Category: 5 Must-Read Posts

Whittling down the bulk of great posts into five distinct items can be challenging. As the web evolves, and as we all get better at communicating using it – the quality of thinking and the volume of quality posts begins to explode. These five must-reads are my small contribution to filtering and connecting. Hope you enjoy them!

1. Peter Economides explains with eloquence and insight why social media is social but it’s not media.
2. Craig Wilson likens new marketing tactics with drug dealing – getting you hooked on the benefits before asking you to pay. He asks What is your gateway drug
3. Are you using Klout? Are you relying on its “influence metrics” for your marketing success? John Haydon reminds us that Buying Influence is Bad Business
4. Is the music industry making progress in the online business space? Alan Jones muses on the Rubber Band and the Future of Music
5. Are you addicted to the newest of the new? Amber Naslund explains that we Need Both Improvement and Innovation

We often read about the death of blogging, or publishing, or the plateauing of Facebook – but most of these announcements don’t actually engage with the underlying issues. They don’t address our sense of digital belonging or the reasons why social network find and then lose favour. The five must-read posts from last week provide some important thinking on this particular subject:

1. John Hagel and John Seely Brown discuss dynamic ecosystems and suggest that orchestration creates performance multipliers whereas static ecosystems (such as crowdsourcing) are still zero-sum. Take a few minutes to learn why more companies need to break their antisocial tendencies
2. For a more academic angle, Jan Lorenz, Jeoko Rauhut, Frank Schweitzer and Dirk Helbing have written a paper entitled How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect. They show how this impacts large scale issues – from the global financial crisis through to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Fascinating stuff!
3. We are increasingly seeing online connection result in a “real world” meeting. David Hood was the instigator of Gathering ‘11 and Beth Worrall captured the enthusiasm and energy in her recap post
4. Niall Harbison explains that social media and connectiveness is not just about linking or clicking. Asking Is Google +1 Another Social Flop?, he identifies the disconnect between the idea and its execution
5. You know that adage about “fishing where the fish are” when it comes social media and channel engagement? Well Francois Gossieaux debunks a couple of these myths and reminds us that it’s important to put the effort in to find your tribes – and find ways to support them.

There have been some great articles published this week – a bit of controversy and a lot of insight. And for the first time in some time, all the must-read posts come from my local peeps here in Australia. Hope you enjoy!

1. What happens when traditional media and social media clash? Social Content and Context is a great post from Tiphereth Gloria detailing her own experience at the hands of a lazy and sensationalist piece of journalism
2. Nicola Swankie shares her recent experience at an “exclusive” bar and then discusses some lessons that brands can apply to their social media excursions
3. In Make Me a Mixed Tape Mandi Bateson highlights the Kaiser Chiefs recent crowd-curation efforts with the release of their new album
4. Chris Savage delivers a bunch of new posts – and shares The Secret to Winning Pitches
5. Julian Cole is building out MacGyvers Digital Strategy Training Guide. You know you’re going to want to read this.

As usual, there was some great content published last week (and I already have some good fodder for next week!) In case you have not had a chance to scour your RSS feeds, take a look at these five posts to give your brain a kickstart.

1. How do we extract meaning from our overwhelmingly connected lives? Stephen Johnson shares The Third Place Manifesto suggesting that overlapping communities of passion may just disrupt our sense of reality enough to help us forge a new understanding.
2. I don’t normally feature posts from the big blog networks, but this interview with Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator has some great lessons for innovators, entrepreneurs and marketers alike.
3. Katie Dreke is curating a lovely Tumblr blog with plenty of inspirational content. Take a quick look and you’ll see why it lives up to the name ObsessiveCompulsive.
4. Ron Shevlin shares the World’s Worst – Or Best – Powerpoint Slide. I think in the past I could have been responsible for something like this.
5. There’s a real gap between talk and walk. How do you measure the difference between popularity and influence? Valeria Maltoni shares some of her thoughts on this challenging subject.

The best of last week’s reads were heavily contested. I could have easily found 10 posts that would astound you. But in the end I stuck with the five – after all I know how busy you are. Some of these posts are longer than average, but they are dealing with some challenging issues. I trust you’ll find them fascinating.

1. Do you love blogging? Has it changed the way you think or work? Does the chaos of information boggle or thrill you? Tac Anderson talks about blogging – what he loves and why it has changed his life.
2. In the technology and social media world, we all have to contend with new platforms and devices that emerge with an almost never ending energy. But at a certain point in time money dries up, interest wanes and consolidation begins. What does this look like? Ben Kunz discusses the Path to Social Media Consolidation and suggests it’s happening before our very eyes.
3. How does good advertising work? It invites you into the storytelling process. Paul McEnany explains this as The Pretending Layer and provides some wonderful examples of it in action.
4. When you are in the world of content and social media, it’s important to remember that you are “makers” – that you create, craft and produce something of value (to someone). This Codified Set of Builders, Crafters and Makers Rules was spotted by Collyn Ahart. Awesome.
5. We’ve all been arguing for years about the big idea vs the small idea. But Gareth Kay takes a different approach and explains precisely Why Small Mattershttp://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2011/05/why-small-matters.html. Check it.

