More and more of my clients are making the decision to eliminate their print magazines and newsletters.

All of this makes sense to me.  I get most of my information via e-mail these days, and I’m subscribed to dozens of newsletters via e-mail and RSS.  And in an effort to minimize the “piles” at home, I have canceled all but a few paper subscriptions.

But I got to thinking:  Am I ready to ditch ALL of my paper subscriptions? Am I ready to cancel my print subscriptions to my favorite magazines, namely TIME, Smithsonian and Stanford magazines?

Here’s my concern about all digital publications:  it’s easy to ignore an e-mail newsletter as just another e-mail in the hundreds I get every day.  Consider this:  when my copy of TIME magazine arrives on Saturday, it ends up in my “to read” pile. This pile gets shuffled around from dining room table to coffee table to bedroom side table.  Each issue sticks around until I read or skim it, then toss.  But here’s what happens with some of my e-mail subscriptions:  if I have the time, I read them on the spot.  If I don’t have the time, I may leave them in my inbox or move them to a “read” folder for later reading.  Trouble is, with the flood of e-mail that I get, I rarely get to my e-mail read pile. And sometimes, in an attempt to gain back control of my inbox, I delete a huge group of e-mail newsletters and start over.

Ugh, so much for the future of publishing.  What is the balance that content organizations should try to achieve between print and digital?  And if digital is your only future, how do you ensure delivery and readership? I have some thoughts:

• As with everything, it’s important to consider the audiences for your e-mail alerts and publications.  Who are they?  What are they looking to you to provide?  How do they want to consume the content?
• Is it even an option to mail a publication out to customers, if they so request?  If not, then you better be able to rely on compelling headlines, great writing, a great opt-in list, and good design to get readers to read your e-mails on the spot. (Hmmm… come to think of it, printed pieces need the same things to be successful.)
• Be sure to embed open and clickthrough tracking in your e-mail campaigns. While you’ll never know if people are reading your printed pieces, you can and should benchmark online usage over time using tracking codes.
• Test, test, test. Figure out the best day for sending e-mails to your audience, which topics generate the most interest, and which headlines result in the most traffic.

One final thought.  I think that the iPad (and similar devices) could revolutionize how we consume content.  While I won’t skim an entire issue of TIME on my laptop, I will read or skim an entire issue on my iPad.  Why?  It turns out that the iPad lets me browse online content the same way I read my printed magazines: on the couch or in bed.  And if I get used to this, I will likely cancel my print subscriptions and opt instead for the digital versions of my favorite magazines.  Which I think would be a win for publishers because they will still get subscription revenue AND they can track my reading habits.

How about you?  Have you ditched your print subscriptions? How do you manage the flood of e-mail newsletters coming your way?

So I decided it was time for a face-off between the iPad and the Kindle. I invited my friend Eileen to come over to the house with her Kindle.  Eileen would represent the Kindle while my 5 year-old would represent the iPad.  Here’s the face-off video where I play host and ask the co-stars to compare the iPad vs. the Kindle in terms of:  e-bookstore experience, screen size and display, resolution, page turning and search.  See for yourself and be the judge.  Who do you think won this face-off?

This homemade video brings home the point that with the Web and social sharing sites, everyone’s a critic, a moviemaker, or a citizen journalist. Despite a legion of tech writers reviewing the iPad, I felt compelled to create my own iPad review.  And now I’ll reach out to my network of friends, clients, colleagues and followers on Facebook, Twitter, blog and e-mail to share my video, get their feedback and try to influence their thinking about these devices.

How about you?  Are you publishing your own content to social networking and sharing sites?  What’s your take on the iPad and have you decided to get one?

Ugh, so what’s an advertiser to do?

This morning, I had the pleasure of seeing Dave Nelsen, President of Dialog, talk about social media for business.  While discussing YouTube, Dave showed us a video that he called “the future of advertising.”  The T-Mobile Dance is a 2:41 minute video of commuters at Liverpool Station in England dancing their hearts out.  As more and more people join in, onlookers snap photos, take video and share the experience with their friends through their T-Mobile phones, of course.

Dave made the point that this video represents the future of advertising because:

• The company got me to willingly watch a loooong ad. This would never happen on TV!
• Because YouTube allows comments, over 16,000 people have commented on this video, creating incredible buzz and feedback for the company.
• The video was so successful that T-Mobile created a YouTube channel for its “Life’s for Sharing” campaign.  Fans can even create their own videos and T-Mobile posts the best of the bunch.  There’s a video of a Korean baby singing Hey Jude and a singer jamming from atop a bus. How’s that for a user-generated content strategy?

And it’s not just large companies that are using YouTube to promote their products. My 5-year old son eagerly watches what are essentially product ads from a company called Trains Galore on their YouTube Channel. My husband Maki loves the YouTube channel of Ten-Tec, Inc., a manufacturer of high quality radio equipment for amateur radio operators.

