Thankfully I’m part of the minority of unemployed who are actually getting phone and face-to-face interviews as a result of my efforts, but as yet I have not found a job that will truly satisfy me, though it’s certainly helping me to keep positive!

One job for which I recently interviewed would have required me to travel upwards of 60, even 70% of the time. To me, this is not conducive to a pleasurable working experience. I know many people are lovers of business travel, and I’ll of course do it to some extent – after all, I did love going to trade shows and such when I was with my former companies - but being away from home that often really doesn’t make for a great work-life balance, wouldn’t you think?

Similarly, I have received calls from companies that are over sixty miles from my house. I was, at my last job, what the U.S. Census Bureau calls an “extreme commuter.” By definition, that includes the 3% of Americans that drive more than ninety minutes each way to get to work. My commute was 152 miles round-trip, a three-hour journey that usually ended up being upwards of four to four-and-a-half hours each day due to construction, summer traffic, or accidents. It was, in all honesty, brutal. Do I think it affected the way I worked? Absolutely. I would have to get up exceptionally early to even make it to work on time, and by the time I got home at night, I had little to no time to focus on everyday things that needed to be done, such as household chores, much less any of my hobbies or personal activities.

And for those of you who wish to stress the concept of using public transport: don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely have done that. Except the job in question was in an area of New Jersey that would have required a train, then a bus, then a walk, which would have added an additional hour to my trip, so that was out of the question.

Let’s face it: according to Alois Stutzer of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich, “Commuting is a stress that doesn’t pay off.” Let’s look at the drawbacks to a long commute:

• One must earn considerably more money to make up for the wear and tear on one’s car, not to mention the constantly escalating gas prices.
• The human body is susceptible to aches, pains, and trauma from sitting in the same position for a long period of time, including high blood pressure … and of course contributes to weight gain.
• Traveling for so long is tiring, and the commuting experience is rarely pleasurable for anyone, so employees arrive at work tired and/or irritable. Employee morale suffers, and when that is affected, so is productivity.

Was telecommuting an option? It was at first, for at least a day a week, but my contract was altered two weeks in to the job. The benefits of telecommuting are numerous to both employees and employers, but I will focus on that in a future post.

What are the other downfalls to a long commute? Are there any benefits? At what point would you say a commute is too long?

The big question for many of you is, “I see all of these marketing folks trying to sell the idea of social media, but where is the proof?  What do the actual consumers have to say about it?”  I’d recommend you take a look at the numbers to get that answer.

Cone Inc., a strategy and communications agency based out of Boston, conducted a survey on perceptions of social media and how it can affect consumers’ buying habits.  According to the survey, sixty percent of Americans use social media, of which 59 percent of these use social media to get in touch with companies.

A whopping 93 percent of social media users believe companies should have some sort of presence on social media outlets, with varying degrees of interaction with their customers.  This interaction can take the form of:

• problem-solving (43%),
• seeking feedback on products or services (41%), and/or
• creating new methods by which consumers can use or interact with the brand (37%).

Likewise, other major research firms are responding to the explosion of social media as a key business tool.  With firms like IDC predicting social media’s growth by 815% in 2009, Forrester Research hits it right on the head by saying, “Rapid consumer adoption of these channels indicates that the time is now to enter this space.”

Has your company begun using social media as a marketing/branding tool?  If you haven’t, what are the causes of your hesitation?

• Social Media for Business – Who’s Doing It Well and How
• Social Media and the Marketing Opportunity
• Building the Social Media Marketing Foundation

Sites like IHateStarbucks.com, BoycottWalmart.org, and LoewsSucks.com have been created for consumers to voice their not-so-flattering opinions of major companies.  And, recently, the Wall Street Journal reported the results of a survey that details company responses to such so-called “bad” publicity.

Buy All Uncomplimentary Domain Names

Xerox has done this, nabbing xeroxstinks.com, xeroxcorporationsucks.com, and ihatexerox.net, among approximately twenty others.  In this way, they prevent angry consumers from registering the domain names themselves, thereby forcing them to voice their opinions elsewhere: on forums, in blogs, etc.  However, this sort of “strangulation” method seems almost the worst thing Xerox could do, as it reduces the possible outlets for expression and thus has the potential to just frustrate the consumers more.

