Healthy Blog Reviews

When discussing content and the web, most of the talk is around generating content for consumption by consumers, prospects and anyone else who might buy an offering whether it is a B to C or a B to B play. That’s all well and good but the “content generation” concept is really just another old school marketing tactic wrapped up in a pretty Internet bow. What does this mean? Well, in the content generation environment we currently exist in, it really is not much different than traditional marketing and advertising in its mindset. The idea is to generate content that will be put in front of someone at the right time by the right people in the right manner. We just think we are doing something different because now content can be spread through so many different avenues while an ad is “static” in that it resides where it was purchased and that’s it. So in many ways, just generating content is still leaving way too much of the result up to chance. What if you become a prolific content generation machine but no one is really reading it. What if you are having search engine success due to these content generation efforts but not seeing the bottom line results you had imagined? It’s at this point that we should all be sitting back and not concentrating on content generation, or content marketing or content curation (I HATE that term but it seems like the cool kids are using it so……). What you ask? What do we concentrate on then? I think we should be concentrating on generating what I will call “content anticipation”. Let me explain. While I am bombarded with thousands of content messages throughout my week I only look forward to or anticipate very few pieces of content. These are the most valuable things to me because they bring the most value and I trust that there will always be something of true interest when I get some content update from these sources. I wait with anticipation for their next piece of content. I do that with Sports Illustrated. Still being a bit old school I wait for the new magazine to arrive every Thursday and I do so with great anticipation. As a result, SI has me in their pocket. No one can unseat them. I never read ESPN the Magazine simply because it’s not SI. I do this with pastor Greg Laurie’s daily e-mails. Because of the subject matter and how much I respect his views and opinions I anticipate his daily e-mails and they ALWAYS get read every day without fail. He jumps to the front of the line each day. I even contribute a very small amount to his ministry each month. Why? Because he is there all the time and I can look forward to, or anticipate, that his next e-mail will be just as helpful. I do this with Inc. magazine. Despite all of the business magazines out there that are of good quality, I would scrap them all in favor of Inc. because they have created an air of anticipation in my mind regarding their next issue. The point being is that if we are just caught up in content generation, marketing and curation (Ughh! Please make this expression go away, it’s so over the top industry speak!) then we are missing the point. None of this activity matters if we have not created an atmosphere of anticipation for what we are going to be creating next. I can read something that is passed along to me and find it interesting but if it doesn’t make me want to seek out the author / creator of the ideas again and again then it is just a pleasant moment amongst the noise. I will have little reason to want or desire the product or service that person is attached to because there was not a reason to come back. Is this easy to do? No way. In fact, it’s more rare than we think. It’s also something that I believe that many marketers don’t pay attention to because the numbers of people that actually anticipate content from a source are much smaller than those that receive it, pass it on or just skim it. In other words, content anticipation ‘fan numbers’ are not sexy because they are small and that’s a shame. It’s a shame because these are your biggest advocates and promoters. ‘Content anticipators’ are brand and company zealots. They are your most valuable customers yet they are sacrificed in most marketers’ attempts to get bigger numbers rather than a better (albeit smaller in many cases) audience of true fans. So, do you create content in a way that makes your readers / consumer anticipate what you will do next? If not then you are truly missing the point. Anticipation comes with an expectation of quality. If you have people anticipating your next piece of content then you are putting out quality information. The old axiom of “Quality beats quantity every time” holds true in the content world as well. Here’s to the hope that you anticipate what I have to say in the future. If you don’t then it’s on me and not you.

Tags: daily, ideas, mind, numbers, point, sports, time, words
Posted June 26, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

While geo-location services often have trouble pinpointing exact location ( studies have shown that 40% of the time they are inaccurate ) that hasn’t hampered the growth of foursquare. In fact, the exponential growth of checkins is starting to produce numbers that boggle the mind. As marketers it is now getting to the point where ignoring the trend will come at your own risk. Mashable reports A tweet from Foursquare yesterday revealed that the company is doing “10+ checkins per second.” We did the math and at 10 checkins per second, Foursquare is processing about 36,000 checkins per hour — putting the daily checkin total somewhere around 864,000. In fact, once Foursquare hits 11.58 checkins per second — a milestone foreseeable in the very near future — it will be processing over 1 million checkins per day. That’s a lot of activity for sure even though many still wonder what the point of all of this checkin activity really is. In the end it may just be a way for people to make themselves available to marketers at the right place at the right time with the right need. A true marketer’s trifecta if there ever was one. Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove makes a good point in assessing the success of foursquare and giving the mainstream press coverage its due in this growing success. Funny how such new and innovative things rely on the same thing that business has for quite some time now. Word of mouth and playing to peoples’ desire to be ‘cool’ will always play an important role in making or breaking products or services be they online or not. Where are you checking in from this holiday weekend? Wherever it is be safe and have fun and remember why it’s a holiday.

