Greer's OC is a great example of an effective consumer marketing micromedia site. Former fashion columnist Greer Wylder targets her content to, and delivers for her advertisers, a very narrow but lucrative and otherwise difficult to reach audience: upscale shoppers, primarily female, in the Orange County, California area. For Hugh Hewitt to call Greer's OC an advertising revolution and a mortal threat to newspapers isn't off the mark. Newspaper subscriptions are declining. TiVo and XM are killing the value of media advertising. Mega-portals like Yahoo that try to be all things to all people end up being of little value to anyone. People will flock, however, in small but targeted numbers, to sites and media that focus specifically on topics that fascinate them. So what exactly do I mean by "micromedia"? Micromedia is any form of media targeted to an individual or group of individuals that can be can be defined by a set of unique characteristics. It is much narr...

Where does your browser go when the click the "home" icon on the toolbar? For many people, the answer is still their ISP's home page (at home) or whatever page their IT goup set it to (at work). However, there are an increasing number of services that let you customize your own start page. Among the first were My Yahoo and the aguably better though under-publicized Google offering, but both the choice and sophistication are increasing. Among the new entries in this space are the very cool Netvibes and Pageflakes . These services let you customize your stat page with tools like news feeds, RSS feeds (such as your favorite blogs), local weather, your address/contact book, a dictionary, to-do lists, online file storage, mail and IM, photos, Web search, sports scores and more. Yahoo, Google and Netvibes all seem to be fairly browser-agnostic; Pageflakes appears to work best with IE. Another service planned but not yet launched is the "life organizer" from Lifeio ...

How do you explain a highly technical product or complex service offering in an easily understandable way? Better yet, how can you explain it so simply that even your mom will understand it (assuming your mother isn't a network system administrator)? That was the challenge facing Xiotech , a maker of storage area network (SAN) systems. CEO Casey Powell , who joined the company about a year ago, is a big fan of HowStuffWorks.com , the site that famously explains in simple terms how almost everything works, from ballpoint pens to rocket engines . When he challenged his marketing team to develop a similarly simple way to explain Xiotech's offerings, Tom Pearce and the rest of the group came up with...the Mom Button . After all, how better to explain complex technology in terms so simple your mom can understand it than to have a mom explain it? Since the initial launch of the Mom Button, the original "Mom Explains Xiotech" concept has been expanded to have Mom discuss s...

Three outstanding new marketing books have been added to the Top Marketing Books page on WebMarketCentral.com , the Internet Web site marketing portal. First, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale by Brian Carroll presents a strategic approach to generating profitable leads. Brian's book outlines a proven approach to generating qualified leads for complex sales, which frequently involve pre-sales engineers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and even corporate executives, as well as traditional sales professionals. The complex sale -- which combines elements of consultative, competitive, and team selling -- is now the norm for business-to-business sales. Brian's book shows how to identify your best leads and target sales approaches; align sales and marketing to optimize both the number and quality of leads; build strong sales pipelines; and use multiple lead-generation vehicles, including email, PR, referrals, blogs, and speaking opportunities. Second, Waiting for Your Cat to Bar...

If (like me) you've chosen Blogger as your platform for online disquisition, you've noticed that it's fast and reasonably intuitive, but lacks a few basic functions. The folks at Quick Online Tips have rectified that with Free Essential Tools for Bloggers , an excellent list of add-ons that expand the capability of the platform. The list goes well beyond the common tools such as Pingoat and Technorati (well known and also covered in Best Practices in Blog Marketing ) to include traffic-generating and tracking tools, as well as mobile blogging . Definitely a post worth bookmarking and coming back to. That's the tools. As for the stuff, Larry Bodine has written an interesting piece over at RainToday titled It's Not Too Late To Start Blogging - But It Will Be Soon . (Yes, Brian Carroll beat me to this ; when does he sleep?!) Registration is required to read the full article, but it's free. Larry provides seven great reasons to blog, most of which are covered ...