Marketing Technology

You may have noticed a little hiccup in my blogging over the last week. In part this has been down to some pretty demanding workshops and clients, but I have also been conscious that this was to be my hundredth post on this blog and I wanted to mark the occasion in a special kind of way.

So for the last week I have been racking my brain trying to think of something really clever to say, something that will get noticed, get talked about by all the gurus, spark a raft of comments patting me on the back, thanking me for my effort and contributions, thus creating a meme that will spread round the blogosphere like a virus bringing instant recognition and fortune.

But then I realised that I’m not actually that good at saying highly cerebral, intellectual things. I have lots of thoughts and ideas but they never become real for me until I draw them or turn them into something. And given that most of my thoughts these days are about web applications, and my programming skills are both self-taught and out-of-date, I increasingly have to rely on others to do this for me. What I like doing is – er – doing. I’m a great proponent of practicing what you preach, and don’t believe that you can be an expert in something without knowing how it works and being able to do it yourself.

It suddenly dawned on me that this landmark post had to be practical not profound.

So I thought I’d share some of the data from my 10 months writing this blog in the hope that it might – in some small way – give friends, colleagues, clients and maybe a few complete strangers the encouragement to hunker down and go the last 25%. Here are some of my key highlights:

• In 310 days, I’ve received just over 38,000 page views, 20,000 aggregator views and 122 comments
• That’s an average of 122 page views and 65 aggregator views a day
• The five most popular posts have been:
  • Blogging policies and guidelines (3,710 combined views)
  • Scoble vs PR agencies… (1,938 combined views)
  • GM Vice Chairman is blogging – or is he? (1,930 combined views)
  • EDS using blogs for thought leadership (1,279 combined views)
  • Why business need blogging communities (1,211 combined views)
• As a direct result of this blog, I’ve given interviews and got coverage for Hill & Knowlton in PR Week (both sides of the Atlantic) and the Ragan Report, and have been invited to speak in the US, Asia and Europe, and am sitting on the plenary panel for the IABC’s EuroComm conference in Paris in December alongside Neville Hobson, Loic le Meur, Elizabeth Albrycht, and Glenn Manoff (we’ll convert him…)
• This blog currently appears in third and fourth positions on Google when you search for marketing technology – out of 316 million results!
• Aside from Google, the biggest referrers of traffic have been Robert Scoble and Hugh “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” Macleod
• Finally, but potentially most rewarding, I’ve had the pleasure of coercing and threatening welcoming many other Hill & Knowlton bloggers to this platform, including:
  • David Ferrabee (writing about change and internal communications)
  • Boyd Neil (writing about Corporate Social Responsibility)
  • Sally Costerton (writing about the future of PR and communications)
  • Our Canadian Technology team (writing about the technology industry)
  • Our UK Consumer Technology team (clearly trying to give Gizmodo and Engadget a run for their money)
  • Breakfast Bytes (seminars from our Australian office)
  • Ted Graham (social networking analysis and knowledge management)
  • Brendan Hodgson (our latest blogger)
  • Please go look at all their blogs and give the encouragement to continue!

So if any of that gives you the desire to start blogging, or even just to ask your advertising, PR, or online agency (or any of the many blogging experts) to tell you more about it, then I’ll make a start towards my double century.