Monday, July 10, 2006

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing Blogs - Week 12

Here's the standings for Week 12, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 5,910 (LW - 1)(+252)
2 - Gaping Void - 17,242 (LW - 2)(+239)
3 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,086 (LW - 3)(+335)
4 - Creating Passionate Users - 18,444 (LW - 4)(+9)
5 - Marketing Shift - 44,012 (LW - 5)(-1,394)
6 - HorsePigCow - 48,444 (LW - 6)(+239)
7 - Coolzor - 64,293 (LW - 7)(+1,346)
8 - The Viral Garden - 73,041 (LW - 8)(+8,677)
9 - Church of the Customer - 81,932 (LW - 10)(+3,760)
10 - What's Next - 82,397 (LW - 9)(+209)
11 - Emergence Marketing - 89,528 (LW - 12)(+1,089)
12 - Brand Autopsy - 90,120 (LW - 11)(+280)
13 - Jaffe Juice - 104,737 (LW - 14)(+919)
14 - Diva Marketing - 112,306 (LW - 16)(+6,449)
15 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 115,038 (LW - 15)(-773)
16 - New School of Network Marketing - 155,671 (LW - 18)(+20,656)
17 - Marketing Headhunter - 171,469 (LW - 17)(-6,540)
18 - Logic + Emotion - 188,594 (LW - 22)(+36,194)
19 - What's Your Brand Mantra? - 194,329 (LW - 19)(-3,679)
20 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 217,287 (LW- 20)(-3,711)
21 - Marketing Roadmaps - 235,539 (LW - 21)(-16,068)
22 - WonderBranding - 249,094 (LW - 24)(+4,956)
23 - The Origin of Brands - 260,232 (LW - UR)
24 - Movie Marketing Madness - 277,017 (LW - UR)
25 - Johnnie Moore's Weblog - 306,175 (LW - UR)



First of all, I've decided to pull FutureLab from the rankings. This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but the main reason why, is I don't it's fair to have individual bloggers that are posting original material, competing against a group blog that's cross-posting entries that were originally posted on its member blogs. If FutureLab wants to start featuring original material from its contributors, I'll be happy to add them back, but until that happens, we don't really have a 'level' playing field if they are allowed to stay in. Looking back, I probably should have made this rule up front, but you blog and learn.

In the Top 8, the first 8 spots stayed put, with Church of the Customer having a nice week to move up to #9. Coolz0r and The Viral Garden also had good weeks. Outside the Top 10, Logic + Emotion scored the biggest move of the week, shooting up over 36,000 spots in the Alexa rankings, and 3 spots in the Top 25. Kim Klaver's newly-named New School of Network Marketing had a big week, as did Diva Marketing and WonderBranding.

Attack of the niche blogs! Movie Marketing Madness, IMO the best niche marketing blog on the internet, has FINALLY cracked the Top 25. Long overdue, and I'm sure this is just the start of a nice run for MMM. But another niche marketing blog is making big waves outside the Top 25. Studio UES, the music marketing blog that has only been live for a few weeks, has already seen its Alexa ranking shoot up to almost 500,000. At this rate Tricia could be in the Top 25 by the end of the summer, if not sooner.

Keep in mind that in order to be included, or remain in the Top 25 Marketing blogs, a significant portion of your blog's content must deal with traditional marketing commentary. You can focus on selling, on customer service, on network marketing, even on advertising, but if I have to hunt back through 2-3 weeks of postings before I find anything directly related to marketing, you're probably not going to make the cut.

As always, next update is next Monday.

16 comments:

Chris Thilk said...

SCORE!

Anonymous said...

Mack,

I finally had a good enough ranking to qualify for the Top 25 and you missed me.

I just checked my Alexa ranking and it is 272,321, which would have put me in 24th.

Dang ! Maybe I can hold on til next week and finally get my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone !

Mack Collier said...

Congrats Chris, definitely LONG overdue!

Mack Collier said...

Mike I didn't miss you, just didn't see enough marketing content to justify ranking you. As I said at the end of the post: "You can focus on selling, on customer service, on network marketing, even on advertising, but if I have to hunt back through 2-3 weeks of postings before I find anything directly related to marketing, you're probably not going to make the cut."

Anonymous said...

Mack.

It's your ranking, so obviously I won't win an argument, but when 7 of the last 10 posts have to do with sales, selling and business related topics, I'd have to say you are mistaken.

Let's ask the studio audience ?

1) 10 Post ideas for Businesses That Blog

2) Businesses And Salesmen Need Competition To Be Great

3) Secrets You Need To Know About Selling

4) How To Tell Prospects From Suspects

5) What Customers Want In A Salesperson

6) Links To Business Bloggers

7) The Rule Of Tolerance With Regard To Sales

How in the world can those not have to do with marketing ?

That's 7 of the 10 on the first page, Mack...no need to look very far back is there ?

As I said, it's your ranking and you're welcome to exclude whomever you want, BUT my blog has more to do with marketing than 3 of the Top 10 which have zero marketing related posts on their front page.

I'll not list them here, because it's not their fault that you have them ranked, even though they have no 'business' being there.

