OM4 will give you a free website with no hosting fees.

Head on over to OM4Business or OM4Tourism (if you are a tourism business).

There is no catch. No setup fee. No hosting fees. No ads. Very powerful websites, none of this cut down stuff. You don’t have to buy an upgrade to get the real deal. Self managed content (Wordpress underneath). Self managed design. All sorts of features designed so that you can market yourself online. Your own domain name, and your own domain email addresses. And we offer education and support.

If you want to understand how we can do this, there are two answers.

Answer 1: You get a free site and free hosting and free education. If you want to outsource some of your online marketing work (such as email marketing, search marketing, content marketing, keyword analysis), you can outsource it through us. Optional, and not free. Enough people use our services, our business works.

Answer 2: A bit of a longer story, but told beautifully by Chris Anderson at Wired Magazine. Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. There are not many services like ours to my knowledge - free blog platforms, but not a fully fledged free business website. There are a huge number of companies paying setup and hosting fees for a business website. Chris’ article makes me think it may not be too long before what we do becomes a lot more common.

Historical note: Chris Anderson wrote an article in Aug 2004 Wired Magazine called The Long Tail. Soon after I read that article, I resigned from IBM’s consulting division to launch my own business. I had an A0 sized poster made up of The Long Tail. I’ll have to get a poster of this one too.

If you run an online business (or plan to run one), then here are 17 web tools you ought to know about.

Each of these web tools (or their equivalent) can either save you money, make you money, or help you solve problems encountered in running your online business.

A few quick points:

• This post will be of most use if you own or run an online business.
• Free is great and I use free tools where I can. But (like many Mac users) I don’t mind paying for good software either. Some of these web tools are free, others aren’t. Where they do cost money, I’ve indicated rough costs in $US.
• While Mac is what I know best, I’ve provided links to Windows equivalent apps where I know of something worth recommending. I’m not prejudiced against Windows … some of my best friends used to use Windows
• My definition of ‘tool’ is pretty broad - whatever you need to be successful online. So it is 17 web tools, or groups of web tools if you like.

If you haven’t come across some of these web tools, perhaps ask yourself - is something similar needed for your online business?

Alright, on with the list.

General Web Tools for Online Business

Customer Relationship Management

A good web based customer relationship management system helps your sales and marketing team work effectively.

I just love Highrise and 37Signals to boot.

I’ve written a post about using Highrise to Support Your Marketing System. Ever so simple, the feature I like most is being able to forward emails to my drop box and have them automatically filed against the correct client. I’ve used a lot of different CRM systems over the years (right up to Siebel). For small to medium business, Highrise has no equal.

After your free 30 day trial, expect to pay $25/mth until you get into the swing of it, and then $50/mth. Runs via web browser.

Keyword Research Tool

Do you know about keywords? (Everyone answers yes to that one).

Do you know what the most important keywords are for your business? Really?

In that case, roughly how many searches (yes, actual searches) will be carried out for these important keywords in the next 24 hours? 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000?

If you don’t know how to find the answer to these questions (let alone have the numbers), then you have a treasure trove of opportunity waiting for you.

Online life is simply not complete without Wordtracker. Using the Free Wordtracker keyword research tool lets you see the popularity of the top 100 keywords for a given seed keyword (or phrase).

If you want some background on keyword research then have a look through this article: Keyword research is Sonar for Online Marketing. I hope it makes things clear.

The free Wordtracker service is damn useful. I use the paid service, it costs $329/yr. Lots more than 100 keywords per search and export to Excel facilities - very useful if you want to analyze larger keyword groups. While writing this article I’ve decided to register in the Wordtracker affiliate programme - I’ve been recommending it for ages, so what the heck. If you do decide sign up, I would invite you to use one of my affiliate links (above).

If you aren’t already across keyword research, make it a priority to do so. This is a tool you really, really ought to know about.

Email Autoresponder

Using an email autoresponder means you can comply with anti-spam legislation in the US, Australia and an increasing number of countries.

Verified opt-in is a big feature you should be looking for. Basically verified opt in means each time you get an opt in request, you don’t treat it as permission until it has been verified by the owner of the email address. An opt in to a list can come from anywhere. Verified opt in means you have permission to send email, and that is critical to keeping your online business on the right side of the L.A.W.

Verified opt in also means outsourcing your email list management is an oh-so-bad idea if it means you have to re-verify your entire list just to move from one web provider to another. If you are going to invest in email marketing, own an autoresponder account. You have been warned.

