LRB; One year old and hot as hell.

Hello all; I’m proud to report today that LRB is one year old.

It’s been an interesting year, beginning with the thought “why don’t I try to build a blog”, followed by “is anyone actually reading this blog”, then “you know what I don’t think anyone is reading this, so I’m just going to shoot my mouth off randomly”, to “OMG there are people reading it and they actually like it”, etc.

So the end result? My original intention was to find more clients and generate more business for my agency BA360; so did I accomplish that? Yes and no; you see, when you write about advertising, clients don’t read it; other advertising agencies read it, a point that slowly occurred to me through a dense fog of ignorance.

So what I ended up with was a lot of partnership inquires rather than client inquires. As dumb luck would have it, these partnerships eventually led to clients, and then the creation of a new company, ZeroDegrees. So did I accomplish my goal? In a bumbling, rambling, circular sort of “hey dumb ass” way… I guess I did.

So what’s it all mean anyway?

It’s simple; when you lead with content, you will build traffic… just make sure that content is targeted (LRB’s content missed the original target mark). Case in point our in-house experiment missniuniu.com; our original goal of building traffic through viral content proved we could pull numbers; but recent developments (which I’ll case study later) has shown we can mold missniuniu into a brand supporting powerhouse; in fact by traffic numbers, missniuniu is now one of China’s top fashion bloggers. I’ll get into the why and how of this later, suffice it to say we came, we blogged, we conquered.

So what’s next? As some of you guys may notice, a few months back I split LRB into two parts; the other being zerosocialmedia.com – this has led to an average of about 2000 hits per month to ZD’s site and has put us on the industry map. Next? I’ll probably meld them back together under LRB’s banner, and turn ZD into service-oriented site (you’ll see this happen toward the end of the week). Was it a mistake to split LRB, and what did it acomplish? Well you see, strategically I… hey what’s that thing RIGHT BEHIND YOU? Oh wow – that was something wasn’t it? Whew!

Anyhoo, we’ll be moving forward with meld the two blogs into one this week; and when I get a chance, I’ll update you on the business leads and partnerships we’ve been able to gather over this one year journey. My original intuition was semi-correct; thankfully it was the semi that led to sustainable business (whew!). I know I’ve been lazy in posting lately, so if you’re one of the readers who regularly drag your eyes though this sophomoric text, fear not! We’ll be back soon with our regular scheduled programming.

Related articles from around the web.

• The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business (problogger.net)
• Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog (problogger.net)
• How to Brand Yourself Without Alienating Your Company (socialmediatoday.com)
• Is Your Agency Making Social Media Easy? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Review: ‘Art & Copy’ Profiles Mad Men, Women of Advertising’s Rise (wired.com)
• 7 Of The Biggest Advertising Mistakes (slideshare.net)
• Is it the end of the line for the digital agency? (adliterate.com)

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