Tags: boggle-the-mind, checkins-per, exponential, holiday, holiday-weekend, mainstream, math, mind, online-or-not, point, processing-over, Social
Posted May 28, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Now the party must really be going full steam. If there is something to complain and whine about in the world at all the EU is usually the lead dog. Although they are merely just dog piling on Facebook at this point it now feels like there is no one left to put up a fuss about Facebook, privacy and even the people behind the ‘Book. The Telegraph tells us The Data Protection Working Party, which advises the Commission on data and privacy issues, wrote a letter to Facebook, saying recent changes that made previously private information publicly viewable by default were “unacceptable”. In the letter, the group said that profile information, and data about the connections between users, should have a default setting in which this information was only shared with “self-selected” contacts. Nice name for a “party” by the way. What’s their logo? A sickle, hammer and a router? So now the data police in the EU are using the “u” word to strike at Facebook. No doubt there are some dimly lit and smoky backroom meetings that are taking place to fully understand Facebook’s role in Greece’s economic meltdown. After all, if there is a problem in the world, Facebook must be the root cause . At this point there really is nothing else to say about this fiasco is there? Michael Arrington is trying to call off the dogs regarding their attacks on the industry’s favorite person to pummel, Mark Zuckerberg . Accounts are being closed. Maybe Facebook could go to some journalistic governing body and get a press bail out? Facebook apparently has responded but anything they say now makes them look tired and getting weaker. Facebook, which has 400 million users around the world, responded to the European Union’s concerns, saying that it provided extensive tools for users to protect their profiles and choose what information they shared with friends. “We already enable users to exclude themselves from being indexed by search engines, and recently introduced granular data permissions for applications,” said Facebook in a statement. “We are happy to continue working with the Data Protection Working Party.” Translation: We’ve heard it all. What else can we say? We are not as evil as you think and we have done virtually everything we can to give our users the means to protect their privacy. Of course, they didn’t mention the confusion they have created and the reality that most aren’t talking about which is that the vast majority of Facebook users aren’t reading Marketing Pilgrim, TechCrunch and the kinds of press that is currently having a field day with this train wreck. Until everyone is officially notified with a permanent box at the top of every Facebook page stating that you should adjust your privacy settings by clicking here there will be complaints. Heck, even that won’t be enough to shut everyone up but it could go a long way toward it. So, good luck Facebook and have a nice private weekend!

Tags: data, dogs, european, european-union, facebook, industry, marketing, point, search-engines, Social, train
Posted May 14, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

I know that what I am about to say is not original but it really struck me that as Twitter announces that it is offering location based information on its site there is so little reported about the potential issues this may create. I think it struck me because the Twitter site is usually the last place where the cool ideas are implemented. Location based mobile apps for Twitter are nothing new and with the increasing popularity of foursquare and others this craze seems to have some serious legs. This is all the more evident if the Twitter site is climbing on board. Mashable reports on Twitter’s efforts with the following picture and quote which pretty much tells the story. It’s a simple integration: with any tweet that has a location attached to it (mostly via apps that support it, such as Foursquare and Tweetie), a small location icon will appear at the end of the byline of that tweet. Clicking on it will bring up a Google Map showing the location where that tweet was sent. I am admittedly not a fan of this kind of service but that means nothing because a lot of people are. The people who I think may be most enamored with this trend are those people who want to know where someone IS NOT rather than where they are. You know those folks that like to come by your place when it’s empty or less protected because of your absence.? Those nice people who like to take your belongings? You know them as burglars, thieves, robbers, home invaders etc etc. As I started to look into this a little more and back in February KTVU.com ran a story ( video here and it’s pretty interesting ) about a web site developed to make the point that maybe a little restraint may be a good thing in this quest to tell everyone when you are not at your home. The site is called Please Rob Me As more people reveal their whereabouts on social networks, a new site has sprung up to remind you that letting everyone know where you are — and, by extension, where you’re not — could leave you vulnerable to those with less-than-friendly intentions. The site’s name says it all: Please Rob Me. Launched last week, Please Rob Me is exceptionally straightforward. Pretty much all it does is show posts that appear on Twitter from a location-sharing service, Foursquare. Please Rob Me puts these posts into a long, chronological list it refers to as “Recent Empty Homes.” Please Rob Me assembles its list by taking information that Twitter makes freely available so that many Web sites can show tweets. But the point of Please Rob Me could be made with data that flows on dozens of other sites as well. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s “Hey, look where I am now!” parade. If someone wants to do this kind of thing, that’s fine. As of today, we live in a free country. But when a law professor from UC Hastings, Robin Feldman, finishes her explanation as to why a site like Please Rob me will not likely be considered an accessory to any crimes by saying The victims to an extent are fools. They are publishing their information and they should be thinking about it. I just had to wonder. What are your thoughts on this one? Is telling everyone where you are at all times always a good thing? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: cool, kind, location, point, Robin Feldman, Social, tells-the-story, thoughts, Twitter
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media