Using a good autoresponder is also - in my opinion - the only practical way of ensuring your email will be delivered to clients who have requested it from you. As anti-spam efforts increase, expect the differences in deliverability rates between whitelisted providers (e.g. coming from a trusted email autoresponder) and the rest to increase.

For some time now I have used (and recommended, as an affiliate) the Aweber email autoresponder. Deliverability is excellent, it is easy to use, and there is no limit on the number of different lists you can manage. We have integrated Aweber into our OM4 web platform to make it even easier to wire email marketing into an online presence. An Aweber account costs $180/yr.

You can sign up for a free Aweber test drive here.

Capture Hidden Profits with Unlimited Autoresponders AWeber’s automated unlimited autoresponder follow up increases sales, lowers costs, builds lasting customer relationships, and increases your profits! Find out how with Unlimited Autoresponders.

Copywriting

Everyone with an online business needs better copywriting. Beg for it, borrow it, steal it (oops, I should say be inspired by it) … develop it in-house, outsource it. Whatever you need to do.

The best resource for copywriting is Brian Clark’s Copyblogger. If you read just one part of CopyBlogger, read about headlines. But you can use it for a lot more.

I’ll cite John Caples and Tested Advertising Methods as my authority for that recommendation about how important headlines are. I am sure that if John Caples was here today, he would insist that keyword research should be used to improve headlines.

Full points if you recognise where the headline for this article came from.

Password Manager

An online business will of necessity have a lot of online accounts and passwords. With financial resources or confidential information to protect, you ought to know about how password managers work.

Writing down passwords is very common. And not smart. Writing passwords on post it notes slapped on a computer is possibly the most obvious mistake. And it happens all the time. Storing passwords in a simple document (like MS Word) with a password is not a reasonable level of protection (if you still think that is safe, 30 seconds on Google should fix that).

Keeping your own passwords is hard enough. But what about employees? Its a serious problem, and deserves a proper solution.

We use a password manager 1Password, and it is a great piece of software. Create a new user account and it saves the details (including a randomly generated strong password). Next time you need to login, you can recall the details at a keystroke. You can do the same with credit card details.

$30 gets you a password manager - 1Password (Mac) or RoboForm (Windows) - and potentially saves you a lot of grief.

Online Backup

Hands up everyone who knows what can go wrong if you don’t backup important business data? Most business owners do.

Hands up everyone who has a working backup plan that also includes regular offsite backups? Hmm, most business owners don’t have this. And even if they think they do, sometimes they don’t.

Are offsite backups really needed? Well, do you insure against fire, theft or flooding? If you computers were damagd by fire or flood, or stolen, would your business continue to operate efficiently?

An online backup service backs up your files automatically via the web. Your files are stored offsite in encrypted form. If you need to get just a few files restored, you can recover them online. If you need the whole lot, some service providers offer a DVD.

An online backup that is automated means nobody needs to load tapes or connect a disk. And an online backup means an offsite backup. Not to say you won’t use local backup day to day. But if you don’t have an offsite backup, you are taking a risk with your data.

BackJack and iBackup both do Mac online backup. Mozy (now owned by EMC) does Windows online backup. $5/mth for 10Gb storage, and $4/mth per user. And Mozy also does Mac backup on a Personal plan (very well). Can’t wait until they offer Mac backup on a Business plan.

Google

Google offers some great web tools, and I use them extensively.

I use Google Mail (aka Gmail) for my mail. I forward all of my mail (and I have quite a few different email addresses) to my Gmail mailbox. Reading it via the Web interface is better than Mac Mail (100 to a page makes it quick to scan, and the search is excellent). I can use POP or IMAP if I want. The spam filtering is the best I know of. 6Gb+ mail box. 20Mb send/receive. This is the modern way with email, and I recommend this approach to all my clients.

Google Calendar is free and has recently joined my favourites list. I’ve given up on iCal (after the clunky Leopard upgrade and unfixable time zone issues that waged war on my schedule). It is really good. Default reminder settings mean I get an email reminder a day before and a screen alert an hour before. Plus a daily schedule emailed to me. Perfect. It is also (surprisingly) the easiest calendar tool I’ve ever used for creating appointments.

Google Reader is the free RSS reader of choice. If you use it you’ll know why.

