Month: February 2006

This blog has been a great way for me to work through ideas. Regular readers will note that I have been grappling with concepts of authenticity, marketing, humanness, messaging, technology etc etc. So eventually I had to come across someone who has already taken the path and cleverly articulated a framework in which this all fits.

Johnnie Moore has a whole site dedicated to what he calls Open Source Marketing. His push is to focus on marketers, to challenge them (us) to understand the audience … and realise that the game has changed. He wants to put the humanity back into branding. He wants messaging to be authentic. He even has a workshop that you can participate in to learn how this may work for you.

There is plenty to chew on in these pages … Of course, the reason we read this stuff is because it provides pointers towards the things that we may need to address in our own work and private lives. Johnnie gives us the framework, now we need to go forth and use our creativty and energy to bring it to life — create results.

Better stop procrastinating (writing) and start generating (writing too).

S.

It is now 30 days since Guy Kawasaki began his blog, and he is now kindly sharing his statistics. What does it show … some very interesting information:

• Plugging in postings: You can generate 20-30 times the number of clickthroughs by placing direct links in your posts rather than simply placing an item in the sidebar. My take: by providing a story, some context and a call to action, you are engaging with your audience, and giving them a reason to follow the link.
• Blogs beat lists: three times the number of click throughs are generated by entries on the blog as opposed to listserver mailouts. My take: addressing the impatient (ie those that come to your blog as opposed to those who wait to receive your information) is always the way to go.
• Funnel your readers: Generate 2-3 times more traffic to your main site by providing a place for your readers to congregate — that is, blog on!  My take: remember that those impatient souls that come to visit you will also follow the stream of links from your blog. Make sure you link back to your own site (sorry I this is it for me!).

Again it comes back to the story. Make it compelling and make it easy … and surprisingly an audience will follow.

S.

You all know I have a thing about iTunes. So imagine how happy I was to see this post. The gang over at Lifehacker have come up with a real alternative for those of us who love the iPod but don’t like the things that it does (or doesn’t) do well.

Ditch it baby!

S.