Marketing Nirvana

It’s Monday and what better way to get started for the week than to evaluating some of the interesting posts we’ve seen in the recent past:

1. How-to: Company blogs:

My friend Mack Collier, compiles eight ideas for revitalizing your blog, the sequel to his much-appreciated ten steps to starting your company blog (registration required). A must-read if you’re in corporate blogging or plan on getting involved at some point of time. If you do wish to further convince your team of the need for business blogging, also check out Charlene Li’s rules for measuring ROI of corporate blogging and my thoughts on the same.

2. Your blog is the new resume:

I updated my recent post on 5 steps to let your dream job find you, following Adam Darowski’s recent post on how the blog is the new resume. I still believe that your online identity is an amalgamation of your search engine results:

First off, NOT ALL blogs can be considered your resume. However, for those of us interested in maintaining an online presence/identity it can be a worthy and impressive add-on. As I’d mentioned in my post below, the best repository for your online identity is your vanity google search. My online brand a.k.a vanity search yields my blog, my other blog (mprofs – where I contribute), my LinkedIn profile (Disclosure: I work for LinkedIn), my Images (Flickr), Video, Events, etc… Now, that’s a comprehensive identity.

Here’s a nice summary of the blog conversation generated by Adam’s post.

3. 7Qs of viral content:

Generating viral content seems to be the holy grail of marketers in this web 2.0 day-and-age. So, what are the characteristics of vial content? Stuart Brown of Modern Life has an interesting take on the 7Qs necessary for viral content. And sums it up with:

there are no silver bullets in viral marketing — a sprinkling of luck is what’s needed most

4. Birthplace of Silicon Valley no more?:

Readers of this blog know my affinity for all things silicon valley given its rich history. Check out this recent post that laments the closure of one of those icons – The Shockley Semiconductor Lab.

Mountain View residents passing by 391 San Antonio Road – the original site of the Shockley Semiconductor Lab – will find the building is now off-limits. William Shockley set up his semiconductor lab in Mountain View in the mid-1950s. Mountain View claims Shockley’s lab as the birthplace of Silicon Valley for obvious reasons. Palo Alto, however, points to the earlier HP Garage as the birthplace.

5. Eric Kintz and the HP garage:

Speaking of silicon valley icons, nothing is more stereotypical than the image of the garage. The idea that a couple of pioneers could start an enterprise from humble beginnings in their garage speaks volumes for the history of the silicon valley.

(Source: Hyku Flickr stream)

And there’s no better example for that than Hewlett-Packard. Check out this profile of our blogger friend, Eric Kintz, profiled as one of the top 10 next generation marketers in Brandweek, with a picture of the HP garage thrown in for good measure.

Happy Reading!