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Sharpening the Edge

by Ron Daly 

This blog was started to bring our insights to the world. In May 2008, we got going with some articles about email marketing and SPAM and mobile banking.

Since then, we've been doing our part to help you, our dear reader, understand the world wide web and its myriad uses as a communication and sales channel. 

Which is why I was surprised to read this article from MediaPost Publications. It seems that there are certain buzzwords that nobody wants to hear anymore. The top ten can be found below: 

Top 10 Buzzwords Tired of Hearing (% of Respondents)
Rank	Buzzword	2009 Report	2008 Report
1	Web 2.0	19.4%	9.1%
2	Social Networking	12.2%	6.0%
3	Social Media	11.3%	0.8%
4	Blog	7.9%	0.0%
5	Viral Marketing	6.2%	6.3%
6	Synergy	5.8%	5.6%
7	Branding	5.1%	3.2%
8	ROI	4.9%	4.8%
9	Green	4.9%	0.0%
10	SEO	3.8%	1.8%
Source: MENG & Anderson Analytics, January 2009

Well, isn't that something. 

But the really stunning thing is the fact that most marketing execs/CEOs don't know anything about the subjects in question. From the same article: 

Twice as many marketers are "sick" of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as "blogs" and "social networking" compared to last year's survey; however, marketers still admit they don't know enough about it. This was evident in the results of a social media study MENG released on November 6, 2008 showing 67% of executive marketers consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes.

I think it's time we here at the C.C.C.Blog change that. 

From this day forward, this blog will be working to inform the Credit Union and Financial Services Industries about the things they're having trouble understanding. Should we be afraid of the web? Not at all. It's only going to get bigger and better and more integral to the way people live their lives.

So here's your call to action: 

1) Spread the word.

Sign up for the RSS feed, send articles to friends who might need to shed some light on a subject, sign up for email updates. 

2) Tell us what we need to cover. 

You folks have thoughts of your own. Let's hear it! Guest authors welcome here, if you've got a hum-dinger article. 

3) Help us make the web better. 

We're hoping to make strides forward. Join us as we make the effort to enhance the online world. 

Twitter gets hacked. Why you need to care.

 

by Ron Daly 

BREAKING NEWS! Fox News has outed Bill O'Reilly, Rick Sanchez at CNN is addicted to crack and Britney Spears...well, the less said the better.

Obvioulsy, ALL THESE CLAIMS ARE FALSE. We have a hacker to thank for all these tidbits, which came from the fount of Internet knowledge: Twitter. 

Yes, Twitter. Folks these days don't know whether to call it a micro-blog or an instant messenger. But they do know, now, that there's a major security hole somewhere through which someone drove a bus (click here to read the story). 

Some of the biggest Twitterers (Tweeters? Tweets? Toots? Honestly, Jimmy's the one who keeps up with this stuff) were hit, including President-Elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Fox News and CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez. 

As someone who spends a lot of time talking about online security, I wondered whether or not this was all that news-worthy. Most twitter pages are just little blurbs about what people are doing, links to their favorite news stories, jokes back and forth with friends, etc. But then I read this article from NetworkWorld.com (read the article here). 

What would have happened if this hacker - who just threw out humiliating little gibes - had posted links to a virus? What if he'd have used email addresses or passwords he'd found to disturb people's private accounts on non-Twitter services? Does this tell you, dear reader, anything about how important it is to guard passwords? 

Jimmy and I jawboned about this for a little while. I asked what he thought was the biggest threat facing Twitter and he told me that there are so many peripheral Twitter applications that require username and password to operate. Seems like a tough sell for me, the thought of giving away security information. What do you think, folks? Respond below.

Level Up! Video games are hitting a broader audience.

by Jimmy Marks

[EDITOR'S NOTE -- This is our 50th post! Thanks for sticking by us. We hope we can keep bringing you the best of our knowledge for the next 50 posts and beyond. Pass CCCBlog along to your friends and let them know we're here and we're giving away our expertise. Again, thanks for your attention and hope you enjoy our blog for years to come!]

I got another article from eMarketer, this time about video games. I love video games. Always have. Original Nintendo? That's me. Duck Hunt? You don't know from Duck Hunt. And I've pretty much followed the trends all the way forward. I can Wii with the best of them (pardon my French). 

But I'm not the only with an affinity for video games, according to this study. I did a little digging and found CNet's list of most sold video games (and this was just in August of this year): 

1. Grand Theft Auto IV--6,293,000 units sold
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl--5,433,000 units sold
3. Mario Kart Wii--4,697,000 units sold
4. Wii Fit--3,604,000 units sold
5. Guitar Hero III--3,475,000 units sold

Boom or Bust: marketing to Baby Boomers a necessity

by Ron Daly

Baby Boomers are a funny thing. 

They're quickly losing focus in the marketing world, with more and more people lumping attention onto the generations they sired. At the same time, according to this article from eMarketer, Baby Boomers are making up around 30% of online users and are using the Internet more every year. 

