very soon.
Sidebar:: As a bonus link, I was looking through my sister’s copy of Vanity Fair, and I noticed an interesting ad for Target, which spanned several top 1/3 pages, featuring sheet music for Tony Bennett’s “I’ll be home for Christmas,” remixed by Moby. I thought that was pretty cool, then I went to download it at the link they gave: www.target.com/tonybennettremix. What was really neat was that you can download it as a GarageBand file (Macs only, snobs!) and remix it yourself.
David Blaine hanging in a box to promote Target = 1.0
Tony Bennett + Moby + UGC (User Generated Content) = 2.0
Again, enjoy your holidays everyone, and get wound up to honor those resolutions come January one!
Love,
Jordan and Alex
Name: Jordan
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I guess you could say the theme here is "Marketing 2.0." I'm fascinated by the rapid changes happening on the web in the world of marketing and new media. Want to join the conversation? Leave a comment, or send me an email.
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