The publication Biology of Belief - Unleashing The Power  Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles is groundbreaking work in the field of new biology, and it will forever change how you think about thinking.  

Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information.  

It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. Suffice to say – you are what you think. 

Using simple language, illustrations, humor, and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of Epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species. 

Want to learn more? Try out an excerpt from the book here or go to Amazon to purchase the book.

About the Author

Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized authority in bridging science and spirit and a leading voice in new biology. A cell biologist by training, he taught Cell Biology at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine, and later performed pioneering studies at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. He has been a guest speaker on dozens of TV and radio shows, as well as keynote presenter for national conferences. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Corporate blogs have become the hub for many social media intiatives. And, anyone who has a vested interest in a corporate blog knows it takes time and effort to produce a great blog - especially if it is the cornerstone for most of your corporation's social media content.

Here are my 'must-haves' for a successful corporate blog:

Blogger shows enthusiasm for his/her blog. If it's written to fill space, I can tell. I’m only interested in blogs that surprise, delight, amuse and inform offering a unique view into your organization.

The blog is well written. I read certain blogs because I not only enjoy reading them, but I’m truly getting information that is important to me – in a style of writing that is more conversational and with the bloggers point of view (good or bad) in mind.

The blog has links to other blogs, newsfeeds or other relevant information. I want to know that this blog is going to get me the next relevant click of information. I love resources, links back to other blogs and creditable information so that I can understand the bloggers opinion or slant.

The blog is updated regularly. There’s nothing worse than finding a great blog only to find out that the blogger blogs on a sporadic basis. I want a blog to be committed to me, the reader, by providing ongoing, updated content – especially if I have subscribed to their feeds.

The blog embraces comments and feedback. I welcome an opportunity to comment on content and provide my opinion on topics. More sophisticated blogs allows sign in and the ability to post comments making the blog very interactive and viral in nature. Corporations can reply (in kind) - especially to diffuse any negative connotation about the organization or its products and services.

The blog is properly tagged and categorized. Make it easy for me to move around your blog, clicking on other categories or relevant tags.

Great Blogging Resource at Amazon:

The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil

More Great Bloggers:

The Rules Behind Creating a Great Blog by Tom Hung, ProBlogger

27 Tips for Building a Kick-ass Blog by Ahmed Bilal

What Makes a Great Company Blog by Mack Collier

Best

Denice MacDonald

Now that I’m an avid traveler, it has become increasingly important that I find the best travel, hotel or car deal. I routinely use Expedia, CheapTickets and even Priceline. Now, with the intro of KAYAK , I can maximize one-stop-shopping to all these sites by allowing KAYAK  to do all the work.   

        This is how it works     .     .     .     .     . 

KAYAK is a travel search site. Everybody knows what a search site is, and everybody knows what a travel site is. KAYAK is like both, but it’s different in some important ways. 

Like a search site, they can help you find what you want. What makes them different is that they’re specialized. Their tools are made to deeply understand things like airfares and hotel stays. And like a travel site they have flights and hotels. But they’re very different from most travel sites because they don't actually sell plane tickets, hotel rooms, or anything else. 

KAYAK  helps people find the best travel choices easily by searching the data from hundreds of travel sites at once. KAYAK  lets you compare options, and when you find something that fits your budget and tastes, you book it where you want: at the airline site, from the hotel, or from a travel agent. 

OK, now you’re wondering how they make money. It’s all advertising. Just like you can watch (most) TV shows for free, you can use KAYAK  all you want, free. 

KAYAK  has local websites in eleven countries including US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, India, and Spain, and offer free mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry. 

Just for fun - check them out for your next travel destination.

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

I’ve just begun following Chris (thanks to ace social guru Augie Ray). Chris has posted an exceptional blog on 50 Power Twitter Tips.   

Chris breaks down the tips into five categories: intent, technical, business, integrated usage, and off-twitter.  

Lastly, check out the great comments from others on the blog post web page. Amazing responses. 

Feel free to repost all or any of this, but if you do, please give credit to this link. 

About Chris

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.  