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

Keep in mind that in order to be included, or remain in the Top 25 Marketing blogs, a significant portion of your blog's content must deal with traditional marketing commentary. You can focus on selling, on customer service, on network marketing, even on advertising, but if I have to hunt back through 2-3 weeks of postings before I find anything directly related to marketing, you're probably not going to make the cut.

Just curious. That sure encompasses a lot. So after that, what are the criteria?

Mack Collier said...

Mike, guess we'll have to agree to disagree. As I said before I'll be happy to continue to check out your blog, but right now, I don't think the marketing content you have is consistent with the rest of the Top 25. That's my opinion. If you disagree, feel free to start your own list.

Me Strauss, the main criteria is, a sizable portion of your blog's content must focus on marketing commentary, not simply news postings. Commentary about marketing news is fine, and you'll find this on most if not all of the blogs in the Top 25. The reason I make this distinction is what I call the 'Marketing Vox' rule. Marketing Vox is a blog/website that focuses on Marketing News stories, and has several posting every day, which makes it completely different from the other blogs in the Top 25. Since there are several postings everyday, Vox's traffic is much higher, and their Alexa rank the last time I checked was around 5,000, which would easily make them the top marketing blog, if I added them.

On the other hand, most advertising blogs DO focus on news stories, with several posts a day, such as AdRants, AdFreak, and Ad-Rag.

Anonymous said...

You win Mack, since it's your ranking, but it's now officially BOGUS.

There are 3 blogs in the Top 10 with not one post about marketing on them.

And I rather quit than rewrite the same news as what your comment suggests. Original marketing related content is much more likely to gather readers than " marketing commentary ". What this suggests is blogs that blog about what other blogs are blogging about. Can you spell s-t-u-p-i-d ?

Like we need more commentary about marketing.

Why not rename you ranking to more closely resemble this, such as -Top 25 Marketing Commentary Blogs, or to more closely resemble the actual gathering here - The Favorite 25 Blogs Of Mack, since some of the Top 25 are really just friends who you didn't have the cojones to not list, even though they don't post about marketing or marketing commentary.

Mack Collier said...

"Why not rename you ranking to more closely resemble this, such as -Top 25 Marketing Commentary Blogs, or to more closely resemble the actual gathering here - The Favorite 25 Blogs Of Mack, since some of the Top 25 are really just friends who you didn't have the cojones to not list, even though they don't post about marketing or marketing commentary."

Yes that's why I waited till Week 12 to add Chris, and still haven't gotten around to adding Jordan and Ryan and Karl and Paul, and Michael. Hope they don't stop talking to me.

Again Mike, if you don't like the list, make your own.

Anonymous said...

No thanks Mack, I'll not make another worthless list, I'm going to do two things with some value to them.

I'm gonna ADD original content to my blog thta includes marketing related content and DEDUCT your feed from my reader.

Mack Collier said...

BTW Mike I went back and checked your blog again. You have 10 possible categories for which YOU classify your own posts, including Marketing Simplified, Selling Simplified, Advertising Simplified, Customer Service Simplified, Living Simplified, Blogging Simplified, Mike's Point Of View, Simply Stupid, Simply Sales Contests, and finally Simply Good.

Since March 1st, you have made 71 posts. How many of those posts show up when I click on the 'Marketing Simplified' category?

5.

So according to YOUR own guidelines, you feel that only FIVE out of 71 posts left since March 1st should go in your 'Marketing Simplified' category.

I think you just proved my point for me.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark!

A quick comment from the lone original poster on Futurelab.

While our egoes will take a while to recover from being de-listed ;-) I can see your point. As you say, you blog & learn. Each week, we remain amazed by our Alexa numbers - I guess Chris Anderson was right after all about that tail.

Still, as the point of the Futurelab blog is to act as a marketeer’s repository for the best thinking of sharp thinkers - which is why I post so little :-) - we evaluate its impact on different parameters than reach.

As such, we won’t just yet adapt our format to get re-listed (no disrespect intended). We are thinking about increasing the % of original posts from it’s current 8% to ca. 20%, yet probably won’t go much beyond that.

Anyway, good luck with the ranking & hope to you hit the TOP 5 soon !

Alain Thys

Anonymous said...

Just want to point our the difference between Alain's and Mike's responses. One of them showed grace and dignity. The other doesn't do as much.

Look. Mack's list has been very good to me. I can't complain. But if he decides to take me off one day. That is his right.

And besides, I don't blog to be on these lists. I blog becuase I can't not blog it's now part of my DNA. Maybe we can all remember why we do this in the first place.

Thank you Alain for setting an example.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, we (brainsonfire.com/blog) is 376,814. But we're workin' on it!!

Anonymous said...

Did I just say "we is?!" No wonder we can't make the top 25!

Mack Collier said...

Thanks Michelle and David. You both are right, you have to blog for the passion, not the rankings.

Alain, thanks for understanding. This was a very hard rule to implement for several reasons, and additionally, if DF goes solo as well, I'm going to have to make them go by the same rule, that the majority of the posts there have to be original content. My rough guesstimations are that if DF had its own domain name right now, that they'd be around #5.

Spike! It's funny that you just commented because I was planning on blogging about the great work BOF has done with Fiskars. I actually meant to weeks ago when John blogged about it on Brand Autopsy, but it slipped my feeble mind. I'll get a post up soon and maybe we can put the power of the Viral Community to work in helping BOF get in the Top 25!