Sick of the unending checkout queues?

Shitty with crappy car parking at your local mega-hyper-suburban shopping centre?

Then save yourself the hassle:

• Oxfam Unwrapped
• World Vision
• TEAR Australia/Useful Gifts

And the best part is, these guys never ask for the receipt so that they can return it for something else!

I’ve been dabbling with creating websites and online communities as a hobby since 2005. I used to spend the whole day working on other people’s IT solutions - counting down the hours until I could flick on my laptop at home after my wife and kids had gone to bed and hack some amateur code together and put up the website I had pictured in my head.

Why?

I just want someone to tell me they thought it was cool (or thereabouts….)

AustralianBlogs.com.au (via BLOG.biz) launches its first WordPress theme! YAY…(it’s even XHTML-OK…I checked)

I hope it’s a stinging blow I strike for fellow untrained, untalented wannabe web designers.

Download it here at your peril.

Following on from the Google war on pagerank, this SearchEngineJournal post got my attention.

I don’t get out much and had never heard of Widgetbucks - so I thougt I’d give it a try - see the new widget in the right-hand sidebar.

I’ll post our findings in the next few weeks.

Not quite, but you get the idea.

In an increasingly crowded media landscape, bloggers need to use their medium find their own ‘voice’ and position their offering:

• to stand out
• to attract and retain readers
• personalise their content

Here’s an interesting case study of a brand that isn’t quite using reverse psychology but is more akin to highlighting their weaknesses (and in doing so, demonstrating their strengths).

‘Telling the truth’ sets the framework for the customer relationship that is based around honesty and trust. Isn’t this what your blog is trying to achieve?

My partner in slime, Luke Evans went to Podcamp Perth and pointed me to this excellent blog post from Kathryn Greenhill.

With Google’s recent crackdown on paid links, some say in an attempt to increase their takings from the advertising pie, a number of blogs that rely on Google for search engine traffic have been hit hard. If your blog falls into this category, then your choices are as follows:

• Comply with Google - stop selling sponsored links + replace it with AdSense
• Make your blog less Google-dependent for traffic

If you’re leaning towards the latter, here are three ideas to help Google do less evil:

• Retain your audience by promoting your RSS feeds to them - people who subscribe will bypass the Google intermediary layer
• Use your blog as the sharing mechanism it’s designed to be - through comments on other peoples’ blogs, trackbacks, pings, social bookmarking and blog communities like mybloglog, twitter etc
• Get a good domain name that is generic enough that web users will naturally type-in the address e.g. realestate.com.au or podcast.com

The who’s who (spoke to on the day):

• Myles
• Bronwen
• Chris
• Junimun
• Still
• Nick H (asked a question from audience)
• Michael

Special mention (shared a group conversation with):

• Simone
  
• Crispin
• Nick C
• Others (names unknown)

These are just a few of the bloggers/web2.0′ers/beer’ers and Interweb’ers that I had the pleasure of seeing/meeting at podcamp perth day 1 2007.

Credit goes out to Chris Quinn for the sweet shot of a podcamp sign.

It’s cool but in its early form - a little edgy and raw.

But it’s got potential.

How do you get the word out?

Hypothesis No.1: Personalise it

If you can’t be all things to all people, road test the idea with a few trusted friends. Cut it down to its raw elements and put it to them for comment.

Put a little spin on it to initiate eyeball engagement. Think of it this way: if your product was a book, what would the cover/title/book need to look like so that the potential reader grabs it off the shelf. Whether he/she ends up buying it will depend on the merits of the transaction - does the book give the reader what he/she needs/wants, but the point is you need to gather the audience before you can even start that spiel.

The AustralianBlogs experience
We thought we’d try our new idea on the inmates/housemates at the Silicon Beach House by individually labelling some beers we brought for Freelancer Friday. Small and hopefully unobtrusive but enough for Bronwen, Myles and Dave to ask the question we wanted them to: “So what’s BLOG.biz?”