Chris is author of the recently released Social Media 101 (Amazon affiliate link). 

For more information on this, please contact Chris directly. 

Likewise, follow Chris on Twitter.

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.   

Social media on marketers' menu for 2010 by Helen Leggatt, Biz Report   

"It looks like social media is on the menu for most marketers this year. A survey of almost 2,000 MediaPost subscribers found that over half plan to have "a presence on social networks" as part of their marketing mix in 2010..."  

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 by Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com

"It is impossible to separate social media from the online world. Facebook reached 350 million users last month -- 70% of whom are outside the US -- and it accounts for 25% of the Web's traffic, according to Pew nearly one in five people on the web use Twitter or some other service to check status messages, and 94% of enterprises plan to maintain or increase their investment in enterprise social media tools. The social media conversation is no longer considered a Web 2.0 fad -- it is taking place in homes, small businesses and corporate boardrooms, and extending its reach into the nonprofit, education and health sectors. From feeling excitement, novelty, bewilderment, and overwhelmed, a growing number of people now speak of social media as simply another channel or tactic..."

Why You Need A Social Media Policy in 2010 by Vanessa DiMauro, Customer Think   

"Policies are dull. No one wants to create them, no one likes to read them and certainly, few desire the job of enforcing them.  But they can play an important role in outlining the rules of engagement around a particular set of online behaviors and have a strong role to play in the face of new situations where the there are no standards.  This is especially true with the wild west world of social media in business..."  

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 by David Armano, Harvard Business Review   

"In 2009, we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year..."

Best,  

Denice MacDonald 

Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.

Whether its website traffic analysis, search engine optimization or tracking business success metrics, you need to develop a web strategy ‘up front’ to support measurement objectives. This thought process seems so fundamental but rarely exercised.  Take these simple rules:

A strategic plan for evaluating your website will help you:

1. Collect only the data you need to make informed, strategic decisions
2. Identify priority “action areas” for improvement, measure the impact of those actions -- and keep your customers coming back
3. Determine benchmarks and performance goals you should aspire to, and the extent to which you’re achieving them
4. Determine whether you’re getting a return on the investment you’ve made to build, operate and maintain your website(s)
5. Evaluate how well your website is performing relative to competitors, your company's brand, mission statement or hiring criteria

Develop a plan – a strategy – and review and adjust it regularly by asking these questions:

• What do you need to measure
• What are your requirements
• How will you measure it
• What tools will you use
• What methodologies are needed to gather the data you need
• What will you do with the results
• How will the results help meet the goals for your website and your company's mission
• How does the plan fit with your company's overall strategic and performance plan

Once armed with this process and validation, you will find that your ROI exceeds expectations. 

Great Resources:

Coremetrics Web Metrics
Get powerful website metrics with the leading provider.

Web Measurement Data Fast
ClickTracks web measurement shows behavior, conversion, groups, SEO.

WebTrends Analytics
Marketing Intelligence Solutions, leading analytic & metrics software.

Web Analytics
Compare web analytics products and get a free report sample from CMS Watch.

Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
If you have an interest in measuring the success of your website, then this book is definitely for you!

Best,

Denice MacDonald

You've spent a lot of time building up your reputation and image both online and off, so it's important to make sure that someone or something has not jeopardized your brand.

One of the simplest and easiest ways to track your reputation is to use Google Alerts. With this free service, you can search either all of Google's properties, or you can specify that only News, Blogs, Web, Video, or Groups is searched. You can then configure the Alerts results to be emailed to you either as it happens, once a day, or once a week. There is also a page where you can edit the alerts once they are created or delete them when they are no longer in use. 

If making a good name for yourself online is a priority, it's time to take a proactive approach to getting your name out there the way you want.  

BUSINESS SOCIAL NETWORKS – Complete your profile in its entirety and connect with key professionals in your network.

BLOGS – Consider a business blog and one that you contribute to – showing you are a thought leader will aid in elevating you or your products in your industry. Likewise, use blogs to amend or respond to bad hype.

WEB 2.0 PR – Get news interviews, podcasts, webinars with clients 'live' online. Third party testimonials by key constituents regarding your products and services will go a long way in building brand reputation.

