(Note: Marqui sponsors this weblog.) Chicago radio station WVON ("Voice of the Nation") cut costs and increased traffic after building its web site with Marqui's Communications Management Suite, according to this interview posted at Marqui's site. What problems were they trying to solve by moving to a content management system? "The key factors were time and money. Each time the web agency would update content or make graphic changes we were being charged. Also, sometimes we needed to update content quickly, but found we had to wait in line for the web agency to get to our content." And why Marqui? "The main reason for choosing Marqui was the friendly service from the sales representative. He actually took the time to answer our questions," and "it was a web-based system that was easy to use." The company says it's saving around $400 a month in costs for site updates, with a 200% increase in web traffic since the Marqui system was adopted.
Weblogsky.com sponsor Marqui is the content management system for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission's web site. According to Janet Johnson of Marqui,
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission members were appointed by the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives following the passage of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Act in 2000 (Public Law No: 106-173). The Commissioners are focused on informing the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of the United States, and finding the best possible ways to honor his accomplishments. Marqui's Communications Management Suite will help facilitate this by enabling the Commission to more easily coordinate online activities, including e-mail promotions, newsletters and more.E-Cubed Media: A Marqui Partner
Janet Johnson posted an interview with Steve Widen of E-Cubed Media Synthesis, a company that partners with Weblogsky sponsor Marqui. Widen is clearly happy with the relationship:
from a developer's standpoint it's so much easier to work with Marqui. The implementation process is very smooth compared with more traditional content management solutions and the back-end is much more intuitive. For example, we’ve implemented ASP model content management systems and comparatively, Marqui can reduce our development times by up to 20%. In addition, the fact that Marqui can publish to any platform increases our flexibility.Widen mentions a couple of the projects his company's completed with Marqui, 360 Networks and BCTIA. They're currently working with Shriners of North America. According to Widen, these clients all like Marqui because it's easy to integrate and use, and affordable.
More about Marqui: Robin Good audioblogged an interview with Marqui system engineer Patrick Jones.
Marqui: Blog Business SummitWeblogsky sponsor Marqui was also a cosponsor of this week's Blog Business Summit in Seattle, and the Marqui folks were liveblogging the conference. Some highlights:
In Robert Scoble's keynote, he says that "blogs are useful because they reveal – and enable &nash; 'passion concentrations.'"
Regardless of whether someone agrees or disagrees with the opinion of a blogger, if the topic is something readers are passionate about, they will migrate to and participate in that blog.
Robert says this is why so many journalists are keen on blogging; it gives them insight into what topics and trends seem to be most interesting to readers. Similarly, businesses can use blogging as a window into what customers are saying. No surprise there, but he went on to say that this type of "window" is now being used by some to predict how well a product will fare in the market based on feedback in the first 24 hours. For these same reasons, blogs can now dramatically amplify a product's failure or unprecedented success…a la the Halo 2 phenomenon.
Janet posted more notes on Scoble's keynote yesterday:
The brave new world of blogs:
Opportunities: They'll come to you because of your passion and authority in this new world.
Ethics: The blogosphere will 'clean itself out' from lies or mis-representations quickly - usually, within hours. (Remember the Swift Boat Veterans hubbub?) Don't lie in a blog, there are smarter people in the audience than you are.
Momentum: Evangelize your product or service through 'connectors.' If there's a target blogger you'd like to reach in your area of influence, talk to the 5-10 bloggers around your target. They'll blog about it, and your target will notice. (It only takes five people talking about a subject to capture Scoble's attention.)
Fear: The fear of blogging and being exposed? (Or there's a worse fear - what if I blog and no one notices?) Blog. Then blog some more. Keep at it. Keep linking out, and people will pick up on your efforts.
And while we're at it, what if conflicts erupt? (I'm remembering being called "pond scum.") According to Scoble, humans love a good story. Go ahead and be provocative - conflicts between opposing viewpoints engage readers.
On day two of the summit there was a discussion of guidelines and recommendations for employees who are blogging for their organizations.
My compatriot Mitch Ratcliffe also posted about Scoble's talk, and Marc Canter/Chris Pirillo.
Blogging for BusinessMy sponsors at Marqui are sponsoring the Blog for Business Summit in Seattle on Jan. 24 and 25. The conference lineup looks solid, including Marc Canter, Halley Suitt, Glenn Fleishman, Robert Scoble, Stowe Boyd, and
Molly Holzschlag. For an idea what assumptions the conference planners are making, here's a description of Robert Scoble's keynote:
Simply put, Blogs are eating the lunch of many traditionally architected sites. In terms of reach, influence, cost and convenience, the advantages are indisputable and significant. For those still building sites the “old” way, this hour will reveal why the future belongs to Bloggers. Robert Scoble, who FastCompany Magazine claims “may well be one of the most powerful people in Redmond” has helped shape Microsoft’s blogging strategy, and has advised Bill Gates on the market opportunities. Robert will reveal why this new architecture rules and how to take full advantage of it.BTW the conference rate of $795 is reduced to $395 for bloggers who post a mention of the conference on their site. Wish I could be there to hear Marc's comments on the Marqui Paybloggers program, which seems to be going well.