Let the Consumers Do What They Want

Dell hasn’t made any attempts to grab the anti-Dell domain names, and does not have any plans to do so.  Currently a few of these domains do exist, like DellIsEvil.com, but as yet the sites are merely parked and full of links to – you guessed it – the Dell corporate site.  Dell knows of its floundering reputation amongst some consumers, but is allowing them the freedom of expressing their opinions should they choose to do so.

Turn the Angry Domain Name into a Useful Tool

AMC Theatres turned the Loewssucks.com site into an educational resource and added a customer satisfaction survey.  BankofAmericaSucks.com has been modified from a strict text-only, single-consumer complaint page to a forum that is now known as “The Official Bank of America Consumer Opinion Site.”  Companies that use “bash” domain names as a means of funneling complaints about their products or services are actually taken advantage of a tremendous marketing opportunity.  By allowing such freedom of expression within a tight, managed format, companies can use the comments that come in to improve themselves in a way that appeals to extremely targeted individuals: people who are actually purchasing their products and services.

Read more about companies combating angry consumers, and thanks to Elena for the tip!

• They Just Don’t Get It
• How to Handle ‘IHateYourCompany.com’

Webcasts – also referred to as webinars – are just one example of using multimedia as a means of presenting one’s value proposition and targeted messaging to the masses in a streaming, live, interactive format. And for those of you who are under the impression that you essentially require a video studio in your office to put on a good webcast, rest assured that is not the case! And the benefits to using webcasts as part of your integrated marketing campaigns are multiple.

Webcasts are easy to produce.

Online tools like WebEx, GoToWebinar, On24, and Webcasting.com offer even the most technologically-inexperienced individuals the opportunity to produce webcasts with simple, intuitive formats. These service manage everything beginning with the registration process to providing dial-in numbers to putting on the actual live webcast to ultimately recording the event so that you may offer it on-demand. Plus, you can produce a webcast from anywhere you like, so long as you have a stable Internet connection, and not all presenters need be in the same location at the alloted time. For a presenter, doing a webcast can be as simple as clicking through a slide show in PowerPoint. And I know you corporate folks are capable of that.

Webcasts are cost-effective.

Yes, you can pay upwards of $30k to have a webcast managed, promoted, and produced by an outside vendor, but think of it this way: if your webcast generates 800 leads, which with a broad subject they are very inclined to do, that’s a very acceptable $38 per lead; in addition, paying an outside vendors means you get a guaranteed number of leads anyway, which is usually in the 400 range. For those of you who have tight budgets, there is inexpensive webcasting software to be had. GoToWebinar, for example, which my company uses for all of our internally-driven, very technical webcats, runs at about $100 a month. You get just 20 people to sign up and that’s five bucks a lead right there. The possible downfall to this is that you must do your own promotion, but that does allow you the flexibility to decide whether to hire an outside firm to run banner ads or email blasts for you or simply hitting your own internal database, which costs you nothing.

After you’ve run the webcast and have recorded it for future use, hosting it on your site or elsewhere allows you to enjoy a stream of interest long after the live event has taken place, thereby constantly improving your return on investment (ROI).

Webcasts are versatile.

Yes, you can simply give your presentation with PowerPoint slides, but webcasts can also incorporate Flash, video, and even live demonstrations via desktop sharing. An effective method for me has been to incorporate two or more of these; for example, have a few PowerPoint slides at the beginning, describing the company, the speakers, and what is to come, and then share the desktop so that the presenter can walk through a demo of, say, the cool features of your product.

Webcasts fit the criteria of social media.

My previous post about building the social media foundation mentions the importance of communicating with, not to, your prospective customers. With a webcast, you can present your message in an honest, clean format and then answer questions that have been directly fed to you by the audience. By discussing topics about which the attendees themselves have asked, you are nurturing the relationship between you and your following. In addition, by offering an on-demand recorded version after the event, you provide a means of spreading your message indefinitely, be it through a post on YouTube, links from other sites, email blasts, and so forth. I am still generating interest from a webcast my company hosted back in March of this year, simply because it’s available on-demand and is easily accessible.

