Long Time, No Update -OR- Blogging to Catch Up

The more I do this thing, blogging, the more and more that periods of time, say a few days, now seem like eternity, dear readers ...

What's happening?

• The New York Times finally gave up on premium content. Premium content, on its own, rarely works. Search engines can't see it, 97%-99% of users give up caring about it, and you're trying to sell something everyone else is giving away.
• On the social web, watch out who you upset. Apparently to spite her pop, Rudy Giuliani's daughter, Caroline, had joined Barack Obama's Facebook fan/support group. When she tried to remove herself after the media caught on, Facebook still showed that she had just removed herself from the group. D'oh.
• Advertisers are scared their ads are going to show up on Rudy Giuliani's daughter's facebook profile. (kidding) Advertisers are worried whose profile they end up on, after Vodafone and others' ads showed up on the facebook group of the British National Party (apparently a pretty controversial group across the pond). Maybe instead of banner ads which have a horrible ROI for the most part -- you use social networking sites to initiate conversations and target true potential customers? Why use a shotgun when you're given a scalpel?
• Internet advertising expected to exceed all other media by 2011. Ok, Chicago Tribune, I wan't to see those front page ads gone by 2011. Some other big revelations in the report, "Consumers are also migrating away from ad-supported media and spending more time with media they support (meaning user-generated-content sources like the internet)." You heard it here first, people don't like media that's entirely supported by ads! Shocking!
• Also in Entirely Duh News, a new report shows the positive effect of enabling customer reviews. After retailers in the US and UK let customers create reviews, 77% saw traffic increases, 56% reported increased conversions and 42% saw higher average order sales. Also, the retailers felt that the key benefits were increased conversions, effective search engine optimization (more content), and increased customer retention and loyalty. In case numbers aren't your thing, here's a graph:
  

• I gave a quick SEO presentation to our company -- I addressed what is, personally, a growing concern that SEO firms want be our next competitors. Creating viral content or linkbait takes a deft understanding of both social media marketing and search engine marketing, yes. But without the editorial expertise, you can't compete in B2B markets. Period. You're just hoping lightning can strike over and over.
• I won a Mimobot at Josh Spear by writing an incredibly offensive comment.

Don't you wish you had more time to blog, and less work to do? And it's not like life stops happening, either, sheesh. I just want to say, "STOP, I haven't even blogged that last thing that just happened!" ...

Comments

[Nathania - Bold Interactive]

I hear ya about keeping up with the blogging. Though it hasn't seemed to hurt my stats too bad when I miss a few days. I think readers have a hard time keeping up with reading. I know there's no way I read everything the bloggers I'm subscribed to have to say. I know I can't be the only one.