Google Analytics is the free web analytics package I use myself, recommend to my clients, and integrate with by default for our OM4 sites.

Google AdWords allows you to run ads on Google’s search and content network. If you only try one search advertising tool, this should be the one.

Use Google Alerts to stay in touch with breaking news and blog posts relating to your keywords of interest.

All Mac and Windows. And except for AdWords, free.

Web Tools for Web Sites and Blogging

Web Graphics

When you run a blog you will often want simple graphics. These might be used to create the design for an entire site. Or you may need graphical buttons for your sidebar.

Once upon a time you needed to hire a graphic designer to get web graphics done (with a professional looking result). Well, times have changed. If you haven’t been using web graphics as much as you would like (because of the cost), or you have been using them (and you want to save some of that cost), you should review options for web graphics.

Keynote is a surprisingly powerful tool to use for web graphics (even though it is theoretically presentation software). You can use Keynote to prepare web graphics on a slide, and then export the slide as a hi res Tiff file which you can crop to size.

I’ve written a post about how to do this, called Photoshop Smackdown: Web Graphics the Easy Way with Keynote. Keynote comes with iWork for $99 and is Mac Only.

Windows alternatives are not that easy in this area. Photoshop costs a bomb, and while great for graphic designers is just too hard for business users. Gimp is free, but also too hard. I’m always on the lookout for a good tool to recommend here (as my clients are interested), so please let me know what fits the bill.

Graphic Cropping and Resizing

Its very common to have to resize an image. Either to change the length/width of an image. Or to change the file size (so it doesn’t slow down your web page). You can use a couple of tools for this.

The quickest and easiest for cropping and resizing (but which doesn’t work for all images) is called ImageWell. The free version is fine (although I use the paid upgrade version). Unfortunately I can report the support is very good (as I have had cause to use it). Thanks Hagen! I hope you can find and fix the bug that stops ImageWell reading certain files. Mac only.

When ImageWell chokes on a particular image, I use Picturesque. This is an extraordinarily beautiful application that handles large files very well - you can resize them (dimensions and size) but not crop. Picturesque also lets you resize a folder full of images at a time (as well as adding drop shadows, reflections etc). Before Keynote came along (which also does shadows and reflections very easily), Picturesque got a lot more use. It costs $25 and is Mac only.

Windows alternatives that I know of in this area are:

• Basic, but easy to use: PIXresizer
• More features: VSO Image Resizer

Ruler

In a lot of different situations you just need to know how big something is.

FreeRuler does this job brilliantly. Fire it up, Cmd Tab to the screen you need to measure on, then Cmd Tab again to put FreeRuler over the top. Cost = free. Mac only.

Blogging Client

Now personally I use the Wordpress Dashboard for blogging. That is because I work on a lot of aspects of a site other than just the blog posts. Also, most of our clients use the Dashboard for posts, and it is important to stay in touch with what most our clients experience.

If you are posting regularly - particularly to several blogs - try out Ecto (there is a 21 day trial available, and it is $18 for a full version). Mac and Windows.

For Windows only, I have seen Windows Live Writer recommended a lot. But haven’t tried it myself.

Screencasts

When I want to record a short screencast (movie) of an application running on my Mac, then I use a few different tools.

SnapzProX from Ambrosia Software is a medium cost ($69) utility that will record what is happening on your computer (in a defined area of your screen) and save it to a Quicktime movie. Mac only.

While you are recording with SnapxProX, it helps to use Mousespose2 from Boinx Software ($15). Mousepose lets you highlight where your mouse is moving, and where you are clicking. Mac only.

Use iMovie to to edit together screen shots, SnapzProX movies and title pages (prepared with Keynote) and lay over a sound track. iMovie is free with your Mac, as part of iLife. And Mac only.

Windows users have a rare advantage in this area, with access to the highly functional (if a lot more expensive) Camtasia. $300. Only on Windows.

Web Page Layout Assistance

If you want to mess around with the layout of your website, there is a great free extension to Firefox that is very easy to use. It is the Firefox Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick. Oh, and if you haven’t figured it out, you need to use Firefox as well.

This tool shows you how your website is put together, by showing you the various blocks and how big they are (such as headers and sidebars), as well as each of the elements - such as widgets and sidebars - and their names. If you know the name of something, you can change the way it looks. You can also see all your CSS rules and try out new ones. Once you have them correct, you can copy and paste into your OM4 custom CSS rules. There are many other tricks for the inner tweak, once you have it loaded just bring up your website and try out the commands.

