New Songs for Pissed-off Catfish

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 23rd, 2008 | Comments

I’ve added two new songs to my playlist on mwmcmusic.com Both are Pissed-off Catfish tracks. Mud-nasty is intended to be a follow-up to whiskey whiskers. This is the demo version with me playing banjo and singing. A full-band version should be up soon.

Poison whiskey is a song I wrote last night for Jeff Stigelman to sing. This version has me on guitar and vocals, and I’m super-stoked about getting a full-band arrangement finished as soon as possible. Enjoy…

There's No Place Like Dome

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 21st, 2008 | Comments

It’s official. The RCA Dome (actually I still like to call it the Hoosier Dome) is no more!

I Just Solved a Problem – What to do With Twitter

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 18th, 2008 | Comments

For a while now I’ve been hearing lots of people discuss the business applications of twitter; basically what’s the best way to utilize it as a tool.  Most people who I stay in touch with say ‘Yeah twitter is fun and it’s a great way to manage your brand, but what else.  It’s not overly effective at generating new business.’  And it might never be.

Here’s the epiphomy I had today.  Twitter is a giant room that’s constantly got people comming and going, meeting each other, doing business, sharing ideas, and solving problems.  So here’s what you do… you listen and you create as much incentive for your existing customers to engage in twitter conversation as possible.  You put a sidebar on your website that says ‘got a question? ask us on twitter.’  You put the same thing on your blog.  You have a few of your key employees managing your brand’s account.

This strategy will inevitably generate followers, so here’s what you do.  Someone asks your company a twitter question.  Then you re-tweet it so that everyone on your follow list can see the question, and then you answer the question (if you can in 140 words).  The advantage is that this creates a soft conversion point for new business, while providing a valuable resource for existing customers.

Oh!  I’ve got a huge twitter related announcement.  It is very likely that a tweet that I received from @nickilaycoax will result in a gig for the Pissed-of Catfish.  If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.

Some New Tunes

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 16th, 2008 | Comments

Here’s a couple of tunes from my music player on the Midwest Music Conspiracy Ning site. ‘Whiskey Whiskers’ is a track that we completed last night. It’s very down-home bluesy. It will be the title track off the Pissed-off Catfish EP that I’m working on with Rob Doty and Jeff Stigelman. The other track is called ‘The Best Thing About Me’, and I wrote it for my fiancee to be played at our wedding. Enjoy…

Jambalaya on the Bayou

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 15th, 2008 | Comments

Check out the post on Scott Semester’s blog that inspired me to make this ridiculous video.

Day 30 of the Amazing and now Complete Blog-o-thon

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 13th, 2008 | Comments

I’m in celebration mode here at the Indy Awesome headquarters (my house). It’s been a long couple of weeks, but the blog-o-thon is officially over. I promised Jim Brown from Evereffect that I would include a report of all the activity I’ve had over the last month. I think I might have overdone it.

Analytics Report

Thanks So Much To Everyone Who’s Been Following the Blog-o-Thon

Which Social Media Services provide the most value?
Websites Are Software – Blogs are for Content
What’s best for Google?

Day 29 – I can see the finish line

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 12th, 2008 | Comments

IT’S DAY 29 OF THE 30-day BLOG-o-THON!!!  I’m on the back stretch now and I’m racing towards the finish line.  Day 30 is not to be missed.  As I write this I’m in the process of compiling some analytics stats, recording some fun video, and preparing for the 30-day send-off.  I’ve learned so much in the last 30 days, but I’ll save all my insights and conclusions for tomorrow.

For today I’d like to talk about what a crazy week it’s been in the Indianapolis bog-o-sphere.  There’s been some great debate from Kyle Lacy, Lorraine Ball, Chris Baggot, Ali Sales, and some great commenters.  Here are some highlights.

Chris Baggot, Kyle Lacy and I discuss corporate blogging

Here’s how it went down. Chris Baggot entered a post discussing a Forrester report that announced the failure of the C-level corporate blog (people just don’t trust those execs anymore). Kyle Lacy fired back with a post of his own worrying that the humanity is being sucked out of business blogging, and KABAMM! A firestorm of comments and discussion that resulted in…….

