Bloggers R Us

Use ANGELS and Web 2.0 Marketing to Drive Powerful, Quantifiable Results
For every marketer, strategist, executive, and entrepreneur

Today, marketers have an array of radically new Web 2.0-based techniques at their disposal: viral marketing, social networking, virtual worlds, widgets, Web communities, blogs, podcasts, and next-generation search, to name just a few. Now, leading IBM marketing innovator Sandy Carter introduces ANGELS, a start-to-finish framework for choosing the right Web 2.0 marketing tools—and using them to maximize revenue and profitability.

Carter demonstrates winning Web 2.0 marketing at work through 54 brand-new case studies: organizations ranging from Staples to Harley Davidson, Coca-Cola to Mentos, Nortel to IBM itself. You’ll discover powerful new ways to market brands and products in both B2B and B2C markets…integrate Web 2.0, experiential, and conventional marketing…maximize synergies between global and local marketing…gain more value from influencers, and more.

Includes information, case studies, and working examples for next generation marketing strategies such as:

•  Social networks with virtual environments, including Second Life
•  Online communities including Facebook
•  Viral Marketing and eNurturing
•  Serious Gaming
•  Widgets
•  Wikis
•  Blogging, including Twitter
•  RSS
•  Podcasting
•  Videocasting

Whether you’re a marketing professional, Web specialist, strategist, executive, or entrepreneur, this book will help you drive immense, quantifiable value from Web 2.0 technologies—now, and for years to come.

If you want to give yourself a Web presence without spending a lot of time or money, a blog is your answer and this is your guide. Blogs (Web logs) are short, diary-like entries on a Web site that has a chronological, journal format. Fun or informative, but not formal, blogs are easy to set up, maintain, and update. You can share your personal, stream-of-consciousness musings or your expertise on any subject ranging from your family vacation to world peace. This guide helps beginners (even technophobes) get started fast, with the essential info on:

• The elements of blogs, such as entries, sidebars, categories, comments, and index pages
• The different types of hosting services, from free to fee and from “turn key” services that are easy-to-use to DIY programs
• Details on two popular, free “social community” hosted Web services that are ideal for casual bloggers—MSN Spaces and Yahoo! 360
• The scoop on Blogger, a popular free hosted service that has some community tools like the social networks, but is basically blog-intensive
• DIY blogging, covering three of the most powerful and flexible blog programs—Movable Type, WordPress, and Radio Userland
• Hooking into RSS feeds to distribute your blog entries beyond your site
• Choosing a newsreader
• Ways to raise the visibility of your blog and make money from blogging

Complete with step-by-step instructions and lots of screen shots, this guide walks you through everything from setting up your blog and posting your first entry to adding photos, audio, and more. It includes the URLs of lots of sample sites to see to give you an idea of blog possibilities. In addition to the essential how-to, it fills you in on:

• The blogosphere, blog culture and etiquette, snarks, macrologues, and more
• Moblogs that let you post entries remotely using your portable computer, PDA, or cell phone
• Buying a domain through a registrar such as Network Solutions, Register.com, or Go Daddy
• MP3 blogs, vlogs (videoblogs), photoblogging, audioblogging, podcasting, and more

You know you have something to say, whether it’s heavy stuff or just your thought for the day. Make your opinions known. Get your photos shown. With Blogging For Dummies, you’ll soon be blogging with the best of ‘em.

Weblogs are about reading and writing. Literacy is about reading and writing. Blogging equals literacy. How rarely does an aspect of how we live and work plug so perfectly into how we teach and learn? Reading this book will give teachers important clues not only in how to become a blogger and to make their students bloggers, but also how this new avenue of expression is revolutionizing the information environment that we live in.