Marketing Technology Blog

What do the Washington Post, BBC News, and New York Times have in common? They’re enriching the content presentation for links on their websites, using a tool called Apture. Rather than a simple static text link, Apture links trigger a pop-up window on mouse over that can display a wide variety of contextually related content.

On the publishing side, Apture makes it very easy for authors to find, link to, and display related content in their blog posts. Simply highlight the text you want to link, and with one click, the Apture plugin – which is available on just about any popular online publishing platform – searches the internet for a variety of different forms of contextually related content, and turns your text into a slick, helpful rich media link.

One of the benefits to your readers is quick access to additional bits of information. Mousing over links will display a little pop-up window that shows content directly related to the term. This could be a YouTube video, a Wikipedia entry, or even real-time Twitter search results.

Ordinarily, these links might take users away from your post, even if they just wanted to find a quick bit of information. Instead of potentially sending your user to another site, Apture quickly and efficiently displays the content the user might be interested in exploring, and in effect, tries to address their interest or their inquiry within your post itself.

The idea behind Apture is to make your posts more sticky, and should, theoretically, increase time on site – a critical engagement metric for many brand marketers.

And for all the analytics junkies out there, you can track the links through Apture’s analytics service in the paid version. Note that while the publishing platform plugins for Apture generate links that Google sees as regular old links, the browser plugin does not produce links that are recognizable by search engines.

We are using the WordPress version of Apture on the current iteration of our blog, and as a company that just makes content – all day, every day – so far, we really like it.  All of our content producers have had positive things to say. It helps make for interesting and relevant posts, and helps out quite a bit with generating new content ideas – and making the ideas we already have more engaging to the user.

Try out a demo of Apture on their site – it makes making the content fun, and your blog more effective.

Reading Doug’s post the made me think about all the applications upon which I have come to depend as a part of how I run my business and my life.  Several, Tungle and Dropbox, Doug already mentioned.  But here is a list of a few others I could not imagine life without:

WebNotes -  This is an invaluable part of my web research.  Whether I am trying to find information for a client project, inspiration for a blog post, or track results of a PR campaign, WebNotes allows me to capture and organize information with post-it-notes and highlighters.  And the best part is the report generation tool.  When teamed with an automated Google Alert, we look like we spent hours searching the web and preparing  the summary report!

AddressTwo – More than an address book, this is a true CRM tool.   I have used a number of data bases over the years to manage my contacts, Access ( I built my own, boy was that geeky),  ACT and Outlook and I find this one fits me perfectly.   Web based, I can share my contacts with my entire team.  We can manage contacts and projects with the built in task list.  Also, I am slowly migrating from ConstantContact to the AddressTwo email tool.  Although it is a little limited from a design and reporting structure, I love the ability to query the data base, identify just the right group, and deliver the appropriate message.

I also love the ability to email Addy with names of people I want to include in my data base or  introduce to each other and she takes care of it.  ( Yes I know she isn’t really a person, but sometimes she accomplishes more for me than a real employee, so it is hard not to think of her as a person)

Audacity - People who know me well find it incredibly funny that I earn my living as a writer, because I am not a writer.  I am a talker! As a talker, I was intrigued by the idea of adding podcasts to my blog and Audacity has made that possible.  With very little time invested, I have moved from novice to editing pro.   I can not edit out even the slightest um, er or phone call interruption.   (Though sometimes I leave them in, just because they add character).

I love the fact the weekly podcasts reduce the amount of writing I have to do, but there are other benefits as well.  The programs give me an excuse to invite a friend in for a recording session and a visit.  Now that I have learned to manage to technology, recording takes only a few minutes, then we have time to catch up and talk about other stuff!

These three applications were new for me in 2009. It is amazing how quickly new technology becomes a part of your life.  I can’t wait to see what I discover next year!

Alright code monkeys… this may be the greatest tool I’ve seen hit the market in a long time. If you’re a developer working in PHP, HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript, this is a product that may excite you. The folks at Sproutbox have developed Squad, a real-time code editing and collaboration tool.

Squad is to development what Google docs is to office suites. With Squad, a development team spread across the world can open up the same file, work on it at the same time, and chat about the edits. No more lengthy code review meetings where the team is fumbling around, passing edits to one another, merging and colliding those edits… Squad makes if effortless.

Although I’m a good developer, a tool like this would have come in handy on many projects where I collaborated on projects. Most recently, I even worked with a developer in Denmark on a project using Flot, an open-source JavaScript engine. I would have loved to have reviewed the code with Ole online in real time!

Squad is a web-based, Software as a Service solution that’s incredibly affordable. If you’re a single user, you can even use it for free! For $39/month you can get a team package for up to 5 members.

Software companies and software as a service companies think they’re selling technology. Selling technology is easy… it has dimensions, takes up space, has definable features, limits, capabilities… and costs. The problem is that most people aren’t buying technology.

Give a great sales organization enough time and they can manipulate any request for proposal into a winning and profitable strategy for a company. I work for a company who’s primary competition (in our prospects’ opinion – not mine) is open source software. If we sold expensive software that competed directly with free software, we wouldn’t have 300+ clients. The reason why we are growing is that we’re not actually selling software – we’re selling results.

Our prospects believe that the value in moving to our blogging platform is that it will result in no headaches down the road. No headaches in downtime, no headaches in maintenance, no headaches on security issues, no headaches in scalability, no headaches in performance, no headaches in educating users, no headaches because it’s difficult to use… and most of all no headaches from failure.

Maybe our real competition is Tylenol!

Some prospects relish the opportunity for headaches… that’s okay… we’re not here for them. We’d rather work with clients who concentrate on results. Results as defined by them, not us.

Whenever your company is investing in technology, it’s not the hardware and software (sorry Engineers!) that they are buying – no matter how cool. What your company is really investing in is the people in front of and behind the product. Your company is investing in the salesman that they trust. Your company is investing in the entrepreneur who started the company that you know as a leader. Your company is investing in people – people who have solved the problem that keeps giving you headaches.

One client who works for the government sector recently told me:

Doug – I don’t care about ROI. I don’t care about how much money your application can make us. I don’t care about upsells. I don’t care about technology. The reason why I pay your company is because you’re there to answer the phone or an email when I have a question… and you know the answers. Keep answering the phone and helping me and we’ll stick around. Stop answering the phone and I’ll find someone who can.

This is why customer service is such a critical component of a great technology startup. I don’t care how cool your application is… when you start telling your customers what you can’t help them with, don’t expect them to sign a renewal (nevermind an upsell!). Your clients want success and they are trusting you to give it to them. You better be listening and responding. Even better – you should be proactively moving to build your clients’ success.

Even within the Software as a Service industry, companies have found that they can’t hide behind a customer support page or knowledge base… or worse, a customer forum. SaaS customers need to understand how to fully leverage the solution they’ve invested in to be successful. That requires competent, experienced employees who understand what it takes.

These leaders understand the path of least resistance, they understand how to read clients and see whether they’re great prospects for growth or customer testimonials… most of all they understand how to impact clients personally. It doesn’t require ridiculous short-sighted goals, hampering processes that ignore the clients’ success, or worse… micromanagement when resources are already lacking. It requires hiring people you trust, allowing them to make great decisions on behalf of the company, and removing all obstacles to serve clients effectively (and profitably).

Are you providing your clients with success? Or is your staff just giving them more headaches?