All About Blogs
February 27, 2009 at 7:00 am
Had great fun last week chatting to Robert Coyle of Bloom Advertising on Alex Gibson’s show – The Persuaders. We were talking about blogging in the run up to the blog awards. Here are some of the things I talked about. If any of these grab you, have a listen to the show:
- Being a blogger is not just about writing your own blog
- How I prepare my content; my blog process
- Blogrolls and what I think of them
- How I promote my blog
- Commenting etiquette
- Talking about some of the finalists in the blog awards including Red Mum, Iced Coffee, Sabrina Dent, The Sexy Pedestrian (my ‘one to watch’ who won!), Sourgrapes, and Cheap Eats (who also won the category)
Tags: Blogging, Bloom, Rob Coyle, The Persuaders
All About Music
February 26, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Two things to say today about music.
Good News (Hurray!)
- YouBloom : A Social Networking Site for Artists by Artists
Take a look at it and you might say ‘yeah yeah it’s just another MySpace’. But that’s where you’re wrong! It’s not. The main difference between YouBloom and MySpace is that with YouBloom money is involved.
At the moment, with MySpace, someone listens to your music and likes it, then you have to hope that they go off to iTunes to buy it. If that happens, you have to wait months before you find out how many sales you had.
Youbloom allows the artist to sell product (music or merchandise) on the site and you get to see in real-time what’s selling and what’s being listened to. They also share 50% of the advertising revenue with you – some other sites claim to do this, but if you read the terms & conditions, you’ll find it’s a bit fuzzy wuzzy… they’ll only share if the cock crows on the third full moon of a leap year sort of thing.
Other important differences:
- YouBloom – the artist owns the data
- You can import lists and use tools to communicate with your fan base.
- Fans get points for forwarding, rating and commenting on songs and they can redeem these for product
- Artist can sell product – digital or merchanise – and can choose to give it away for free, sell for hard cash, or sell for points.
The site is only out of beta a couple of weeks and already has 500 artists. It’s definitely worth a look. And for the record, I have nothing to do with this site.
Evil Bad News
I’m disgusted with the news that Eircom is being forced by IRMA to block access to music download sites. It’s such a ridiculous pile of legal poo. If it goes through, Ireland will be the first country in the world to block access to these sites. I hate the way the authorities here allow things like this (that they don’t understand, or that don’t affect builders/farmers) to go through with no comment.
It’s not even going to work. People will use proxys to get around it.
But the real point is, it’s not just about blocking access to music, it’s about censoring the internet. The internet should be kept free and semi-state appointed, old men from IRMA should back right off.
There’s a Facebook group called “Let’s Ensure We Have An Uncensored Internet for Ireland” you can join if you want to voice your disgust.
UPDATE 3 March: More signs of deals being unwound… Portishead are looking to fans to come up with their new business strategy.
if you lot have any bright ideas of how we should sell our music in the future lets us know
Here’s a pic lifted off the fabulous Pirate Bay website. If you want to download music for free, check out ThePirateBay.org :
All About Advertising
February 25, 2009 at 11:51 am
Three things to tell you today, all advertising related:
- I just attended a breakfast briefing by Brian Sparks, no not Brightspark!, Ireland’s only pitch doctor. The takeaway? Don’t do an agency pitch unless you have to. If you’re not happy with your agency, carry out a relationship audit first. What should you be looking for in an agency? Quality people. Thinking. Creative Output. Process. Remuneration. Would someone please tell Agency Assessments to update their site? It’s got a ‘what’s new’ dating from 2005. While Brian himself seems to ‘get’ Digital and included it every time he mentioned the various channels, his parent company is not singing the same tune judging by their site.
- Ryanair has updated its website and is now selling non-travel product. Another way for Ryanair to make money? I’ll be interested to see the results. I personally wouldn’t have thought of going to Ryanair when I wanted to buy my stainless steel egg slicer but who knows what kind of actions people will take late at night when booking cheap flights? Plus, the search area in the main panel of the home page is a little squashed. Hello? Browser check anyone?
I have read possibly the finest analysis on ‘these current economic times’ so far. How do I know this? Because I keep quoting bits of it in my everyday life to all sorts of people. And I’ve promised practically everyone I know to send it to them – because it’s relevant to us all. What is it? It’s called AAAGH and it’s a piece of research by Young & Rubicam on how to market in these uncertain times. It’s a nicely designed pdf, you can download it here.
It’s so insightful I’ve become a fan on Facebook! And I’m going to post separately on its forecasts for digital in these current times. But first, a little taster:
Likens the current economic times and our getting our heads around it to the 5 steps of dealing with grief:
- Denial : pre-Christmas late night shopping in BT’s or Dundrum anyone?
