Posts Tagged ‘David Leonhardt’
What’s So Funny About Social Media and Online Marketing?
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010What has 28 links and will make you laugh? This blog post! From social media cartoons and contextual advertising gone wrong to dysfunctional agency-client relationships and the best (and worst) online ads, here are some of the most amusing, creative and remarkable blog posts and videos of 2009.
Some of this content may not be suitable for most office environments, elderly relatives, children, pets, potted plants or those who simply lack any sense of humor.
Amusing, Creative and/or Just Plain Odd Blog Posts
Social Media
Top 30 Social Media Jokes, Clips and Cartoons! Episode 4 by Thoughtpick
An outstanding collection of social media-themed cartoons and videos. Mostly safe for work.
The Twitter Avatar Roast: 10 Types of Profile Images by Tremendous News
An inspired taxonomy of Twitter avatar types, from “The People Who Think We’re So Interested In Them We Need To See Their Childhood Photos” to “The Nothing-Is-More-Natural-Than-Me-Just-Kinda-Laughing-Not-Noticing-You’re-Taking-A-Picture-Of-Me Guys.”
Ten Reasons NOT to Use Social Media by Sanera People Development Company
Exhausted from trying to explain the benefits to social media to clueless executives, Alicia Arenas switches gears here and delightfully makes the case for “why you should avoid social media like the plague,” with reasons such as “Because what your customers say about you and your company is irrelevant” and “Because participating in the world’s fastest growing communication tool is not a good use of your time.”
How social media is like the seventh grade by Training Marketer
How automated social media responses make online introductions as awkward as junior high.
SEO, SEM and Web Design
You might be a redneck SEO if… by David Leonhardt’s SEO and Social Media Marketing
David Leonhardt takes on Jeff Foxworthy with his own list of 50 signs you may be a redneck SEO, including “If your other Mac is a truck, you might be a redneck SEO.”
The 100 most funny and unusual 404 error pages by Blog of Francesco Mugnai
Who says 404 error pages have to be boring? Check out this outstanding collection of amusing, creative and occasionally bizarre examples of what you may see when clicking on an outdated link or mistyping a URL.
10 unbelievably cute 404 page illustrations by Limeshot Design
If your taste in custom 404 error pages runs more toward sweet than strange, then check out this collection of plump cartoon animals and other frilly stuff.
20 Funny, Clueless, Weird, And Existential Google Keyword Searches by MediaPost Search Insider
Wondering if anyone has ever entered “where did I put my keys” into a Google search box, Rob Garner discovers an array of loopy searches, from “Why am I hot” (9,900 searches per month) to “Why am I so broke (16 searches per month – comforting to know that narcissism is so much more common than destitution, I guess) to “What is the number for 911″ (yes, these people can vote too).
Contextual Advertising Gone Wild – 20 Examples by Pedro Laboy
***** 5 Stars
As anyone involved in online advertising knows, contextual advertising attempts to match ads with the surrounding text, so that, for example, if you’re reading an article about European sports cars, you’ll see an ad from Porsche or BMW. Sometimes, however, this can go horribly wrong–as the examples in this post demonstrate. A Bank of America ad showing up next to a news story on mortgage fraud; an ad for cheap life insurance next to a story about the untimely death of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin; an ad for Kaplan University with the headline “Jobs become obsolete; talent doesn’t” next to a report about Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence from Apple. Ouch! Some of these will make you laugh, others will make you cringe.
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell by The Oatmeal
Anyone involved in design will relate to this; the decline of a design from the “everything is cool…the client communicates their needs and you set expectations” stage through “minor changes” and the everyone-gets-a-say stage through the final abomination of the original, georgeous design.
Advertising & PR
The LOL Cats Take On The World Of Freelancing by Hi, I’m Grace Smith
Grace Smith imagines the LOL Cats from I Can Has Cheezeburger taking on various types of challenging clients in the world of freelancing.
The Publicity Stunt Hall Of Fame by Taylor Herring Public Relations
A collection of funny, clever and inspiring PR stunts from around the world; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll pick some trivia for the next happy hour, you’ll maybe even be inspired in these vignettes about the origins of the Tour de France and Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to the “Barbie Street,” how Liz Hurley became famous, and much more.
Six Business Lessons from the North Pole by The Communicator
Highly creative take on Santa’s marketing and business brilliance, from branding (the red suit is instantlyrecognizable) to human resources (who’s ever heard of an unhappy elf?).
Hard to Categorize
32 Absurd Action Figures by TrendHunter
A bizarre collection of action figures the world probably doesn’t really need, but some people will buy regardless, such as the cast of the “Twilight” movies, political action figures (including Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and BHO), the Katy Perry doll, and the “Jesus Action Figure and Cleaning Kit.” Really.
Won Park – The Master of Origami Paper Folding by The Design Inspiration
“Bending, twisting, and folding, Won Park creates life-like shapes inspired by objects living and not– both in stunning detail.” An amazing collection of Origami art using $1 bills.
Review of webmarketcentral.blogspot.com by Global Business Blog Reviews
This showed up in my Google Alerts one day; a two-paragraph review of my old blog. Who knew a marketing blog could be “visually restorative” and “enchanting”? Well I thought it was funny anyway.
