Category: 5 Must-Read Posts

We live in a time of information abundance. Almost anything we want to learn, we can find online. All we need is an internet connection and a few minutes to scour the search engines. But it’s not information that is valuable these days – it’s our time. Our attention. We need utility in all its forms. We need relevance. But perhaps most importantly, we need resonance.

This week’s must-reads are brought to you by the letter I and the number 5. I hope they resonate with you.

1. Anna Farmery serves up yet another tasty podcast – Innovation is a Social Process featuring author, Patrick Howie
2. Stefano Maggi shares a TED talk with volunteer firefighter, Mark Bezos. It’s a story of how to be remarkable – one act at a time
3. Mark Pollard has been on fire, writing plenty of scorchingly good posts – but this one on social media monitoring tools asks all the right questions
4. Ron Shevlin announces a new social media influence measurement tool. You’re going to love it
5. We all talk about leaders, but what about followers? You can learn about the art of followership from the brainiac Matt Moore at one of his upcoming events in Sydney and Melbourne.

When I am selecting these posts, I look for something that piques my interest – a word, a phrase or an idea that resonates.

Interestingly, it is almost never a comment. The idea behind Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week is to highlight those articles that should be shared or should find their way through the well-tuned content filters we have now all developed.

These five posts caught my eye and my imagination last week. I hope they help you start this week well!

1. This excellent article on the Psychology of Pay Walls fascinates me. The concept that ownership has its own value is very important – and gives an indication of just how online communities become entrenched in the minds of their members
2. Do your blog posts have a “tweetable moment” – the soundbyte that encourages your readers to tweet out a link? Craig Rosenberg shares Nine Variable to Consider When Creating Remarkable Content. The tweetable moment is just one of them
3. How to Make New Friends is a stirling post by Nicola Swankie. Plenty of lessons for all of us here
4. Not exactly from last week, but something that Mark Pollard shared (again): How to Position Your Business in 3 Sentences. For. Only. Because. We all need to be reminded of this! (Also check out his How to Explain an Idea – really from the last 5 days)
5. An opportunity not to be missed – the Tax Deduction that Could Change Your Business.

A little late this week – but there’s been a lot on! There’s posts, news, work and so much great reading it’s hard to find time to write!

Hope that these five posts from last week get your brains vibing!

1. For those wanting to optimise their sites (and who doesn’t), Google’s recent changes to their search algorithm is big news. Michael Brenner explains What Google’s New Search Algorithm Means For You.
2. Want to move people from the digital world into your stores? Julian Cole shares 7 Killer Examples of Online to Offline Campaigns.
3. Nike made it famous. Just do it. The same applies to social media for business. Cathie McGinn recommends joining the Dead Social Media Practitioners Society.
4. John Hagel suggests we are seeing a shift from short term to long term thinking. He talks revolution from the edge. Thankfully few of us ever have to push our ideas for change as hard as those in the Middle East.
5. Feel like you get pushed from pillar to post? Veronica Jarski explains How to Prevent Your Social Media Strategist from Being Everyone’s Lackey.

And don’t you still love Spell with Flickr?

Sometimes I have a hard time finding five posts that really ring my bell. At other times, there is an abundance of great thinking. This week is an example of the latter.

Over the last week I have read some great articles, shared many of them with my Twitter followers and made notes for future blog posts. And while I still love Twitter for the immediacy, when I need detail or when I crave analysis, I turn to blogs. And I think many people are the same.

So while it’s easy to think that blogging is past its prime, I still believe that blogging is yet to hit its serious stride. These five must-read posts make my point:

1. Concerned at the direction that Facebook is taking, Geoff Livingston confirms with his readers that the Facebook Empire Ends Here.
2. Beth Harte suggests it’s about time that marketers make a change. Rethinking the Marketing Mix from the Customer’s Perspective takes the Four Cs of the customer-centric model and throws it up against the Four Ps of marketing. Who wins? Always the customer.
3. Venessa Miemis is asking for input on the Future of Facebook. What’s your view? Where is it going for you – and importantly, do you care?
4. At a conference last week, Jye Smith provided 5 Lessons in Community Management and a case study on Red Bull Bedroom Jam. You can check out his thinking on his blog.
5. Jacob Morgan pulls together 50+ Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies and Examples – a great resource for anyone seeking inspiration.

This week I am looking at creativity. What does creativity mean to you? How do you maintain it and how does it manifest in your life?

These five posts should get you thinking (and hopefully acting) this monday!

1. In the hustle and bustle of a busy life, Drew McLellan asks, how do you maintain your creativity. What do you do, what do you read and where do you go to make sure that your creative focus remains strong? Read Drew’s tips here.
2. The Wall Street Journal reports that we should give up coffee and start daydreaming. It appears that all that coffee keeps us on a too-narrow focus and that we need to broaden our vision and begin daydreaming. It seems that the lack of attention is really just a door into a creative world that is just waiting for us.
3. Mark McGuiness takes a walk on the wild side and interviews everyone’s favourite Twitter personality – the BadBanana. Tim Siedell – with almost half a million followers is a testament to the power of social media – showing that a niche focus and a unique voice will build you an audience.
4. Richard Huntington discusses crimes against participation – and reminds us that we have to be a little more creative and a little more focused when it comes to online participation. Rather than thinking about what we can get people to do, we should be asking “what would I participate in”.
5. Take a read of Rob Campbell’s series of creative insights masquerading as rants – all published while here in Australia as part of the AWARD awards program/Circus conference. He reminds us that the right creative solution for your client doesn’t always mean writing an ad – and that the best advice sometimes means ignoring everyone else’s advice.

