State Librarian enters blogging world

Norma Blake, our NJ State Librarian, has started her own blog- Blake's Blog. It should be a valuable blog for everyone interested in knowing the latest news at the State Library. Readers will also have the opportunity to see what goes on in the life of a State Librarian. Visit Norma at Blake's Blog .

Market Opportunity- Classes that support new report

CNN reports, "This week the conversation [about education] will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of education secretaries, business leaders and a former governor releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy. See article here.

One of the key points is:

"Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education."

This may be a good time to market your classes that teach these skills to teens... Don't have a class like this? Maybe you want to....

2006 - The year of the customer

It's that time of year again when we all begin to reflect on the past year...
Chris Cafi has a head start with his column for the current issue of CMRGuru.... take a look at what he has to say about Marketing and PR.....
Of the three primary CRM areas, the areas of marketing and public relations made the most strides with respect to customer engagement. Not only startups but also behemoths such as General Motors, Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems have embraced social technologies such as blogs and podcasts in a big way, as a method of getting their message out and engaging customers in the conversation about their products. These processes of engagement with customers through social media, however, need to be done correctly, and with unassailable ethics and transparency. As an example, Wal-Mart and Edelman, a PR firm, found themselves in significant hot water in October 2006, when it came to light that a blog framed as a "grassroots" effort of regular, everyday folk ("Jim and Laura," who were driving their RV across the country, from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart and documenting it) was actually a planned marketing campaign, paid for by Wal-Mart and supported by Edelman.
It turned out that "Jim" and "Laura" were professional journalists on assignment. ("Jim" was Jim Thresher, a photojournalist for The Washington Post, and "Laura" was Laura St. Claire, a professional freelancer.) With incredible research tools at their fingertips, customers now can ferret out the truth about products and companies in only a few clicks. Despite such missteps, through social networking, other companies began to put a more human face on their organizations. An increasing number of companies are engaging with their customers directly online; answering their questions in the public square; and moving away from "marketingspeak" and toward developing deeper relationships with their customers based on actual interpersonal trust.
Read the whole post: http://www.socialcustomer.com/

Please excuse the antiquated way I'm linking. Just bought a Mac and I am still working out the quirks....

library marketing