These small retailers likely don’t have big budgets for advertising, but they have clearly found a following on YouTube.  This video advertising wooden Thomas the Tank Engine trains has gotten nearly 300,000 views and 50 comments!

All of this is not to say that the future of advertising is YouTube.  But YouTube represents an incredibly flexible way that companies are promoting their products through inspired creative, a viral strategy, and a user-generate content strategy.

How about you?  How are you using social media to promote your company?  What’s your YouTube strategy?

Our work included:

• A new blog where Campbell addresses financial issues, and offers insightful tips on how to prepare for retirement and sustain financial security beyond one’s working years.
• The incorporation of other social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to help establish a fan and follower base.
• The implementation of Expression Engine as the CMS.
• A fresh look and feel that serves  that highlights Campbell’s expertise and perspectives on the nation’s brokerage industry.

Visit Fire Your Broker

So how come most organizations shy away from incorporating UGC on their sites?

I think it’s because most organizations are not equipped to deal with UGC, good, bad or indifferent.  And they are deathly  afraid of negative comments.  Here’s my take on UGC, why it’s here to stay and why most organizations need a UGC strategy:

• UGC can take many forms. A magazine site that allows visitors to rate articles support UGC.  A store that allows ratings supports UGC.  A blog that welcomes comments invites UGC.
• Sites that welcome UGC invite participation. And participation by the right people encourages more participation and more followers.
• UGC lets you tap into the expertise and experiences of your members, customers, and partners, which will enrich the content you provide.
• Supporting UGC on your site or application does not mean that you lose control. You can set up guidelines and moderate comments.  On this blog, for example, all comments are immediately posted but I get notifications and I spam (delete) all comments that look spammy. Yes, I get the occasional snarky or negative comment, but unless the post contains profanity, I leave it on the site.  The New York Times recently announced that Wikipedia, the site built on UGC, will soon impose a layer of editorial review on articles about living people.
• Celebrating UGC lets you tap into most visitors’ need for true interaction with you and your organization. I read every comment on this blog and respond personally when I get a request for information or assistance.  I believe these interactions have helped Matrix Group make followers out of readers.
• If your organization is suffering from criticism re: transparency and responsiveness, UGC can help you face your critics directly. The Direct Selling Association launched a blog 18 months ago to counter false perceptions about direct selling.  Although apprehensive about allowing comments in real-time, the organization decided it needed to make a strong statement about integrity and transparency.  The results have been great.  Negative comments are opportunities to address criticisms and myths.  More importantly, the negative comments have been few and far between.
• Supporting UGC is also a wonderful way to let your staff, clients, partners and friends network and share their experiences. I was moved by the dozens of memories that members of the Matrix family posted to our 10th anniversary microsite.  I didn’t know about some of the antics and every single post was a treat!

How about you?  What’s your take on user-generated content?  What are your favorite UGC sites?  Has your organization taken the UGC plunge?

10 years feels like a real milestone to us, especially to me. Like I say in my “Where We’re Going” letter, when I started the company, I wasn’t thinking about balance sheets or Web standards. I just wanted to help companies with their Web sites. And when my Advisory Board Chair asked me about my five-year plan (during year one), I just laughed; I was so focused on surviving the first year, five years felt like a lifetime.  So it felt right to create a microsite that lets all of us at the company see where we’ve been and think about the future.

We also wanted to create a showcase piece for the company, one that invited a lot of clicking to learn more and let us create some far out designs we don’t normally get to do.  I love, love,  love timelines, so we scoured our project notes and intranet and created an interactive timeline with important dates, factoids and photos.  We also adore information design, so the Fun Facts portion of the site is a tribute to information design. Finally, I was dying to launch a Twitter visualization project, so ours shows off tweets from the company, the staff, and people we’re following, as well as tweets about topics we follow (Web standards, social media, yada, yada.)

Finally, we want to use the microsite to let clients, partners, staff and alumni share their favorite Matrix Group stories.   Share Your Memory is letting us capture some great stories from the past ten years!

If you’ve got an anniversary or important milestone coming up, think about a microsite!  Let us know how we can help or send us a link!

I just got back from a week in Mexico.

If you read The Washington Post, you’ll think we were insane to go. The Post has stories about swine flu pretty much every day.  I count no less than 10 stories that feature or mention swine flu in today’s online edition of the Post.  The Post also tells me that the World Health Organization is set to declare swine flu a global pandemic.

So why did we decide to go?  First of all, what was not widely reported was that the CDC downgraded its travel advisory from a recommendation against non-essential travel to a travel health precaution.  Second, reviews from bloggers in the US and Mexico assured us that Playa del Carmen and the Yucatan Peninsula were safe, having pretty much zero cases of swine flu.  This, despite, the news media reporting that swine flu was all over Mexico.  I found this blog post by Toni and Cheri useful, TripAdvisor (one of my favorite sites for travel and restaurant reviews) had a whole forum devoted to swine flu and Playa del Carmen, and a Google map of swine flu cases around the world showed no confirmed or reported cases close to where we were going.  All of this information, together, reassured me that I would not be putting my family’s health in jeopardy by going on this trip.

