Blogs Worth Reading: April

I’ve decided to take a page out of Louis Gray’s book and highlight six blogs (in no order) that have really caught my attention in April, as well as one link that I feel is a recent notable read.

1) Bryan Person – BryanPerson.com, brains of Social Media Breakfast

• Before heading to an event, study the attendee list – Keep that in mind when coming for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2!

2) Dan York – Disruptive Conversations, correspondent for For Immediate Release.

• When Twitter Goes Down… oh, how we have come to rely on it – A weekend the Twitterverse remembers not so fondly.

3) Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff – Groundswell, authors of Groundswell.

• Listening with Summize and Tweetscan – All companies should know this by now.

4) Brian Koh – Harmless? Bananas!, Ogilvy PR and co-creator of The Open Room.

• New marketing, but are we ready? – crap 2.0?

5) Eric Berlin – Online Media Cultist

• Good traffic, bad traffic, silly traffic, traffic traffic – In case you still think hits is the be all and end all.

6) Tara Hunt- Horsepigcow

• Tweeting for companies 101 – great case studies, read this if you’re a company.

The amount of new blogs I’m subscribing to monthly is decreasing (I suppose there’s only so much information I can process), but if you know any great ones, recommend them in the comments space below!

10 Relationships vs 5 Million Impressions? (And a Scrabulous Jingle)

Jaffe Juice #102 was released with perfect timing, on a day that I had lots of driving around to do. The beginning, a Scrabulous introduction is hilarious and well worth listening to, though of course, not the only thing you should listen to.

Early in the podcast, there’s a conversation about whether you would prefer 10 good relationships or 5 million impressions. Just one person in a room full of professionals voted for 10 good relationships. Perhaps some reason can be attributed to the fact that the numbers really are very far apart, and I suppose even for someone who wants to go down the relationship path, it might be hard explaining why you’d want to spend so much money on 10 relationships vs 5 million impressions, especially to a boss who’s well stuck in old marketing.

That said, I’m actually pretty curious about what number it would have to be before people start agreeing with 10 relationships. 3 million? 1 million? I was thinking to myself the other day that I wish I had done my Advertising module later, because I know so much more about new media and new marketing now than I did 4 months ago, and I have no doubt the new ways can be equally if not more effective. However, I’m reminded that unfortunately, the client and to some extent the professor, still graded very much on old marketing, which is sad.

What could be a worse situation than having the knowledge of how to make things better, but have people around you who don’t realise or recognise it?

First Book Of The Year

I finished Game Of Thrones, but before starting on the next book, I’ve decided to pick up Meatball Sundae instead.

Meatball Sunday, is Seth Godin’s new book (What? So soon after The Dip?), comparing Old Marketing (Meatballs) as one flavour, and New Marketing as the other (the Sundae toppings). What’s important in the book is probably the 14 New Marketing trends that he’s observed and comments on. I’m only at chapter one, but if you’re curious, Brand Autopsy has more.