This morning when I opened my reader I had a few folders that had the nice little “1,000+” number next to the folder. How, depressing. I began to read through the posts one by one and marking them off as ‘read.’ One hour later I hadn’t made a dent in that annoying little “1,000+.” By the way, thanks for putting that number in fire engine red because I wasn’t already aware how out of control it is. Anyhow, in each of the folders where said number appeared, it’s usually just one blog that is the culprit and it got me thinking....is it possible to blog too much?

I decided to ask the Google machine. Well, turns out I’m not completely off my rocker because the first search result was a post by Seth Godin entitled, “The Noisy Tragedy of the Blog Commons.” In that post, Seth laments the Tragedy of the Commons in relation to blogging. In a slight twist on the definition of the commons, Godin asserts that we’re actually over saturating people because we can.

I want to subscribe to blogs that make me wish for more; not blogs that make me wish they’d stop writing. I want a blog that is selective in it’s content; not a blog that publishes everything it can get its hands on related to it’s industry. I mean honestly, who has time to read 100 posts a day from one blog alone? I know I can tag my information, I know I can just scan headlines; but why not do the tagging for me? Why not scan the headlines for me? Why not produce only the best of the best content, and leave the rest for the pageview & blood thirsty ego-blogger? Obviously there are some exceptions--take TechCrunch or AdAge for example....and there are your friends blogs that you read because you care about your friends. But my favorite blogs are still those that censor information for me and tell me what I need to know.

I think the Microhoo situation was a good example. That was the shot heard round the blogosphere. Everyone wrote a post (if not multiple posts) regarding the takeover, but I read very few blogs that actually had something good to say. Perhaps people felt the pressure to write about it so as not be deemed irrelevant.

But therein lies the rub for me…

Continue reading "Is it Possible to Blog Too Much?"

UPDATE PT. 2Thanks to Joel, you can now view the commercial I was mentioning at his blog here. Thanks Joel!

UPDATE: Thanks to Muriel’s comment, here is the link to the DirectTV commercial series I was referring to. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the exact spot, but it does have some others that are in the same vein and equally as funny. Hopefully they’ll be posting the “Blog it Out” spot soon.

Direct TV has a new TV commercial series out featuring John Micahel Higgins and a chunk of the Christopher Guest Crew (Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show etc.). I bring that up because not only did the most recent commercial I saw make me laugh out loud; it was incredibly poignant.

The group is sitting around a drab executive style oval table, and they all look bored to tears. They are playing the part of the unnamed cable company executives. Higgins begins by stating that cable TV is losing it’s steam and something must be done. Rather than changing their policies, he says to the crew “We’re going viral. We’re gonna get online and start blogging it out.” I wish I could find that commercial on YouTube--if you find it, please let me know.

Anyhow, that is just a perfect picture of a typical view of digital marketing and social media. Someone, somewhere, heard of social media and decided they needed to be leveraging the new shiny toy. It was clearly not in Higgin’s original business plan to utilize digital marketing. Digital marketing is not a quick fix or a limited one-off; but rather a long-term invested approach of discovering where your customers are, and finding relevant ways to join their conversation on their terms

A recent study by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Association of National Advertisers suggests that fewer than 1 in 4 of the participants in Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010 consider their organizations digitally savvy. Furthermore, AdAge reports that,

While every marketing executive recognizes the pervasive pull of the internet, most allocate only 5% to 10% of their ad budgets to digital media.

The article goes on to say,

Leading marketers such as Nike, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble are indeed recognizing that digital and interactive are no longer niche capabilities; they are a requisite skill set for all marketers.

Currently, the way in which legacy marketing treats digital marketing is akin to buying a cell phone for the sole purpose of replacing your land line: You never take the phone with you. You leave it at home, you plug it into your answering machine, and you bolt it to your wall. You now have your shiny new toy and you’ve now become ‘relevant.’ Great concept, but missing the point.

The issue for Higgin’s crew in the Direct TV commercial is that is that not only was it too little too late; but the culture supporting the “blogging it out” is not conducive to blogging.

Continue reading "“Blog It Out” - The Confusion of Digital Marketing"

With engagement the new name in the metric game for marketers, brands are rabidly trying all that they can to build sites that foster any level of engagement with their customers.

Some are well-suited to creating their own community, while others would be wise to invest in leveraging pre-existing social networks like MySpace or Facebook. (Mashable has a post up listing several recent initiatives, including social networks from Reebok and Disney.) Recently, even musicians like 50 Cent and Kylie Minogue have begun focusing their efforts beyond MySpace to create their social networking platforms.

Coca-Cola is one brand that has been throwing a fistful of darts on the social media wall - hoping for something to stick. After failing to see the value in last year’s viral sensation “Diet Coke and Mentos,” and somewhat lackluster experiments in Second Life among others, they’re gaining some traction in their latest blog. What Coca-Cola is learning, as are other brands that are joining the conversation with their customers, is that it requires a longterm commitment to nurturing those relationships. Relationships, that quite frankly, need to built on their customer’s terms.

Continue reading "Getting Social With Big Brands"

Social media influencers may not have the sway they once thought they had over their digital fans.

A study this week reported that “self-described social media users put far more trust in friends and family online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace “friends.” In other words, while some pseudo-online celebrity bloggers may have earned a respectable legion of followers and have further earned the right to carry the mantle of being a full-blown media outlet; their influence doesn’t equal that of your good friend dropping a solid recommendation on Twitter. 

Continue reading "Social Influencers Can Be Anyone, Anywhere"

For social media marketers, one of the challenges has always been metrics. How do you measure success? While we at Viget have a secret sauce of our own for such things; the social media industry is still not as data driven as some would like.

Recognizing this criticism of social media and all things viral, YouTube has just unveiled YouTube Insight.

In their own words:

Finally, we have some answers. Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

In the same way Feedburner’s internal analytics have made it an invaluable for anyone with an RSS feed and essentially crushed the competition; YouTube Insight will further distance YouTube from their online video competitors.

Check out a screenshot of the interface.

Well done YouTube. Well done Google Analytics.