LINKING – If you have a web site, consider carefully where and how inbound and outbound links are connected – bad links will reflect poorly on your brand.

SUB-DOMAINS - Add a sub-domain for careers, corporate and/or product info for little or no cost.  Not only will sub-domains elevate your search results but add depth to your reputation.

PPC/ONLINE ADVERTISING – This can only help protect your brand and will help influence visitors to see who is the real website that should be visited.

SEARCH - Take control of the visible results of any search related to your brand. By taking a coordinated approach to search engine optimization, you take greater control of the other nine slots.  

FREE MONITORING TOOLS:

Similarly to Google Alerts, Yahoo! Pipes is also a good tool for aggregating and combining feeds into one central repository.

Using Twitter search you can locate any instances of your name and decide whether you want to tweet back or ignore them. 

If you have a blog, then you have to be on Technorati. Technorati tracks “blog reactions,” or blogs that link to yours. Search for your brand on Technorati, and subscribe to RSS alerts so that when someone blogs about you, you find out.

Yacktrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources, such as Blogger, Digg, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, and Wordpress blogs.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

According to Wikipedia, a review site is a web site on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Just for fun, I have compiled a list of review sites for your use and review. Not only can you use these sites personally, but there certainly is a plethora of learning and insight relative to functionality and user interaction. This learning can be translated to both business and consumer web sites. In particular is the wide use of mobile technology.

MOVIES:   Rotten Tomatoes

Fresh or rotten, this site sums up what all of the critics are saying about most every movie and DVD. From ratings to polling’s, you can insure that this site offers ‘transparent’ critiques. 

RESTAURANTS:     Yelp!

Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great – in your area. the site includes restaurants, shopping, nightlife and more. By setting up a profile, the site will automatically serve up content that is important to the user - including mobile alerts and content. 

SHOPPING:     RedPearl

RedPearl provides ratings, rankings, and reviews for thousands of web sites including the top sites in over 100 shopping categories. The site is extensive and includes ratings for anything from baby to garden supplies to travel gear. There is definitely something for everyone at this site.

FAMILY FOCUS:     Pluggedin Online

Plugged In is a Focus on the Family publication designed to help equip parents with the essential tools that will enable them to understand, navigate and impact the culture in which they live. Site includes reviews and ratings on TV, DVD, Music and Movies available online and by mobile alerts. 

MUSIC:     MSN Music

MSN Music includes concerts in your area, latest music releases and access to ratings on all types of music genre. The site also includes timely music news, a dedicated blog and mobile downoads. 

Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald

Gifting during the holidays is always a conundrum for businesses - who should we gift, what should it be and how much should it cost? Businesses are fearful of gifts that look too self-promoting and others are concerned about it being too personal. Here are a few tips that may help you decide what is appropriate for your business. 

Non-profits need gifting 

A recent examination of charitable giving during recession years in America shows that a slowing economy definitely affects donations to non-profit organizations. This is the perfect year to make donations on behalf of your clients AND employees. Making donations to charities will be a win-win for all types of clients - at all levels. Use either a very simple postcard to communicate the gifting or manage the gifting online. Follow-up in January with the results of your giving - a great way to reconnect post holiday.  

Limited budget 

Nearly everyone loves receiving edible gifts and they work nicely for individuals and groups. Give food gifts such as chocolate or fruit baskets, special cookies, and even wines. Most products might have a limited shelf life and need to be distributed quickly - so use your sales staff to make a face-to-face - no sales talk, just holiday well wishes. 

Getting creative 

Consider partnering with a major retailer on gift giving. Starbucks, for example, will work with corporate companies on designing a custom gift card. This way the gift AND card are combined (most holiday cards with company imprint can run up to $5 a piece).

Likewise, if you have out of town customers, consider a gift certificate from Dale and Thomas Popcorn - they also do customization. 

Resources: Corporate gifting etiquette   

What Happens to Giving During a Recession?                            

