How To Write The Best Damn Blog In The World II

I've got the secret punks, but do you think I'm gonna tell it to you? Hell no! If I've got the secret to the word's coolest , most traffic generating, most awesome, most digitally-ever-inspiring blog, do you think I'm gonna tell you without a dime? Fark no. I've got a matrix of metrics that you can masticate on for the next millenium and I'm not givin' up until I hear 'CA-CHING', about as loud as the Niagra Friggin' Falls (yes, that's a proper name). So give it up folks. Right here, before I tell ya'll.

Now are you ready?





































Whoa cowboy. I haven't that happy 'Ca-CHING' yet.























My hand's at my ear... I'm listenin' ...






























But I'm not hearin' anything ...


















Scroll summore, Cheap Charlie (that's a proper name in Vietnam)



























Ok. You've paid enough. At least in time and frustration.




Here's the answer:

W r i t e.

And then write more. Check the top 100 blogs on Technorati or any other rating site and you'll find they all have one thing in common. Bloggage. Quantity. One post a day or more than one post a day. Here at the Wild Wild East Dailies we're slacking a bit and only committed to three posts a week. But that's what I feel I can do comfortably and with a modicum of quality. A better writer might could do more.

But that's the secret. It's called 'writing'.

I recall a quote from the film 'Throw Mamma From The Train' with Danny DiVito and Billy Crystal. Crystal is a writing teacher at a small city college and he has a mantra by which he encourages his class everyday.

"A writer writes", he says. "A writer writes".

That's the secret.


For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Love: The Travis Diaries III

"Love: It's like one of those carnival rides you pay money for and they spin you around real fast - and when it's over you're dizzy, but everything else is still pretty much the same." - Travis



For more in the Travis Diaries, check here:

Sex: The Travis Diaries I
I'm a man, DAMMIT: The Travis Diaries II
Love: The Travis Diaries III
Tiger: The Travis Diaries IV
Ambivelence: The Travis Diaries V
Advertising People & Blogs: The Travis Diaries VI
What's Left?: The Travis Diaries VII
Year of the Tiger: The Travis Diaries VIII
She said: The Travis Diaries IX
Dreams: The Travis Diaries X
A Bad Day: The Travis Diaries XI
Svengali? The Travis Diaries XII
My Way: The Travis Diaries XIII

"I'M A MAN, DAMMIT": The Travis Diaries II

"Okay, I was coerced on leaving by a beautiful, if somewhat out of touch with reality girl, who held sex, money and travel in her quiver. Am I an idiot? No. I'm a man DAMMIT! I would have been an idiot had I had not gone on the trip. Case closed. "
- Travis

For more in the Travis Diaries, check here:

Sex: The Travis Diaries I
I'm a man, DAMMIT: The Travis Diaries II
Love: The Travis Diaries III
Tiger: The Travis Diaries IV
Ambivelence: The Travis Diaries V
Advertising People & Blogs: The Travis Diaries VI
What's Left?: The Travis Diaries VII
Year of the Tiger: The Travis Diaries VIII
She said: The Travis Diaries IX
Dreams: The Travis Diaries X
A Bad Day: The Travis Diaries XI
Svengali? The Travis Diaries XII
My Way: The Travis Diaries XIII

Is Infinite Wisdom Dead?

Well, that's not the kind of idea that can really die is it? Can we say that we're in Beta? And now retooling? Exactly. One partner is off learning that no amount of money can make a dream come true, and how to just show up everyday and do the work, and the other partner is learning that being right doesn't mean the same as being successful. Will Infinite Wisdom survive. Of course it will. Because the sum of our parts are not always equal to the whole - and once we learn that, we'll be good to go.

The road to total enlightenment takes time...

Hi all. For the next few days I'll be working on the business plan for Infinite Wisdom, so I will not be posting quite as regular for a few days.

In my post "How Not to Market in Asia: The importance of time, money, quality and knowing how much of each you need to succeed" I waxed philosophically about the idea that even in the best of circumstances, you are only allowed to have two of those attributes - the third - you must be flexible with. ie: If you want something high quality and fast, you need money. If you want something high quality and cheap, you need time - and so on.

What Infinite Wisdom has in abundance right now is quality, but a distinct lack of start-up cash. So what we need is time. I'm taking that time now, so that we don't have troubles later.

Please take your time to stroll around the site and look at some of the almost 200 older posts we have here. You can search any topic you like in the search bar - you may be surprised!

See you in a few days.

David.

Bentleys ain't squat in Vietnam nomore!

Move over boyz. Da Rolls Phantoms iz here in Vietnam and they're taking over from the Bentleys .

