Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Three Super Bloggers - What Makes Them Great?

Published
by
Karl
on April 6, 2007
in Marketing
. 5 Comments

I started this article as a congratulatory note to David Armano, but I ended up using to do something I’ve been meaning to for a while, which is highlight some great blogs and talk about why I think they have been so successful, particularly over the last year.

Logic+Emotion

David Armano of Logic+Emotion is someone I’ve been having various conversations with over the last year and i’ve seen him go from describing himself as a nobody (on Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound Podcast), to getting a 1,300 word article published in Business Week, titled It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid. His blog Logic+Emotion has gone from strength to strength over the last year, and to some it may seem like overnight success but I would suggest there are three key things David did right:

  • Focus - articles on topic, expectations set and fulfilled
  • Differentiation - his explanatory graphics have gone a long way to communicate complex topics that everyone else might be talking about, but Armano explained
  • Humility - It’s just clear from his writing

Mashable

Pete Cashmore over at mashable.com has done an amazing job over the last year turning his blog into the TechCrunch of social networking. Here’s what I think makes Mashable distinctive

  • Focus - Mashable picked there spot, the blog about social networks and went for it, news and articles are always on topic
  • Design+Features - Mashable is always innovating it’s design and adding new features, like mashtracker, and myspace widgets/add ons at Mashcodes
  • Volume - Mashable maintains a tremendous volume of topical, relevant posts

Read/Write Web

Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web has also done an amazing job over the last year turning his blog into a 2.0 powerhouse. His focus on editorial articles about web applications has made his blog a must read for the 60,000+ that subscribe to his RSS feed.

  • Focus - again always on topic, very focused on web 2.0 and web applications
  • Differentiation - Read/Write web stands apart from the “news” style blogs and focuses on articles making it the Economist of Web2.0 Blogs
  • Writing - Richard does a top quality job of recruiting people to write interesting articles and editorial

Admittedly this is not particularly in depth analysis, but i’m convinced that the common theme of focus is very important, maybe focus and consistency. Love to hear thoughts on what makes a successful blog, especially from those guys :-)

McKinsey Reports Businesses Loving Web 2.0… Except Blogs

Published
by
Karl
on April 4, 2007
in Marketing
. 3 Comments

Putting People First blog just posted about a survey that strategy consultancy McKinsey just conducted with executives about web 2.0 technologies and found significant interest and support, but they still shy away from blogs:

Only 16% of the companies surveyed said they were investing in blogs, compared to 63% for web services, 28% for peer-to-peer networks, and 19% for social networks.

78% identified web services as the Web 2.0 technology/tool most important their their business.

Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week says companies are afraid of blogs.

Why? IMHO companies are still uncomfortable talking to their customers directly, actually, uncomfortable allowing “employees” to talk to customers directly. They like the idea of social networks and communities, they are easily distinguished from the “company”. Blogs on the other hand are written by humans, that talk to other humans, employees to customers, employees to partners, employees to investors, employees to stock markets, employees to press (or at least that seems to be the terrifying image).

One of the problems is that people that are blogging are not necessarily the communication professionals that companies would like to be blogging. In fact they are people who work on the nuts an bolts, it’s a marketing person talking about marketing, its a developer talking about developing apps. In fact if a communication professional started blogging they would be more likely to be participating in the PR blogosphere.

The problem for companies is they want to decide who represents them in the marketplace, that’s why there are spokespeople, i’m sure they would prefer to pick the people who blog for the company and groom them and train them to say the right things. But right now the early adopter bloggers are driven by something else, they self identify, they just start blogging, they just are blogging. I really think companies need to do a better job of finding the people who are blogging in their company and saying “hey, how can we help”.

Look at what Digitas has done with David Armano, and now Greg Verdino .

Nine Inch Nails Using Alternate Reality Game (ARG or “Big Game”) To Market New Album

Published
by
Karl
on April 3, 2007
in Marketing
. 5 Comments

I think the concept of marketing using “big games” or ARG’s is one of the most exciting marketing concepts that has emerged in recent years. The way it combines customer experience, co-creation, word of mouth, and customer engagement and lets not forget FUN, makes it a very powerful tool in a marketers repertoire. As Trent says though this is not just about marketing but a new form of entertainment.