Whether or not the new idea meets their needs will depend on how well we do our job in structuring our offering + whether they actually need what we offer….but last things first - let’s make them grab this little idea off the shelf for a closer look.

The Concept

The Yakka

The Execution

Myles Eftos (MadPilot Productions and PerthNorg) and Luke Evans (AustralianBlogs)

Dave Gardner (Intilecta Corporation)

Bronwen Clune (PerthNorg) and Luke Evans

Bronwen Clune and Bronwen’s beer

Beered in absentia: Richard Giles (Scouta) and Jordan Brock (Five Senses Coffee)

Excerpt from Water Corporation’s (WA) latest marketing push.

“water for ALL, forever”.

What I want to know is… what are the WA frogs doing to conserve our water?

Found this sign on the entrance to the main arena at Challenge Stadium, taking a ’state the obvious’ marketing approach.

I wonder what they class as a weapon (Scissors, toothpick, grenade launcher) and who decides?

I love this story - up there with asking a woman whether she’s pregnant only to find out that she’s not (believe me, I know…)

A concise, everyday tag line ‘I can do that’ linked with common energy-savings examples eg. no standby power, all against the context of doing your bit to save the planet (for the next generation).

WHAT IT’S SAYING TO YOU: Ultimately, you know it’s good for you so why not try some simple everyday things (like switching the lights off when you’re not using it)? A nice call-to-action with a catchy phrase.

I’ve been avoiding the Facebook and MySpace crowd since its inception - I didn’t want to be the thirty-something, dirty old man on the barstool of a teenie/twenty-sonething nightclub. However, about the time of the relaunch of AustralianBlogs (or thereabouts) Simone sent me a LinkedIn invitation. I must have signed up a little while ago as it’s fallen by the wayside like my hotmail account. So I gave i a whirl - accepted Simone’s kind invitation to link up and dusted off the resume. This time around, I pasted a link on this blog (as you can see on the top right-hand corner).

It’s terribly uncool to the digerati, I’m sure. LinkedIn’s up there with Amazon, eBay and Yahoo as the giants of the first go-around of the internet boom.

So I thought…PERFECT.

Positives

• good for finding long lost friends
• acts as an online business card or whitepages listing
• might help personal ‘trustrank’
• nice to see the track record

Negatives

• a bit narcissistic - and you do feel like a tosser
• privacy - you can’t control who sees your profile and what they do with it
• can’t hide the bad bits - think of it as web cellulite

Overall, I’ve added 30-odd friends (real friends) and a couple of acquaintances from the blog world. Not bad. The greatest tangible benefit has really been hooking up with long-lost friends but I guess it’s been some help with any interested surfers looking to get involved with AustralianBlogs.

This is a great post - I love the distinction between ‘Making money by investing time’ and ‘Making money by investing money’.

Instead of blogging, Sep was spent:

• looking for a new home
• sick in bed
• looking after sick kids
• coping with the spike in workload on the day job
• nagging Luke (but that happens every month - that bludger)

….and didn’t we pay for it - Uniques dropped by a whopping 20%!

I’m such a lousy unconference unattendee having missed out on the fabulous Perth Barcamp organised by Myles and mates. But my wife seems to think the newborn is much more important (plus we’re in the middle of moving house), go figure.

But this upcoming event might just be in the right timezone where I could sneak out for a few hours (just quietly):

PodCamp is a FREE new media UnConference. It’s for anyone with an interest in media and technology and covers topics such as:

* social networking
* emerging technologies
* podcasting and blogging
* creative media (music and art)

* new media development and startups
* business newmedia marketing

Below are the vitals for PodCamp Perth:

WHEN: October 27 & 28
WHERE: Central TAFE (140 Royal St, East Perth WA 6004)
COST: FREE!
REGISTER: at the PodCamp Perth wiki or email perth@podcamp.info (include your full name, website/blog address, and suburb)

The best part of PodCamp is that “you” help make it happen. Whether you want to give a presentation, volunteer to help bring it together, sponsor the event or simply want to listen and learn, it’s about you getting what you want out of the conference. Everyone is encouraged to get involved in their own way.