What’s fascinating to me is how, once again, I relied on local sites, bloggers and peer reviewers to give me the inside scoop, which seemed to contradict the story I was getting from national, mainstream media. The Pew Research Center would call me an Integrator because I “get the news from both traditional sources and the internet.” However, there is a segment called Net-Newsers “who principally turn to the web for news, and largely eschew traditional sources.”

I’m not about to abandon reading The Post, The New York Times, CNN, etc.  I will, however, continue to blend mainstream news with reviews, blogs and articles by bloggers and peer reviewers.  In some instances, I will probably give more weight to what a mommy blogger has to say about a topic (or product or movie) than the most famous or  award-winning journalist.

How about you?  What sources of news and information do you find most credible?

Wikipedia says that a tag cloud is a visual depiction of the tags (topics) on a Web site. The tags are usually listed alphabetically and font size or color is used to show the relative importance of a tag.

But first, let’s talk about tags.  The choice is tags is incredibly important on a Web site or blog.  Your tags should represent what’s important to you and your target audiences.  Personally, I think you should limit your tag universe to a couple of dozen topics so that you can focus your content and visitors can easily grasp what your site is about.

So once you’ve got your tags, you’ve got to tag every piece of content.  Yes, it’s extra work but it will pay off.  With tagging, you can display related content and of course, you can have a tag cloud!

Take this blog.  You’ll see from the tag cloud on the right that the tags with the most number of posts are: marketing, social networking, blog, leadership, Google and Twitter.  It’s great for me to see the topics I post about most frequently and I can easily see if I need to post on other topics so as not to bore my readers.

Here are some interesting tag clouds:

• Flickr has a tag cloud and I love how you can see hot tags from the last 24 hours, as well as the most popular tags of all time.
• TagsPage has a tag cloud that uses color and size; this one is a little too crazy for my taste.
• Delicious has so many tags so you can only see a list of top tags for all users.  Individuals, however, have their own tag clouds. I was fascinated to learn that the top tags in my jmpineda Delicious account are: management, statistics, twitter, things to do, social networking.
• Web Designer Wall has a small tag cloud that uses size to indicate important and frequency

But the most interesting thing about tags is how they connect people. Here’s how:  on a social bookmarking site like Delicious, I can see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages.  On my list, for example, I can see that 421 have saved The Cult of Done Manifesto in their bookmarks; I can also see their comments, and their tags for the same site.  I can click on the Delicious profile for any of the users or click on any of their tags to see what they’ve saved under a specific topic.  I am fascinated to learn that most poeple tagged this site under Manifesto, productivity and inspiration, while I tagged it under management, leadership and culture.

Bonus: I found cwmurphy’s bookmarks on productivity really terrific, so I added him/her to my network.  Yep, I don’t know this person but I hope to find out about more cool sites through my expanded bookmarking network.

Last note: there are now sites that you let you make tag cloud from any site or text, like Wordle.  Here’s a word cloud of this blog, created a couple of weeks ago.  A little chaotic, but super fun.

I can give you all kinds of reasons why I love Twitter. It’s terrific for knowing what my friends are up to, it’s a great way to promote my company and blog, but most of all, I love the crazy variety of sites and pages I learn about. My favorite tweeters are people who introduce me to new sites, interesting statistics, gorgeous photos, and news articles I would otherwise never chance upon. One of my favorite tweeters is Guy Kawasaki. Some of the recent gems I learned about from Guy are: 9 resistance-boosting foods and ingredients to help you win the cold war, 50 of the world’s best food blogs, and 10 evolution stories Darwin would love.  I suspect that Guy spends all day trolling the Web or has a vast staff that does same and then he tweets the coolest and most interesting of his finds.  Thanks, Guy!

My other love is StumbleUpon.  Here’s how it works.  You create a profile, indicate your interests, then download the StumbleUpon Web plug-in, which then adds a new toolbar to your browser.  From your  browser, you press the Stumble! button and get taken to a seemingly random site that others who share your interests have given the thumbs up.  You then have the option of giving the site the thumbs up or down, or you can do nothing.  Over time, StumbleUpon is supposed to learn what you like, based on your special interests AND the sites that you have given the thumbs up.  While having my soup at lunch yesterday, StumbleUpon took me to: the ReadPrint free online library, gorgeous black and white photos of animals from Nick Brandt, and Newsmap, which lets me access news headlines from around the world.  BTW, StumbleUpon reportedly has over 7M users and is driving an enormous amount of traffic to sites worldwide.  Be sure to check your usage reports to see if StumbleUpon is sending visitors your way.

I don’t know about you, but until recently, I felt like I was in a Web browsing rut.  I went to the same sites every day and I wasn’s straying from my normal surfing routines.  Twitter and StumbleUpon have introduced me to new sites and new perspectives.  God bless all this user-generated content!