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49 Resources for

travis van

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Do's and Don'ts for Analyst Briefings: Michael Coté -- analyst at RedMonk -- shares some off-the-cuff do's and don'ts for companies participating in analyst briefings: Increasingly, I like short calls. Most calls I do are an hour, but 1/2 hour would be nice. I've seen other analysts get upset when...; Tags: Travis Van, briefing; Blog posts 2007-10-16
What Works In the Product Review Process: Previously Matt Sarrel described some of the common ways that companies participating in product reviews tend to irritate the reviewer. Today he's back with more pointers about what works in the product review process: Be polite and respectful of the reviewer and his/her time. All magazines are...; Tags: Travis Van, reviewer; Blog posts 2007-10-15
Should PR Pros Leave Comments on Client Stories?: The Tech PR Gems blog ran an interesting post earlier this week that discusses the practice of PR folks commenting on their own clients' stories. As the author notes, it's a fuzzy area that makes a lot of folks nervous: "In talking about engaging bloggers in PR, we...; Tags: Travis Van, public relations; Blog posts 2007-10-12
Marketing and PR Blog Picks of the Week: Monday, 10/8 Online Marketing Blog -- "Why Search Marketing is So Hard" Pronet Advertising -- "StumbleUpon: The Antithesis of Google?" Tuesday, 10/9 Marketing Pilgrim -- "Are Newspapers Squandering Yahoo Ad Opportunities? InfoFlow -- "Marketers: There are Seven Separate Intelligences"...; Tags: Marketing research, Travis Van, marketing, public relations, Web; Blog posts 2007-10-12
AP's Copyright Lawsuit: Legitimate or Frivolous?: Yesterday's news that the Associated Press is suing Moreover Technologies (a news aggregator service that was acquired by Verisign for $30 million in 2005) seems to have been met with general eye-rolling from the 'sphere. I particularly enjoyed Rich Ord's perspective in "AP Suing Moreover Like It's...; Tags: Advertising & Promotion, Travis Van, Internet; Blog posts 2007-10-11

Product Documentation: Marketing's Stepchild in the Attic: What's more important than your customers' ability to clearly understand and interact with your product? Product documentation may be the most meaningful communication line that any organization has with its customers. Yet for many vendors (particularly those with highly technical offerings, ironically), product documentation is woefully...; Tags: Travis Van, product documentation, Product Documentation, marketing; Blog posts 2007-10-09
Empty PR Exercises That Make Your Company Look Amateurish: Does your company ever dilute its credibility with these types of (very common) lame-o announcements? Lame Partnership Initiatives -- When Google and IBM announce [even relatively mundane] joint initiatives (like today's announcement that they're partnering to "promote new software development methods" in research and academia), tier-1 business...; Tags: Travis Van, consortium, public relations; Blog posts 2007-10-08
Why the Product Review Process Scares Vendors: In a perfect world, product reviewers would buy the new products they're reviewing ... and test them completely independent of any interaction with (or coercion by) the respective vendors. But most publications don't have the budget to independently acquire the products they review, and therefore rely on the vendors...; Tags: OPEN SOURCE, Travis Van, reviewer, product review, information technology, Matt Sarrel; Blog posts 2007-10-02
Before Your New Product Launch, Solicit Criticism: Too often, new products are created without adequate feedback and buy-in from prospective customers. That's the gist of the popular book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" -- which advocates / roadmaps a much richer interaction between vendors and customers during the entire product development cycle. ...; Tags: Strategy, Travis Van, public relations, marketing; Blog posts 2007-10-01
Blogging is Not for Every Company: There are a number of impassioned blog advocates out there trying to slap some sense into the organizations aren't blogging (or better participating in "conversational" marketing approaches). Brian Solis (author of PR 2.0) -- for example -- mixes no words when pointing out the missed opportunities of not participating....; Tags: Travis Van, blog, marketing, corporate blog, blogging; Blog posts 2007-09-27
Why are Industry Analyst Projections so Immune to Criticism?: Why is it that -- when there are thousands of web pages / discussions dedicated to the accuracy of Nostradamus' 500 year-old predictions -- it is almost impossible to find dissent on the industry stats / projections that Gartner and IDC make every year? As the famous...; Tags: Strategy, Travis Van, stat, industry; Blog posts 2007-09-26
Are You Wasting Your Colleagues' Time With Your Bad Email Habits?: Every organization has at least one employee whose bad email habits are negatively impacting their colleagues' productivity. Are you that individual (i.e., how many of the following apply to you?): Black hole inbox -- You literally have hundreds of read and unread messages sitting in your...; Tags: Travis Van, e-mail; Blog posts 2007-09-24
What Does a 'Relationship' With a Journalist Get You?: You hear a lot of PR folks claim to have 'relationships' with certain journalists. I remember when I was at PR firms how often colleagues would drop names during new business pitches. "Walt Mossberg (WSJ), Steve Lohr (NYT) -- yeah, we have GREAT relationships with them." As if to say...; Tags: Travis Van, public relations; Blog posts 2007-09-19
PR Firm / Client Collaboration Break-Downs: Yesterday's rant covered some of the common characteristics of underperforming PR firms (from the frustrated client's point of view). As kstarrpr (from Larkin Communications) commented, sometimes PR firms do indeed "[e]xpect the internal manger [on the client side] to do the heavy lifting with the agency's duties...; Tags: Travis Van, public relations, PR company; Blog posts 2007-09-18
Signs You Picked the Wrong PR Firm: Your company went through an agency review process and found the PR firm that felt like the right match (their track record was solid, their referrals checked out, the publicity results they promised sounded ideal). You've already invested a great deal of your (VP or director of marketing) time...; Tags: Travis Van, public relations, PR company; Blog posts 2007-09-17
VMware: The World's Busiest PR Team?: A couple of weeks ago, Forbes wrote that VMware had become the world's fifth highest-valued software company (behind only Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Adobe). Pretty incredible for a technology category ("virtualization") whose basic concept / definition ("abstracting the OS and software from the underlying hardware") ... is far beyond the...; Tags: IPO, Virtualization, Utility computing, Storage management, Travis Van, VMware Inc., PR team, public relations; Blog posts 2007-09-12
Is the Mystique of Podcast Marketing Severely Overblown?: I've seen a number of self-proclaimed podcast marketing experts declare that "[t]he power of audio is far greater than the power of text." I must be completely out of the loop, because my consumption of industry-related content is still overwhelmingly of that apparently passe text variety (but...; Tags: Podcasts, Travis Van, podcast, podcast marketing, marketing; Blog posts 2007-09-10
Leaders Who Sabotage Their Own Marketing: I just caught up with a colleague who recently jumped ship to a new marketing role / company after reaching his wit's end with his previous CEO. Hearing about what he endured in that previous role got me thinking about just how important a rational, intelligent leader is to...; Tags: Marketing research, Travis Van, marketing, leader; Blog posts 2007-09-06
Don't Let Your PR Become More About Vanity Than Selling Product: I once had a client who was relatively ho-hum about all the trade press we were getting (i.e., great visibility with the audience actually likely to buy his product) ... yet would take great delight in any mere mention in business press articles (sending out celebratory emails to his friends...; Tags: Travis Van, public relations; Blog posts 2007-09-05
Why Your Company Does NOT Deserve Business Press: Many vendors reach a point where they look beyond the industry / trade press publicity they're getting and say 'that's nice ... but we deserve business press.' [The implication that business press is 'better' is certainly questionable ... and I'll talk later about recognizing when your PR has become more...; Tags: Travis Van; Blog posts 2007-09-04