Seth Godin's Top Ten for Business Laggards

Is your business running on all cylinders in terms of new media? If so, you can bypass this one.

Author and internet übermarketer Seth Godin has written up an intriguing list of ten recommendations for businesses (and organizations or clients) that are web laggards. (It's the sick who need a doctor, right?) Those who qualify have:

- No real website
- No social media
- No permission assets
- No real cash

All ten of them are good, but these are my favorites:

- Use gmail to give every person in the organization that can read English an email address.
- Start an email newsletter using Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp. Give the responsibility for the newsletter's creation and performance to one person and offer them a bonus if they exceed metrics in sign ups and in reducing churn.
- Offer a small bonus to anyone in the company who starts and runs a blog on any topic. Have them link to your company site, with an explanation that while they work there, they don't speak for you.
- Start a newsletter for your vendors. Email them regular updates about what you're doing, what's selling and what problems are going on internally that they might be able to help you with.
- Get a white board and put it in the break room. On it, have someone update: how many people subscribe to the newsletter, how many people visit the website, how many inbound requests come in by phone, how long it takes customer service to answer an email and how often your brand names are showing up on Twitter every day.

Here's a link to the rest.

Thanks, Seth.

Pleasure to burn...

Do people ever ask you what you think of television? Not of "24" or MTV or The Antiques Road Show, but television itself. Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man,...) said this:

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

His assessment of the internet is a bit more optimistic: "Well, I hope it's an experiment that works." Here's the whole clip: Bradbury on the internet

The End of Airline E-mail Blackout

An update on in-flight broadband -- American Airlines just announced they will team up with service provider Aircell to offer the internet on domestic flights early next year, picking up where Boeing left off, using cell towers rather than satellites. Blessing or curse, you'll be able to keep up on e-mail and access the web, rather than just updating spreadsheets and powerpoints.

ASiQ Inflight - Just in Time for the iPhone

If you've been wondering what the holdup is in getting inflight internet access, here's an update in anticipation of ASiQ's low-cost solution within the next couple months.
Just in time for you to try it out on your new iPhone, depending on where you stand in Rogers' diffusion of innovations -- and your current contract with Verizon (whose service wins hands-down over AT&T but where Steve Jobs couldn't agree on the terms of the deal).