To promote new album “Year Zero,” Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is using a multimedia scavenger hunt that leads fans to online destinations, reports CNN. The campaign will encompass everything from cryptic phrases on T-shirts to Orwellian Web sites to MP3s found on USB drives in bathrooms at NIN concerts.

A source with knowledge of the project says Reznor perceives it all not as a marketing campaign but as “a new entertainment form.” 42 Entertainment is helping to create the experience; that’s the agency behind 2005’s “alternate-reality game” promoting the Halo 2 videogame for the XBox.

Via

Trent Reznor

iamtryingtobelieve.com

Related: Five Trends Driving Big Games

Conference Notes From Virtual Worlds 2007

Published
by
Karl
on April 2, 2007
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

An old friend and colleague just sent me these notes he had written up for the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference that just took place in NY.

main point being there is a lot of stuff happening out there and SecondLife is just one player.

DEFINING QUOTES:
“We are at the silent movie stage.”
“This is one freaky, geeky 21st century we are moving into.”
“A lot of this is going to happen and a lot of it is not going to happen.”

Companies to watch:

  • GSD&M marketing and advertising
  • Forterra - If SecondLife is the Internet then these guys are the Intranet, serious technology for training, Military, medical etc.
  • 3pointD.com Blog about the meterverse
  • Reallusion - 3d tools
  • There.com Similar value proposition to SecondLife
  • Second Life
  • Parks Associates Consumer research for “digital living technologies” (not sure what meterverse related stuff they’ve done)
  • Multiverse Network of MMOGS and Virtual Worlds
  • McKenna (?)
  • Entropia Universe a “massive online virtual universe” cool graphics, real economy
  • Proton Media e-Learning, e-Meetings, e-Selling
  • Whyville Kids virtual world for learning
  • Habbo The 8bit graphic version of SecondLife :-)
  • Trilogy Studios Game developer? (I hope there games are more fun than their site, bit of a problem navigating the flash pop-up site)

You should definitely go read the rest of his notes, i just pulled a couple of things that caught my eye

Supermarket 2.0 Funny? Yes. Future? Possibly

Published
by
Karl
on April 2, 2007
in Marketing
. 2 Comments

Link for feed readers

Although this video certainly takes the piss out of a lot of web2.0 concepts, it also provides some food for thought on the future. Sure, physical tags on products seems funny, but that is exactly what the concept of “augmented reality” is supposed to do. Overlaying data and information on the physical world. In fact things like geotagging in flickr are already providing a potential foundation for augmented reality in the future, it’s a way off but not that far.

Links of interest:

Via

Uncommon Uses - Twitter

Published
by
Karl
on April 2, 2007
in Marketing
. 4 Comments

In a continuation of my series Uncommon Uses (previously Podcasts, wikis and SMS text interfaces) I thought I’d look at Twitter, for such a new simple tool I’m thinking most of the uses are Uncommon Uses. One of the things that made Twitter take off was it’s simplicity and with that simplicity comes the ability for it’s users to mold it into what they want.

  1. Chat - Probably falls under extremely common use, but I had no idea how many people were using it just for chat, even though it acts as a micro blog adding @username at the beginning of your tweet makes sure your comment is directed at an individual. Many people even have targeted tweets sent to their cell phones so it’s actually an incredibly timely chat client. Probably blows away the IM clients that comes on most phones.
  2. Blogging in Africa - soyapi gives the example of Malawi, where there are about 50,000 Internet users against about 700,000 mobile phone users out of a population of about 12 million. Twitter makes an ideal blogging platform
  3. Automated Weather Report - Liminal Existance have whipped up a weather bot that will msg you, just add the bot as a friend for the city your interested in: Boston, Brighton, Chicago, Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, and Vancouver.
  4. Social Music/Audio - TwiTunes Itunes plugin and automatically tweet the podcasts your listening to via Pluggd
  5. Social Shopping - Dealtagger lets you tweet the things your shopping for
  6. Home Automation - Replace your doorbell using twitter via O’Reilly

I think Twitter has some incredibly useful applications which we haven’t even scratched the surface of yet. Rather like blogging was initially used for online diaries, twitter is being used in a rather similar way, hence the leap to call it a useless fad. I think we have yet to discover it’s deeper more valuable use, right now we’re just playing.