blog till you drop!
A cocktail of advertising, social media, and technology
Taking a break
Jan 22nd
It’s been a little quiet on here over the past week or so… I am not entirely sure whether it’s writer’s block, lack of time (perhaps inspiration), or maybe all of the above. I can’t even be asked to Tweet!
I’ll be back for sure when I have something good to share… And oh, tips to beat writer’s block greatly appreciated!
Should bloggers get paid to write blog posts?
Nov 15th
3-4 PR pitches land in my inbox each week; I don’t mind being pitch and will happily write about brands and products provided the content is relevant to my blog.
An agency recently offered me €70 to write about their latest social media campaign; this made feel somewhat uncomfortable as I don’t think that bloggers should be paid to write about brands/products and I think this is a worrying trend…
I am very much pro-incentivising bloggers for their time but favour product-based incentives, thus giving bloggers the opportunity to experience the brand/product in question first-hand.
What do you guys think? Should bloggers get paid to write blog posts?
UPDATE 17th November 2009:
- Matt Churchill: PR agencies must not pay bloggers
- Ben Cotton: The business of buying off bloggers
- Peter Sigrist: Blogging could disappear as quickly has it has risen
- PR Week article 25.11.09: PR community split over paying bloggers in PRWeek poll
Adventures in Twitterland… (bring back the link love)
Oct 15th
Funny things often happen in Twitterland… Today’s randomness definitely got me LOLing away behind my screen…
Back in the old days, bloggers used to link back to one another other as a sign of appreciation, and an effective way of sharing content. Linking back also helped increase our Page Rank and Technorati authority; we (bloggers) call this the Link Love. With conversations now moving to Twitter, linking back to other bloggers is sadly a behaviour in decline…
In an attempt to help my friends with their Page Rank, I’d like to introduce you to my blogging buddies Nicolas the Frenchie (who’s going to kill me for calling him Frenchie 
), pun-extraordinaire Hayley, Italiano vero Matteo and last but certainly not least, Gavin Heaton of Servant of Chaos fame who inspired me to write this post!
As always thanks for reading 
Blogs are stronger, better and faster than ever!
Oct 27th
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.These markets are conversations.
The Cluetrain Manifesto
According to a recent Wired article by Paul Boutin, blogging is dead. Interestingly, I read a similar article in French financial paper ‘Echos’ a couple of years ago that also predicted the end of blogs… and guess what? I read around 120 active blogs on a daily basis! The blogosphere is healthier than ever, and to quote Paul, the ‘amateur wordsmiths’ are in fact an amazing community to learn from!
Whilst I agree that the blogosphere can be littered with dead blogs, or a ‘a tsunami of paid bilge’, there are thousands of amazing active weblogs out there.
New tools such as Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook complement blogs but will never replace them. I use Twitter and Facebook to consolidate my existing relationship with bloggers, but 140 characters will never replace a blog post!
Twitter, FriendFeed and Flickr offer threaded conversations making it easy to reply to comments and interact with other users. Admittedly blogs are still a little behind when it comes to keeping track of ‘comments box’ conversations, but this is rapidly changing with the introduction of plugins such as phreadz, cocomments, or new kid on the block comment reply via email, which are turning blogs into interactive conversational tools.
It looks like quite a few members of the blogosphere disagree with Paul. I even wonder whether this article wasn’t written as a link bait; Technorati picked up 466 blog reactions (negative one would hope) to this very article.
On a different note, I’d like to welcome Rax to the blogosphere! There are still quite a few passionate bloggers out there after all 
Blog Action Day – poverty must end!
Oct 15th
Today is Blog Action Day. 10,369 (at time of writing) bloggers, podcasters and videocasters around the world have decided to address today the same topic, poverty, to raise awareness and trigger a discussion.
I live London, one of the coolest cities in the world, but cool has a hefty price-tag… We’ve all complained about Tube fares, our extortionate rent, but we nevertheless still shop till we drop!
We seem to have forgotten the millions of children and pensioners who live in poverty. And as the credit crunch is starting to bite, things will get worse…
So instead of buying that extra gin & tonic tonight, how about donating some of your hard earned pennies to a worthwhile charity and help end poverty…