Media Culpa

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.

Here’s a guy I’m getting tired to see. He’s the “Bloglines Plumber” and he comes on to my screen every time Bloglines is down for “a little fixer upper”.

Hi,

I’m the Bloglines Plumber. Bloglines is down for a little fixer upper. We’ll now be back at 1 Am Pacific Time. Bloglines will be all better when I’m done with it.

Thanks,
The Bloglines Plumber

The down time wouldn’t be much hassle if it:

1) Didn’t happen so often; and
2) Didn’t affect a vital part of my media monitoring.

I wouldn’t accept a “little fixer upper” on a regular basis for my email client, nor do I think it is acceptable that Bloglines goes down now and then. RSS has become an important channel for my news consumption. I use it for monitoring media, reading important blogs, monitoring the blogosphere for mentions of my company’s brand etc. It’s nothing I am especially pleased at being locked out from for several hours. Sure, they often do it during non-office hours in the US, but hey, the blogosphere is awake 24/7 so when it is a convenient time for an upgrade in the US, it is not in Sweden. Perhaps it would be possible to run the service on a limited scale while doing the upgrades. I don’t know how, I just feel that if this continues I might have to abandon Bloglines for a more reliable service.

Managers at Norwegian companies don’t like their employees to blog, according to a survey by Dagens Næringsliv. The survey asked what managers considered to be the greatest threats to their business. The primary worry was to lose key personnel:

1. Lose key personnel
2. Breakdown of IT system
3. Hacking
4. Identity theft/Phishing
5. Loss of intellectual property rights

The paper writes that one of four key koncerns for Norwegian managers is blogging. “Norwegian leaders don’t want their employees to blog. They don’t wish that internal information will be made public through that kind of channels.”:

Blogging: Norske ledere ønsker ikke at egne ansatte skal skrive blogger. De ønsker ikke at intern informasjon skal komme ut via slike kanaler. I USA har flere teknologiselskaper åpnet for ansattes blogging, innen gitte rammer.

Of course there is a risk involved in having blogging employees, but the potential rewards may be even greater. If your greatest concern is to lose key people, then maybe the strategy should be the opposite – let key people blog within given policies. There is a chance it will make them more committed, more satisfied and better spokes persons for your company. There’s also a risk they become so visible that someone else wants to recruit them, but having the most attractive work force on board is a luxury problem.

Seth Godin is on tour to promote his book All Marketers are Liars. The concept of the book is that marketers are good at telling stories that customers want to believe, but not necessarily are true. Here’s a comment from Godin on the What’s Your Brand Mantra blog about storytelling in the car industry:

If I ran GM, I’d figure out how to make the cars MORE different. Why doesn’t the Saab have Swedish words on the non-essential controls? Why doesn’t the Cadillac come with a better version of Onstar? Dollar for dollar, consumers spend more money on ridiculous stories for cars than anything else we buy. GM needs to learn before it’s too late that they are NOT in the assembly line business. They are in the business of telling stories.