The Engagement Principles

Despite the hype, Second Life’s virtual world is proving to be something of a bust for business marketers, who are finding few participants in the virtual stores.

In this month’s installment of my series of business blogging articles for Chief Marketer, I look at the new Britannica Blog — a blog from a knowledge-based brand that’s been around since 1768 — but one that’s plenty capable of learning the latest blogging tricks.
In this case, Brittanica’s wide-ranging blog includes some posts clearly designed [...]

Are corporate “loyalty” programs really effective? A recent Direct magazine article suggests the answer is “sortof. And no.”
Does engagement marketing offer any hope?
Loyalty Marketing: Still Growing — But Growing Ineffective?
Designed to drive customer retention, loyalty programs offer a premium (frequent flyer points, rewards points, etc) to keep customers connected and “loyal.” Of course, incentive-based loyalty [...]

Moleskine notebooks are expensive, luxurious… and rather craftily marketed. Proclaimed the notebook used by Hemingway and Van Gogh, they’re the kind of product that attracts a cult following.
In an earlier post, I outlined the ways they brilliantly leveraged the power of engagement marketing, connecting with their readers’ values and passions.

The Moleskinerie Blog; stunning artwork, all [...]

Blogging for engagement is a powerful technique. But what about engaging with other bloggers?
Engaging readers via passions and values is valuable — whether you’re aiming directly at customers or at influencers.
It’s why Nikon just launched an outreach program aimed directly at bloggers; for six months, they loan a Nikon D80 digital single lens reflex camera [...]

I tend to focus on engaging via passions and values, and fun is a passion shared by almost all of us. That’s why this post on Communities Dominate Brands (the grandaddy blog of engagement marketing) caught my eye.
He points his readers towards a new “Free Paris” online game by MyNuMo.com

From me, this is brilliant marketing [...]

Everyone knows that sinking feeling; you return from a vacation only to find several bazillion e-mails clogging your inbox, or an RRS reader so jammed it would take a dozen of you to clear it before your next vacation.
As related by Debbie Weil in the Guardian, Fred Wilson handled the situation the same way many [...]

Is the Home Page dead? Are businesses wasting their time building (and optimizing) them? And are engagement marketing media like blogs about to become the center of the corporate Web site?
That’s the question posed by Matt Ambrose of the Copywriter’s Crucible, which led to my asking a similar question on my Copywriter Underground writer’s blog, [...]

Live blogging is far from the center of the business blogging world, but it’s an emerging trend among traditional media — who are looking for ways to join the conversation.

(photo via stock.xchng)
Sadly, it appears the NCAA believes that live blogging falls within its “no live representations of NCAA games” guidelines, and asked a report for [...]

With WordPress the current open-source champion among blogging platforms, it’s easy to overlook Movable Type — the “commercial” product (single use licenses are free) that powers well-known blogs like Huffington Post, GM, etc. (I recommend against Google Blogger for business blogs.)
Thought it’s hardly a secret, Movable Type 4 Beta is available for testing, and includes [...]