Tag Archives: web application

Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrow

Inkybee 300x136 Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrowAnyone who makes blogger outreach easier is a friend of mine — and, if they do it smart and have the blogger culture close to their heart and respect the blog and its power and influence, I love.  Here’s an announcement for Inkybee‘s launch tomorrow, February 7th — consider this sort of a scoop (nobody told me to embargo). The folks at Forth Metrics are smart and they do good work and make useful things.

Forth Metrics launches “Inkybee” – a web-based outreach solution for the PR industry

4thM 300x41 Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrowForth Metrics has launched the full public beta of a new web-based comms tool called Inkybee. Inkybee is a simple tool for public relations, digital marketing, social media and SEO professionals. It is the brain-child of Forth Metrics’ directors David Cumings and Hugh Anderson who spotted an opportunity in web-based PR measurement. The PR industry – and the comms world in general – is being transformed by the shift to web-based digital media. Inkybee aims to help comms professionals with this transition.

Inkybee breaks down the barriers of cost and complexity for small organisations who are undertaking any form of outreach on the web. It finds relevant sites to target on the web, manages the outreach process and measures the end results. Much of its novelty lies in its simplicity, being accessible via a user-friendly web-interface. It is particularly focussed on outreach to blogs which represent a growing opportunity for influencer marketing and are also of increasing importance to search engine optimisation (“SEO”) professionals.

hAnderson 294x300 Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrowCo-founder, Hugh Anderson, said “It’s a hugely exciting milestone for us. We have been developing Inkybee for over two years and we believe we have created something that can really help the vast majority of PR professionals who are crying out for a simple, affordable solution to manage and measure their web-based outreach.”

The launch is in a free public beta with the objective of quickly moving to a paying model via an affordable, monthly subscription. Several hundred beta testers from all around the world have already been testing it privately and their feedback has helped to shape the product. To learn more about Inkybee, visit www.inkybee.com.

Why we created Inkybee

iB 300x168 Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrowWe created Inkybee to help smaller, independent PR agencies and businesses. We wanted to create a simple, user-friendly, affordable tool that would enable busy comms professionals to do blogger outreach more effectively, saving them time and allowing them to focus on more value-add activities.

We recognised that the PR industry in general finds blogger outreach a painful process and as a result has developed a reputation for doing it poorly. As the power of bloggers and the World Wide Web in general grows, we want to help the industry improve so that everyone benefits from better communication and relationship building. It is a win-win outcome for comms professionals and bloggers.

dCumings 300x200 Inkybee tool for blogger outreach launches tomorrowWe started off on a measurement journey to measure the outputs of blogger outreach and online PR effectively. However, we soon realised that the additional pains of finding the right influencers and tracking relationships with them also needed to be tackled. So we built Inkybee to do it all.

We’ve got the first beta version of Inkybee running and it is working well, but there is a lot more to come. Specifically in three key areas:

  1. In adding lots more helpful features and functionality – every week you’ll see improvements
  2. Adding sophistication to our blog discovery tool – we have the technology to add a lot more firepower to make the results of this much, much better in due course.
  3. As our database of blogs grows, we will work with bloggers to help them understand their own niches and the associated network of related, influential bloggers.

Whilst all of this development is going on we will continue to provide lots of helpful educational materials to make sure comms professionals keep learning to do a better job as this exciting area grows and grows.

More answers to frequently asked questions can be found on the Inkybee FAQ page

About Forth Metrics

Forth Metrics is a Scottish-based web technology company. It was formed in 2010 with a vision to create simple web-based measurement products to help smaller businesses that are unable to afford Enterprise solutions. It is one of a number of Scottish Enterprise backed technology companies in Edinburgh that are doing exciting things on the web. Forth Metrics’ expertise spans big data management, complex mathematics, digital, commercial and creative prowess. Forth Metrics is a member of Scotland IS, the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and AMEC. To contact the company please email info@forthmetrics.com. For more information visit www.forthmetrics.com.