It was Super Bowl week last week, so there was ad world overload. But if you looked beyond the replays of TV commercials, there were some seriously good blog posts published last week. These five caught my eye – but I am sure there were others.

Did you see them? What did you like? Let me know!

1. An interview with Shiv Singh – How Pepsi’s crowdsourced ads beat the Super Bowl beer spots makes for interesting reading
2. We’re all in the business of producing content – but how much should you charge? Chris Brogan has a great post on Pricing Digital Content.
3. It’s nice to be customer centric right, but Tara Hunt takes it a step further. She claims that The Customer is the Center. Think I agree.
4. BBH Labs consistently publish quality, thought provoking articles. This one is great – Five Things Agencies Can Learn from Music Labels
5. It’s been a long time between drinks, but Sean Howard is back blogging again – and asks do we always have to create something new?

How many blogs do you read each week? How many each day? How do you find them and why are they useful? Do you come back to them? Do you subscribe or add them to your favourites? How do you keep up-to-date?

All good questions. Yet while statistics indicate that blogging is growing – modestly – my feeling is that we are seeing higher quality, more thoughtful writing and keener insight. So while there’s not the massive growth that we have seen over the last five years, we' are seeing a spike in quality. That’s only a good thing.

1. As we approach conference season here in Australia, you’re likely to witness some atrocious attitude, bad behaviour and schoolyard silliness. And that’s just the presenters. Jason Falls has an excellent rant – suggesting it’s time we took a walk in the hall of mirrors.
2. Valeria Maltoni regularly publishes thought provoking articles (so be sure to subscribe to her blog). But last week’s How Do You Influence the Influencers is worth a second look.
3. Last week, fashion brand Kenneth Cole earned the ire of the Twitter community through a poorly judged tweet. Olivier Blanchard explains what every brand should not do on Twitter.
4. This post from Annik Skelton made me laugh out loud. I Went to Yogi Dancing and it was Weird is a great piece of storytelling – and may just see more people signing up.
5. Craig Wilson shares the Internet 2010 in Numbers – perfect fodder for your next presentation (please see point 1 above).

There was a time when January was slow – where nothing much happened until February. It was a time for planning and organisation. It was about getting your ducks in a row.

We’re already a month in to 2011 and it feels like I’m aboard a freight train – there are events, book launches, happenings and great blogging all aimed to help your branding, marketing and social media activities for 2011. I’ve got some great ideas that I am working on and hope to share with you soon. But most importantly, there are five great posts from last week that you simply must read!

1. If you want to make 2011 a year where you achieved great things, follow Tara Hunt’s advice and ignore the devil’s advocates (in your head, in your business). After all, Nobody Told Me It’s Impossible – so instead of asking “why?”, ask “why not?”
2. There’s no doubt that “social” is moving from being a buzzword to something that is more far reaching. But Shel Israel asks Is Social the New Black? While all things social are certainly “in fashion”, my sense is that there’s some serious business success now starting to manifest – we just may be too saturated with the S- word to care.
3. And on the “social” topic – what would “social innovation” look like? Edward Boches shares Four Great Examples of Social Innovation.
4. This post from Katie Chatfield on Like Baiting, while older than the last five days is also a must-read. If you want results, take a read.
5. If you are a visitor to New South Wales’ Hunter Valley or to Newcastle, you will be wanting to keep an eye on UrbanInsider – a new site with plenty of blog posts that give you the inside running on the local scene. This post is a must-read for you social media cupcake fans.

Each year it starts the same. A dark, quiet room. Incense laden air. I take a breath. Again. Drawing the cosmic energies deep into my being. I hold them, momentarily, and then relax, breathing them back into the world.

And as I sift through the psychic residue, searching for a shred of insight, I am given the greatest gift. Release.

Accordingly, I won’t be making any predictions for the year ahead, but here are five smart folks who have. Be sure to check them out!

1. Peter Kim’s Social Business Predictions offer a scorching read. As Managing Director of the Dachis Group in North America, he is scanning a wide array of topics from leadership through consumer and workforce engagement, metrics and location based services. He has collaborated on these predictions with a bunch of leading thinkers.
2. Covering some of the same ground, Taly Weiss from TrendsSpotting pulls together the underlying trends and puts a face to some of the ideas.
3. Paul Dunay always delivers a well thought-through analysis. Here he talks about his B2B marketing predictions for 2011.
4. David Berkowitz takes a different tack and focuses in on the whole digital space for his predictions.
5. Mark Pesce goes mainstream and publishes in the Sydney Morning Herald. Here’s his take on the year ahead.

While the above predictions are great, I really do love this.

This week – because we are all running as fast as possible – towards the holidays, I thought I’d share with your five SHORT must-read posts from last week.

Each of them demonstrate just how much you can communicate if you squeeze your text and image hard enough.

Be sure to check them all out! It’ll only take you five!

1. Message is the Medium – Great context setting (as usual) from Stan Johnson
2. The Eternal Struggle – You know this happens to you too from Katie Chatfield
3. Roald – The elegance of a letter from one of last centuries great storytellers from Angus
4. Wikileaks – Is This a Significant Moment in History? Craig Wilson asks the big question
5. Meet Facebook the New US Census – Ben Kunz shows exactly how aggregated data on Facebook reveals behavioural patterns.