Year: 2005

Mille Millnert, President of Linköping University has started his own blog.

…and Hanna Flodr of Dagens Nyheter “blogs” from the music festival in Hultsfred.

Klas Åhlund, guitarist in Swedish band Teddybears Sthlm must have set some kind of Swedish record in number of “no comments” in an “interview” in Aftonbladet.

Would you like me to tell you what kind of bloggers write the longest posts? My qualified guess is – movie buffs. With posts titled “hellfaucet’s guide to movies that you should see” and “1001 films” [Edit: post seems to have been deleted] they share their opinions on just about every movie ever made, preferably with lots of screen shots mixed into the whole thing. Other extensive examples here, here and here. Only problem is when your company almost share its name with a famous movie director, your media/blog monitoring becomes a task well in line with finding a needle in a haystack.

Also see B.L. Ochman’s arguments against full text in RSS feeds. Or Constantin Basturea’s arguments for.

Uncork the champers and cling the glasses. Media Culpa has received an honorable mention in the prestigious MarketingSherpa’s 2005 Best Blog awards in the category Best Non-English Language Blog (although this blog is mainly in English, once in a while there is a post in Swedish as well). Hats off to the Dutch blog Marketingfacts who won the category. And congrats to Mike Manuel at Marketing Guerilla who was named Best PR Topic Blog.

MarketingSherpa asked their 173,000 readers (who are mainly marketing execs at medium-large businesses and the agencies who serve them) to nominate their favorite blogs on the subjects of marketing, advertising, and PR. From these nominations, 52 blogs were selected and in total 2065 people voted for their favorites based on the following criteria:

#1. Personality: Is there a clear personality? Do you feel like you know the writer(s)? Is there a feeling of intimacy that may be missing from mainstream media?
#2. Usefulness: Is the information either darned useful or very enjoyable to read? Did it make you think, or laugh, or click? Are there handy links to other places?
#3. Writing style: Is it a sales pitch badly disguised as a blog? Is it a long-winded column instead of a snappy, slightly-informal blog? Is it just news briefs without analysis or insight?
#4. Usability & design: Is the typeface easy to read? Can you find links to archives? Is the writing concise and skimmable? Are graphics limited to what’s useful or fun?
#5. Would you revisit?: Is it useful or engaging enough for you to visit it again someday? Or will you forget it the minute after you vote?

All winners:

Best individual’s blog on the general topic of marketing and advertising
Winner: Seth Godin’s Blog http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/blog.html
Honorable Mention: Adrants http://www.adrants.com

Best group weblog on the general topic of marketing and advertising
Winner: MarketingVOX http://www.marketingvox.com/
Honorable Mention (Tie): Marketing Genius http://marketinggenius.blogspot.com
Church of the Customer http://www.churchofthecustomer.com

Best PR-topic blog
Winner: Media Guerrilla http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media_guerrilla
Honorable Mention: Strategic Public Relations http://www.prblog.typepad.com

Best B-to-B marketing-topic blog
Winner: Guerrilla Consulting http://guerrillaconsulting.typepad.com/
Honorable Mention: B-to-B Lead Generation Blog http://blog.startwithalead.com/

Best blog on small business marketing
Winner: Duct Tape Marketing http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php
Honorable Mention: Small Business Trends http://www.smallbusinesses.blogspot.com

Best blog on online marketing
Winner: Chris Baggott’s Best Practices in Email http://exacttarget.typepad.com/chrisbaggott
Honorable Mention: Charlotte Li’s Blog http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/

Blogs on Search Marketing
Winner: Search Engine Roundtable http://www.seroundtable.com/
Honorable Mention: Brad Fallon http://www.bradfallon.com

Best Blog on Niche Marketing
Winners (tie):Ypulse – Media for the Next Generation http://www.ypulse.com/
WonderBranding – Marketing to Women http://michelemiller.blogs.com/marketing_to_women
Honorable Mention:Lipsticking- Smart marketing to women online http://windsormedia.blogs.com/lipsticking

Best non-English-Language Blog
Winner: MarketingFacts (completely in Dutch) http://www.mediafact.nl/weblog.php
Honorable mention: Media Culpa (in Swedish with some English) http://www.kullin.net/

Top readers’ choice write-in vote
Winner: Easy Bake Weblogs http://easybakeweblogs.com/
Honorable Mention: Collateral Damage (CMO Magazine) http://www.cmomagazine.com/blog_view.html?ID=401

Footnote: Seems that I owe Åsk a thanks for nominating me. Champagne is on me, Åsk.

Sure, it’s Apple. If Apple could sneeze, someone would blog it. But this still shows that there is a point in distributing press releases via RSS. Someone out there might actually find it useful.