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Motionbox is giving away free Roku Digital Video Players

logo2 Motionbox is giving away free Roku Digital Video Players

The company I work for, Abraham Harrison llc, is helping to promote Motionbox, and I’m actually pretty excited about it.

You see, Motionbox is giving away brand new Roku players to 3 of the people who sign up for a free account during the month of November as a way to celebrate Motionbox’s upcoming featured channel on the Roku digital video player.

Tekzilla created a really great review video of the Roku:

Motionbox is the perfect way to share your videos with only the people that you choose. Motionbox is a video hosting service for people who want their friends, family, and clients to see videos in high quality, but don’t necessarily want the entire world involved.

As you can see here, Motionbox video quality really out performs Youtube:

Motionbox also recently added a new PRO service which includes storage, web-based editing, streaming, and embedding, all in up to 1080p HD quality. There’s also the free Basic service for those who don’t need as many bells and whistles.

Check out Motionbox and let me know what you think

Motionbox is giving away free Roku Digital Video Players

Strong Community Demands Strong Leadership

I woke up to an amazing article written by Jonathan Trenn, The fallacy of community, and I responded in a comment to a pretty passionate article and a passionate comment string, and here’s what I wrote — and I have expanded the argument below, so it is an expansion. Via Marketing Conversation.

Gosh, I don’t know what to say here… there are so many different types of communities, many of which can surely be manufactured. What every successful community requires is community leadership. Community leadership can be organic and emergent or they can be hired in the form of online community managers or facilitators. A strong leadership — people who have skin in the game — is more important than a good web application; also, these community leaders are often the main draw to the community and can be the difference between keeping or losing your members when a competitor comes to town.

Here are some types of communities, as pulled from Wikipedia:

Many of these can be created, in much the same way that one may create a garden. I think the biggest problem with these sort of things — community-creation — is that people do it wrong, and they have been doing it wrong for at least a decade.

Back in the day, when I worked at Caucus Systems, we manufactured communities for businesses — virtual teams, virtual conferences, and whatnot. And it worked quite well, to be sure, and they were powerful and transforming.

What most companies don’t understand is that communities require facilitators and managers. They always have. AOL hired community managers back in 1995 when they created communities, the Well and Caucus and Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms have paid and unpaid community managers and facilitators.

The mistake that most companies make is that they assume that if they build it, they will come. It is not true. You can create a Wiki, a Message Board, Forums, or a Blog and it doesn’t mean anything at all.

In fact, people will spend all of this time putting together a message board, fill it with conversation-starters, and then open the doors, promote the hell out of it, and still nothing will happen.

What is required to manufacture a community is passionate members — and they can be paid. However, if they’re paid, you need to hire them from a pool of OD experts or a pool of topical experts — or, you can poach them from another community, always the best way.

So, WordPress and phpBB are not killer apps, the killer apps are the people who start and maintain conversation, the people who re-seed conversation, the people who catalyze conversation, the people who show interest and ask questions, and the people who protect the other members through active moderation.

In fact, I am an expert in this. You can restart an old thread, you can catalyze a conversation, you can break out an off-topic thread to a new topic hope.  It is an art, but it is an art that anyone who knows conversation, who knows facilitation, and who knows people, can do — and it happens all the time “organically” on all of the online boards we’re so in love with.

Hell, get WordPress, phpBB, or Wikimedia for free — or buy vBulletin for a little money — and put the rest of your budget towards hiring professional Community Managers.

Hell, if it weren’t for Jonathan Trenn on Marketing Conversation, we would be done for on this blog. He’s the glue and he’s the only reason why you are all here.

Blogging Basics Course Syllabus at Bethesda Writer’s Center

Blogging Basics One-Day Workshop: “Writing for online consumption is much different from writing for the page. Learn how to write for the Internet and the blogosphere in this one-day class focused on the unique and powerful way the blogosphere communicates and how you can best leverage your own personal passion, your own personal artistic voice, and your unique perception of the world into an online organ that could change the world,” via The Writer’s Center

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