Who is in control of your brand?

This list endeavours to rank all the lists on social media/marketing blogs in Australia.

Laurel Papworth discusses the importance of leaderboards in communities, what do you think ?

And one of Australia’s top bloggers, Darren Rowse, view’s on ‘top blog’ lists.

The problem with ‘Australian Blogs’ for marketers

Blog’s based in Australia don’t necessarily have an Australian readership. What we need is a ranking of the top blogs READ by Australians. Julian? Hitwise?

The music industry and internet industry have been butting heads for years on the issues of music piracy on the internet and lost revenues for record labels and artists (not that artists get much of it anyway).

A few models have been put together, like the 3 strikes law and some other subscription models, however, neither industry has come to an agreement without a fight, and Australia is still to decide on a strategy.

It’s clear in my mind that the music industries old world model is quickly dying, someone needs to show leadership to bring forth some new ideas and ways to monetise the industry in an ever digitised world.

UPDATE (9.20pm) File sharing is perceived by the music industry as music piracy without exception, in this case it isn’t, but it’s something the industry just can’t get over.

I was therefore excited today to read that Bacardi and Groove Armada announced the launch of a completely new approach called B-Live Share which embraces music file sharing.

From Reuters UK

Mark Earls seems to agree with me on this one…

This is news to nobody, however, the doom and gloom that the media push out about the drastic financial future is mostly setup to get an audience and sell advertisng. (In my opinion)

Yea, great, whatever, but what do I have to back this up…?

Well in 2008 it wasn’t kept quiet that the automotive industry is dying, and too right, those big metal carbon producing cars are against our Good Australian Morals, right? Well, yea, wait no, 2008 was one of the biggest years in history. According to the FCAI’s (Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries) recent news release.

There was certainly a dip in the last quarter, but based on the first 9 months the Australian automotive sector had sold enough cars for the entire year that the last 3 didn’t matter.

The automotive sector sold over 1,000,000 units which resulted in the second highest sales figures on record… WHAT? So we’re running out of money?

Sure the future might be bleak, but hey, lets look at that… Today one of Australia’s top advertising industry magazines B&T’s second article was a positive one about confident consumers, HOWEVER…

The Australian Centre for Retail Studies (ACRS) revealed there is optimism among
Australians for the year ahead,
…
79% said they are unlikely to buy a car in the next 12 months.

79%? WOW that’s a big percentage, but wait, how often to we buy cars, every year? No, of course not every couple of years, so if 21% of people are buying a car this year that’s pretty good. So sure, the FCAI say they’re predicting 880,000 sales, a 12% drop from all time highs, or on the flip side, a very good year. If anything I think petrol prices would’ve freaked everyone out and encouraged them to use fossil fuel free/efficient transport, like bikes (which had their biggest year ever, and outsold cars in unit numbers!).

Simon Burrett, managing director of The Foundry and chairman of ACRS Advisory Board said: “I don’t buy into the ‘sky is falling, everything is a disaster’ theory. I’m seeing consumer confidence rising and I think the press tends to focus on what’s happening overseas, which has been doom and gloom, but what I’m seeing locally is that customers aren’t buying into it.” Burrett said advertisers should come to market with confident statements: “We need to let customers believe that it’s going to be OK.”

What do you think? Have you noticed a ‘real world’ impact, i.e. friends losing jobs, maybe you’ve lost money in shares, people ranksacked your house or maybe you’re not buying a car?

As social media analysts and consultants fall off the pages of the AFR and mainstream media, the excitement is rapidly declining.

In 2009 excitement will be replaced with its less glamorous older cousin ‘measurement‘. People and brands around the world have experiemented with all kinds of social media and its been fun, but now its time to count the cookies, and deliver solid a ROI.

Kate over at Social Abacus brings together the predictions of industry leaders, analysts and researchers on social measurement in 2009.

Top 4 predictions for 2009:

* We will substantially advance our understanding of individuals and the meaningful connections they have.

* We will identify methods to tap what people are *really* thinking, feeling, and paying attention to, meanwhile gaining insight on what a measurement is truly capturing.

* We will determine how to measure the value of social interactions and attach financial value, whether we’re monetizing attention or a new medium.

* We will build better tools to manage– analyze and visualize– massive volumes of data, primarily tapping the evolving social graph.