Creative Agency Secrets

These are things I enjoy and so do well.  I’ve done most of them many times and can give you references, if you need.

In no particular order….

1 - Mentoring and coaching anyone with business development responsibility or who has to collaborate with biz dev to do their job better and get results

2 - Moving the whole company to an Enterprise 2.0 operation.  This is a more open relationship with its customers and prospects though using web 2.0 techniques (for yourselves not clients) and creating the open culture internally that enables outsiders to recognise the ‘personality’ of the agency - bypassing traditional outbound communication methods

3 - Facilitating an away day for a client or your senior team

4 - Improving your new business methods and, particularly, pitching

5 - Running a training session on "New business for non-new biz people"

More links to eager entrants to the draw….

Gayla Mom Gadget
Mark McGuinness Wishful thinking

Internet Marketing
Sara Pajama Professional
The Beef Jerky Blog
Gadist
Nancy Money Relations
AlphaBlogs
Vijay Contester
LaurenMarie Creative Curio
Betshopboy
Isabella Mori Moritherapy

Duncan Carver is a clever man.  He makes a fine living thinking up canny things to help online marketers like myself improve our ability to promote our products and services.
This is his latest wheeze.

I recommend you check out this new free service that will help to drive more targeted visitors to your blog at absolutely no cost… Blogrush

…it also works passively to increase the amount of exposure your blog receives over time. This one is set to be hot and produce excellent results for early movers so I would highly recommend you take the 5 minutes to install it…

And so I installed it.
You can see it below on the bottom left side of the page.
I have set it up to display ‘marketing’ blog posts…. not targeted enough IMO and certainly not for my needs if I were onto tight linking strategies.

But hey, it was free. 

Let’s see how it performs.  If you want it, click on the Blogrush image on my page (to give me the credit!) or the link above.

A familiar theme to those out there working with real companies - there are an awful lot of them not even beginning to get working on actually using Web 2 tools. [backstory here].

Joe Mckendrick on the FastForward Blog has researched CIOs (now they really should be out there doing this stuff….) and 11% don’t.  Nothing at all.

Key findings

Here’s a rundown on what they personally use. Note that only 11%
said “none of the above.” It must be strange to work in a company in
which the CIO doesn’t touch any technology.

Video over the Web — 54%
Wikis — 49%
Blogs — 48%
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) — 47%
Podcasts — 39%
Social networking (e.g., tagging, social bookmarks, community sites such as del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Technorati) — 33%
Expertise location and sharing — 21%
Mashups — 13%
Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) — 12%
Instant mobile updates (e.g., Twitter) — 11%
None of the above — 11%

Dropped into the glorious boathouse offices of EML earlier this summer. They overlook the river Thames at Kingston and are only a short walk from the centre of town.  Dreamy.

Richard Parker is MD and has succeeded in growing the business with three new members of the organisation since we did a strategy session in August 2006.  Great work!  They are now the leading PR firm in the UK for key niches in the tech PR sector - a great achievement.

And to celebrate, they’ve had a new logo designed.

Had a steamy little cup of coffee with Rory Sutherland in the Cannery wasteland last month.  He’s a man always on the lookout for a new anecdote…. and I think I supplied a couple of appropriate ones.

We compared notes on what we are reading.
I’m doing "When we Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris (adland life in Chicago during the 90s slump) while he’s into "Get Smashed" by Sam Delaney.
   

We exchanged ideas on how to get the best out of Network Rail (annual season tickets for short journeys), driving into the office late, and what’s going on in mobile marketing.

I’m introducing him to Hugh McLeod, Red Spider and Beep Marketing….. and he’s looking out for jobs for me with small (er) agencies.

I am getting some interesting links from the prize giveaway David is running on his website.

Vikram Agarwal
John from Online Investing to Make Money
Michelle Van’s Shoestring Startup
Nate Average Joe Blogger
Skunky Skunky’s Monkey
Vijay Siteguide
Dean Technical Itch
Million Dollar Blog
Laura WritingThoughts
Random Encounters

Agent Sully Life Learning Today

Just received the 2 parcels
Hilariously addressed to “Rubella Carol”

Now, my Mother once received a parcel addressed to Mrs Caravan [her address is Mrs Caroe, Vann, Hambledon] so it was a fair approximation!

I have been reading David Airey’s blog for a while now and he is about to celebrate a year in the blogosphere with a competition prize draw.  David does logo design.

Prizes have been donated by his readership, including me….

4 hour business growth consultation with Rebecca Caroe, via telephone / Skype, or face-to-face in London / Cambridge. Rebecca is a business growth consultant for creative agencies, so if you’re looking to expand your company then this is the prize for you. If you want Rebecca to visit your offices simply pay her travel expenses.

And as a clever piece of web marketing he’s suggesting the link uses the word, logo design.… great way to get incoming links all using text he has in his SEO list.  And, being a gracious type of a guy, he is offering you the chance to have multiple entries in the competition, here’s how.

Feel free to add any other information you like, PLUS, for every 5 prize sponsors you link to (they’re all listed above), you’ll get 1 extra entry into the draw.

After writing your entry, email me the URL so I can check it out. I’ll add your entry into the prize draw.

Get one entry by subscribing to my website
Subscribe to my website, either by RSS or by email, and in your first update you’ll see a code word at the bottom. Simply email me with the code word for an entry into the prize draw.

MAXIMISE your chance of winning
If you want to achieve the maximum number of draw entries, here’s what you’ll do:

    * Publish a blog post about the giveaway using the details above
    * Link to the prize sponsors in your post (1 extra draw entry for every 5 sponsors linked to)
    * Subscribe to my site by RSS or by email
    * Email me with the code word from subscribing and the URL of your blog post