A Drop In the Bucket (or, in this case, Kettle)

by Ron Daly 

I do my best not to get sappy around this time of year, but I was touched to read this story from CNN.com (click here to read) about the Salvation Army coming to the rescue of a couple in need. The story talks at length about their health care bills being the reason they couldn't make their house payment and about how after years of donating to the Salvation Army, the couple went there for help. 

It's nice to see that people are still willing to remember the spirit of giving, even if it's only a few cents. Cents, I might add, that turned into $118 Million last year.

But what really impressed me were the details of the Salvation Army's use of text messaging and Twitter to get people to donate. When you text the SA's "Online Red Kettle" on your cell phone, you get to donate via your phone bill. Following the SA's kettle on Twitter keeps you abreast of important information from the 143-year-old organization. 

Feed Me, Seymour! Why you need to get with the RSS program.

by Jimmy Marks

There was a time when I didn't see the point of RSS feeds. I didn't care to get all the information I wanted from one source. Who needs that kind of headache? 

Turns out I do. When I'm here in my office, I'm usually working on twelve things at once (thanks, TV, for giving me the attention span of a three-month-old puppy, an asset of my personality that's both depressing and productive). Why go to 19 different news/magazine/blog sites when I can go to one site and get all the information? 

So I use Google Reader, which comes with signing up for a Google account that gets you your gmail and your personalized Google information. It's not the fanciest thing in the world, but it does what I want. And when there's new sites that might interest me, I can look them up with Google's feed finder and they're all right there for me. Convenience, thy name is RSS. 

So you're not into getting yourself a reader? Fine...here's another golden egg that's just been laid. It's called Tabbloid, and it's a service offered by Hewlett-Packard that takes RSS feeds and turns them into a PDF that gets delivered to your email account. The service is pretty new and it takes very little know-how to get going, so jump on it while it's fresh (go to tabbloid.com by clicking here). How did I know about Tabbloid? It came up as an article on a blog I read called "brand new". Which I have in my RSS FEED READER. Is this sinking in yet!?! (Thanks, brand new, for being great! A Link to their Article on Tabbloid)

But what if your site doesn't use RSS? Odds are if you're reading this, you're a professional our company works with or just someone with a curiosity about Web 2.0 type stuff. Well, your site can have an RSS feed and not be a blog site. It's true! There's a service called Feedity that turns static web pages into dynamic RSS feeds. It's a nifty tool and it's free (for the stripped down, ready-to-run version). Just type in your web address and use Feedity to start generating RSS feeds about your frequently updated content. Then offer that feed as a service to clients/people who use your site a lot. Go to Feedity by clicking here. 

I get tired of repeating myself, so this is the last time I'll say it: you're wasting time "surfing" when you could be just reading. Web 2.0 is a way of making the internet come to you. So start getting in! You don't want to be standing on the dock when Web 3.0 (whatever that is) leaves port. Get in the game now and start eating up those feeds. 

Presidential Campaigns’ Email Tactics: Good Lessons in What Not to Do

by Ron Daly

This election season, both presidential candidates have turned up the heat with their email programs. They know email is an efficient, fast, and cost-effective way to reach supporters and to bring in donations. But according to Email Insider’s Jordan Ayan, both campaigns are “abysmally poor at executing based on today’s best practices.” (The Real Presidential Debate: What’s up with Candidates’ Email Campaigns, Oct. 1, 2008).

While we won’t have a winner until tonight, the presidential race is a dead heat when it comes to email no-no’s. Here are a few examples:

• Sending too many emails. Like many companies, presidential campaigns have many departments and offices, making it hard to keep track of the various messages being sent out on behalf of the candidate. Both the McCain and Obama campaigns regularly send numerous emails within the same day, giving recipients the impression of not just a poorly managed email policy, but a campaign that doesn’t value their time or respect their inbox. 

• Using multiple and irregular “from” addresses. When trying to build a brand or establish consistency, the email rule of thumb is to use familiar name(s) in the “from” line, which improves open and readership rates. Both the McCain and Obama campaigns send emails under various names – some are familiar, like their VP candidates and spouses, but many are unfamiliar, like state chairpersons and major supporters. This tactic is confusing and increases the likelihood that the messages will go unnoticed.

• Ignoring CAN-SPAM guidelines. The FTC ruled that emailers must provide a simple unsubscribe process that doesn’t make the recipient give information other than their email address and opt-out choices, and does not require them do more than send a reply message or visit a single Web page to unsubscribe. Neither campaign follows these guidelines … Obama’s sends recipients to a designated webpage to receive a special code number that they must enter on a designated browser form; McCain’s requires recipients to give a reason for unsubscribing.

Today, many financial institutions recognize that email is a valuable tool when it comes to communicating with members/customers and marketing products. The secret to success is knowing the right way (and wrong way) to plan your email strategy – and putting that knowledge into practice. 

