More templates for blogger (and other stuff)

Blogger team have come up with new templates and other stuff. So if you use blogger, you might want to play around with it. I changed my template background while checking it out. No doubt I'll get bored of it and change again soon. More info here.

McCann Erickson have a (nice) blog

The folk in McCann Erickson have a new blog.

Actually, their entire website is a blog. I'm impressed. We've had a debate before (the world doesn't need any more websites) on whether most companies really need a static website and a blog. For me, this suggests they know what they are doing. Good stuff.

Why Irish Ad agencies should blog. Three practical reasons...

Image courtesy of athena

Why don't Irish marketing agencies blog?

A few do. Brando, Bloom, Cybercom and a few others have embraced it. But most do not. I'm not sure why they choose not to. Loads of good UK agencies blog.

But here are 3 practical reasons to start:

1. Blogging allows clients and potential clients to know and understand you. Your culture. What excites you. And most importantly, how you think. You are in the ideas business. Let us hear your insights and ideas.
   
   
2. The practice of blogging keeps you alert. Finding interesting new content every week is not easy. Creating original regular content is harder still. But planners and creative folk are good at this stuff. So it forces you to stay current, which is a good thing. For you and your clients.
   
   
3. The blogging community is growing. Becoming more and more influential. Some are receptive to promoting products. Some are not. (See Damien Mulley's and Piaras Kelly's posts about recent PR/Blogger discussions.) Either way, bloggers have a voice and there is little debate these days that they can influence our perceptions of brands. Being a genuine part of the blogging community is the first step in building relationships with bloggers. Unlike other publishing media, you can't just arrive on a blog, get out your wallet and start talking cost-per-thousand.
   

I posted before that I believe clients should blog too. For different reasons. Mostly to understand customers, open up conversations with them. Hopefully we'll see more of this soon. And I believe we will.

For a more insightful view on ad agencies and possible reasons why they don't blog, drop over to Nick's blog and ask him.

Purely out of curiosity...

Purely out of curiosity, I've added a video thumbnail in the sidebar. Saw something similar on Scamp's blog and thought it was an interesting way to feature an ad or a slideshow for longer than a single blog post. Not sure if I'll keep it. We'll see.

If this slows down the page loading in any substantial way at all, please let me know.

Who in the world would you most want to blog?

Image courtesy of Dave & Bry

If you could read, and respond to, the daily thoughts of any one person today or in the history of time, who would it be?

Your favourite writer perhaps? Movie actor or director? A musician you love? Sporting hero? Business leader or marketing guru? A politician or world leader you admire? Journalist? An academic you want to learn from?

Too difficult to choose just one. I can immediately think of several that do not, or didn't, blog (as far as I'm aware) - John, Ed, Paul, Jon, Peter and Jorge.

Of course, having them blog is not just about reading their thoughts. If it were just this, you could simply read their books. It is more. It's the commenting and hoping to god you don't sound like a fool. It's the interaction and this intimate connection with your heroes that it so exciting.

Who would you pick?

Free Online Marketing Training material

If you're interested in online marketing, pop over to top blogger, Damien Mulley. He is generously giving away free copies of his training documents.

Get it here.

Disguise yourself as a customer...and go to jail

Ever tempted to give your own products a 5-star review or write a fake blog post - disguised as a customer?

Don't.

Clearly it is a stupid thing to do. Dishonest (not like us marketers). And potentially damaging for your brand. But it will also soon be illegal. You could find yourself facing criminal charges. New regulations are clamping down on fake reviews on the likes of Amazon or TripAdvisor, as well as many others. This is great news and very welcomed. More info here.

Found via Justin Mason. Image via adland

Barclaycard Waterslide Spoof

Not bad at all. You can see the original ad here and also a link to the making of it in the comments.

I'd seen the spoof on a couple of blogs last week, and had planned to share here. But more interestingly (to me anyway), I was then contacted by Unruly Media, asking if I'd like to share this on a commercial basis. They are a viral video seeding specialist, seeding this on behalf of Specsavers. Essentially I'd get paid for each UK visitor that watches it here.

I checked Unruly Media out and I'm impressed with their progressive and transparent code of ethics. They don't ask me to say I like a video or anything else.

Not sure what you think, but this might be a viable way for bloggers to make a few quid, without putting ads on their site. If the content is something I'd be already interested in sharing or talking about, and I'm not compromised in what I can say, then this might be a good thing?

I'm not against putting ads on blogs, but the 12 cents I'd make a month is probably not worth it just yet.

Hitler tries to make money blogging

Via Wall Street Fighter

The world doesn't need any more websites

Video via commoncraft.

A friend of mine (Una, I use this term very loosely), mentioned this evening that her consultant friend was planning to put a website together.

Don't.

For the most part, websites are relics. They are static, inflexible, costly and clunky. They represent a time when the internet was still one-way. Websites were useful when your intention was to put up all your information and leave it untouched for the next six months.

Today, your online presence is about content. People come back to read (or see) what you are doing. To see what you are saying. Even to see what your visitors are saying.

So - dump the idea of building a website. Start a blog. Add videos. Allow readers to comment. Link to others with similar or different views. Make it interesting. Keep it updated. You can be up and running with your blog in under 20 minutes.

And it costs nothing except your time.

Top blogs that planners read

For anybody interested, here are some of the blogs that agency planners read. Taken from a survey of almost 800 planners, from UK and the US. Found via Fallon.

More results from the 2008 Planners Survey here.