- Anger: happening now. Will be directed at anyone who can be punished – bankers, government, advisors… Golden Circle?
- Bargaining: salvage what they can. This might appear to some as the good times back again or may be mis-read as tentative signs of an upswing, but really it’s just people adjusting their portfolios and spending habits to the new environment.
- Depression: early 1990′s Britain, nobody wanted to spend. Herd mentality that is hard to break.
- Acceptance: can take a very long time, and time taken will be a function of the amount of money people have lost. It took until the early 1940′s for acceptance of the 1929 crash to kick in.
7 Types of Money Minds – Which One Are You?
- Succeeders: need for control. High appetite for risk. How to market to them now? Be seen to be helping them to survive
- Mainstreamers: risk averse, savers not investors. Their fear and weakness in understanding the economy will cause them to be passive aggressive. How to deal with? I’d say, avoid them!
- Explorers: early adopters, tend to go for new experiences. Can sell innovative products to them.
- Aspirers: follow the herd, strong affinity for luxury goods and brands. Sell them ‘recessionary chic’.
- Reformers: articulate, tend to reject materialism. Sell them using a little cynicism.
- Resigned: believe their best years are over, very conservative. Sell safety.
- Strugglers: they live in the extreme short term, have been hit hard, but spending doesn’t change in a recession. Key thing here is their numbers are swollen.
Tags: Agency Assessments, Brian Sparks, Ryanair Selling Egg Slicers, Young & Rubicam AAAGH
Tips for Bargain Hunters
February 24, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Everyone’s shopping around these days. And many’s a bankrupt property developer cute hoor that’s looking for a bargain. Here are some tips for bargain hunters who are new to the online world. If you’ve been busy ‘playing the property game these last 10 years’, this post’s for you!
- When you come across a website offering bargain basement prices, if they don’t provide an address in the contact section or in the footer, walk away. Or alternatively, take your €500 and burn it out the back garden.
- Email software is just that. It doesn’t come with marketing ideas, design and construction that’s geared around maximum deliverability. You have got to pay for that.
- Avoid sites that refer to ‘one stop shop’. They are obviously lacking in ideas if they can’t even come up with a non-blando description for their own business.
- Try to understand what’s involved in constructing a website, an email or the hard slog that goes into a high ranking on Google. Don’t insult this professional industry by offering to pay us less than a thousand for all of the above!
- While you were drinking champagne and playing the game, we weren’t. We were building our businesses, doing our thing, embracing new ideas, feeding our families, and having fun. Just because your fun has ended now doesn’t mean ours has to. If you don’t get the web, don’t reinvent yourself as a property developer turned web entrepreneur.
PS – will you ever please upgrade your browser from Internet Explorer 6?
Tags: bargain hunters
Free Tech Training – For Girls!
February 23, 2009 at 10:12 am
It has been noted, event organisers, that lots of speakers at your gigs tend to be men. As there are plenty of amazing women out there who are just as clued up on things as men, we can only deduce that the reason why there is such a lack of women speaking at tech events is because women may be a little shy about getting all ballsy, standing up and showing off what they know.
Enter the Girl Geek Dinner folks who are running free tech speaker training to help those who have something to say.
Starting this Thursday 26 February and running weekly until March 19th, this training is useful for anyone who is keen to enhance their career and reputation by speaking more often in public. It’s free, it’s going to be good, and it’s running in Dublin city centre. If you want to avail of this, get on over to the Girl Geek Dinner website and register.
Irish Blog Awards Winners
February 23, 2009 at 10:11 am
The blog awards were a great success. Everyone agreed that it made it all the more exciting that they were on in Cork – the travelling out of the city bestowed a sense of occasion on things. Travelling back with a slightly more foggy head the next day was a bit arduous however! Hopefully next year the awards will be held in another city – Belfast or Galway would be great.
The night itself ran super smooth. Thanks to everyone who did the work behind the scenes to make it happen. I know it’s not easy putting on an event like that. And it ran really well. Thanks to Brian Greene who played deadly tunes all night long. If you’re planning a Big Event and you want decent tunes, contact Brian.
The awards site seems to be down this morning, but here’s a good roundup of winners. The winner in my category was Blacknight Solutions, congratulations to them. There is no doubt that Blacknight is a keen supporter of the web industry in Ireland and of the web development community as a whole. Their hosting solution is the best for bloggers who use WordPress, I use Blacknight for this blog.
Tags: 2009 Irish Blog Awards
Run Up To Blog Awards
February 19, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’ve been asked to go on The Persuaders Marketing Show this Friday at 1pm to lay my soul on the line and make Big Bold Calls as to who I think is going to win in a number of the key blog award categories.
Tune in to Dublin City Radio 103.2 FM at 1pm on Friday. That’s the station that does the traffic commentary to get you home during rush hour.
