A chance for everyone to interact with the “Cheetah” the inspiration behind the Mahindra XUV500.

Advertising Agency: Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, Mumbai, India

Advertising Agency: TRY/APT, Norway
Production company: Både Og
Director: Petter Jahre

“Introducing our new line of two flavored cat food.”

Advertising Agency: Hermandad, Brazil
Creative Director: Paulo Lima
Art Director: Gustavo Frazão
Copywriter: Flávio Galvão
Photographer: Pixel Imagem

To show the people the dimension of this job, Raf Comunicacao organised gigantic signs imitating sewer pipes were strategically placed in areas of high traffic of people.
From afar the format of the signs would attract people, who would get close for a better look and get to know the work that the Parnamirim city hall was doing.

Advertising Agency: Raf Comunicação, Brazil
Director: Rogério Nunes
Creative Director: Mark Wynkler
Art Director: James Williams
Copywriter: Saulo Sousa
Head of Art: James Williams
Photographer: Shutterstock

In the same fashion as any other occupation, there are certain skill requirements that must be met. Almost every industry blog site has published an article about how blogging can improve your career, and then proceeds to convince the majority of readers that being a blogger is the way to go for them. However these articles, for the most part, are all missing one key aspect to them. Somewhere before, or after, informing the readers about the benefits of being a blogger, there needs to be time to reflect on why one shouldn’t be one.

Not too long ago I had an article published questioning the current state of the blogging industry. In it, one of my main concerns was the quality of work currently filling up most blog pages. That is where this article comes into play. Below you will find a set of questions that need to be addressed before taking on the role of a blogger.

Do You Write Well?

*Image Credit: jjpacres

There is nothing more embarrassing, or hurtful to your career, than having an article published that is structured badly and filled with grammatical errors. Automatically you’re going to have people eager to criticize every little grammatical mistake you make in your articles, that’s just something you have to come to expect as a blogger. Imagine finding an article that interests you and then realize that it is not written well enough for the actual message to be clear. It’s understandable why readers of articles like this voice their frustrations in the comments.

Don’t think that because in school you always got top grades and/or awards for your writing that the praise you received then will automatically translate over to your blogging career. A good writing style and ability level for a blogger allows for any topic to be written in an easy to understand and follow article.  This is not something that comes easily if it is not your natural style of writing.

Are You Going to do the Research?

*Image Credit: UGA College of Ag

Although being a top writer in school may not have much to do with your blogging career, how you went about researching your essays and papers does. For the most part, the average blogger gets started by writing about topics they already know a lot about. This allows them to showcase their knowledge, and is an easy stepping stone on the path to their new occupation. Once the topics they know about dry up so to speak, what then?

This happens a lot in the blogging world sadly. It is a regular occurrence to see a blogger write pretty good articles at first based off the knowledge they already have, but after they start digging into topics outside of that they kinda flop. This is starting to happen more often because there are a lot of bloggers who are not putting in the proper amount of time in the research phase of their writing process.

Do You Care about Your Readers?

*Image Credit: familymwr

Personally, I’m always asking myself and wondering how my readers will react to anything I write that gets published. Questions like “Are they going to understand my reason for writing this?”, “Could I have given that little bit of extra effort to make better?”, “Did I spend enough time on it?” or any number of  other questions. To be a good, well received blogger, you need to ask yourself these types of questions somewhere in the back of your mind. Even the bloggers who claim they only write to please themselves, somewhere along the line will start to if they are building a fan base for their work.

As a blogger your job is to provide quality content FOR your readers.

Do You Enjoy Blogging?

*Image Credit: kiki follettosa

Being a blogger takes up an awful amount of time if you’re doing it right, whether you’re being paid for it or not. The level of joy you have in your chosen topics, and blogging in general, will clearly show in everything you write. If you’re interested in your topic, you’ll probably write a good article. However if you’re is uninterested in the topic you’re writing about, and enjoyment is not a factor, then its going to be harder to produce quality content on a consistent basis.

Are You Going to Give Readers What They Want, Or Need?

*Image Credit: United Way of the Lower Mainland

For the most part, the majority of people who find themselves blogging come from career backgrounds with their daily work always leading towards pleasing someone whether it’s a supervisor, client, board director, or the end-user. It doesn’t really matter who, in the end their job is to do something that pleases someone else.

Blogging is a lot like this, because the one way a blog site can come up in the ranks fast, and keep a consistent strong readership, is to create content that they feel readers want. This of course will get you a ton of sharing of your articles, but will you be doing the community of readers who come to your articles proper justice?

A good blogger should always remember that people don’t always get the best results from receiving what they want. It’s more vital to instead get what one needs.

Why?

*Image Credit: B Rosen

This is a simple question, yet puzzling. Before embarking on this occupational journey you should ask yourself why? Whatever reason it may be, you need to be 100% sure of yourself. If you’re only looking for the possible internet fame associated with the job, then maybe you should just max out your potential in something you’re already doing. If you just want a nice and easy way to make a little extra money, you should ask yourself the previous questions again. Probably missed something important.

In Conclusion

Being a blogger is one of those areas where your interest level in what you do shows very easily, and your reputation rests with your worst article sometimes. It’s not easy, there is not a set amount of hours or days you will be working, and you’re not going to become some overnight sensation. This is a hard job to do, but the rewards greatly outweigh that if you’re really interested in blogging.