The Giving Institute and Giving USA Corporate Gift Giving Tips: Corporate Customer Gift & Business Gifts

Non-profits

Global Giving  

Recommended food gift sites

Figi's

Starbucks

Dale and Thomas Popcorn 

Exclusive, high-end gift giving

Simon Pearce

Best,

Denice MacDonald

[Image Credit: http://thefabulousgiver.com/]

According to AMR Research -- web content management isn’t just about building and managing a web site anymore. It’s about engaging customers and collaborating more efficiently with partners.

To prove this point, AMR Research recently released a white paper: “Evolved Web Strategies, Part 1: The Web as a Vital Artery for Strategy and Growth”.

The piece, written by Jim Murphy of AMR, states that organizations will need to examine four streams of change when devising a web strategy and choosing technology providers: strategic, pervasive, engaging, and responsive. 

1. Fatwire
2. Oracle
3. Interwoven
4. Vignette
5. Sitecore
6. SDL Tridion
7. Ektron
8. EMC
9. IBM
10. Microsoft 

Upcoming

AMR intends to provide a follow-up white paper wherein they will look at the pervasive web and the providers that will help companies meet impending challenges. 

About AMR Research

AMR Research provides subscription advisory services and peer networking opportunities to supply chain, sustainability, and IT executives in the consumer products, life sciences, manufacturing, and retail sectors. They are the world’s leading independent research firm focused on the global supply chain and its supporting technologies. 

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Denice MacDonald

When you mix Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li and Forbes – you know for sure that the dialogue on social media and social media marketing has definitely elevated to a fever-pitch.  

In a recent article posted at Forbes, Owyang was able to provide readers a summation of the Forbes CMO Summit recently held in Palm Beach.     

Basically, Owyang contends, the dialogue on social marketing has elevated:  

1. CMOs are on a holding pattern for growth
2. CMOs admitted they were losing power to the empowered consumer
3. Social media was on the lips of nearly everyone
4. Social media is difficult to measure--yet marketers know
   they must be there
5. Beyond monitoring, insight from the social sphere is untapped 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: 

Behind Closed Doors: What's On The Mind Of Chief Marketing Officers?   

New to Forbes.com? Become a member for free! 

[Article and Photo Credit: Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist, is partner, Customer Strategy, at Altimeter Group]

Best

Denice MacDonald

Company executives always say they believe customer loyalty
is the key to business success. 

However, customer care solutions, CRM systems, and discount programs are not enough and companies are losing customers at a staggering rate. Fostering true customer loyalty and engagement starts at the basic level. 

That being said, the following is a great white paper offering the simplest tactics to get customers engaged to provide you quantifiable feedback on your relationship with them. 

Allegiance_TechPaper_9ideas.pdf (891.88 kb)

Also, the vendor does a great job of presenting the business case for their product here: www.allegiance.com/engage  

I highly recommend that you take a look at this vendor, read the white paper and begin a lasting business relationship with your clients, employees and stakeholders. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Dimdim is a simple, free open source web conferencing service.  Dimdim lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet - with no download required.   

Dimdim is available as open source software so you can extend and improve it freely. Dimdim already integrates with CRM and LMS software and can be extended easily.

Moreover, Dimdim is extremely flexible, available in hosted and onsite configurations and easily customizable. 

For more information on this new and evolving product, go to Dimdim’s video tour page.

Best

Before Web 2.0, organizations would take old brochure copy, poor graphics, a couple of cheesy widgets and off they go to build a web site in bad html code. With today’s user expectations, web sites have to be a bit more sophisticated, offering the best-of-breed in user experience and delivery.

To truly build a great web site presence, compete on a level playing field and convert customers, organizations must do a bit of homework before developing their web site.

Review competitors – in order to compete, organizations need to see how they fare against the competition. A comprehensive competitor’s analysis will allow the organization to provide a similar interactive experience when vying for customers to their products or services.

Know your audience – most web sites try to cater to a broad-base audience using a ‘hit or miss’ approach. With today’s web savvy user, web sites need to address exactly who their customers are. In most cases, audiences are looking to be entertained, informed or persuaded - but knowing specific industry focus, generational disposition and online behavior will go a long way in getting your audience to engage, drill down and act.

