Month: October 2008

Do Good on Blog Action Day

Community, Good Works, Social Media

Are you new to social media? Does it feel confusing? Fast? Alien?

When you step into the social media world, you certainly are entering a new domain and a new way of understanding the way that we PARTICIPATE in our local and global communities. I don’t mean the veiled participation of global democracies. I mean, real me-and-you participation … working together to CHANGE what already is into something we WANT it to be.

This is a fundamental change in the role of the individual. It is tribal, but tribal by association. We can choose where we belong. We can mark ourselves as participants simply by doing … and indeed, one of the hallmarks of social media is the collapsing of thought and action. In this brave new world, words (while powerful) fade in comparison to actions. Our measurement, our worth, our standing in the world is determined not by what we write, but by what we do. And Blog Action Day is a great example.

October 15 is Blog Action Day, a non-profit event that aims for mass participation around a single theme. This year, the focus is on poverty and there is much that you can do to raise awareness and contribute to this global movement: 

  • You can make a loan and change a life by investing in an entrepreneur’s business through Kiva   
  • Visit BlogActionDay.org, register and contribute to the movement by writing a blog post
  • Read other Blog Action Day posts, comment on them and help build momentum

But if you are closer to Sydney and you want to make a tangible difference to the lives of others, consider attending the Article Thirty-Nine Concert in Sydney next month. Tickets are now available, and there are some great bands donating their time and talent in support of child soldiers.

 

 

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From Ad Land to Inspiration

Australian Blogs, Branding

For an industry that is supposed to be at the forefront of promotion, the advertising and marketing industries do a relatively poor job of positioning and marketing themselves. Yet, if you work in these industries, it is essential to “keep up” with the latest efforts of the best minds in the business (locally if not globally) – which means relying on (of all things) – blogs that aggregate content on our behalf. There are a couple of Australian based sites that do this extremely well – Bannerblog and Duncan’s TV Ad Land.

 

Duncan Macleod recently moved this popular site over to a new domain – www.theinspirationroom.com (get the new feed here) and I asked him a few questions …   
 
TIR_Crest_grey-on-white

Duncan’s TV Ad Land was a popular site. Why the change?   
 

Duncan’s TV Ad Land was popular – but had become limited by it’s own branding. For one, it’s naming linked the site to me alone, and I needed to develop an approach that incorporated capacity for growth, including other writers and possibly allowing sale later on. To take it to the next level (increasing readership and income) I needed help from people with capital, contacts and connections to the creative industries. After a month of conversations I moved five blogs into one and then transferred them to The Inspiration Room, joining forces with a team with a significant business plan.

 

TIR_Crest_grey-on-whiteHave you found there are pitfalls with this type of rebranding?   
I was fully aware of the pitfalls of rebranding, having previously moved my blogs from Blogspot. Those include the loss of RSS subscribers, the sheer hard work required to update past posts, and a temporary setback in Google page rank, Alexa and Technorati ranking. However, with the use of redirection, I’ve been able to retain my place in the search engines. The main thing missing now is the number of links to images on the site. That could be a good thing for just now.

 

TIR_Crest_grey-on-whiteWhat would you do differently next time?    
What would I do differently next time? I’d set up my RSS feed with email subscription right from the start – much easier to migrate to a new address. I’d choose a domain name that wasn’t linked to my name.

 

TIR_Crest_grey-on-whiteThe Inspiration Room caters to an audience interested in advertising and marketing. Do you see it growing outside of this market?   
The Inspiration Room’s growing list of regular subscribers does tend to be from the advertising and marketing world. However an analysis of visitors to the site through search engines reveals that over half of the visitors come from outside that market – people interested in reading about advertising, looking for the name of the music used, treating advertising as an art form. With the increase of shows like The Gruen Transfer, we’re moving beyond the “Funniest TV commercials” approach in the general public.

 

TIR_Crest_grey-on-whiteThere is no discussion or comments allowed on the pieces you show. Is this a conscious decision?   
Discussion/comments is allowed on every post. However the front page is designed to show the first section of each post, to allow 10 posts to be loaded quickly. Some posts have had up to 210 comments. I’m looking into a way of making it clear that there’s more to the first post on the blog. However most visitors come via search engines directly to each post and never encounter this problem.

