Dropping In To The Marketing Lounge
Posted under: Last week saw the launch of a new marketing resource called The Marketing Lounge. It’s described as a site that’s “created for marketers by marketers, with contributions from many of the industry’s thought leaders and not a journalist in sight”. Amongst the early contributors are Kevin Edwards, Ed McFarlane, Matt Swan, Jessica Howe and Emma Haslam.
The content varies from a beginner’s guide right through to the latest current news in online marketing. Articles are short and concise whilst the site is pretty easy to navigate. It has a newspaper site feel to it – most certainly it’s design has been inspired from that direction.
Readers can comment on the articles, although you do have to register. I’d have liked to been able to connect with Facebook or Twitter or even use Disqus though – just because I’m lazy! There’s no forum at The Marketing Lounge so interaction is limited to just the articles.
It’s early days so it’ll be interesting to see how the site grows and who contributes. It’d be nice to see a few articles from affiliates – perhaps covering new ground rather than going back over old pastures and perhaps involving the new big guys in the industry rather than familiar names and faces.
In many ways I feel that The Marketing Lounge format would make an ideal front end to Affiliates4U. The A4U site is still for me the centre point for AM in the UK, but it has lost it’s way in recent months. In my opinion A4U really do need to tweak things on their front end side (it’s pretty unexciting) and on the forum side – a quick look at The Marketing Lounge may give them some inspiration.
Evolution is an important part of being online, and there’s nothing better to encourage a bit of evolution than a new competitor appearing in your backyard. It focuses the mind, makes you look over what you’re doing and perhaps gives you ideas to be inspired by. On the other hand you can also watch as people do things that you wouldn’t do or have already done and realised that they don’t work. Experience is a very underrated commodity!
Speaking of which, last week was Loquax’s 13th anniversary.
I’m not sure how many people in affiliate marketing have been doing the same thing for the last 13 years? Tbh, this stat made me feel older than hitting 40! Surely it’s time to be doing something else?
I was speaking recently to an affiliate friend earlier in the year and we were both thinking of new challenges. But what kind of new challenge? A new website? A new entrepreneurial task? Perhaps something completely different?
In many ways disposing of Loquax and doing “something” else (as yet undetermined) seems like a plan (some days it’s seems like an excellent plan, other days an insane one). But, in the words of Spider-man “it is my gift, it is my curse”. For all the days it feels like an Albatross stuck to a mill stone around my neck, there are a lot of much much better days.
So the reality is that I don’t need a new challenge in terms of starting from scratch as the new challenge is quite simply to make the most of what we have and enjoy it.
New competitors come and go, new technologies come and go, new revenue streams come and go… the challenge is quite simply to adapt and evolve around these things, embrace them and then let them go when they’re served their purpose.
The lesson here is quite simple, the biggest challenges are quite often right in front of you.
Hopefully The Marketing Lounge and Affiliates4U can help in providing me and other affiliates with interesting discussion, new ideas and advice to take on the latest challenges.
Jesus, it looks exactly like the Guardian. Are they actually trying to rock that as a new look?
Glad you like ti Jason. We’d love to have articles from affiliates, so if you’d like to contribute or know of anyone who would, let us know. The site is about showcasing talent within the marketing community wherever that comes from, and we hope it will become a one stop shop for marketers across the board.