12 SOURCES OF DIGITAL FITNESS

• Category: Consumer Insights
• Category: Design / Usability
• Category: Digital Media
• Category: Integrated Marketing

October 22nd, 2007   Posted by: Simon Morgan  

One of our most exciting initiatives this year has been in evangelising digital marketing through a training programme called ‘digital fitness’. The main message to marketers is: get your hands dirty, experiment, play with this stuff … and step outside your comfort zone.

We’ve spent time with some fantastic people from within our own organisation and with clients. So far almost 200 people have been exposed to this 2 day digital bootcamp.

One question that I get asked a lot, from newbies and experienced folk alike, is how to keep up with the constantly changing landscape.

The glib answer to this is “get stuck into RSS”.

But RSS only provides the best mechanism to pull in content. From web sites and blogs to podcasts, bookmarks or even photostreams and slideshows, RSS is key.
But what about the content sources?
With over 100 million blogs listed on Technorati there is a vast amount of noise to filter out.

So, to those of you who’ve asked the question, here are a few of our current favourite marketing feeds and sources. Feel free to share these – and please tell us about yours.

1. Publicis Digital Blog
(yes, I know it’s a skite. It’s just that there are some very smart people in our place blogging furiously about new trends and digital news). You’d need a lot of time to cover the ground that our most prolific bloggers Andy, Tim, Kristy, Hugh, Travis, Phil, Mike, Luke and the team cover in a month – so subscribe to the feed here (shameless plug ends)!

2. Mediapost daily email alerts.
I like these posts in email format – perfect for reading on the crackberry during my commute time when the view gets boring.

It’s so important to understand the digital media market and opportunities – these days you can’t focus entirely on digital creative or strategy, you need to understand the online media landscape. Why? Because today, the answer is less likely than ever to be a web site.

Careful, there are hundreds of Mediapost feeds to subscribe to, and most make for really interesting reading. If nothing else, this will hammer home to you the sheer diversity of subject matter that together makes up the subject of digital marketing.

3. Greg Verdinos Marketing Blog.
I like Gregs approach – he’s pragmatic yet passionate about digital marketing and a real social media maven. If you want to get to the coalface on social media then he’s your man.

4. Ian Tait’s Crack Unit.
I really love some of Ian Tait’s recent posts.This one is simply a must read for a ‘get these off your chest quickly’ suite of digital ideas that have a habit of resurfacing time and time again. Everyone should read this post!

5. Lee Lefever from Common Craft.
Lee leapt to fame with Common Craft’s wonderful 2 minute movies demystifying digital. I refer a lot of people to the intro to RSS video see here. Its great stuff – and there are many more joining this one from Wikis to social networks.

6. David Armano - Logic and Emotion
David’s blog for me encapsulates the new kind of thinking that needs to be embraced by the wider creative community around creating great online experiences. He also has wicked charts being a design guy – I particularly like his thinking on T-shaped creativity. And here, you can also subscribe to his slideshare feed.

7. Marketing Profs
These guys have a huge selection of case studies and webcasts. To get the best content you need to pay to join, but is well worth it and even if you don’t there is plenty of inspirational thinking, mainly through real-world examples.

8. Marketing Sherpa
I put this into a similar category to the site above – plenty of great case studies.

Podcasts & Vodcasts. Let me preface this section: I believe there is a gaping hole for a good Aussie and NZ marketing podcast – we’re playing with some ideas now…let us know if you’re interested in getting involved.

However…
9. Joseph Jaffe’s ‘Jaffe Juice’ (iTunes Link)
Straight talking Jo is prone to looong soliloquies, and the sound levels on his podcast are variable - but I do enjoy this when I have time.
(RSS Feed).

10. The TedTalks Vcast (iTunes URL)
Brilliant, there are some truly inspirational talks here (yes it’s video), and they’re short and sweet. The videos are available from the site and the blog is excellent.
Site
Blog Feed

…(as an aside if you like rattling good yarns, e-books and a bit of sci-fi – subscribe to this feed ) - Scott Sigler (see previous post) is one of the webs great podcasting success stories.

Miscellaneous Feeds – these aren’t blogs or podcasts – but use RSS too.

11. Social Bookmarking - a deliciously big secret.
Try getting into social bookmarking by subscribing to a few peoples del.icio.us feeds. First you need to join www.del.icio.us

Here’s mine, just to give you an idea what it’s all about – but the key is to find a few people in your business with whom you share some professional interests. Let me explain further.

The way to get the most from social bookmarking is to go beyond using it as a replacement for your browser-based bookmarks. The key is to start looking at what the people that bookmarked the same stuff as you did are looking at. This can actually be even more powerful than Google, especially if you’re having trouble finding the right search terms to describe what you want.

Look at the image below from my del.icio.us page.

See how some of the links have been bookmarked by other people? As well as giving an indication of how popular (or niche) this site might be, the best bit is that I have access to all of these peoples own bookmark lists. And I can add any to my network - or subscribe via RSS to their page. Get it?

I’m going to let you find your own way at this point. Social bookmarking is an addictive pastime – and it’s a must try. Do it now!

12. LynetteR’s Flickr account.
Lynette’s photostream is really original. She has a flair for mashing quotes and observations on really current digital issues with wonderful images from Flickr.

Thanks for your time, if none of these ideas grab you, then try this blog league table.

Or… the world’s most popular ad blogs according to Alexa

There are of course millions of other great sources, and many we haven’t shared (sorry). If you’re a newbie we hope this post provides a starting point; if an old hand, maybe there’s something new here for you too. Enjoy!