Author Archives 
A former high-tech publishing executive, Charlotte Ziems held executive editorial positions at InfoWorld, Computerworld, PC Resource, and PC/Computing, among others. She joined Tendo after serving as vice president of research and operations at Guidewire Group, an analyst firm that focuses on entrepreneurial companies and emerging markets. As Tendo’s vice president of client engagement, Charlotte manages the editorial strategy and content development for Hewlett-Packard. When she’s not working, Charlotte rides and trains carriage-driving horses and tries to avoid big hooves.
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Navigating highways and Web pages
My recent trip to New England reminded me of one of the things I love about the East Coast: People know how to drive. By that I mean they know that if they’re driving more slowly on a highway than others around them, they move to the right lanes to let faster drivers pass on… Continue reading
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Integrating social media content
Tendo has lots of clients (both B2B and B2C) who are in various stages of adopting social media strategies. Some are wrestling with ratings and reviews. Others are trying to encourage internal bloggers and Twitter users to be more active and engaged in the blogosphere. Still others are in the listening stage, using social media monitoring tools to collect data about online conversations and struggling to convert that data into actionable analysis. Continue reading
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Does the Web make you smarter or dumber? Is that even the right question?
I was fascinated by a recent Wired article excerpting Nicholas Carr’s latest book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” Perhaps my reaction was stronger since I’d just returned from a vacation during which I was able to read my first fiction book in years. I had picked up South of Broad
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How do you read the Web? Eye-tracking data reveals 5 key findings!
I learned about eye-tracking technology in my newspaper days, when places like the Poynter Institute would strap headgear onto hapless readers to record where their eyes moved on the printed page. The data was always useful, since it shows what layout approaches and print elements attract attention and for how long—and also how eyes move… Continue reading
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What makes a successful infographic?
Recently, my colleague Bill Golden wrote a blog post about infographics resources. It prompted some discussion at Tendo about best practices for online vs. print infographics. Many of the graphics featured in this link, for instance, are fairly complicated and would be difficult to access online. If an infographic’s purpose is to make information more… Continue reading
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Should online critics be more critical?
A recent Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) made me wonder about the long-term viability of the social Web. The article is about Internet product/service ratings, and how the average grade is about 4.3 stars out of 5.
Many companies have noticed serious grade inflation. Google Inc.’s YouTube says the videos on its site average 4.6 stars… Continue reading -
Busy as a marketing bee
My latest hobby is beekeeping, and I’m fascinated by what I’m learning. Bees are amazing creatures. A hive holds about 60,000 bees: one queen, 50-something-thousand worker bees, and a couple hundred drones (male bees whose sole purpose in life is to mate with the queen; I’ll hold back on the sexist comments). There is such… Continue reading
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How compelling content intersects with social media
I read a great blog post on ProBlogger a couple weeks ago that asked, “What is compelling content to you?” and was interested to look at the comments for how readers answered the question. To spare you from scrolling through them (but I do recommend taking a look), I compiled this list of adjectives from… Continue reading
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Twitter’s relevancy for business (in 140 characters or less)
I’m a bit of a social media geek and really enjoying the work we’re doing supporting the social media communication needs of one of our large clients. I was riding the elevator out of the office yesterday with my boss Karla, talking about Twitter, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and she said, “I think Twitter is… Continue reading
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Keywords are no longer key; it’s the content
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the intersection of SEO and content strategies after attending a webinar on Google’s new search algorithm. To sum up, the keywords you use to drive traffic are only as good as the content that surrounds them. But until you measure the effectiveness of different content, you’re not really… Continue reading
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ROI on the brain
I had a nice Memorial Day week off and returned to work this week refreshed. And thinking about ROI. And metrics. And measurement. Why? Several reasons.
First, I attended the CMO Leadership Forum on Tues. with some Tendo colleagues and heard sound bites like these… Continue reading
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When Google revises search algorithms, marketers crumble
I participated in a webinar from WebMarketing123 this week on SEO and learned some fascinating stuff. Google revised its search algorithms on May 12, and it’s useful to stay abreast of them so you can update your content’s SEO strategy accordingly. First, the interesting facts:
There are 14 billion internet searches done each… Continue reading
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Making a case with video (without or without a case of wine)
I’m excited about the power of video this week. Maybe it was Gary Vay*ner*chuk that did it. But as my colleague Chris wrote in a blog post earlier this month, video’s an effective way to make a case for a product, oftentimes more effective than text.
Shortly after she wrote that post, I got… Continue reading
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