Every week, I read and watch lots of business and marketing articles and videos. Most are just good opinions pieces, but every few weeks there is a real corker that I want to share with people.

And this video by Gary Vaynerchuck is a corker. So please enjoy:)

Welcome to my first ‘Incomplete Guide to Newcastle’s New Influencers’ list for 2010. It’s populated with a lot more local Newie bloggers (including business blogs) and a few Newcastle expats.

But, I’m still on the look out for a local user-generated site (please help).

So, if you have time please go and visit as many of our new influencers as possible. And when you get there, don’t be afraid join the conversation. Make a comment.

Some write often. Some don’t. Some use images. Some use words. Some are on radio and most are not. But, they all look at the world in a very different way.

Life In General & Armchair Philosophy

Blackbird Corner, The Spice Rack, Crow’s Garage, pryorcommitment, the best of all possible worlds, Mitchell Davies Blog, My kid is too funny, Belinda-Jane,  Miss Kool, Killing Mind, Glen Evans, Puff Pieces, Adam Purcell.com, Whalen Flynn, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think, An Account of Social Commentary, Five Thumbs Down, That Ducati Guy, Lexxie Couper, The Rant-O-Matic, Tonight,Captain?, Miss Koolmeister, BryAntics, My Take On It,

Art, Technology, Design & Entertainment

eCommerce and Online Shopping Systems, Trends in Communication, Peter Bower, Just Creative Design, Deanjrobinson.com, RocksolidPR, Newcastle Music Directory, The Plastic Age, Matthew Packer, Deadly Bloody Serious, Ivan Vanderbyl, One fine Day, I’m With The Band, Newism, Zen Harris, Living Light, Steve Happ, Jacob Talbot, Hunter Arts Network

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Get Sticky. Now, get it on your iPhone. Yes, my friends the team at Sticky have launched our very first iPhone App.

Its totally free and a fun way for readers of our popular inbound marketing blog, Get Sticky to get the latest updates. Plus its allows our team to explore the mobile apps market.

To download our App search for Get Sticky on your iPhone app store or go to
http://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/get-sticky-inbound-marketing-blog/id350964188?mt=8

Its not going to be on iTunes Top Chart for Free Apps, but we hope corporate marketers will find it useful.

So, why not help a little Aussie team of inbound marketers and download your Get Sticky iPhone app today. And if you could give us a favourable rating in the iTunes score, we’ll love you even more.

Thanks in advance for your support. We appreciate it.

Here’s a blatant promotion on my blog. If you are marketer or CEO who’s organization is struggling to come to terms with the digital revolution. Then, you ought to be interested in our latest news from Sticky Advertising. We’ve dropped the ‘Advertising.’

And, we’ve finally taken the plunge and repositioned the agency as digital with a focus on advanced digital strategies.

Why?  So we can take advantage of a growing need to manage the transition from a mainly offline business and marketing model to a growing digital and social business model. It also means higher profit margins and lower costs compared to advertising’s traditional cash cow of buying media which is now basically a commodity being sold by every Tom, Dick and Mary.

The process of change has been exciting, but at times scary especially for our principal, Craig (Media Hunter) Wilson – it’s his money we are playing with. However, Sticky has quickly scored some big goals by signing up a number of large national accounts. There is talk now of going International.

If you are interested you might want to see our new revamped Sticky and GetSticky sites…

I don’t usually make New Year Resolutions, but for 2010 I’ve decide to conjure up a few resolutions to help me focus on my personal brand and not to get distracted.

And by the time you read this, I will almost surely have reneged on the first two. I hereby resolve…

1. to be kinder to those marketers and business people who just don’t get it. People are real, they have real feelings and always deserve respect (most of the time).

2. to be kinder to those laggards at the Australian Marketing Institute – this one is going to be hard.

3. to be kinder to Craig Wilson(@mediahunter) by making more of an effort to respond to his emails, document all our Inbound Marketing processes and contribute more to our corporate blogs.

4. to be kinder to my clients. I’m not actually cruel and I don’t ignore them, but I can always improve.

5. to be more creative with my blog content by producing and publishing more focused content on digital and marketing strategy. And start using my nice new Flip video.

6. to be ready to challenge all industry sacred cows.

7. to be more conversational by means of exchanging a few extra words.

8. to be more inquisitive of all things digital and marketing.

But occasionally, I’ll still throw a few snowballs from time to time…

What do you think?

Google has revealed its new real-time search feature. Now people will be able to see real-time results coming from newly published blog posts, web pages, Tweets and updates from MySpace and Facebook.

Go to http://google.com/trends & click on any of the topics. Check out the demo video below.

It seems every corporate marketer has started writing their marketing priorities and budgets for 2010. The biggest issue they’ll need to address is whether they challenge old marketing practices and shift more of their marketing budget into digital and social media or do they hold off.

For all those marketers who are planning to hold off for one reason or another, I’d like them to take a look at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts study on social media usage by the top 500 fastest-growing private companies in the US.

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I want to share this little marketing gem. A diamond crusted bit of marketing wisdom from Jack Trout’s latest book ‘Repositioning’ where he says of the current era of marketing change and competition:

If you’re not careful, nothing can kill a company more quickly than change. Like Competition, it continues to accelerate, thanks in great measure to “disruption technologies.

Even the largest companies are not protected from the ravages of change; in fact, the bigger a company is, the harder it will be for that company to survive. Go down and visit the corporate graveyard. You’ll find some once very big companies that are quite dead.

Today, Media Cafe launches what is thought to be a world first a ‘one-stop shop’ website to help media planners, buyers and sellers communicate more effectively. (mediacafe.com.au)

Media Cafe site aims to take the myriad of information which is available in the media world and groups it in easily searchable categories. While industry news will be a small part of Media Cafe, it offers a much more comprehensive suite of helpful tools for all media professionals.

Photo by Lucas Janin

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I’ve just read a very interesting series of blog posts by Allen Mitchell, where he talks about how marketers have made a BIG error – a misperception – that pervades everything marketers do. And OMG he doesn’t hold back on marketing’s traditional belief systems.

But, what is this whopping great big marketing error?

Image from Ralph Buckley

Well, it’s our industry’s belief that marketing is a ‘stimulus-response’ activity where marketers send out various types of stimuli to consumers, whose attitudes and behaviours are then changed, to elicit certain desired responses. I think I have to agree.

Because on this, Allen thinks marketing is suffering from a bad case of schizophrenia.

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