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Paul Chaney

Author Profile

Paul Chaney

Biography

Paul is an online marketing consultant, popular speaker and author of The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.

ARTICLES BY Paul Chaney

Well.ca Emulates Zappos Model for Social Media and Customer Service

I recently was given the opportunity to interview Sameera Banduck, marketing director at Well.ca, a Canadian-based ecommerce company that sells health and beauty products, regarding their use of social media. The company emulates much of Zappos' strategy when it comes to using social media for customer service. For that reason, I begin by looking at Zappos approach, then discuss what Well.ca is doing relative to that. Both provide excellent examples of how social media can be used for customer service and building brand identity.

Online Retailers Make Gradual Move into Social Commerce

A recent Wall Street Journal article suggests that online retailers are beginning to move in the direction of using social networks like Facebook and MySpace to sell their products. It is a trend that is being met with marginal success, according to the article.

Effective Social Media Engagement Means Setting a Table of Your Own

For many ecommerce merchants, the idea of engaging in social media means setting up a Facebook Fan Page, securing a Twitter handle or posting videos on YouTube. While interaction on major social networks is part of the equation, there is another aspect that needs to be given consideration - that is what to do with your company Web site or ecommerce store. How does it factor in?

Blog Copywriting an Essential Skill

In the offline marketing world, copywriters are a hallowed lot, at least the good ones. Not so much online. I recall a few years back reading about the different types of Internet-related jobs in terms of salaries paid, and copywriting was way down the list. In the offline world copywriters worth their salt can make a fortune! What does this have to do with blogging? Simply that honing your blog copywriting skills can make your blog more popular and, if you're in the business of making money with it, more profitable as a result. Two blogs I've found recently that

Pay Per Post Requires Disclosure

Maybe their conscience got the best of them, or maybe the FTC's ruling did it, but controversial PayPerPost.com is now requiring disclosure. In case you've not been following this issue, PayPerPost.com is a site that gets bloggers to write posts about companies and products for a fee. The problem -- and there is more than one -- is that PPP didn't require full-disclosure. Hence, a blogger could write a post proclaiming the benefits of a certain product or company without informing the reader that, presumably, the reason they were doing it was because they were being paid. TechCrunch

Bloglines Looking for New Direction and New Director

I use Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice. When I logged into my account the other day, I saw an ad touting the headline "Come work for Bloglines." Seems they are looking for a business director, someone to give strategic direction to the app. As you may know, Bloglines was acquired by Ask.com last year from then CEO Mark Fletcher. Mark's dream for the site was to turn it into the "homepage of the 21st century," whatever that means. However, Mark left the company last June to take care of his cats and pursue new

Blogs Push Surge in Social Media Marketing

Toby Bloomberg used to be a blogging consultant. Now, she's a social media marketing consultant. So is B L Ochman, as are others I know. I mention that to say these ladies know which way the wind is blowing. They understand something Toby said I predicted some years ago, that blogging would become part of a larger landscape called social media. (To be truthful, I have no idea what I said, but she says I said it.) She (er...I) was right, it has. My good friend and business partner (he's my boss, actually) Richard Nacht has written

Big Changes at the Blog Herald

This falls under the "what doesn't get reported the same day it happens is old news" category, but I wanted to bring you up to speed on some changes happening with the Blog Herald. Blog Herald is one of my all-time favorite blogs. If you want to know what's happening on the business end of the blogosphere, that's certainly one good place to go. Recently, the site got sold to UK outfit, Bloggy Network Ltd. (Here's a word from the new owners about the sale.) The company that purchased Blog Herald from founder Duncan Riley only

More on Blogkits

Yesterday, I introduced you to Blogkits, an advertising service which promotes itself as a viable alternative to Google Adsense. Blogkits creator, Jim Kukral, sent me the following information in an email, and I decided to pass it along to you verbatim: BlogKits is the first, and only affiliate marketing network built for bloggers. It's an alternative monetization method for millions (99% of all blogs) of low-traffic bloggers who aren't expert marketers. Why is BlogKits different than a normal affiliate network? BlogKits ends the confusion, makes it simple & provides the best options that benefit the blogger. Here's how. When a blogger

Blog Prognostications for 2007

Some of the Fellows over at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) have made predictions about blogging in the year ahead. (BTW, I use the term "Fellows" as a proper noun, because it's some of SNCR's Research Fellows of which I speak.) One of those, Debbie Weil, had this to say...
"We´re unhooking from our computers and will be getting much more online info via our cell phones, PDAs, etc. Beware the marketer who doesn´t remember this and doesn´t format blog posts, etc. to be read on a cell phone or Treo! The corporate blogosphere has gone multi-media.