Anyone who spends a lot of time in the social media echo chamber will know, there's a great deal of chest beating that goes on about followers, accolades and rankings.
Though a lot of A-Listers are there by merit, if you go to the bottom of the league tables you will often find blogs and sites that are just as insightful, if not more so, than their higher placed peers. They simply haven't promoted themselves as hard, or are just there by chance.
Over Christmas I tested this out by going to the AdAge Power 150 - it's actually more like the power 1000 - the index of the most read marketing blogs in the English speaking world. I wanted to expand my reading list, but rather than doing the obvious thing, I went to the second half of the table.
Many are there for a reason - they are defunct, or are blatant sales sites.
Others are excellent reads, and I wanted to put forward five examples that might not have thousands of subscribers, but I recommend book marking. By doing so, you get access to thoughts and opinions that most others don't.
Here are my five in no particular order. With the exception of Yaybia! I hadn't read any of them before this week.
The Balihoo Kennel. This blog was the source for my recent sponsored species post. Also good, this article about a California maths teacher who dealt with budget cuts by soliciting ads on exam papers.
Cultural fuel by Leo Burnett's Frankfurt office. Filled full of good info. You can also download their monthly newsletter.
Yaybia! I am cheating a bit here as I already link to them via my blog roll on the right. Based in Minneapolis, Erin, Libby and their co-writers are, I gather either looking for or have just got jobs in advertising.
It's well written, contains interesting little observations and the team at Yaybia! show what any graduate wanting to get in the industry should be doing. Give these people a job before someone else snaps them up!
A Canadian blog, thanks to 'Tell Ten Friends', I now know what Soup and StoryTlr are.
Pure Thinking. An interesting agency and an interesting blog to boot.
I should add two important caveats to this post:
This definitely isn't meant to be patronising to the blogs concerned.
My point is that it's good to break away from the herd and look outside of the standard reading list.
Case in point, one of the scores used to put together the AdAge list is Todd Andrlik's (the guy who created the league table) own perception of the quality of each blog - it's the first figure you see beside each site listing.
Yaybia!, Cultural Fuel and Pure Thinking all have a maximum score of 14 from Todd - higher than the 12 that this blog gets. And if you invert the table based purely on what Todd thinks is good, you get a few of the "gurus"...along with plenty of people you've probably never heard of before.
Secondly, yes I display my AdAge badge on this site. Absolutely - I like having readers and people linking here. At the same time, I've always believed that if you are in this purely for the numbers you are on a hiding to nothing.
Anyway, happy hunting! I can almost guarantee you will come away better read and informed as a result.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the cred, Dirk! We always enjoy your posts as well, especially ones like this with new blogs to check out. It's what keeps the little guys like us going!
Dirk - Thanks for the shout out regarding the Balihoo Kennel. Glad you enjoyed the posts!
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