MarCom Professional

Friday Roundup 14th November 2008

So why is the Roundup later today than normal... by just over two hours by my watch?

Well, a wise old email marketer suggested we vary the time a little over a few weeks to see how that affects open rates.  We can then establish the optimum time of day.

Sounds like a plan, although with open rates way over 25% and click through rates typically over half that number, I'm not sure we can improve that key performance indicator! The old man did confirm that we're doing pretty darn well.  As new social marketers to an old email marketer, we did point out that it's actually the community that's doing pretty well :-)

Best regards, Andrew and the MarCom Professional team. More...

Friday Roundup 7th November 2008

NEWSFLASH - Obama Elected US President.

Oh, you know.

But we do have some great posts this week from members teasing apart the success factors underpinning and driving Obama's campaign. Trevor Young looks at "What brands can learn from Barack Obama". The ever insightful Graham Jones explores "contextual priming" in the context of Barack. And David Meerman Scott picks out his "Ten marketing lessons from the Barack Obama Presidential campaign".

And if perchance you've had enough of the US election, there's plenty of great posts below that don't feature flag-waving or the word "change". More...

Friday Roundup 31st October 2008

No waffle this week.  The current economic times demand efficiency and we don't have anything to add to this week's highlighted posts...

Best regards, Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

Falling ad revenues call for 'smart' marketing practices

by Caroline Tarbett of Racepoint Group UK

Nielsen's new figures point to a significant decline in ad spend. According to the figures, ad spend has declined by 5.28% in Q2 of this year and, if we're to believe the figures, we must all be shuffling a little uncomfortably in our seats. For the first time, for a long time, marketers will find themselves under scrutiny from within their organisations, to justify the value of their investment. More...

Friday Roundup 24th October 2008

We're no longer sure where exactly Twitter lies on the buzz-o-meter right now. Every other post to MarCom Professional is about it or refers to it, the most popular post recently is all about Twitter tools, and yet we regularly meet "normal" people for whom the word conjures up birds or talking nervously.

And then there's mobile, which is as ubiquitous as anything can be. With the launch in the US this week of the first Android phone, the HTC G1 from T-Mobile, a mooted iPhone-like device from Nokia, the new touchscreen Blackberry Storm and a new head for the Symbian Foundation, it appears that the future is bright, shiny and mobile. More...

Friday Roundup 17th October 2008

Some say it'll be short and deep.  Others, long but shallow.  Either way, it's not quite business as usual.

Interestingly, the impact of all this talk of recession so far on MarCom Professional is an increase in the rate of registrations, growth in a page views, and a sudden glut of applications from recruitment consultants (they are politely refused in case you're wondering).

Some great posts to entertain you today, the most apt in the current climate is an upbeat perspective from Stephen Waddington about running a consultancy in a tougher economic climate. More...

Friday Roundup 3rd October 2008

Ever wondered about what the top 5 biggest blogging boo-boos are? David Meerman Scott revealed all this week and also gave some top tips on avoiding making the same slip ups.

Stephen Waddington has also shared his thoughts with us on the wonder of automation that is Sky+ while Graham Jones is less impressed with the latest ‘balls up’ by Ed Balls.

Fancy taking in a show? si crowhurst suggests the London Design Festival while David Meerman Scott looks at the New Marketing Summit. 

Finally, check out our pick of bizarre post of the week with this 86 year old Buddhist monk who has penned a mobile phone novel. More...

Friday Roundup 19th September 2008

There's some tasty morsels for digital marketing gourmands on the menu today.

Appetiser..

A tartlet of  MTV innovation on the backchannel (Chris Applegate)

Mains..

A rack of BackType and blog comment gravy (Brian Solis)

or

A flambe of personal URLs for one-to-one dining (David Knowles)

Desert..

Steaming Amazon Mechanical Turk and Google Forms with cream (Philip Sheldrake)

or

A knickerbocker glory of mobile street view with a Google cherry on top (Si Crowhurst)

:-)

Bon appetite, Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

The Hills - Social TV

by Chris Applegate of Outside Line

MTV in the US have created an interesting initiative around their reality show The Hills…

“The Hills Backchannel is a multi-player social game you play while watching The Hills. More...

Friday Roundup 12th September 2008

Some great posts this week, which speak for themselves, so a quick update from us about our plans for MarCom Professional.

We’ve read all your feedback from recent months and we’re currently short-listing things we want to tweak and new features we’d like to add. We’re oscillating between perfect harmony and fierce warfare here… so you make the perfect arbitrator.  Do continue to email us or, if you prefer to make your ideas public, comment here or post.

Just in case it’s not clear, we’re determined to make MarCom Professional the most innovative, interesting, engaging and, lest we forget, highly SEOd social professional network for marketing communicators. More...

Friday Roundup 5th September 2008

Some weeks it's apparent that something in the air has influenced our members' posts as they appear to be spookily linked in some way.  As if we're all influenced in some sort of Derren Brown way (and if you haven't seen this guy in action, every marketer should watch this without exception).

Guess that's just how things go now we're all connected with this Interweb thing.

But not this week.  A real mixed bag of highlighted posts this week.  Everything from respect for Obama's world record setting SMS campaign (by Si Crowhurst) to the personality types you should consider when copywriting (by Matt Ambrose). More...

Friday Roundup 29th August 2008

Another great selection of highlighted posts from MarCom Professional members this week. And a "thank you" to those of you who have used our badges to promote your membership.

What else is there to say but leave you to the real content below.

Best regards, Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

1 Million views in 2 days...wow

by Giles Shorthouse of t'Internet PR & Advertising2.0

Have you ever met Fred? He is a YouTube sensation, his latest video has got over 1 million views in 2 days = Wow.

His channel, www.youtube.com/user/Fred, has:
Subscribers: More...