MarCom Professional

Friday Roundup 3rd July 2009

I was given a book last night. Free.

Free, as in I didn't pay for it, and "Free" as in the book's title.

The author is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of the widely acclaimed 2006 book "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" (ISBN 1-4013-0237-8).

"Free" (ISBN 9781905211470) takes a look at the rise and rise in recent years of business models pivoting around the provision of stuff for free. The book has some interesting chapters for anyone involved in marketing, particularly in relation to Web search and publishing (the widely held expectation of not having to pay for Web content and the rise of free papers during the decline of traditional media). More...

People don’t like it when they feel they’ve been tricked, cheated or treated badly; the same applies to how people engage with brands. Whereas in the past, companies could choose to ignore letters and phone calls, now people with an axe to grind can make themselves heard. If they find other people online with similar grievances, brands can find themselves confronted with an army of angry customers. As the popular blogger Jeff Jarvis put it, “Now consumers do not just consume. We spit back. We have our own printing presses.”

In fact, failing to respond to criticism in social media can cause severe damage to a company’s reputation. More...

This really is very good – and sadly, very accurate. Well worth watching in full.

Copying them word for word can ingrain into your mind what it feels like to compose high converting landing pages and emails. It’s almost as though you can plug into the writer’s mind and see through their eyes how they constructed a compelling argument on the page.

Studying different styles of copywriting can also help develop your own. Just as music composers are influenced by other musicians, you can evolve your writing style by sponging up the techniques and wordplay written by some of the greats. More...

Over 449 bloggers from 21 countries took the time to fill out the survey and tell us what they think about how PRs interact with them, and more importantly, what they want from PR professionals.

So what did we find out?

You can review the presentation findings in full on Scribd and Slideshare, but I’ve picked out what I think are some of the key lessons from the survey:

Corporations are increasingly recognising the influence of bloggers

About time? Contact with PR agencies and in-house teams is increasing, and bloggers in EMEA and APAC are being held in the same esteem as their North American counterparts. More...

Yesterday in the Times Newspaper a great 16 page supplement from Raconteur Media was included on mobile marketing – with great quotes from a number of leading companies and figures from the UK mobile marketing scene – including a number of MMA members.

You can download the PDF or browse the document online.  Either way – it is a great snapshot of what is happening in the UK from a brands, agencies and technology perspective – well worth downloading and reading at your leisure.

• MMA Brands and Agencies London event shows the power of mobile
• With mobile it’s personal – marketers must respect customer information
• What does a Mobile Advertising Evangelist actually do?
• Top 50 Australian marketing blogs 2009
• Think big, act small, scale fast – advice from Procter & Gamble on mobile advertising

I saw Paul and Wes last night at a function pre-launch and I asked them who they saw their major competitors were.  “Admob” was the answer.  I’m happy to give them some promotion below and enclose their launch release.  Competition is a good thing and I hope they do well.

LONDON, UK – July 1, 2009.  Launched today, advertisers and agencies can bid for advertising on mobile sites and apps, creating a new revenue stream for mobile publishers. More...

via blogs.influencer50.com

Excellent post from Duncan Brown of Influencer50. I agree that the traditional awareness / familiarity / consideration / purchase / loyalty model just doesn’t apply any more – McKinsey’s new version says that awareness isn’t even a prerequisite for consumer decision making. Worth reading Duncan’s full post.

Posted via web from Andrew’s posterous

Do you constantly check your web statistics?

But it's all nonsense; you are truly wasting your time if you worry about all of this, not to mention the stress and anxiety it is causing some people..! You can find blog posts about increasing your Twitter following and there are tools to let you know how much traffic your web site gets. More...

In Brian Solis' latest post, Unveiling the New Influencers (and here on MarCom Professional), he reviews the reasons for listening to the marketplace for clues about how your organisation is doing, how it is perceived, and how the same stakeholders might regard your competition.

If you like his post, then you may like my free ebook on the topic, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008. Of course I recognise we've reached the first anniversary of the ebook this week (and over 35,000 downloads to date!), and it was time for me to post an update on the list of vendors I'm tracking. And wow is this market exploding. More...