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Age of Conversation Podcast #1

Age of Conversation

Aockhaleejtimescover
The launch of the Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It? edges ever closer. This year we have well over 200 authors contributing from 15 countries. All the profits go to Variety, the Children’s Charity, and we have some great plans to promote the book, the authors and the charity over the coming weeks and months.

But how did it all come together? What is the difference this time around? And what can we expect from this bumper edition? Jay Ehret took the time out to record a podcast with Drew and I to find out. In fact, Jay is planning on interviewing all 237 authors.

In this Age of Conversation we really want this to be more than a one-way discussion, so do drop by the Age of Conversation blog and leave a comment.

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Australian Marketing Blogs

Australian Blogs

Julian Cole has extended his Top 25 Marketing Blog list to well over 100 entries … which, no doubt, takes a great deal of time and effort. It is great to see a growing number of writers taking the time and making the effort to engage in discussions about marketing and brands in a landscape that is under constant transformation. Be sure to check out the full list at AdspacePioneers. I have chosen to list those blogs ranking in the last 10 of the 100 — each of which contains fantastic content. It seems that there is a great depth of quality thinking right across the list — boding well for the Australian marketing landscape.

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

Australian Marketing Pioneers Blogs Pioneer Ranking Google Page Rank Tech Authority Score Tech Reactions 10 Alexa Rating Score Total
91 Via Media – The Way(Marketing News) 7 2 0 0 0 9
92 Ponderings of The Orange Cow(Communications) 4 3 0 0 2 9
93 Work.netx(Digital Advertising) 5 0 0 0 4 9
94 Tick Yes(Digital Marketing) 4 2 0 0 2 8
95 Write across media (Marketing News) 6 0 0 0 2 8
96 Zebra Bites(Marketing Research) 7 0 0 0 1 8
97 Quintessentially Digital (Digital Marketing) 6 0 0 0 2 8
98 How good you want to be (Marketing News) 7 0 0 0 1 8
99 The Odd one out(SEM/SEO) 6 0 0 0 2 8
100 Tony from the Population(Social Media) 8 0 0 0 0 8

A Big Week in Australian Business Blogging

Blogging, Smart Bloggers, Social Media

  A big turnout 
  Originally uploaded by servantofchaos

For those of us who are involved in blogging (or broader social media) from a business or professional perspective (here some of us are enjoying a Friday morning coffee at Single Origin), it has been surprising and not a little frustrating to find Australian brands and businesses actively resisting the opportunities presented by social media. For while social media tends to have an aura of "danger" for brands or can be considered to be the personal diarizing of the great unwashed masses, smart marketers are reaching out to their customers directly and with great effect. And perhaps, this week will see a change in the social media landscape here in Australia.

For a start, we are seeing the flow-on effects from the global financial crisis, with businesses indicating that their advertising spend is likely to drop. This will mean even greater scrutiny over marketing budgets and promotional efforts in the year ahead (or as I suggested recently, it’s not time to cut through, but to cut out). This bodes well for social media based efforts where long term brand engagement, trust, preference and recall are staples.

It seems that this sentiment is being echoed in the wider business community — with both B&T and Smart Company giving some serious prominence to blogging. B&T not only announced a redesign of their website, but followed through with a revamp of their magazine where they feature an update on Julian Cole’s list of the Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs. Not only do they list the Top 50 (where I am proud to be included at #2), they also devote space to an interview with Katie Chatfield and David Gillespie. This represents, in my view at least, a significant change in the attitude of one of the local advertising industry’s leading publications. I look forward to seeing whether we can move towards the sort of roundtable discussions we had with AdAge in New York earlier this year.

Similarly, SmartCompany have a great article on business blogging. Brad Howarth interviews Steven Noble, Jeremy Mitchell and Trevor Young who discuss:

  • Small business blogging
  • Getting started with blogging
  • Five tips on content

The article is wrapped up with a list of 15 of Australia’s best business blogs. There are some excellent blogs listed (even a couple are new to me), but all worth checking out:

 

A Year, That Year

Good Works

If you use Twitter, you may have noticed that a number of people have turned their avatar blue. It is part of the effort to raise awareness of anxiety and depression — Blue Day 2008. World Mental Health Day is on October 10. Depression can affect any of us, at any time — sometimes it creeps up on us, other times it hits like a fist. But it can be worked through — and help can be found. For me it was writing that helped to me to work through my own depression … and I have now lived many years without looking back into its cold eyes.This is a poem that I wrote  from the depths.