Advertising Agency: JANDL, Bratislava, Slovakia
Creative Director: Pavel Fuksa
Art Director: Alexis Blanco
Copywriter: Eugen Suman

“Handle the distance.”

Advertising Agency: BangkokShowcase, Bangkok, Thailand
Associate Creative Director: Chokchai Tupanyakanok
Art Directors: Sakon khanawuthikarn, Pathrawee Homkanjan, Chaitat Sookate
Copywriters: Krittayot Opassatavorn, Thiti Boonkerd
Photographer: Montol Anusasamornkul
Production House: Silhouette

“Called. Fished.”

Advertising Agency: Martpet Comunicação, Recife, Brazil
Creative Directors: Diego Curvêlo, Edison Martins
Art Director: Almir Lira
Copywriter: Diego Curvêlo
Illustrator: Fábula Estudio

What is Join.me?

Join.me is a screen sharing tool. Join.me easily allows users to share what’s being done on their screen with others. Screen sharing tactics help your listeners understand what you’re talking about by providing visual support to back up what’s being discussed. It’s a great tool for collaborating with staff or freelancers. Need to train a client on a new piece of software or show them progress on the website you’re developing for them? Done. Join.me is a quick and dirty tool that allows you to share your screen with anyone at any time. It’s definitely worthwhile to know about, especially for those situations where you didn’t take time to set up some of the more complex screen sharing software programs and you just need to quickly share your screen with someone. Hop on join.me within seconds.

How to Use join.me

The reason we are profiling join.me over its competitors is because of how easy it is to use. It takes literally less than a minute to start sharing your screen with someone. The first time I heard about join.me I was on a weekly conference call with my client. He was trying to explain something to me, but couldn’t quite put it into words. All of a sudden he blurted out, “join me”. I’m like, “I thought I already had… we’ve been discussing this for 20 minutes”. He said, “no, no go to join.me and enter this code”. I did. Seconds later I was looking at his screen. It was pretty incredible how quickly we synched up like that.

To start a meeting simply:

• Click the “Share” button (you will have to download the software upon the first use)
• Send the conference code that pops up to anyone you’d like to join you
• Your attendees simply input the conference code in the “Join” text box on Join.me
• Let the screen sharing begin!

It really is that easy. It takes seconds to get started.

Train Staff with Join.me

Many website owners outsource some aspect of their website development or upkeep to freelancers. Others work with staff who may not be in the same office. Join.Me is a great tool for website designers to use to explain projects and tasks that others need to complete for their website. For example, say you need a design element of your website updated, but your designer works remotely. You call her to try to explain what you want done to the website and where on the site it should be created, but it takes awhile for her to visualize exactly what you’re trying to tell her. Now think about that same example but along with you verbally explaining what you want accomplished, you can couple that with visually demonstrating to her what you want done and where it should go on the website. You can do this easily with join.me’s screen sharing technology.

Collaborate with Customers with join.me

Not only can join.me be a great tool to use internally, but it can also be a great way to collaborate with customers. Obviously getting face time with your customers is critical, but for a lot of us, customers aren’t always located nearby. Therefore tools like join.me can come in very handy when you need to demonstrate something online to someone who’s not in the same physical location as you. Say you’re building a customer a website and she wants to know how things are progressing. You could just email her a link to the DEV site and let her navigate around. We all know how that usually turns out… 13,353 questions come back about why “this link isn’t working” or “how come you used red here instead of blue”, etc. Instead, why not invite her to join you on join.me and show her around the site yourself?

By using join.me with customers you can answer many of their questions and concerns before they even ask them because they can get both a visual and verbal explanation of what you did and why you did it. For me, using join.me with customers is a no brainer. It doesn’t take any extra time, and in fact probably saves time in the long-run. It also creates a more valuable experience for the customer, which only benefits your relationship with that customer in the long-run.

Benefits of Using join.me

As you have probably gathered from the information above, there are a lot of great benefits to using a free screen sharing tool like join.me. Here are a few more:

• It’s quick and easy to use
• Multiple people can view your screen at once
• Setup is simple
• There is no setup for viewers
• You can access a conference call number that you can send folks who are not in front of a computer
• It’s FREE
• It’s great for training and collaborating with employees, freelancers, and customers
• It provides people with a visual description to match the verbal information they are receiving

Using join.me

Will you use join.me? Have you used screen sharing tools in the past? Which ones have you liked? Which ones will you stay away from? There are a lot of great screen sharing tools out there, but not many of them are as easy to use as join.me. It really is an easy process for both the demonstrator and the viewer. Join.me can provide website owners and website developers with a lot of benefits when it comes to training and collaborating. Leave your comments below to let us know which screen sharing tools you’ve used and if you will try join.me. For those of you who have used join.me, please let us know what your experience has been with it.

URL: http://www.ruadasflores7.com

As you all know, Tura, our dog and former creative advisor, left the agency. At Leo Burnett, Tura won every possible advertising award. So we thought: let’s use the space she left to help other dogs win another very important prize. A home. From today on, our website will work as a showcase for abandoned dogs of Lisbon. We will show a different dog every 15 days, its history and how it got to the kennel. And our goal is that, soon, he will be at your home. (Which, for a dog, is better than a Grand Prix.)

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Lisbon, Portugal
Creative Directors: Erick Rosa, Luciana Cani
Art Director: Fabio Cristo
Copywriter: Carolina Markowicz
Illustrator: Fabio Cristo
Online designer: Leandro Reis