01 August 2009

Here’s a list of undergradute bloggers who write about something marketing related. Some are active, others not so much, but there’s definitely some insight in each of them.

Canadian University Marketing – Morgan Coudray
Gruen Transfer – Michael Lanyon
How Good You Want To Be – Katherine Liew
I Hate Ads – Rick Clarke
Liquid Caper – Josh O’Halloran
Pigs Don’t Fly – Zac Martin
Simon Says – Simon Oboler
The Forrest Through The Trees – Marek Wolski

Should you or anyone else be on this list? Drop me a comment.

Posted by Zac Martin

29 July 2009

Under this theory, perhaps the Six Degrees of Separation theory is no longer relevant. The adoption of social networking has made the world a far smaller place.

And an interesting side note, to get it down to Four Degrees of Separation, the average number of friends would need to be 289.

Posted by Zac Martin

26 July 2009

Being young and being a Gen Y (or an iGen for that matter) are not the same thing. The two are correlated, not dependant. Don’t confuse a mistake of youth as a Gen Y characteristic.

Every generation makes mistakes when they’re young. Don’t stereotype on something that applies to everyone. Even you.

Posted by Zac Martin

20 July 2009

When it comes to Twitter, I suppose I don’t really follow the unwritten law of “you should follow anyone who follows you”. In fact, I’m really picky about who I follow.

If I check out your page and you’ve posted too many times that day, I won’t follow you. If you haven’t posted enough, I won’t follow you. If I don’t like your display picture, I won’t follow you. If you have all tweets with no replies, I won’t follow you. If you’re following too many people, I won’t follow you.

Too bad if you happen to have a bad day or exhibit some once off behaviour. Chances are I won’t check you out a second time.

I always judge books by their covers. Does anyone else? And do you ever stop and think about what your profile looks like right now? I know I don’t do it enough.

Posted by Zac Martin

16 July 2009

Today I was flown up and back to Sydney to present to Nova’s marketing team about social media. When I got home there was a free copy of David Scott‘s latest book World Wide Rave waiting for me.

Sometimes I surprise myself how far this blog had taken me in just fifteen months.

Posted by Zac Martin

11 July 2009

Who’s behind the social media strategy for the Government? Because they’re doing a pretty fucking great job, on both the federal and state level. Probably far better than many brands. And when the Government is doing a better job than you, maybe it’s time to lift your game just a little.

Firstly, the bid for the World Cup is quite remarkable. The official website is, well, kinda cool as well as this totally rad video…

Can you imagine Howard appearing in that video? Anyway, they’ve also got a pretty strong presence on standard social networks, but particularly their Twitter account looks pretty healthy. Developing somewhat of a community around already passionate people is a great idea. Using that community to achieve your goal is even better.

As not even a soccer fan, I’m impressed.

And the other great example that Will Egan told me about, is John Brumby’s YouTube campaign. Check out the video…

Great use of the medium and a great way to personalise things. Not even Obama is doing that, and we all know social media is the only reason he won the election. ;]

What do you guys think of these two campaigns?

Posted by Zac Martin

07 July 2009

I’ve said in the past I will never put AdSense on this blog. But I wonder if there is some type of sponsored deal you and I could organise?

It doesn’t neccessarily have to be a link or ad on the side, in fact I don’t want that. But I wonder if something more can be explored, something more creative and flexible, that adds value to you, me and my audience.

Would you sponsor this blog? Let’s talk.

Posted by Zac Martin

03 July 2009

So this John Hartigan bloke, News Ltd CEO, had this to say in regards to the future of journalism…
“Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.”
In his speech he then proceeded to point out sites like Crikey and Mumbrella as leeching off journalism in Australia.

You take out these two points and his speech might have had some decent ideas behind it. You’ll notice he didn’t mention anything about The Punch which, funnily enough, is owned by big bad News Ltd. He also failed to mention that a significant amount of their contributors are also bloggers.

This is the dinosaur you’ve selected to keep newspapers and journalism alive in Australia? Good luck with that.

Also, as I write for The Punch I’d just like to say the people running the site do a smashing job, and thankfully do not take the piss out of us bloggers.

Posted by Zac Martin