If you miss it, you can always pick up the podcast here.
Tags: Irish Blog Awards, The Persuaders Marketing Show
Website in a Week : Jobless And Proud
February 19, 2009 at 9:51 am
An experience of how Irish people still have it in themselves to give. A reminder to all that while the Celtic Tiger might be over, our traditional generosity is still alive.
Background
David Jones lost his managerial position in a furniture factory. He was given one week’s notice and had his company car, laptop and mobile removed from him. In the immediate aftermath, he couldn’t find the information he needed. It seems this time the Interweb failed!
Returning home, unable to sleep, David sat down and wrote a book about his experiences. “Oh No I’ve Lost My Job What Am I Going To Do”. He wrote the book in 4 days and 4 nights.
Some days later, I heard David being interviewed on Newstalk. He mentioned that now he had the book written, he needed to find a publisher and get it up on the internet. I texted the show and said I could help. The next day I met with David and I gave myself the challenge that if he could write a book in 4 days and 4 nights, then I could create a website for him in the same time – and for free!
Tapping In Through Twitter
I blogged about it. Then I put a shout out on Twitter about it. Chopped up the project into its component parts and listed the skills we’d be needing.
- Web designer
- Book cover design
- Coder
- Blog skinner
- Hosting
- Photographer
- Podcaster
- PR people
Within 2 hours I had the team that I needed.
Everyone jumped on board and were really happy to give. Not only that but the offers kept coming!
- We had business coaches offer to coach David in finding a new job
- A media coach offered to prep him for TV and radio interviews
- He even had a super hairstylist offer to do hair and make-up for any TV appearances!
In a week when there was a lot of bad news about job losses in the Irish economy, in my little world there was nothing but abundance. Generosity of spirit. Sharing of talents.
Resultarama
The website went live on 17 February - and David went back on Newstalk to tell the nation! Exactly one week after he had been on before, he was now the owner of a brand spanking new site. There were 1,300 downloads of the book on the first day. Since then the numbers have reached 4,000. Clearly there are many people out there who need this information.
The site itself is rather impressive. It’s not just a rush job, but a very contemporary ‘one page website’ style. It’s got a blog that David has been trained up on and he regularly posts to it.
I found Twitter to be invaluable in terms of mobilising the message. My initial call for help was retweeted many times. The project team was located all over Ireland and in the US – we found 37signals’ Basecamp to be a great way of keeping everyone in touch and files/messages/tasks clearly communicated. I use Basecamp for everything, it is my most treasured business tool. More so than email!
As a 57 year old man who has worked all his life, David Jones could have thrown his hands in the air and proclaimed that the sky was falling in. He could have felt sorry for himself. But that is not what he did. He embraced everything that came his way. He went from one week of not knowing what a blog or a podcast was, to becoming a blogger and being part of a podcast! He took to media like a fish to water. A last minute request to appear on the TV3 lunchtime show saw him hop off the bus he was on, make his way to the studio, and sit with the Editor of the Evening Herald and other guests looking like he was born to it!
David is now pushing ahead with his idea to form a Job Seekers Union. Helping workers to help themselves. You can find out more here.
I am very interested to hear how people use the tools of the web to help themselves. The last recession in Ireland was in the 1980′s, so none of this greatness existed. If you have any stories of people using the web to help others and themselves, please let me know.
Tags: david jones, jobless and proud, Website in a Week
Observation On Cleaning My List
February 18, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Practising what I preach, I’m doing a spot of email list cleaning this morning.
A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to the sender because it is permanently undeliverable. Causes include invalid addresses (domain name doesn’t exist, typos, changed address, etc.) or the email recipient’s mail server has blocked your server. I just take it to mean that the person has moved on and is no longer at that company.
Apart from the usual movement and activity I’m noticing a sharp increase in the hard bounces for three areas:
- Hotels – particularly high end ones such as the Ritz Carlton and the Westin
- Advertising Agencies
- Eastern European sounding names - the pretty smart girls you’d meet at business networking events are all gone
I also noticed a couple of names who I know are still working at the same place. Closer inspection revealed that the companies concerned had undergone a rebrand and name change.
Tip: if you are planning to rebrand your company, make sure you send an email out to all your contacts informing them of the name change.
Tags: email list cleaning, hard bounce
More Good News – Blog Finalist
February 17, 2009 at 9:00 am
I just found out that this blog has made it to the shortlist of the 2009 Irish Blog Awards. I’m chuffed! Thanks to all the judges, on average 7 of them, I believe.
And good luck to the others – Blacknight, Sabrina, Curious Wines and Nice Day Designs. I think it’s kind of cool that the shortlist has such a diversity of business types.
Tags: Irish Blog Awards
