I'm a mAD man - Explaining Advertising

After learning the theories and methods of advertising, I created a blog as my platform for justifying why bad ads are just that - bad. personal experience taught that people didn't have a hard time saying they didn't like an ad; they had a hard time explaining why. "I'm a mAD man" was launched in October, 2010 to help with this very issue. Recently, my vision for the blog has transformed. I now use it to simply explain advertising, whether it "good" or "bad."

I have learned a lot about blogging in my short time as a blogger. Since switching to my own domain, I use Google Analytics to see the impact of my blog. I am able see who visits from which site, how long they were there, how long they spent on the site, etc.. With this tool, I am able to explore messaging techniques by click throughs from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. For example, my post entitled "Dear Rent-A-Center..." has garned the most attention. This may be a consequence of the title, or people simply enjoyed the critique of a corporation for their high-profile endorsement with Hulk Hogan. In either case, I am learning by experimentation what my viewers are most interested in.

I have also learned about SEO by making my domain searchable on Yahoo, Google, and Bing. My domain is purposefully "garrettjmcguire.com" to increase visibility of my name in those search engines.

In short, here's what I have learned about blogging: it's complex. How do you gain an engaged audience? How do you keep an audience? Updating frequently is important, but difficult; tweeting is easy, but getting the click-through is difficult. There is still much to be learned.

In the meantime, please join me at "I'm a mAD man." Let's challenge each other.