Firefox is an excellent browser for both Mac and Windows.

Images and Stock Photos

Ok, this doesn’t technically fall into the Mac Tools for Business Blogging category, however I use these resources all the time for blogs.

You can get lots of useful images from iStockPhoto.com. Need a fresh image for a site header? $2.00 will usually get you one from iStockPhoto, and if you are lucky you may snag a good free image of the day.

While it can take longer, you can also look at images in Flickr.com. Finding interesting images is simply a matter of searching by keyword, sorting the results by Interestingness and switching to thumbnail view. Depending on whether your blog is commercial or not, you can often find images with a Creative Commons licence that you can use on your site.

Mac and Windows.

Slightly Technical But Highly Useful Tools for Online Business

Cross Browser Compatibility

If you ever worry about how your site looks to people using different browsers, then the free Browsershots.org site may be just what you need. Browsershots brings up your web page in a mind boggling array of browsers, and gives you a screen shot of the way it looks.

Test for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari and you have most bases covered. But Browsershots doesn’t hold you to just that - you can test for browsers you have never even heard of.

Mac and Windows.

Speed Testing

To test the speed of your broadband connection, you can use Speedtest.net. It is quick and easy to understand the results.

Mac and Windows.

Domains and DNS

Do you want to know if your website goes down? Pingability will carry out hourly checks on the availability of your website for free (or more frequently for $10/mth).

Are you migrating your site to a new domain? Want to find out if your existing domain is properly configured? Use the free Pingability Instant Checks to see the current nameservers for your domain, and where your web and email traffic is being sent to. This tool will also report any errors in the DNS for your domain (web and email).

Domain Registrars

• DomainCentral operate a US based website that sells .com domains for $6.50 and provides a good range of self-service tools. I’ve never had to call on their support as yet, and hope I never have to.
• NameCheap.com are recommended by some people I trust, although I haven’t used them myself (.com domains are $9.29).
• WebCity Domains are a popular domain registrar with responsive support. They sell .com domains for $9.50 USD ($10.90 AUD) or $34.95 AUD for 2 years for a .com.au domain. You have to login separately to manage each domain. Not a problem if you only have a few, but I would love to see them with a better system for managing larger collections of domains.

I used to recommend DomainCentral.com.au, but have decided to recommend WebCity instead. Support isn’t needed from a domain registrar all that much, but when it is required, it matters.

All DNS and domain tools Mac and Windows.

Other Useful Tools

(but maybe ‘ought to know about’ would be stretching it)

I am a QuickSilver user. Try it out if you do a lot of work online and love keyboard shortcuts. Mac only.

All my US conference calls (and many in Australia) are conducted via Skype, and it is good for video conferencing with other Mac users (who have built in webcams with Macs shipped in the last few years). Mac and Windows.

Other Writings on This Topic

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame writes about his 14 Essential Mac OS X Applications for Bloggers

Joost De Valk of SEO Blog has 13 Mac Tools for Web Developers and SEOs

Now I know there are a lot more than this, and I will update this set of links over time. Its just I’ve spent way too long on the core list, so I’m going to have to put this to bed now.

In Closing

Just in case anyone is concerned I’ve favoured Mac applications over Windows, here is an additional link to help Windows users find great web tools for online business.

Now … what has worked for you? What have I missed?

One of the hardest aspects of online marketing is making sure the rubber hits the road.

Some times you will be marketing products that people can purchase online without any interaction. Other times you will get a lead and need to follow it up.

We are now using a new tool from 37Signals called Highrise. A free 30 day trial means you can easily see what it does and find out whether it works for you.

The main features I like are:

• it keeps a record of all the people and companies we deal with
• we use Tags to keep track of Prospects, Leads and Clients
• it keeps track of Cases - we use these for each of our jobs
• it lets me set up Tasks for myself and for others - a handy tool for delegating
• we use it to record details of our systems and processes so everyone can follow them
• and best of all I can do most things directly from my email

The email feature is really cool. If I get a new email enquiry, all I have to do is forward the email to my Highrise dropbox and Highrise creates a new contact and files the email against it.

I can also create a new task (for myself, or for others within OM4) simply by sending an email to a special dropbox with the appropriate subject line.

I’m not involved with 37Signals other than as a customer. But I’m finding I am recommending Highrise more and more as its such a useful tool to support online marketing.