Create relevant content – with the growth of social communities, blogs and rich video media, content can be served up in many formats. Key to the use of these great Web 2.0 applications is providing relevant content to users.  Similar to ‘knowing your audience’, organizations must segment content based upon visitor types.

Enhance the experience – the visitor experience relates to ease of use, access to relevant content and tools that will help engage, connect and convert customers. Reviewing appropriate navigation, Flash or graphics, web tools or gadgets as well as call-to-action scenarios will enhance the experience and have the visitor coming back for more.

Integrate online and offline strategies – successful organizations have realized that integrating online and offline marketing strategies is the best way to tap into a large customer base and get customers to spend more. Moreover, when an integrated strategic plan is executed for online and offline simultaneously, customers get a single, unified message from the organization that reflects a cohesive brand.

More Related Strategy:

Engagement Redirects the Marketing Trajectory

Web Site Success Requires Companywide Collaboration

Web Personalization - No Longer the Next Frontier

Best

Denice MacDonald 

RazorFish just released their latest report "Social Influence Marketing" - a 'must-read' for all brand marketers looking to forge Social Influence Marketing within their businesses.  

The essence of this 54-page report (clickable image at the right) can be summed up simply: 

"Being an active brand means accepting the fact that the days of formulating one big idea with multiple executions are behind us.  Being an active brand means that each day you interact with your consumers based on how they interact with you and with each other." 

To learn more about RazorFish, go to their web site or download their fact sheet. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

TweetMic is a simple and intuitive Twitter client app for the iPhone that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings or "Tweetcasts" and publish them directly to Twitter.

There is no limit to how much you can record and you don't need to sign up for any additional service to start using TweetMic.

More information here!

For more expanded information on Twitter in general, consider Mashable - The Social Media Guide:

- 6 Twitter Search Services Compared
- 6 Unique Twitter Visualizations
- 20+ Great Twitter Tools for Firefox
- 20 Twitter Badges to Show Off Your Tweets

Happy 4th of July to all you!

Best

Denice MacDonald

From employees to customers, from suppliers to your local community, from the building you reside in to the products that you make, social responsibility transcends all parts of your business. Ultimately, social responsibility increases brand equity, customer loyalty, employee engagement and the bottom line. 

What are the key components of a sound social responsibility program? 

Suppliers: You need to scrutinize suppliers you deal with. Do they create products that pollute? Do they maintain manufacturing facilities that harm the environment? Working with suppliers and distributors who take steps to minimize their environmental impact will be a wining proposition for your organization. 

Employees: Employees are your most coveted asset. For the responsible business, this means doing more than simply complying with legal requirements - it means treating all employees fairly.

Local Community Involvement: Your organization needs to be actively involved in your community. Whether it is financially giving back or simply being a community advocate, working with your local community brings a wide range of business benefits. 

Environment: You need to think about how what your organization does that affects the environment and what you can do to reduce pollution and waste. There are all sorts of ways you could think about reducing the environmental impact of your business, it is just a matter of coming up with a defined plan and moving it forward. 

Who's doing it well? 

Gap:  

Excerpt -- At Gap Inc., we believe we should go beyond the basics of ethical business practices and embrace our responsibility to people and to the planet. We believe this brings sustained, collective value to our shareholders, our employees, our customers and society. 

Starbucks:   

Excerpt -- Since 1971, when we opened our very first store in Seattle, to today with nearly 17,000 stores around the world, we’ve always been committed to doing business responsibly and conducting ourselves in ways that earn the trust and respect of our customers, partners (employees) and neighbors. 

Walt Disney:   

Excerpt -- At The Walt Disney Company, we believe that being a good corporate citizen is not just the right thing to do; it also benefits our guests, our employees and our businesses. It makes the Company a desirable place to work, reinforces the attractiveness of our brands and products and strengthens our bonds with consumers and neighbors in communities the world over.

Great Resource:

CSR News - Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire

Best,

Denice MacDonald

If you’re a busy web professional like me, you don’t have time to participate in every event, tradeshow or user group.  Moreover, if you don’t care for daily extensive reading and prefer some face time, a video blog may be your answer. 

