Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Free ebook from Seth Godin and some comments about free content



Just came across Seth Godin's free ebook - available as PDF format on his blog looking forward to reading it.

Furthermore, it's interesting because I was listening to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast where David Meerman Scott author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, was discussing the very idea of free publishing.
He discusses how the best form of self marketing is publishing valuable content for free.

Two interesting points stand out for me in his discussion:

1. Ensure that you content has "conflict".

Akin to the art of story telling, your content needs to engage in a similar way. He describes how brands fall down in this way where they tell as story of "boy meets girl, falls in loves and gets married" while a more interesting story is "boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy gets girl back and then they get married."

2. Don't have a gate to you content.

Citing personal experience and free metrics from mailermaailer.com if you ask for an email address before people can download your ebook or white paper...you might get 1k downloads in a year. However if you allow people to go ahead and download without any barrier you could get 20k to 50k downloads in return.

Interesting stuff, particularly when we transfer these learnings to brands...

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Looking for interesting Twitters to follow?


This handly little tool gives you a quick rundown of the top blogs that the people you follow...follow...

And while we're on the subject of Twitter I highly recommend using iGoogle's Twitter Gadget.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Techno-inspired clothing...


Now clothing companies are being inspired by social networks...this ingenius dutch company produce clothing with a unique logo for each user...the logos serves as a launch pad for people to connect with you having snapped your unique logo with their mobile phone...

This is exactly the type of company who will foster naturally growing communities as their innovation pays off through word of mouth and the clincher - and absolute driver to the online world in their USP.

I love this one.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

And again...thanks Google

Great new tool from Google - Google trends - this FREE tool lets you analyze historical Google history data around key words and even compare key words...fantastic!