Last week there seemed to be fewer but longer posts on my reading list. The regular bloggers that I follow wrote less, but they went deeper than usual, churning out deeper, presentation format style posts. So while some of these posts will take you a little longer to read, be sure that there’s a payoff – there’s some great knowledge sharing going on, and it should be applauded!

1. Tac Anderson writes about the New Social CMO and how performance in the digital-to-consumer channel is a strong indicator of overall marketing and business performance
2. Stan Johnson’s observations on the advertising industry and the shifting and unpredictable consumer society in which we live makes for one of my favourite blogs. Stan asks what ever happened to those virtual agencies?
3. Kickstarter, the darling of crowd-financing scene just turned two years old. Check out the graph that shows the growth in dollars pledged to new projects per month (and it is not cumulative!). Read the post to learn some of the reasons behind their success
4. In What’s Next for Me, Valeria Maltoni talks about her next move and how she is creating a job by finding a problem to solve
5. You’ve probably known this for some time, but Assholes are Bad for Business. Just ask Olivier Blanchard.

This week we seem to be asking a lot of questions. We seem to be challenging the orthodoxy, digging into the details and throwing various cats amongst the squadrons of social media pigeons.

There are questions of style and of substance. Questions of tactics and strategy. And even a walk in the hall of mirrors.

All-in-all, it makes for great reading.

1. Craig Wilson’s Customer Service in the Digital Age: Radiohead v Vodafone sets out some of the tactics that have worked for rock bands and suggests that brands could learn a thing or two from the world of rock
2. Did you know that 30% of mums use Facebook constantly through the day and that 73% check into their social networks daily? Mandi Bateson digs into the data to show exactly why, in Australia, Mums Own Social Media
3. You may be talented, but are you buyable? If you are building your “generalist” skills in the industry, consider also where you go deep. BBH Labs asks Are the junior talent in advertising packaging themselves wrong?
4. I love a good story – and I love to see it being told via social media. But as Kris Hoet reminds us, you need to get your internal story sorted out before you go public. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the external story is the only one that matters.
5. You might have the talent, the ambition and even the ego to make it to the top – but do you have the right name? Neil Perkin uses LinkedIn data to ask What’s in a Name?

This week I mix it up a little, with a bit of social media, some politics, some pop culture and a good dose of “do the right thing”. These five posts will get you started nicely this week.

1. Amber Naslund writes An Open Letter to the Social Business Industry suggesting that we temper our claims, promises and approaches
2. Former NSW Premier Bob Carr suggests that there are two questions we should be asking in the current debate over clubs and poker machines. Read his post to learn why the clubs fight
3. Dan Perez owns up, explaining that he loves American Idol – and shows why you should too. It’s a must read for the budding social media participant
4. Katie Chatfield reminds us that it’s easy to be a douchebag – and the challenge is to feel the fire, but not be burned
5. Mandi Bateson shares a great example of communications planning – asking So You Created a Viral Video. What Next? 

Every week I read hundreds of blog posts. Sometimes they are mercifully short, other times they are compellingly long. Some contain the germ of an idea. Others carry the reader along in the torrent.

Whittling all these down to five must-read posts can be difficult. But I do it in the hope that this is useful to you. This week’s five must-reads from last week are:

1. I love this piece from Collyn Ahart where he talks about the difference between markets and cultures. He’s spot on. Let’s look for the gaps in culture and see if we can help galvanise a movement.
2. Christina ‘CK’ Kerley has launched a new website for B2B marketers – zeroing in on the power and promise of mobile. What’s the name of this train? It’s called B2BMobileRevolution and it’s leaving town. All aboard!
3. Looking for a job in marketing? Drew McLellan provides much needed advice for finding your first marketing job.
4. Ben Kunz suggests that Youtube may have missed the boat – with rival video sites like Hulu and Netflix drawing audiences to “full course entertainment meals” rather than video snacks.
5. Robin Stephenson (via Beth Kanter’s blog) shares 10 Organizing Rules for Twitter Communities. While the focus is not for profit organisations, the same can be applied to any effort.

This week’s focus is on innovation – what is it, what drives it and how do you need to think about it differently now. The central theme is that it begins with you – innovation is not something you can handball to someone else. So what are you waiting for? Don’t be the reflected glory in someone else’s mirror. Step up. Yes, I’m talking to you.

1. If you only have time to read one article this week, make it this one from Olivier Blanchard – Social Business vs Social Marketing. Yes, it’s a fight over content, but that’s just the beginning.
2. Julie Hunt suggests it’s time that IT and Marketing got together to drive innovation through B2B enterprises
3. Valeria Maltoni asks you to take a walk in the hall of mirrors – how attractive are you (yes, it applies to brands), and why would anyone want to talk to you? Sometimes you have to influence your self.
4. Is imagination the source of innovation? Brian Solis suggests that for true innovation we need to dig deeper than the surface layer of technology, tapping more meaningful experiences, passions and capacity to lead change.
5. The nature of social media often masks the introverted nature of many of its participants. If that sounds like you, then the introvert’s guide to getting noticed in business is a great read.