Pointers Pointers

Related to a couple of Bryan's posts, I ran across some interesting posts on a few other blogs this week:

Joe Wikert points us to former editor Erik Dafforn's post on search engine optimization and specific things publishers and authors can be doing to make sure their books perform well in searches. He examined mainly tech publishing, but many of his recommendations apply to all sorts of trade titles. Plus, he reports that very few publishers seem to "get it" from a holistic perspective.

John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing (a great small business marketing blog) is a huge advocate of blogging for businesses. I thought of his post on the "B" word when Bryan told me about his marketing meeting experience.

And via The Church of the Customer (one of my favorite blogs these days) we have Laurent Flores' post on why focus groups don't work. We're always known to some degree that this method was flawed (in book publishing as well as development for other consumer products) and Flores offers up some interesting theories why -- mainly that it's an aquarium. And our readers aren't fish. Which, you know, I'd wager is true.