Good Day

Paul Harvey died this weekend. There are any number of finely worded obituaries you can read about the man whose "rest of the stories" and "good days" punctuated the breakfast tables of my childhood. What I think should be noted is that this 90-year old, who was often cited as the oldest living radio personality and one of the most effective pitchmen ever, was really quite progressive. It occurred to me as I thought back on his show that Paul Harvey was blogging before there were blogs. His daily news and comments with segues to commercial content, all packaged by his folksy delivery — you could have transcribed it and probably have had a great blog but you'd have missed the author's voice and unmistakable inflection. Plus he respected advertising, famously quipping, "I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is." Good day, indeed.

Photo credit by Tanki via Flickr

Top 5 Westerblog Posts: 2005-2009

Okay ... so most people do a "Top 10" but we had a pretty dry period there for a while so I feel that the best way to give a clear and accurate picture of our most popular posts (by traffic - thanks Google Analytics) is to start with a simple list of five. So in the spirit of looking forward to 2009 and looking back, here are our top five posts:

1. I'm Nick Westergaard and I Approve This Blog Post
2. Is That Crap Under My Windshield Wiper or Guerilla Marketing?
3. The Swing Marketing Advertised
4. The Monster That Ate the Trade Show
5. Sprinkles the Wonder Dog

Cheers to Chris Brogan for the idea. He observed when he put his list together – using "linked to" as a rating instrument for the posts – that numbered posts got a lot of attention. Hence I shrewdly chose to do a look back/best of list and number the blog title to test that out.

What do you think? What would you like to see more of in 2009? Cast your vote now using the quick poll in the sidebar to the right.

The Westerblog Is Back

Hello blogosphere! The WesterBlog is back. We are relaunching this blog that I first started in 2005 as a team blog for our agency - Westergaard Advertising. Dean and I will be sharing our thoughts on advertising, marketing, new media, traditional media, and everything in between. For more details feel free to watch the video above. We hope that you'll all join in the conversation.

Do You Blog for Your Business?

You should. I could list of all the reasons but instead I'll further propagate the blogosphere by sending you to a great post by Janine Popick, President/CEO and founder of Vertical Response (my email service provider of choice) where she sums up the 5 Reasons on Why You Should Blog for Your Business. Hers is also a great example of a business blog. Great tone. Valuable content. And it's relevant to her customers and her business. Plus she does something uber smart: she links her email newletters to her blog posts.

To elaborate a little further, there is also a nasty misconception that blogging is a tactic for B2C marketers only. Sadly this lie was born of B2B marketers who have been slow to adopt the new technologies that Web 2.0 has brought us. Now to be fair, some of these tools, such as RSS, aren't exactly ready for B2B primetime. But others, like blogging, are.

So check out Janine's post and start blogging for your business today.

Everything is Connected: Email to Blog to Book

I can't remember what movie recently featured the tagline 'everything is connected' but I'm co-opting it here to make my point about how you can spread your ideas incrementally across media. Take these three commonly used marketing pieces:

• Email newsletter
• Blog
• Book

Alone, each of these items is a finite vehicle for you and/or your company's ideas. However, if you undertake the simple task of connecting them you can create a lean, mean marketing manifesto and quickly ensure the spread of your ideas.

How? I'm guessing, like so many out there, you collect customer email addresses and someone has said "we need to send out an email newsletter." So every quarter/month you are scrambling around for relevant content for your e-newsletter so that you can dredge up something to say to your customers.

Fast forward a couple of years when blogs crop up and, again, someone at the marketing round table said "we need to get us one of those." So now you're blogging. You now have two content driven pieces struggling for relevant content.

But what if you take a step back and tie these two pieces together. Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse, my favorite email ASP, does just that. Every month she sends a newsletter that has a teaser to one of her recent blog posts that links to the blog site. And, as we all know, once you click through and read her blog how likely are you stay on her site ...?

Brilliant, right? So then you follow this thing through to it's next logical conclusion and you take your best blog posts and assemble a book like Seth Godin is doing with his upcoming book Small Is the New Big. Really, previewing potential book content on a blog gives you great insight into what your audience wants to hear from you. If I'm not mistaken "Small Is the New Big" was Godin's most popular blog post and is thus the central idea of his latest manifesto.

The Point? Connect your messaging dots. We spend so long searching for content for emails, blogs, books. Why not use one as a spring board to another and another. If you can get your message firing on all pistons, your ideas can build like a mighty snowball! I'd better get out of here before the metaphor police arrest me.

P.S. If you were really paying attention, I'm sure you noticed the key ingredient that I glazed over: the simple fact that you must have something relevant to say to your audience. This whole rant is null and void if you don't have a message. So ... uh, get one. Easier said than done. More on that later.

P.P.S. "Everything Is Connected" was Syriana's tagline but since I can't really connect this marketing riff to oil I'll bow out gracefully.

Hello Blogosphere!

I'm here!!!

I hope to use this blog to share my thoughts on marketing communications in our upside-down world where all of the rules have changed and it's eat or be eaten. [LITERARY REFERENCE ALERT:] I think it was James Thurber who said, "It is better to have some of the questions than all of the answers." I think I'll rip 'ol Jim off and call that my thesis for this blog. I don't have all of the answers but I do think having a thoughtful discussion about the state of marketing is the only way to stay afloat.

Stay tuned. Profound thoughts to come!