Thursday, September 27, 2007
Welcome to the September Underwire Newsletter.
Contest Winners: Beyond Buzz
Congratulations to the winners of our contest draw for a copy of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Lois Kelly.
Alphabetically, our 5 winners are (note: this is a partial list):
Kara Harun
Kate Trgovac of www.mynameiskate.ca
Jennifer Wiederick of www.worldwidewatercooler.com
For those of you who missed what Beyond Buzz is all about, it is a book on how to generate good, interesting conversation about your company, products or services.
Get an executive summary of Beyond Buzz.
Submit Your Press Release Online
PRWeb.com promotes itself as the Online Visibility Company. Indeed the role they play is in getting your press release in front of eyeballs that are relevant to your message.
How does it work? You create your press release, keeping in mind the keywords and phrases that your desired reader might use to look for news on your subject, product or service. You load that press release into the PRWeb system and further optimize it for discovery in search engines. Your press release is then distributed over the PRWeb network, Google News and Yahoo News, and through RSS. For information on PRWeb and why it is a good, cheap way to send out electronic press releases:
Read my full post on PRWeb.com and watch the Common Craft video.
Copyright, Permissions and Online Rules about Re-Publishing Articles
The internet is a vast resource of excellent articles, images, photos, and videos—all things that we want to filter and sort and compile in order to share with people within our social network.
Social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and StumbleUpon, have sprung up to support this miraculous tenacity we have for organizing data.
But what happens when we want to go beyond quoting reasonable amounts of text and linking back to the original source? This is great question comes from an Underwire subscriber.
See my answer on the Underwire blog.
Ask for Support
Have a question? Is some piece of technology driving you mad? Are you a non-techie in need of support? Email me your questions for next month’s newsletter.
Travel Advisory
Work Industries is going on the road. We will be away Oct 1 to 21 in Malta. Emails and phone calls will be answered upon our return. If you have something urgent, contact me before Friday. Cheers!
Upcoming Events
She’s Geeky: A Women’s Tech (un)Conference
October 22-23
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
shesgeeky.org
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
This month one of our Underwire subscribers asked a great question about copyright and whether the rules for online publishing are different than those of print publishing.
* What are the copyright laws in relation to the practice of posting other people’s full articles on your website?
* Do you need author and publisher permission?
* How are the rules for online publishing and print publishing different?
It is a complex question, and I’m not an expert on copyright, but disclaimers aside, here’s my opinion.
Seek Permission
The internet is a vast resource of excellent articles, images, photos, and videos—all things that we want to filter and sort and compile in order to share with people within our social network.
Social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and StumbleUpon, have sprung up to support this miraculous tenacity we have for organizing data.
But what happens when we want to go beyond quoting reasonable amounts of text and linking back to the original source?
In this example, our Underwire subscriber wants to create a database of research articles and allow users to download those full articles. How does copyright apply? Who do they have to seek permission from in order to store these articles in a database?
See, it gets more complex right?
In the case of copyright materials (anything not licensed under Creative Commons—and even then, pay attention), you need to get permission to essentially re-publish these materials.
The question then becomes, who do you need to get permission from? The author? The publisher?
Understand Who Can Grant Permission to Share, Re-use and Re-publish
The answer is that it is dependent on the author-publisher contract. In many cases, when an author publishes an article in a journal or other publication, they sign an agreement with the publisher, which grants the publisher the exclusive rights to that article. In some cases this includes the right to self-archive, i.e., to keep a copy of their own work in an online CV or on their own website or to submit the work to an open repository.
If the author has not retained these rights, you must seek permission from the publisher. If the author has retained those rights, you must seek permission from the author.
So how do you tell who has the rights to the work if the copyright message does not clearly identify the rights holder?
I say cover your bases and make sure you seek permission from the publisher and author. They will be able to determine who has the legal right to grant you permission. Then you must make sure that you have, in writing, permission from the entity that controls the legal right to grant permission.
Each situation must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
The Short Answer
The short answer is that you can create a database of citations with links to original materials. As soon as you want to deal with archiving full articles, you must go through the process of checking how the rights to the work are assigned, confirming who the rights holder is, and, if necessary, requesting permission.
For more information on copyright:
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office offers a guide to copyrights.
The Creative Commons website explains the licenses and legal concepts behind them.
Monday, September 24, 2007
A Huge Thank You
Many thanks to everyone who attended my sessions on Online Marketing last week in Toronto and Banff.
Thank you also to Jack Illingworth at the Canadian Publishers Association and Katherine Shute at the Book Publishers Association of Alberta for organizing the sessions.
Hire Monique
If you are interested in online marketing services, please feel free to get in touch with me. See the Work Industries contact page.
If you are interested in having me come into your company to talk about online marketing, Jack tells me there is money available in the mentor program for members of the ACP.
Here’s a list of further services that James and I offer through Work Industries. You can see details on the Work Industries services page.
Subscribe to the Underwire Newsletter
And if you are curious about my Underwire Newsletter: Full Support for Non-Techies, you can subscribe here.
Out of the Office Travel Notes
Just a reminder that James and I will be out of the country from October 1 to 21 and will have sporadic email access. But we’re back full time November 1.
Testimonials?
Testimonials and referrals are greatly appreciated. If you have a testimonial that I may share on my websites or with potential clients, please contact me.
Many thanks again.
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Congratulations to CanGEA, the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, who have just launched their new website.
See the new site at http://www.geothermal.ca
CanGEA—the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association—is a non-profit association promoting the development and use of sustainable geothermal energy in Canada. Sustainable energy that works in partnership with nature.
CanGEA members are leaders of the Canadian geothermal energy industry ...
CanGEA joined the Work Industries’ client list in August, and we worked with them to determine the website strategy, the content architecture and design. We used Expression Engine to run the website, and you’ll notice there is a News blog and Events blog, available via RSS, as well as standard pages.
Work Industries would also like to thank Joslin Green of PLAYER Industries, who designed the site, and Eric Barstad of Shadow Box Creative Media Ltd., who handled the programming.
Congratulations again to our friends at CanGEA.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
PRWeb.com is one of the best press release services I’ve found on the web.
Why is it great?
For a small donation, $100 USD, or a large donation, $$$, you can get your press release distributed online in a number of industry categories and on Google News and Yahoo News.
Why is this great?
Because it boosts your website traffic, brings you qualified leads, and allows people to easily put your press release on their site or share it with a friend.
It’s free to set up an account. Go to PRWeb.com and create an account.
Then you’re ready to upload your press release.
You want to make sure your release is optimized for relevant keywords. Before you start plugging your press release into PRWeb make sure that you’re telling a good, coherent story, and that you’ve thought about the keyword phrases people may use to search for exactly this type of product, service, event—whatever your release is about.
You need an editorial score of 4 in order for your release to be on Google News and Yahoo News.
And don’t forget the add-on features. Depending on your contribution (payment), you’ll be able to attach files to your press release or select additional industry categories.
And the PRWeb support desk are there to help you along the way.
UPDATE: Our friends at Common Craft have produced a video to help explain PRWeb.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
GrokDotCom is lobbying for website copywriters to stop being More-ons.
“More-on” refers to hyperlinks that we write for our site, things like “Read more ...” or “Click here”.
Grok’s Example:
Which is more persuasive?
A. Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. Read More
B. Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. See how Steve doubled his income in one year.
I admit that B sounds more persuasive, but I also wonder about space constraints and how to provide short links that include an imperative + benefit as suggested by Grok. Regardless, I think considering these links more carefully is a good thing.
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