I’m using it for OM4 and also for another business of ours. It really works well.

Which car is the best for racing?

Well, what kind of race are you in?

Is your race more like the Dakar Rally or an Indy 500?

Which is the best racing car? The answer is… it depends.

It is the same with web platforms. They can all do things for your. But what race do you think you are in?

Basic websites

For businesses that just want a presence on the web, its hard to go past the economy web site:

• cheap and cheerful hosting for around $10-20/mth.
• basic HTML website that is uploaded with ftp.
• email addresses that don’t cause you too much grief.

This economy model has been around for yonks and won’t cost you much at all. There are thousands of web designers, web developers, and ISPs who can help you get online in this way.

eCommerce websites

If you want to put products up into a store, you can get a wide range of e-commerce packages. The easiest are fully hosted, and you just pay a commission on sales. If you have your own hosting and merchant account and invest a bit more in your setup, you can bring down the cost per transaction (important if you have a higher volume of sales). Lets call this the e-Commerce web site:

• why do your own store when you can set one up in eBay or Amazon?
• other fully hosted e-Commerce options include popular platforms such as 1ShoppingCart or niche providers such as Shopify.
• if you are prepared to download your own software and invest time in configuration and administration, you have access to open source platforms such as osCommerce.
• there is no shortage of choice in this area, just search on ‘ecommerce website’ and you will have no trouble finding something that suits you.

Online marketing websites

However sometimes even though you sell products, even use a shopping cart, your business isn’t best served by an e-commerce platform.

E-Commerce platforms are great at putting your goods up on display for purchase. But not necessarily best as an online marketing platform.

The rise of open source and free content management systems has changed the game.

Let me explain my reasoning here.

People buy on emotion, and justify with logic (that is a Seth Godin principle that I firmly believe).

If you find people in trouble and help solve their problems, people may trust you, and then sales will happen. Another Seth Godin principle.

Ok, so if sales take care of themselves once people understand they can trust you, and that you can help solve their problems, what do you focus your energy on?

Displaying products in a catalog so they can be added to a shopping cart? Sorry, what problem were you solving for me again?

Maybe you’ve already done your marketing, and people just want to buy their Wii at the best price and get on with life. In which case, you aren’t really in need of an online marketing platform, just an online e-commerce platform. Dakar vs Indy 500.

So what does a web platform for online marketing look like?

So what does an online platform need to do? Here is my checklist for an online marketing platform:

• it should help you publish. Making it easy to publish means you can talk about understanding of problems, and how you can help solve them
• it should help you build trust. There are many different ways to do this, but if you believe people trust people, then you want an online marketing platform to help personalise your presence.
• it should help you engage in a conversation with your audience. Some people make instant decisions, most don’t. Mostly you want to open a conversation with someone rather than try to sell them on the first visit. Business is business, but life is a lot more fun if you take the time to understand each other.
• it should let you do everything else you can do with a normal or eCommerce website

Right, so that is my definition of what an online marketing platform should do for you.

Publishing is such a powerful part of an online marketing strategy (or at least the style of online marketing I believe is best). And open source content management systems have enabled self-publishing in a way we have not seen before.

So recognising content management is at the core of online marketing here is my shortlist of best web platforms for online marketing:

• if you are prepared to download, configure and administer your own web platform, then you can’t go past my favourite WordPress.org, but there are also excellent CMS options available from Joomla or Drupal and Ruby On Rails.
• if you want a free hosted online marketing platform, then Wordpress.com will get you started for nothing other your time. There are restrictions however, and you may find (for example) rather than being able to integrate your own e-Commerce pages you will need to link out to another site (see above)
• commercial hosted online marketing platforms are also available from Site Sell.
• and last but not least, we ourselves offer hosted OM4 sites that use Wordpress as their engine (for example Auspen Markers and Histology Online).

I know some people will argue WordPress is not a content management system. Whatever.

All of our customers have online marketing sites and can manage their own content and manage their own design. So if there are better content management systems, I am not going to argue about the toss, I just don’t care. Because it isn’t only the content management that matters.

Recently WordPress won an award that neatly sums up the main reason I recommend Wordpress so strongly. Wordpress has just won the Best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System 2007 award from Packt Publishing.

Now that is some title for an award. BOSSNCMS 2007 for short

The very fact that Packt felt a need to create this category is important. Because in this field, the content management capabilities are only part of the story. And WordPress is good enough at content management.