A Year, That Year
The must door exhales the memory of you.
Rotting teeth, perfect flying spirals
  and the fresh breath of forgotten fears
I dreaded your coming and going
  and the wake of your torrents – the sting of your tale
For I knew there was more to the story than the telling.

The idle tranquility of sprawling sheets offends the angry palm
Slamming doors, eyes shut, window panes.
The disappointment of a clear sky, an empty
  room and words falling from the page
And of all this you taught me:
  Even deserts have spring rains.

But for me?

I have supp’d on losses of a kind
The mother lost and lost haunts each move,
  each thought, each brush of skin on skin
The friends countless, disappeared, disappearing
  all rooms without faces
And the words that left me when only
  writing could hold the sorrow that breathed me
I stood
  shooting tentacles, acts of faith –
  desperation aside
I would have preferred anything to this
To the slow, unfolding knowledge
  that can only bring you to yourself
I have squeezed the blinding anguish of you,
  ripped the pages of your history
Ate it like the truth

And at its end, shooting sparrows from the sky,
  I began with ink
  and an uncertain ending.

—–

UPDATE: Take a read of some personal Blue Day stories.

So what can you do?

The folks from BlueDay2008 suggest the following:

  • If you don’t have a blog of a podcast, register on this site and submit a post that will appear on the Submitted Posts page.
  • Change your avatars on your favourite social networking site
    Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed/etc to something blue, download one of our pre-built ones
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Modify your blog theme to be mainly blue
  • Run a Second Life event, or attend the jokaydia event
  • Wear blue for the day
  • Organising a meet ups on the day, currently organised:
  • Tag your photos/posts/tweets with BlueDay2008
  • Become a fan on FaceBook
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Get Into Your Groove with the KaiserMix

Co-creation, Smart Bloggers, Web 2.0, Web Fun

Kaisermixbanner1
Have you ever wondered what social media is all about? Here, I will let you into a trade secret. It is just TWO things.

  • Being social — reaching out, activating, participating and exciting people
  • Doing things — creating content, sharing ideas, holding events

Now, you might think that this sounds easy. But you see, the challenge is, in a digital landscape and in a social world that crosses borders, timezones (and sometimes even boundaries of common decency – jokes), the crafting of a compelling offer and the telling of an enlivening story requires a broad array of skills and expertise. And you will find that the bloggers and social media participants who do this well have a breadth of expertise that normally resides in a TEAM of people.

Now, Marcus Brown is one such person. I profiled Marcus in my first Mining the Gold post, but that was a retrospective. Tomorrow night (Australia time), we all have the opportunity to actually PARTICIPATE in one of Marcus’ creations. It is called the KaiserMix and it will be a heady mix of music, streaming, photography and live bar action direct from Munich. It is easy to participate, as Marcus explains:

Twitter:
I’ve set up a twitter account (robbed myself of a former Character’s Twitter account) called TheKaiserMix
which you can of course follow. I’ll only be using this twitter account
on the evening and it’ll be tweeting my blips – and through that odd @
functionality the blips of everyone following me. If you’re on the road
and want a song played just send an @TheKaiserMix to me on twitter –
and I’ll play it.

Flickr:

I’ll be taking lots of photos during the evening which will be appearing in the slide show widget you can see above over on The Kaiser Mix
blog (the charming Gentleman in the slide show above is Snoop – and
along with Joseph runs The Schwarzer Hahn). If you’re there, like in
“The Hahn” on the night and you have a flickr account you can upload
photos and if you tag them thekaisermix (just that tag) they
automatically appear in the slide show. Likewise if you’re not going to
be in Munich but you’re listening or watching (see below) you can
upload your version/experience of The Kaiser Mix.

Blip:

For those of you who are not going to make it to Munich, there is of
course blip itself. If you follow me and use the @thekaiser function
you can send me songs you want played. If I play your blip it’s goes
into the kaiser’s playlist.

Yahoo Live:

OK, as some of you know I’ve been playing around with the video
streaming stuff – and think I’ve got it nailed. You can either watch
the event, live (starts around 21:00hrs C.E.T) on The Kaiser Mix channel (where you can chat with me during the evening – and if you’ve got a video camera stream on the channel as well) or on the The Kaiser Mix.
If you’re especially excited by all of this you can actually embed the
yahoo live widget on your blog.

Hope to see you in Munich … or a screen a bit closer to home!

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