Surveys: How's Web 2.0 Treating You?

by Greg Crandell

Give us your feedback: has social media made a big difference in your businesses' online presence?

Take our surveys below and let us know. Thanks!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Some news from the folks at C.C.C.Blog

by The Contributors

Well, it's been a hum-dinger of a five months here at the C.C.C.Blog (Note: That's our new nickname for ourselves! Ya like? It goes with our logo that goes out with our email stories: 

Cool, huh?)

We've just ticked past 40 stories and we've got some exciting new updates to talk about. First: We recognized just the other day that our feed for this site was a little hard to get to. Luckily, we've put a BIG, HONKIN' LOGO linking to our feed right on our sidebar there! -->>

Click it and sign up for our feed in your favorite feed reader. If you don't have a favorite feed reader or don't want one, that's okay, too...we now deliver through email. Just click on the subscribe via email link right under the BIG, HONKIN' LOGO over there. -->>

So, what else is new? 

>Due to the popularity of our quiz from a post or so ago, we're going to start offering more quizzes...maybe on a particular day? Contact us, let us know when's a good time to be tested.

>Jimmy had a post featured in the CUES Techport newsletter! Click here to visit the CUES Techport website, or just go to the story itself by clicking here!

>Rob emerged from a posting dry-spell to give us his thoughts on the financial crisis...click here to read!

>We're STILL so excited to be bringing you advice and opinion! Speaking of advice, do you have questions you want us to answer? About anything? Let us know, we'll do our best to bring you enlightenment.

Onward and upward!

The Real Rob Banker: Laughing all the way to the Bank(rupt)

[A note from the editor: --
Rob Banker, our fearless young EVP/CIO/COO, spent three hours writing this missive. From 3AM to 6AM today, he was busy being crazy and writing it down. What follows is a reproduction of a plain-text document that was waiting in my inbox when I woke up this morning(they're extra creepy when they're just plain black text delivered while you're asleep...it was like getting a ransom note). Don't say you weren't warned.

--Jimmy]

I don't tend to think of myself as a particularly enlightened individual. Actually, it's more the opposite. I typically feel like I'm looking at the world around me in a sorted of stoned confusion with a big "Huh?" emblazoned across my less-than-toned chest like the shirtless dude at a Packers game at Lambeau field in January. Sorry for that visual.

I think I'm on to something, though. Or not. But indulge my delusion. I wasn't even aware of it until this past Monday, but I was sitting at my desk with a stock ticker going on my desktop. Now this is in itself completely out of character. I don't watch the stock market. I don't understand what short-selling is and I don't care. I pay a financial advisor to do that. He could be funding Polynesian vacations from the IRAs and kids' college funds he set up for me a few years ago. I'm not smart enough to know that the balance statements I've been getting for the last 7 years were really just pages from the discarded Racing Form from his last trip to the track.

But now, here I was watching the market jump around and laughing with guys in the office about how much money I'd just lost. Yup. Laughing. That's a little odd, I know, but I'm prone to laughing at inappropriate moments. My retirement account lost half of its value since January and I'm laughing. And I do genuinely think it's funny. It's not an "if I don't laugh, I'll cry" thing. I'll explain, because there's a number of elements at work here.

#1. Schadenfreude. Because no matter how much money I've lost on my modest investments, there's some other guy who thought he'd beat the system and made a killing a couple of years ago. Right now, he lying on the Rosa Aurora marble floor of his bathroom with a 1/4 bottle of Grey Goose in one hand and a Wall Street Journal alternately sobbing and vomiting into his bidet.

#2. Karma. I managed to make it through the tech boom/bust of the late 90's/2k's without losing my job. I bought a house in 1998 bought a house in suburban Washington D.C. in 1998 and sold it in 2005 for a 130% profit. Both of those -- pure luck. No reason I shouldn't have gotten s***-canned like everyone else I knew in 2001. ALSO, the whole time I was living in that house, I was pining away for the days I could just call the landlord to come unclog the toilet. I was clueless and I got lucky. I figure this is just the universe's way of balancing out some of that dumb luck.

#3. Fear. I don't mean that scared-of-the-bogeyman-in-the-closet type of fear. Just the opposite. It's fear that comes from the beginning of knowledge and not knowing quite to do with that knowledge. I equate it more to watching a horror movie about the bogeyman, knowing the bogeyman is in the closet, and laughing hysterically when the sweet young co-ed gets decapitated with a potato peeler when she opens the door. You know that something bad is about to happen, but there's nothing you can do about it, and it doesn't really matter anyway because it's not real.

This is why everything I write ends up the length of War and Peace, but never the quality. I say things like I just did in #3. Do I think I have even the slightest clue about what's happening in the financial markets? No. Do I really think that the crisis isn't real? No. Do I find decapitation by potato peeler funny? Yes. Did I search Google to find out what one of the most expensive kinds of marble flooring was. I most certainly did.