I like Wordpress
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Hi everyone - demonstrating Wordpress to some VERY nice people 
Google Maps - Undiscovered Features
Catching up on my Feeds led to me to this very cool / informative video on the Official Google Blog.
Pretty cool eh? This is something that is becoming clearer to me all the time - I use only 10-20% of the features of the Google Apps and software which is available on the web. So much more to explore!
A Packed Week
Good evening all 
It’s been a good week. Interesting, engaging, fun, exciting and varied. Exactly the opposite to the kind of week I used to have a while ago… Speaking of which I had an email from an old work colleague saying hello. Errr…. 15 months late me thinks.
Week Highlights
- Apple’s new notebooks. Looking very impressive, but sadly sold out in all stores I have rung (Manchester, Sheffield and Regent Street). Will be hunting one down next week…
- Working with a superb team of people based in the UK, Stockholm and San Francisco. Finally, I have found people who understand the wonders of online marketing, and are also great fun and some are even Mac fanboys!
- Doing some tech support for a Premiership Football player (Mac user surprisingly!), along with Monsieur Cleary.
- Some crisp Autumn weather - cold is fine. Wet and cold is not.
- Some excellent leads for clients in November.
- More work with a top flight client.
- Great feedback on email campaign from a client
The feedback has been fantastic we have had quite a few emails
saying how much they love the newsletter and the format!
Week Lowlights
- Not buying the MBP when I had a chance in the Sheffield Apple Store - doh.
- Not a lot else, so that is pretty good!
Misc
- Looking forward to reading Noded - a superb new book from Andreas and Jaan, who I met at FOWA last week in London. (I’ll be reviewing the book properly once I’ve read it).
- Wordpress buying PollDaddy is a good move
And that my friends, is about it! Hope you have a great weekend
Marketing ROI - wake up people!
Traditional media is dying - wake up people, and smell the coffee. Magazine advertising and old fashioned PR? Not for me and it shouldn’t be for you either. Unless:
- You would like to burn money
- You don’t want to track your ROI
- You don’t want to engage your customers
- You don’t want to give your customers value
- You want to go down the easy route where you can pick up a phone and place an ad
- You are stuck in the past and too damn lazy to do something about it!
So, wake up. Smell the coffee. Watch this video from Gary Vaynerchuck.
Citysense
I am looking forward to the day when this kind of technology is going to be married with the social aspect, and of course, the advertising. Exciting time!
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
95% of Companies Just Don’t get It
What don’t they get?
They don’t understand that they need to look after and nurture their employees and stop treating them like idiots with zero intelligence. I’ve talked about this before and it is one of the areas of business that really interests me.
Jason Fried, from 37signals has been featured recently over on AZcentral.com and he talked about how employees should be treated:
In order to appeal to us, employers need to rethink their rules a bit. Forget rigid 40-hour workweeks. Forget traditional company hierarchy…
One company that has led the charge in shifting the work-life paradigm, especially when it comes to employee relations, is 37signals. Headquartered in Chicago, it’s a multi-million dollar organization deeply committed to maintaining a work-life balance for its employees.
President Jason Fried says today’s employers present the biggest roadblock. “Simply put, employees are treated like children. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and there are too many layers of approval, just too much insulation that prevents anyone from doing anything. The traditional workplace is broken, and until someone realizes that, there’s always going to be conflict.”
This suffocation by protocol is dead on and will never allow an employee to “go beyond” or achieve something extra for the company. This is a critical link that most organizations continually fail to acknowledge. They are too focused on ensuring employees do no wrong that they actually prevent them from achieving anything beyond status quo.
Does your company do this? Or are you in the 95% (or higher) who don’t?
Is Your Agency Ready for Now and Next Year?
One of the things that theappleofmyi prides it self on is understanding online marketing. Without wishing to be full of it, this is what we love, what we read about and do every day.
The online markerting space is developing at a rapid pace and there are many traditional agencies who, frankly do not have a clue. A good example of this was when I was working in the corprate space and an agency came to see me to pitch their services. A couple of quick questions involving feeds, twitter and blogging soon established them to be pretenders. The final straw came when I pointed out their news section on their homepage featured one item from 2005 (it was 2007 at the time).
Now I am not writing this to be arrogant or clever. It is to make a simple point. If you are using an agency or marketing consultant, they MUST understand the digital space.
This leads me nicely onto a very interesting report from one of my favourite companies, Sapient. If you have a few £100,000 for an online campaign, then these guys would be good to talk to
They have recently published a survey -
national online digital marketing survey of more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketers responsible for managing digital budgets (among other things).
Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future
1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. With more than a third of marketers surveyed revealing that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising, it’s clear that agencies need to have a greater knowledge of the digital space in order to thrive. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents have switched agencies (or plan to switch in the next 12 months) for one with greater digital knowledge or have hired an additional digital specialist to handle their interactive campaigns. Further, when it comes to an agency’s area of expertise, 79% of respondents rated “interactive/digital” functions as ‘important/very important.’
2. More use of “pull interactions.” When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions’ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push’ campaigns.
3. Leverage virtual communities. An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents expressed interest in leveraging virtual communities (public and private) to understand more about their target audience.
4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Ninety-two percent of respondents said it was ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important that agency employees use the technologies that they are recommending. For example, it is important that agency executives regularly use Facebook, Flickr, wikis, blogs, etc. in their personal social media mix.
5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed said that agencies with chief digital officers are more appealing than those without.
6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. Sixty three percent of marketers surveyed said that an agency’s Web 2.0 and social media capabilities are ‘important/very important’ when it comes to agency selection.
7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. Seventy-six percent of respondents deemed this as an ‘important/very important’ aspect of their agency’s online digital marketing and interactive advertising area of expertise.
8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed ranked strategy/brain trust capabilities at the top of their agency wish list.
9. Branding and creative capabilities. Sixty-seven percent of respondents ranked branding at the top of their agency wish list while seventy-six percent ranked creative capabilities as ‘important/very important.’
10. Ability to measure success. It’s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.
Jon’s Thoughts
These results do not surprise me in the least. The online or digital channel is becoming more and more important. The clients that I am working with are starting to realise this and we have been having some real successes, for example:
A YouTube channel which has attracted 25,000 + views
An email campaign with consistent 40%+ open rates on a list of around 1000
A mini 10 day course, all online, which is getting superb sign ups and amazing feedback
These are just small examples of what can be done. Your imagination is the only thing holding you back! Companies do however, need to get the simple stuff right first, and then start doing bigger projects. Unfortnately, most companies have still got those simple things to do. Just do them quickly.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
What are Your Favourite Blogs?
I’ve just been reading a fascinating post over on the SEOmoz blog, all about the world’s top blogs. It looks at their niche, are they .com or .co.uk, who are they owned by and some more great info. I recommend you have a look - well worth a few minutes of your time
It got me thinking about blogs. I love reading blogs - it is easily my biggest source of information right now and will be for the foreseeable future.
From your 54 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,380 items, starred 697 items, shared 933 items, and emailed 72 items.
So, I subscribe to 54 blogs at the moment, and I try and whittle them down every week or so, but usually fail miserably. Hey ho. There are always ones I really look forward to reading, my faves, and I thought I would share a few with you:
thedieline - the leading package design blog - this is just superb. I am increasingly inspired by great packaging - it is SO important for a product.
twitturly - ok, not a blog, but I subscribe to it, and it provides tracking of all the urls being twittered around the web, which in turn gives me some great material and info
signal vs noise - from the 37signals boys, all about design and usability
Seth’s blog - a great read from Seth Godin, a marketing master
Amnesia Blog - from a big marketing agency in Oz - just started reading this one and it seems to have some good stuff
These are a few of my faves at the moment. Now, let me know what you are currently finding essential reading / subscribing please! Hit up the comments now!
Finally, linking on blog stats, have a look at which websites are used more heavily in the US - makes fascinating reading!
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
Photosynth Launches
Microsoft are starting to launch some pretty cool applications which are capturing people’s attention more than the standard Visaster stuff.
Photosynth is one such application which stitches photos together to create a seemless interactive world:
Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.
It looks amazing and I was genuinely impressed when I saw a demo of it a few months ago.
ReadWriteWeb have a good review of it here and explain some of the fundamental features.
One problem for me though (and of course countless others), is that it does not run on a Mac (yet). However, Microsoft do admit this in a truthful manner
Good Customer Communication from 37 Signals
If you like webapps and like using apps that just work, with the minimum of fuss, you probably have heard of 37signals, a great company who I am a BIG fan of. They make project management software and a simple but effective CRM (amongst others).
Yesterday they hosted their 37 signals live event online using ustream.tv to broadcast a live event where over 700 people chatted and asked questions.
This was a great thing to do for a few reasons:
1. Shows the people behind the brand / company
2. Creates a conversation where they are actively engaging their users and fans
3. Allows people to ask questions
4. Creates good PR!
Other companies take note - what they did is not hard, not expensive and not cheesy - it worked very well and earned them some well-deserved praise as well as being VERY useful.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
BBC News- You may like to read this...
-
Warning: Attempt to assign property of non-object in /var/www/vhosts/theappleofmyi.com/httpdocs/blog/wp-includes/rss.php on line 440