Funny, Clever or Otherwise Remarkable Videos
Billy Mays’ Resurrectifier Commercial – YouTube
Jimmy Kimmel explains how late pitchman Billy Mays is able to keep selling products even after his untimely passing. Tasteless, but funny.
Why Print isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time… by Junta42
Remarkably creative spoof commercial for “The UK’s best handheld for 40 years” – the Sun newspaper.
The Vendor Client relationship – in real world situations by Erin Blaskie
If you’ve ever worked in a marketing agency, you’ll find this video hilariously familiar. In you work on the client side, hopefully you won’t and you can just laugh at the inconsideration of others.
Top 5 Media Industry Parody Videos – a Little Too Close for Comfort? by iMedia Connection
***** 5 Stars
Matthew DiPietro collects some of the funniest agency-related videos of last year. The language gets a bit rough in spots though, so wear your headphones or earbuds if watching at work.
Resco Packer-Viking Week – YouTube
Mail fulfillment house Resco created this video to some publicity in the Minnesota-Wisconsin region by capitalizing on the passionate Vikings-Packers rivalry-which was intensified last year by the defection of Packers legend Brett Favre signing on with Minnesota. But this destined-to-be-a-classic video really speaks to the primal emotions of fandom anywhere, in any sport. And it’s very funny.
Meet The Fune, Microsoft’s New Smart Phone (It’s Really Hot) by TechCrunch
“It’s a phone that runs Windows Vista, and it connects to the Internet through America Online.” Get a sneak peek at Microsoft’s answer to the Android and iPhone.
VerticalResponse – Nuthin’ But an App Thang – YouTube
An email service provider rap video. `Nuff said.
Comic Relief – The Process by Web Marketing Therapy
What stop signs would look like if they were designed by clients and advertising agencies. It’s not pretty, but it is funny.
14 hilariously effective online campaigns by iMedia Connection
From rapping preppies and a disturbing Australian Flash Dance take-off to John McCain and Paris Hilton, Jim Nichols reviews a slew of the most entertaining viral video ads of last year.
Evian Roller Babies international version – YouTube
The gold standard of viral videos. With almost 24 million views, yeah, chances are you’ve seen this, but it’s still absolutely amazing.
Top 10 Shockingly Bad Tech Ads by Listverse
Some are more tragic than funny, but these can be the results when bad video happens to good people. The vintage clips at the end promoting Windows 1.0 and Windows 386 are priceless.
2009 The Year in Social Media by The Group News Blog
A nine-minute wrapup of the social media “highlights” of 2009.
The Insidious Nofollow Tag: An SEO Rant
Sunday, February 14th, 2010I’m normally a positive, upbeat kind of guy, and as someone who’s been writing professionally since the days of disco, rarely at a loss for words. Yet mention the “nofollow” tag, and that all changes. I, like many other many other web marketing professionals, am left sputtering with a mix of disgust and rage, fumbling for an adjective that conveys sufficient contempt: despicable, vile, loathsome, abhorrent, abominable, wretched, odious, detestable, downright evil.
The nofollow tag was misguidedly inflicted upon the online world by Google in 2005. According to Wikipedia (among the worst nofollow offenders), “The nofollow HTML attribute was originally designed to stop comment spam on blogs. Blog readers and bloggers were well aware of the immense problem. Just like any other type of spam affects its community, comment spam affected the entire blogging community, so in early 2005 (Google and Blogger engineers) designed the attribute to address the problem and the nofollow attribute was born.”
Though the originators of WordPress have developed a far more elegant and inoffensive solution to the comment spam problem with Akismet, the execrable nofollow tag remains with us, like a cancer impervious to drugs or radiation.
The justification for the continued use of this repugnant scrap of code is to prevent passing link juice from listings on directory and social bookmarking sites to spammy or other objectionable content. But, to be charitable, the nofollow tag is to the world of web links what “let’s just be friends” is to romantic relationships. It’s a way for site owners to say: “I’m happy to use your content to build my traffic, but not to reciprocate. I don’t want anyone to think we’re together.”
An alarming number of once-respectable social bookmarking sites—Digg, delicious, Mister Wong, Reddit, Mixx, Bibsonomy, Jumptags, Faves, Yahoo! Buzz, Simpy—have now instituted dastardly nofollow tags. It’s easy to determine if your favorite site should now become an ex-favorite, just “view source” in your browser and search for rel=”nofollow.” If it’s there for any reason other than Pagerank sculpting (e.g. nofollowing pages like “Contact Us”), move along. If you’re trying to promote your own content, it won’t work. If you are trying to promote some else’s, you won’t help them much.
Hey, here’s a novel idea: if someone is using your blog, social media site or directory to link to spam, porn, hate speech, discount online pharmaceuticals, miracle weight loss nonsense, or work-at-home scams—DELETE THE LINK. Why is okay to have such crap listed on your site, regardless of whether or not you’re passing link juice?
In fairness, this pernicious string of characters once served a purpose, as a less-than-ideal solution to a serious problem. But today, Akismet solves the link spam problem on blogs. The community can be used to solve the problem on social bookmarking sites. A little bit of old-fashioned work can deal with issue on directory sites.
I’m not alone on this. It’s time to demand better, to rid the world of the reprehensible, insidious nofollow tag once and for all. Ideally, Google should announce it’s no longer recognizing the tag. Absent that, site owners should boycott it. And if they don’t, users should walk.
Note: This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in October 2009. But it all remains true.