Meanwhile I just ran onto another site that's powered by Marqui, CanSpeak, a company that provides speakers for various events. The site has a list of speakers, and each speaker has an individual page on the site. Retrieval is zippy, check it out.
Marqui's Search Engine Optimization Flap
Another word about Marqui, a Weblogsky.com sponsor! Marqui has a blog, too, and the December 31 post talks about the Search Engine Optimization white paper mentioned in my New Year's Day post. I dutifully passed the word on without analyzing the SEO paper, but other Marqui bloggers, especially Robin Good, took time to read, analyze, and write critiques of the paper. Robin said "the white paper is a badly written collection of well-known antiquated principles and techniques that are either out of use, outdated, unsubstantiated or plainly wrong." This negative feedback is a great test of Marqui's resolve to encourage the kind of honest responses that bloggers would normally post, even from blogs the company is sponsoring. As Mitch notes, Marqui has been living up to its promise to take criticism to heart and respond constructively, as they did in their December 31 post.
I asked Bill Leake, whose company LCG (Leads Customers Growth) specializes in SEO, what he thought of Robin's critique. Bill thinks that page titles are probably still relevant, and the anchor text in a link is important, despite Robin's statement to the contrary. He also says "content and links are the most important thing, but it's not all about simply getting good on-page content and links from quality websites. There are many minor tactical devils lurking in the details that become, in aggregate, strategically important when trying to optimize and do well in a competitive space," whereas "some spaces are not at all competitive, and simply good on-page content writing that gets indexed, with no particular SEO expertise behind it, will perform very well indeed in such spaces."
Marqui on Search Engine Optimization
Happy New Year from Marqui, a Weblogsky.com sponsor! Marqui defines its CMS as a "Communication Management System," which suggests something more than content management. Marqui sees their system as the nexus of a communication system that includes and integrated email system, interface with CRM and other existing infrastructure, and calendar-based campaign management tools. Marqui wants you to know about a whitepaper they've prepared that addresses the fundamentals of effective search engine optimization, including the basic steps to help make site content even more "SEO friendly" as well as creating an optimization methodology for CMS. Properly implemented, these tips can dramatically strengthen search engine rankings, and, hopefully, the bottom line.
And now for a word from our sponsor, Marqui! Thanks to Shannon Clark for pointing out that I failed to link to Marqui in my December 10 post. And thanks to Meryl for posting some details about using Marqui.
Marqui sent us a document with some thoughts about their perception of this experiment in marketing communication:
Marketing automation and communication management tools (like Marqui) are key to helping marketers maintain their relevancy to consumers, while allowing them to serve themselves and influence new communities as they form online, on air, and in their workplaces. (Janet's evangelism is showing!) Our blogosphere program, for example, is a free focus group online, offering product and support suggestions we're already rolling into our roadmaps.Marqui is also talking about multimedia approaches and what happens when blogs are no longer just text. (I suppose we should all take singing lessons.) I do think they understand, though, that it's the value in their product, and not these marketing experiences, that will determine their success or failure. Learning about MarquiWith regard to the blogosphere program, Marqui will participate in Alex's FeedFest 2005 by putting Marc Canter and David Weinberger (contributor to Corante) on with opposing viewpoints on paying bloggers to blog. We'll try to get Rowland Hanson to moderate the discussion.
And now a word from our sponsor, Marqui... Janet Johnson of Marqui created a paperless brochure for Marc and Lisa Canter with a q&a about Marqui's CMS, evidently responses to questions from The Head Lemur, another Marqui-sponsored blogger. They have weekly free webinars to show how Marqui works, Janet sez, though I have to admit I couldn't find info about those on the site (something Marqui might want to think about). Meanwhile they've posted a new whitepaper, A Marketer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, which I haven't downloaded yet... on my way!
This post is part of the Marqui Sponsorship program. I've told a few people who had questions about Marqui that my own company would be unlikely to adopt the product for any of our projects because we don't code or work with Microsoft's Active Server Pages. Thierry LeVasseur, Marqui's founder, sent me a clarification via email:
Yes, it's true, the tool is programmed with ASP, but the web properties you build with Marqui are completely platform and code independant. We are the only CMS that can be used as a development platform for both .NET & J2EE. We have clients managing their Java on UNIX, PHP on Windows, CFM, XML, XHTML, even companies producing exclusively Word documents to a file server, etc, etc. This is why our partners love us so much. There are NO restrictions to the code or platform you can use.Marqui is a hosted service, not a product that you install and host yourself. Marqui will ftp your content to your server based on templates you set up. Your technical people control the templates through one interface, and your content people submit content through another. It would be interesting to see how this compares to higher end CMS solutions - Vignette, for instance, or Interwoven. If you've seen or done comparisons, please post a comment.