Kyle and I debate the ROI of social media

All the great discussion at Kyle’s blog led me to write yesterday’s post where I describe my social media ROI value proposition. That led to some great discussion between Kyle and I on Smaller Indiana.

and just when I thought the week couldn’t get any more intense….

Ali Sales, Kyle Lacy and Lorraine Ball shoot Pay-per-click in the foot!

Okay, so pay-per-click has been dying a slow death for a while now, but I’ve never seen so many people jump on the ‘kill pay-per-click’ train! On Monday Ali Sales (of Compendium Blogware) writes a post about how much more cost effective it is to focus on a blogging strategy as opposed to PPC. Then yesterday Kyle puts up a post about how PPC is a total waste of money and no one should be doing it, he gets all kinds of comments, and wouldn’t cha know it? Today Lorraine puts up a post with her two cents. She thinks PPC still has a place, but it’s becoming increasingly ineffective, which I kind of agree with.

I’m Exhausted

Okay so it’s been a rip-roaring week in the Indianapolis social media scene and I need a nap. All this information flying around is giving me a headache. Don’t forget… tomorrow is day 30, the final day of the blog-o-thon and then I get to take at least one day off. Don’t miss it!!!

Day 28 – How I Measure Social Media ROI

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 11th, 2008 | Comments

In yesterday’s post I referenced some great discussion that was going on at Kyle Lacy’s blog which was really an analysis of Chris Baggot’s blog post from yesterday (I love it when there’s so much cross-talk from so many great minds).  Kyle replied to my comment about the importance of social media sites questioning the ROI of my proposal (at this point it would be very helpful to pull up Kyle’s original post for reference).  I think my comment might have been misunderstood. 

Here’s how I measure the ROI from sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed (or really any of the others for that matter).  I use google analytics to track all the activity on my blog and it allows me to see which sites I’m getting the most referral traffic from.  Therefore, I can see how many visits I’m getting from the links I put on twitter or any other site.

From there it’s important to qualify the quality of the traffic you’re getting from these sites and it can be very different from the quality of traffic you get from search as it relates to actual conversion (dollars and cents).  However, this traffic is invaluable when you consider managing your brand online. These visitors are the people who are engaging in your message, and the ones who are most likely to spread your message to others.

I view my blog as the hub of all of my online activities, and all the social media tools I use as spokes that drive traffic to the hub, so if you’re considering a social media strategy, you need some sort of centralized location where you get your measurement data.

I know that Chris and Kyle both come from the progressive school of marketing (as do I).  We realize that measurement is the most important aspect of a marketing strategy.  I believe that social media contributions are definitely measurable, and that you measure them through the metrics of your blog or website.  I hope this makes sense.  Are there problems with this strategy?  How can it be improved?

Day 27 – Speaking of interesting online conversations

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 10th, 2008 | Comments

I’m a little pressed for time today, so I thought I’d share an online conversation from Kyle Lacy’s blog.  He wrote a post referencing Chris Baggot’s recent post about business blogging.  Check it out the full post and comments.  That’s what I call real authentic communication!

Why aren't you listening? – Day 26

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 9th, 2008 | Comments

I had an interesting experience on twitter last night that really put into perspective all the reasons I believe so strongly in the power of social media.  I was just relaxing and watching a movie and I happened to have my laptop out (big surprise there) and I noticed a tweet from @scottabel.  It said ‘Salesforce.com wants to know what their customers think.’

It made me think ‘Why isn’t salesforce on twitter telling me about this themselves?’  I’d bet the farm that Salesforce has hundreds if not thousands of current customers who are actively using twitter (I used to use Salesforce at my old job).  

I did a quick search and found @salesforce and @successforce, but neither account had a significant number of followers, and neither had posted anything in a while.  Here’s my point.  Salesforce is missing out on the conversation.  Why aren’t they actively participating in the conversation?  If they want to get valuable input from their customers they should engage in social media.  They should control the conversation instead of letting it go on without them.  Comanies everywhere need to wise-up.