In May of this year, Frost & Sullivan released a white paper for On24 (which I suggest you read) that discusses the increased use of webcasts as a marketing tool. “Smart companies use technology to its fullest potential,” it says. “The ubiquity of the Web offers avenues to make a message heard, and powerful web events can be a critical tool in a corporate communications arsenal.” That is, utilizing webcasts within your marketing program can be an extremely worthwhile, cost-effective method of spreading your message to a wide audience.

[enter social media marketing stage left]

Wikipedia defines social media in its broadest form as “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” In essence, social media – or ‘new media,’ as it is often called – encompasses various methods of communication that go beyond the age-old standard of a marketing team talking to potential customers by adding conversation, fluidity, and collaboration into the equation.

Social media is available in many forms, including blogs (Blogger, Wordpress), microblogs (Twitter), photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), video sharing (YouTube), RSS, social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), wikis (Wikipedia), social bookmarks and commentary (Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit), instant messaging (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), podcasts (Podcast Alley, iTunes), webcasts and video blogs (Rocketboom), online communities (MyBlogLog, Plaxo, Google Groups), consumer-owned shopping sites (Zazzle), and even virtual worlds (Second Life). This list does not by any means encompass all social media outlets – and, of course, more are being created and developed every day – but it’s a good start.

“This doesn’t sound like anything I have in my so-called ‘integrated’ marketing campaign. Why would we use any of these strangely-named sites for marketing?”

Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe because over 112 million blogs are already being tracked by Technorati, a number which doesn’t even include those sites not submitted to the leading blog-sharing site. In January of this year, 79 million viewers watched over three billion videos on YouTube. User-generated content attracted 69 million visitors in 2006; that number is expected to jump to over 100 million visitors in 2011, generating $4.6 billion in ad revenue. These are just a sample of some absolutely huge numbers, people. Would it make sense to ignore all of these individuals by disregarding social media, one of the biggest – if not the biggest – consumer influencers? Because let’s be honest: consumers trust other consumers more than they trust any advertisement your creative minds could possibly think of.

HubSpot, now one of the leading internet marketing companies in the country, was a no-name startup just two years ago; it got to where it is now through the use of social media marketing tools like blogs and webcasts that deliver honest and useful information to the masses.

And it’s not just start-ups that benefit from social media marketing. Coca-Cola saw sales of Diet Coke skyrocket after they started creating professional-looking videos on YouTube that demonstrated the wonders of adding Mentos to the popular soft drink (and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch one of the hundreds of videos available).

For further examples, the Internet Advertising Bureau released a study this year on user-generated content and its effects that includes a number of case studies similar to the ones above (and does, in fact, mention the whole Diet-Coke-and-Mentos thing). It’s only about fifteen pages long, and well worth a read.

In short, social media is everything ‘old media’ is not: fluid, transparent, consumer-driven, and open to conversation and collaboration. Remember: it’s only too late to embrace the ‘new’ when you realize your competitors have run you right out of business by doing it first.

Apparently a whopping seventy percent of those surveyed had no plans or interest in adopting open source software, citing security as the number one issue prohibiting them from doing so. However, it needs to be noted that of those surveyed, many of the decision-makers didn’t realize that some of their software is indeed open source.

Savio Rodrigues over at InfoWorld sums it up nicely in his latest article, “Forrester Finds Lack of Interest in OSS?,” by saying, “OSS vendors face an uphill battle to sell anything … if the top decision maker doesn’t believe that his/her company is using OSS. It’s not an insurmountable battle, but it is uphill.” Savio provides some pie charts and further investigation in his article, which is absolutely worth a read.

The actual report is restricted to those with a Forrester subscription.

“The cost and flexibility benefits of using open source technologies are appealing for developers and organizations in the current financial climate,” said Claire Roy, head of research at Kingpin. However, it was also discovered that a lack of faith in the quality of open source software is still an issue, with less than a third of those polled believing open source software to be of high quality.

Despite this, the use of open source software – specifically open source databases – will continue to grow exponentially, according to analysts. In an April Wall Street Journal issue, Gartner, leaders in the technology analyst sector, determined that sales of open source database software will be in the upper-$200 millions this year, jumping to $400 million by 2009. The article maintains that the comparative low cost of “open source” databases is a huge draw for companies looking to minimize their RDBMS spending.