WebProNews Blog Videos is your home for ebusiness, tech and search video content. They provide exclusive coverage of conferences, compelling interviews with top names in the industry, practical tips, and online news that matters.

You can watch the blog version with actual clips at events with subject matter experts like Bruce Clay, or you can read the blog.

Either way, you will be able to find current information that would take hours to filter through via daily searches or bookmarking. WebProNews provides RSS feeds and archived blogs.

Here are a couple of interesting, if not edgy, posts:

Bruce Clay - SES NY 2009 - Mike McDonald sat down with Bruce Clay for an interview at Search Engine Strategies, NY on a follow-up to ranking being dead, and changes to search results based on behavioral and intent-based data.

SES NY - Twitter Exclusively as a Marketing Tool? - Discussion on Guy Kawasaki's presentation at the Search Engine Strategies, NY.

Best

Denice MacDonald

It is imperative that all departments, disciplines and vested shareholders collaborate on the daily feeding and overall strategy of the organization's web site initiative - or else the web site will fail.

Why? Web sites are no longer ancillary; they are mission critical - adding substantially to the organization's bottom-line. Moreover, the combined needs of various departments or disciplines actually enhance the dynamic strategy behind the on-going transition of an organization's web site by offering various views and points of entry to clients, customers, employees and shareholders.

How? Collabration does not begin by ordering various departments into a conference room for a strategy meeting. It begins with defining needs, strategies and business goals. In most cases, what the sales department requires is not much different than what the HR department may need. Each is looking to communicate the organizations value and offerings while providing easy call-to-action scenarios for visitors and on-going interaction to the organization's web site.

Where to begin? Start with simple site goals that require collaboration against business needs from various departments. Begin the process of determining how the needs intertwine or can be repurposed to satisfy many needs.

SCENARIO 

HR is trying to hire high end sales professionals in a very tight market. The Sales department is trying to get a new product to market. Marketing has a tight budget but would welcome PR exposure relative to company growth.

SUGGESTIONS

Use web video to create employee profiles for HR enticing 'like' recruits. Use the same web video but add additional footage to introduce and e-mail video newsletter to targeted customers and leads that may benefit from the new product. Have marketing dove-tail the e-mail video newsletter AND web video components to the web site thereby increasing interaction to the site through video news releases. What will this take? It will take two or three days of shooting, various formatting of the web video, simple permission-granted e-mail program and some high end content. Using a create it once, use many ways concept has leveraged the collaboration of various department initiatives while safeguarding a cohesive web brand strategy.

Best

Denice MacDonald

To build e-commerce sites that drive more traffic and sales, retailers are creating interactive page treatments and adding video, customer reviews and other advanced features.

Time to motivate customers

By incorporating video, customer reviews and other advanced features, b2b and b2c retailers are positioning content, tools and applications on product pages in a way that motivates the visitor to take a specific action.

For example, if your customer base relies heavily on compliance or regulatory mandates, consider a video that provides insight on how your product or service will solve or comply with a regulatory issue. Likewise, consider adding customer reviews on new products – doing so will not only show that your organization is transparent, but that you are willing to learn from product feedback – whether it’s good or bad.

Lastly, smart retailers are providing insight and thought leadership in the forms of blogs or interactive forums to draw in prospects and customers – using them as a third-party sell. Doing so will not only elevate your brand but provide content to virally get your message out.

What’s next?

Some web retailers are taking a wait-and-see approach to launching mobile commerce or digital communities. But that doesn’t mean that these features should not be on your radar and/or part of your ‘next steps’ in the evolution of your e-commerce web site. Technology and customer expectations are moving quickly, regardless of the economic downturn. Be prepared.

Who's doing it and how are they doing it?

iPhone 3G Shows How to Use Online Video to Sell Products by Holly Buchanan of FutureNow

Ebags.com (view video lower left hand side of web product page)

Microsoft (uses customer profiles to tell the story - very cool)

Best,

Denice MacDonald