Our Team Rubber blog has been ranked #1 out of 152 of the Bristol Media companies included!  Now we need to note that this is only part one of the report and is the quantity based section (we had 109 posts), but it’s still good to win when you didn’t know you were competing!

This started a little inter-agency rivalry with Gez (from Delib) noticing that they had posted 140 times in 2010, so could actually have beaten Team Rubber. Over at the Viral Ad Network we managed a lowly 101 posts, and Rubber Republic is yet to comment

Personally I find that regular blogging is a tough task to maintain – client work always seems to get in the way! But I do think its worth trying to be disciplined. At VAN we find that blogging, alongside other social outreach, is a great way of generating new business and attracting relevant people to our site.

I’ll leave it at that before I type myself into a New Years Resolution!

We’ve put together a handy guide in four parts:
- why to commission a video
- how to do it
- how to set and manage expectations
- how to grow the idea further and create an ongoing video strategy

» Free guide: pitch your brand client a video.

‘New’ is addictive. Here’s some stuff that’s not new. Don’t matter though, try em anyway.

I should just fricking put these links on Twitter where they belong instead of saving them up to try and add some useful insight. Whatever.

1. Faris Yakob and some other blokes talk about interesting stuff in 2008. Seems a long time ago now. Still, nobody knew anything then, nobody knows anything now. If anybody does know, send me a postcard, ta. And if you don’t know (and nobody does), give it some interesting chat instead.

2. BJ Fogg on Simplicity. If I say more, you won’t bother clicking. Then you’ll miss out. Go on, click. It’s worth it

3. Five ways to ruin your industry reputation. Seems pretty retro and obvious, now right? Surely everyone knows Facebook is for baby pictures and debauchery; business networking is done with linkedin and twitter. Or do they? And who’s ‘everyone’ anyway. Get ‘everyone’ to send me a postcard, see how many I get.

4. John Kay. If you don’t like learning about business and economics at all, well, whatever. If you do like business and economics and you don’t like reading John Kay, you’re just wrong, and I’ll fight you. Unless you are (a) bigger than me, or (b) better at fighting than me or (c) nah.

5. “Viral marketing may also be limited by the virtue that most people are actually only talking to small groups of people online.” HP Labs research from 2008. So talk to lots of small groups, right? Or – get this – make sure you start a conversation with one person, repeat that n times. Don’t just arrogantly broadcast your views out at people…hmm. Irony fail. Kzzzpttt. [end]

First, go to the privacy page.

I’d already customised my “Sharing on facebook” settings – setting everything to “Friends Only”

It turns out that what facebook means by “Friends Only” isn’t exactly what I thought it meant though – it actually means “Your Friends”, “Any websites facebook trusts”, “Anyone applications your friends trust”, “Any websites your friends trust”, and “Any of your applications”.

To reduce the huge number of places facebook will share your personal data with a bit, click “Edit your settings” under “Applications, games and websites”, and change the settings for “Instant personalization” [sic]. Now turn off any extra applications you’ve got installed (several applications seemed to have mysteriously installed themselves on my account through using facebook connect twice, although I would never have said I was willing to install a facebook app from them).

Another privacy concern is that Facebook can track your movements over the entire internet due to people using Facebook Connect – If I want facebook to have data, I’ll enter it myself.

Most sites that collect information about you (like tracking codes) can be blocked if you’re so-inclined. What’s more, they normally just track you – they don’t tie it into personal information about you. Facebook on the other hand is trusted with personal data by enough people that it is able to know exactly who you are, and exactly what you’re doing right now.

Unfortunately it’s very tough to block facebook connect on other websites – they serve the “social plugins” from the same domain as Facebook – so you can’t just block it with an entry in your hosts file. You can install ad blockers to do it but, working in advertising, I really don’t like that option.

It would be a massive shame if Facebook ended up ruining the web for ad-funded publishers because they don’t give any other way to block their services.

I’m not leaving Facebook yet, but I’m coming perilously close. Perhaps the most worrying thing to me is if I do leave, I won’t be able to stop facebook from sharing any and all information my friends enter with everyone and his dog.

Everybody likes to think their viral creatives are going to go viral without any kind of push – but here’s the bottom line:

Summary:

How much would you enjoy reporting to your client to tell them their average cost per view was £20? (even if you don’t phrase it like that, they will be calculating it).

Including a bought spend reduces their (and your) risk – in very worst case above you’d be entering that meeting reporting an average cost per view of around 1/40th of that price – that’s 40 times more ROI for them, and a more economically viable campaign.

What’s missing from the above?

Quite a bit – for a start, the more that your content is seen, the more likely it is to get organic views – so a bought media buy makes it far less likely that you’ll be hitting anywhere close to the worst case. For simplicity I’ve left this at the most basic calculation I could.

(Disclaimer: these numbers are estimated and may not necessarily reflect real-life results, which will depend on individual campaigns)

It was written after the Suitcase Skittles development that we did with them last year for IHG in which we all learnt a lot. But that seems to be the case with most Flash game developments…

It’s a nice summary of what we’ve learned in the last ten or so years. Cheers – Andy

Team Rubber FC in second place

We’re currently behind the holders and previous season’s winners and the-season-before-that’s winners and the season-before-that-one’s winners and some more wins, Brucey Boys. It just so happens we’re playing them in 2 weeks in what has been dubbed as “a game between first and second on the 17th of December”.

Adam Cardew, Team Rubber FC’s newest recruit from Delib, sums it up perfectly: “I wish I had some new size 9 football boots so that I could play but I haven’t got time to buy any”.

Twitter of course excels at short succinct messages. So do cartoons. Me, I’m hoping for the cartoon equivalent of Twitter. I would use it to Kill Birds. There’s a free web-app idea for someone. Let me know when it’s done…