About Microsites

A very interesting article by David Armano about microsites, their reason of being and how better use them.

One of the examples he uses is a Lenovo site for the Olympics. This site works pretty much like an agregator of content generated / submitted from the usual suspects: blogger, YouTube, Flicker and Tweeter. I specially like it how the home page is orgznized by sport, country and language, it makes for a very simple and esay navigation.

Email vs. Social Networks

There have been some talks around about email beings substituted by social networks, but the recent AOL Email Addiction Report shows email usage is stronger than ever.

The Email Insider column brings up some interesting points:

"When the consumers that buy goods from us begin to spend more time managing their social networking sites and profiles than they do in their inbox, then I'll be worried."

And anyway, don't we receive alarms from our social networks on our inbox too...

How to make a video contest succeed or suck.

Brutal and frank and almost a check list article.
Marketers before launching, before developing a user video submitted contest print this article out and make sure you want to do it.

The infamous article!

Advertising Agency vs. Social Media

Two very interesting articles by Joe Marchese about how the communications business is changing. In his first article (Social Media Demands A Reinvented Agency), he analyzes how Social Media serves a different purpose from a traditional camping. A second article (Agencies: Reinvented Or Replaced) goes on discussing if the traditional agency is ready to manage a social media campaign, or even if it will be able to evolve and change.

On one hand we have the traditional advertising agency model, on the other the new media and especially social media. Although both have plenty of points in common, the differences are significant, especially in how different is the set up for both of them. While a traditional campaign has a clearly define beginning (launch) and end, a social media campaign has to be an on-going effort to be really effective. So the problem is not that much, if a traditional agency can undertake a social media campaign, but if they (and their clients) are able to change their mind set up. Not an easy task especially when agency compensation is being systematically reduced and kept under scrutiny and quick returns the law of the day.