No longer a centrally planned government with it's feet in Stalinism, Vietnam has now embraced the worst of western society - making its countrymen look like total peons while the chosen drive around in the economic equivalent of the Space Shuttle. I'm absolutely sure that Ho Chi Minh, the President and holistic leader of his people, who refused to live in the Presidential mansion and had a far more simple home built on the grounds, would approve. Bollocks. Just take a look at the photos of Rolls Royce Phantoms, all shot right here in Vietnam, and notice particularly, the spare environs that surround them. Bollocks is right. I saw this same phenomena in Mongolia years ago when I went there to produce a TV show about the 2004 Olympics. In Mongolia, one of the poorest and most sparsely populated countries on the planet, there was no shortage of jet-black Hummers trolling the Gur infested countryside (pictured on the right), courtesy of the local gold and silver mining companies -- the only people in Mongolia who were making any money at all. And here in Vietnam, things seem to be catching up with America, Europe, Japan and Korea. I started counting Bentleys just this year. Looks like in no time the Commies will be pitching themselves off high-rise buildings and getting their government to bailout their bad business deals once the Rolls needs an oil change. And who pays? The people always pay. And hasn't it always been that way? The current fact that 10% of the world's population holds 80% of the wealth doesn't seem at all shocking once you remember that Louis XIV had the entire, largely unpaid, French court living in the Palace of Versailles, in what amounted to impeccably decorated dormitories, while the common people starved. (Cue: Beatles, "Revolution") Vietnam can certainly thank France for that legacy. But as George Washington never lived in the White House and Ho Chi Minh never owned more than a Pugeot 440, (pictured on the left) maybe it's time for our leaders to set an example for their people again. George W. Bush has certainly assured that as history advances, his photo will hold no match for that of Che Guavera adorning t-shirts of yet another generation to grow and challenge the status quo. In Vietnam we can also rest assured that no Bentley or Rolls owner will ever have to compete with Ho Chi Minh for those same t-shirt honours.

My thanks to DJGJ for the Rolls info and make sure to give them some grief about having a blog with nothing in it!

$57 Billion USD in Vietnam FDI: Show me the money!

SEP 25, 2008
Vietnam Business News

Vietnam attracts over 57 billion USD in nine months Viet Nam attracted 57.12 billion USD in FDI over the past nine months, a five-fold increase on the same period last year, the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) has said.

According to the foreign investment watchdog, foreign investors were very keen on investing in industry and construction as they poured a staggering 32.3 billion USD into 484 projects in those fields during the first nine months of 2008. The FIA estimated that investment in projects in the fields of industry and construction accounted for 57.48% and 54.68% of the total FDI and the overall number of projects, respectively. The service sector attracted overseas investment of 23.7 billion USD for 361 projects while the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors drew in just 1.12 billion USD.

The FIA reported that Malaysia has climbed into first place on the list of 40 countries and territories who have invested in Vietnam in the past nine months. The Southeast Asian country has registered 14.8 billion USD for 37 projects, accounting for 26.45 percent and 4.1%, respectively, of the registered FDI and the number of investment projects.

The second-largest foreign investor was Taiwan, with 8.6 billion USD and 116 projects, followed by Japan, Brunei and Canada. In the past nine months, 8.1 billion USD in FDI was disbursed, an increase of 37.3% over the same period last year, according to the FIA.

Notes: Stay out of the fish business. And who's to know if these numbers are even close to real. The government here is well known for just manufacturing numbers when it's convenient and sells well. But then again, it beats the US where the numbers are real and in the negative billions. In the US you can't blink an eye without another bank going bust or Sarah Palin saying something dumber than Dan Quayle, while in Vietnam a new bank pops up every day looking to get a start in a market where only 10% of the population currently participates in the banking system.

"Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow"

I first heard that in 1982 as words of advice for my career from my boss, Stan Richards at The Richards Group in Dallas, Texas. Believe it or not that company is an advertising agency and Stan still runs it daily, and he's into his mid 70s. Between that statement and the film of Leo Burnett on this blog, you might actually start to believe that the advertising business had some principles and some standards. And for the best people I've met in the business, it does.

Oh, I've met, worked with and worked for slimeballs, scumbuckets, sleezeballs, charlatans, hacks and downright liars as well, but it takes quite a bucket of idiots to make up for the few strategically well-placed souls in the industry.

For every Bernbach, Richards or Burnett there must be a thousand carpetbaggers, but trust me; these are not the voices you want to listen to. Not at least if you want to sleep well and lead a career of talent, inspiration and integrity. You can run ragged on the music business in the same way for all the criminals you'll find there but you'll also find an Ahmet Ertegun or Quincy Jones in the mix to balance things out – just every once in awhile.

The point was, is and always will be that doing what you love is the ultimate reward. It is the ultimate benefit of choices well made, of dreams well chased and of honour and honesty to oneself. If you can so much as continue to love the way in which you spend the majority of your time in the pursuit of a living, you will have succeeded at something that 99.9% of the population will go to the grave trying to grasp.

Excerpt from Wild Wild East:

"It was a Saturday morning and my father's study was next to my room in the partially sunken half of our suburban split-level home. In there Dad had his drafting table and what I thought to be exotic German instruments for designing electrical diagrams. On this particular morning he had a pile of drawings and was busy reviewing them and making corrections to his staff's work. I had never seen my father work on a Saturday before. As fascinated as I always had been with the mechanics of his job, this still did not seem to be an enjoyable passing of a Saturday when baseball and even lawn work stood as alternatives.

'Dad?'. I asked him, 'Do you like your job?'

The most quizzical look passed over his face. Obviously only a child could ask a question of such stupidity. And to Dad, a Korean war veteran and child of the depression, it was as nonsensical as could be.

'David', he said, 'It's not about liking something. You're not going to like everything you do in life. My job pays for this house and you, and your mother and your sisters. I never asked myself if I liked it or not. That's not how life works.' "

And that was probably the day I decided that it was important to enjoy what I was going to spend my whole life doing.

It was far, far later that Stan Richards would verify for me that I was not a complete idiot and that other people felt the same way as I did. Stan was both successful and happy.

Recently I left Stan's comment on a weblog called "MakeItbetter" under a post entitled 84 Things To Live By. To me it's still the way to sleep well each night.