iPod Contest Winners Announced

The Blog Squad's Anniversary celebration, contest and subscription drive ended on April 30.  Last night we announced the winners on Conversations with Experts and now, online, here they are...

The winner of the Razer Copperhead Mouse, for referring the most new subscribers to our new ezine Savvy eBiz Tips, is Mike Jay, Founder of Leadership University and B\Coach Systems.  Thanks, Mike!  We appreciate your support.

The winner randomly drawn from our list of subscribers is Steve Pohlit of http://www.stevepohlit.com/ in Florida.

And finally the winner who submitted the best answer to the question we posed:

In your experience, what is the most important marketing skill a professional must master to be effective in the years to come?

We reviewed nearly 250 submissions so it wasn't an easy task to pick one.  Many responses were excellent.  We were looking for big picture thinking and decided on this answer:

I think that the ability to write (or otherwise communicate, given the rise of audio and video technologies) with an authentic voice will be critical for those seeking to grow their business online.  The Web is experienced by potential customers as a 1-to-1 interaction, and as such, typical 'brochure speak' doesn't work.  Authenticity (coupled with expertise, that's a given) leads to trust which leads to relationship which opens the possibility of doing business.  If you can't converse with potential customers using the online medium (written, heard, seen), you are at a serious disadvantage to those who can.

And our winner is Mike Duffy whose blog is http://blog.WineryWebSiteReport.com/.  Congratulations Mike and thank you to all who participated.  We'll be publishing our top 10 list of responses over the next few days on this blog.

See our press release here.