It is the ability to engage with an audience that WordPress really excels. So now I will give you the reasons I think WordPress is the best web platform for online marketing:

• Social Media integration. As the award indicates, WordPress is brilliant for integrating with social media such as StumbleUpon, Deli.icio.us, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, FaceBook, MyBlogLog - the list just goes on.
• Personal. WordPress naturally leads you towards a personal web presence. Its just the way it is. You can make a basic HTML web site personal - if you try hard. With WordPress, its just they way they assume it will be.
• Conversational. WordPress is exceptional at facilitating conversations with an audience. RSS and email subscriptions for readers, comments, pingbacks and trackbacks from other blogs, recent posts/comments widgets, forums, directories - you name it, WordPress excels at conversation.
• Ease of Publishing. WordPress makes it really easy for non technical people to be publishers. 1.7M people with hosted WordPress.com blogs and many millions who download WordPress software and run their own sites has made it very easy to use. Non experts can publish text, images, videos, audio - incredible.
• Flexibility. WordPress is tweakable. So you can get exactly the design you want. People are fussy, so that is important. You can also integrate it with just about anything. It is LAMP underneath (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP), so easy to extend when you need to.

The social media integration is the most important aspect, and I think the Packt award will help draw attention to this. WordPress.com is now the 6th highest ranking social media site by unique visitors, trailing only Facebook, Geocities, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces and Blogger.

Pretty amazing stuff. And that is only WordPress.com, it doesn’t include WordPress.org sites.

That is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of WordPress features. Or a feature by feature comparison with other platforms. I think Joomla, Drupal, Ruby On Rails are excellent platforms.

Microsoft has a genuine problem, there is so much genuine competition for it here.

So this is one way of looking at a web platform for online marketing. We love WordPress over here at OM4. But there are many choices that can help you get better online marketing outcomes.

Something I’ll be doing as I get this blog going is point out those resources that I have found most useful in understanding and practising online marketing. And at the very top of my useful list goes this book: David Meerman Scott and The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

David launched an eBook called The New Rules of PR around the same time we were launching PublicityShip. He subsequently developed the concepts from that initial document, and his book was the result.

I also recommend his blog WebInkNow as a great read. It also happens to be an excellent example of content marketing in practice.

One of David’s primary insights is that new media is enabling a direct conversation with buyers. If you want to talk to buyers through print or broadcast media, you need to address the needs of journalists and editors. But publish yourself on the web and you can talk directly to buyers. The implications of this change are profound. A blog is in no small way one of the channels for communicating directly with buyers (although you may choose not to try to sell them directly).

With a full title of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How To Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media To Reach Buyers Directly, you can expect to get a thorough run down on a wide range of new media. And you won’t be disappointed, or receive a trivial treatment.

David discusses in some detail the value of content rich sites (David’s earlier book Cashing In With Content is also in my list of top resources, and I will post about separately).

Unlike many books that can rapidly start to lose precision, The New Rules and Marketing & PR gets involved in:

• the crucial relationship between online marketing and copywriting
• practical approaches to thought leadership to build trust
• building a marketing and PR plan

Aside from the very specific guidance provided in relation to how PR and marketing operate online, David makes a very interesting point about the convergence of marketing and PR. I’ve definitely noticed this. When we launched PublicityShip, we were focussing on publicity. As The New Rules of Marketing & PR was being written, we were busy adding online marketing services to our offering. As it stands, we’ve decided to create two distinct points of presence for these services. One for Publicity and Public Relations (PublicityShip) and another for Online Marketing (OM4). There are advantages in this (well, I think so anyway, our clients will prove this one way or the other). However there is no doubt in my mind that we are more useful to our clients by having both capabilities. Crossovers between the two offerings are happening all the time - the convergence of PR and marketing is very real from where we stand.

For me the standout element of The New Rules of Marketing & PR is David’s explanation of how to use Buyer Personas. It is concise, to the point, and really useful in developing a content strategy. It gets a whole session dedicated to it at Blog School. To learn more you can also read Adele Revella’s Buyer Personas blog.

In summary, buy this book. You’ll enjoy reading it, and won’t be able to avoid scrawling notes on it. Reading it is like a mini online marketing strategy workshop. Shortly after we received our copy, I asked Jane to read it in detail, and she came back with about 25 separate marketing initiatives to discuss.

It sparks ideas.