If you have any questions or want to get involved – email: perth@podcamp.info.

UPDATE:
Look who else is coming!

Attendees:

1. Jared Madden, Emersive / Blog, Hunter Valley NSW
2. Adam Purcell, redPixel / Blog, Newcastle NSW
3. Nick Cowie, State Library / Blog, Kwinana WA
4. Constance Wiebrands, Curtin University Library / Blog, North Perth, WA
5. Tama Leaver, The University of Western Australia / Blog, Subiaco, WA
6. Graeme Watson, The Film and Television Institute WA / Blog, Fremantle, WA
7. Lloyd Johnson, Student @ Murdoch Uni / Blog, South Perth, WA
8. Kim Flintoff, Student @ QUT/Lecturer-Tutor @ ECU / Blog, Joondanna, WA
9. Kay Smoljak, Clever Starfish / Blog, Madeley WA
10. Kate Quinn, LMS Systems Administrator, Blog, Dianella, WA
11. Chris Quinn, Programmer/Analyst, Dianella, WA
12. Simon Wittber, Blog, WA
13. Trevor Bennett, Podcasting@ECU, Mount Lawley, WA
14. Eran Malloch, TalkWeb TV / Blog, Bedford, WA
15. Bob Cooper Swan Tafe Bateman WA
16. Gary Barber, radharc / Blog, Ballajura, WA
17. Jodi Linto, ECU, Lecturer, Scarborough, WA
18. Lisa Billingham, ECU, Systems Librarian, Joondalup, WA
19. Bronwen Clune, Norg Media / Norg
20. Liam Casey, Curtin University Library / Bentley, WA
21. Julia Gross, ECU Library, Mt Lawley, WA
22. Mike Nodding, ECU, Project Officer, Centre for Learning and Teaching, Mt Lawley, WA
23. Cat Hope, WAAPA COmposers Blog, ECU, lecturer in music, WAAPA, Mt Lawley, WA
24. Eva Dobozy, ECU, Lecturer, K-7 Program, School of Education, Joondalup Campus, Perth,WA
25. Chantal Morin, TV Producer www.goodenoughtoeat.net , WA
26. Michael Newby, Blog, Bentley, WA
27. Shane Henderson, ECU, Lecturer, Game Design, Mt Lawley Campus, Perth,WA
28. Kim Tran, Blog, Marketing and the Media, Bedford, WA
29. Simone van Hattem, Enjoy Perth / Blog, Perth, WA
30. Pascal Wijnberg, Enjoy Perth, Perth, WA
31. Duncan Riley, TechCrunch / Blog, Australind WA
32. Rene LeMerle, ineedhits.com / Blog, Inglewood WA
33. Mike Minutillo, Fujitsu Australia New Zealand / Blog, Stratton WA
34. Jackie Pedley, West Coast TAFE, Lecturer, Joondalup WA.
35. Jenny Lane, ECU, Course Co-ordinator, Lecturer Graduate Diploma in Primary Education, Mount Lawley & Joondalup
36. Lutie Sheridan ECU Library, Perth WA.
37. yovita Winarto ecu student Perth WA.
38. skribe Forti skribe’s Second Life porn emporium, South Perth WA
39. Kristy Haines Market United, West Perth, WA
40. Tammy Cooksey Market United, West Perth, WA
41. Shadi Moqarrabin, ineedhits.com, Yokine, WA
42. Angela Han, ineedhits.com, Nedlands, WA
43. Kathryn Greenhill Murdoch University Library , WA / Blog
44. Stewart Greenhill Curtin University, WA / Blog
45. Bruce Paulik, InsideScreen, Claremont, WA
46. Dihan Wijewickrama, wellnet, The Carriage WA
47. Nicholas Tan, ECU, International Student Adviser, Joondalup, WA
48. Kat Black and Jasper Cook, Byte Me! Festival / VJzoo, North Perth WA
49. Nick Hodge, Nick Hodge, Sydney, NSW
50. Paul Montgomery, FanFooty (including Coaches Box podcast) & Tinfinger / Blog, Geelong, Victoria
51. Richard Giles, Scouta / Blog, Perth WA
52. Cassandra Colvin, ECU, International Student Coordinator, Churchlands
53. Michael Corry, iiNet, Perth
54. Sue Waters, Mobile Technology in TAFE / Podcast, Perth WA
55. Penelope Coutas, EdD Candidate, Murdoch University, Fremantle WA
56. Chris McCormick, Hello, Perth WA
57. David Koh, Positive Gold, Karrinyup,Perth WA
58. Crispin Harris, Blog, Perth WA
59. Natalija Brunovs, Seedpod / Blog, Mt Lawley WA
60. Nikki Haseldine, ECU, Library, Perth WA
61. Kerry Johnson, Education Officer, educationau, Work: edna’s E-learning Insights  Personal: Neotenous Tech, Adelaide, SA
62. Nicole David, Curtin University of Technology, Web Multimedia Designer, Bentley, WA
63. Ross Buncle, Perthpunk / Blog, Mount Hawthorn, Perth
64. Teresha Aird, Infoactive Media / Blog, Iluka, Perth
65. Michael Smith, Leeming WA
66. Alessandra Morrone, Darch WA
67. Matt Aird, Infoactive Media / Blog, Iluka, Perth
68. Caine John, ECU Student, Perth WA
69. Marziya Mohammedali, kikei.dot.net, MInT Student - ECU, Projects Assistant - UWA, Mt Lawley WA

- Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

When we came up with the idea of blogging our attempts to raise some money for my boy’s childcare centre playground refurb, we thought it would be a laugh to see if we could come up with some unconventional marketing campaigns to flog what is well-worn fundraising stock (ie. the humble Freddo and his mate the koala).

Here is a quick summary of the ideas we tried:
- selling with humour
- selling with threats (albeit in good humour)
- selling via perceived shortages
- selling via lifestyle outcome (ie. “I want to get out of this place!” - see above image)

Here are some ideas which we didn’t get to try:
- selling via recommendation/sponsorship (”The Boss says ‘buy a Freddo!’ “)
- anti-selling (”Say no to smartarse marketing slogans - buy a Freddo $1″)
- Office lookalike competitions
- ‘Diet starts tomorrow’
- ‘0.00003% fat-free’
- locating Freddos in the Ladies toilets

The final wash-up:
- nearly four boxes of 48 Freddos/Caramellos sold @$1 (still finishing up this final box)
- near-zero theft rate

Analysis:
- People chose our chocs over others because we gave them interesting content (that made them laugh…or in one case - tear it up in disgust)
- People were less likely to steal because they knew who was behind the Freddos (we had a substantially-lower level of theft compared to other choc fundraisers)
- The initial gimmicks got some great laughs
- People made up their mind about your offering pretty quickly
- People who bought at the start will more like continue to buy from you (and vice versa)
- We identified our customer-evangelists who were our highest spenders as well as spread ‘the word’
- Customers expected a new and funnier campaign daily. When they didn’t get one, they still bought (although they would give you a good-humoured serve)

How does this little exercise relate to blogging?

Is your blog like a box of Freddos? Is it a commodity or is there a high degree of differentiation compared to other blogs (or even other media?) Do you know if your readers are coming just for the content or the interaction? Do they see your blog as a means to pass the day or something they draw information for practical application? Based on this, how do you package your product? Do you dress it up with witty commentary, or do you focus on newsreader-like dissemination of the facts?

Answer these questions (as a start) and you will find that you’re on your way to building a group of sticky clientele that will keep on buying your virtual Freddos.