I’m back from my week in the Bahama’s, which was relaxing and busy all at once. I posted some pictures early last week, and to get a feel for the experience you should read Tami’s post on her blog.
One of the big breaks was from producing content: between this blog and another blog I use for some other writing, I’m creating 15 or so pieces of content every week. When I took a break last week, I realized that is a fairly time-consuming sideline, and it was nice to let my mind stretch out and ruminate over things.
Here are four quick thoughts from my idle musing this week:
“Leads” is a term that is too loosely used and too loosely understood by media providers, lead generators and marketers. I’m watching the markets that I’m involved in get cluttered with misidentified leads. The result is troubling: a focus that should reduce cost and increase profits for marketers seems to be doing exactly the opposite. A “leads” arms race by the media partners will only clutter the market. My takeaway: I want to run a business that drives good leads and helps our customers make them better leads.
Media continues to be a powerful way to connect audience, information and merchants. The organic nature of media has changed, however. Media used to be associated with a format. Now, media is associated with an experience. Or something. What I do know is that media is more fluid and alive than ever.
The business cycle today reminds me of going to play basketball in a cold gym in the middle of the winter. Every ball was slick and flat. The secret was picking out the ball that was tight enough to have kept its air, and to keep dribbling with it until it warmed up and expanded. Voila, you had a ball that you could shoot and rebound. That’s the key: you can’t rebound a ball without air. In this business cycle, we can’t get discouraged that the ball feels flat…we’ve got to keep playing with it and warming it up.
And finally, experience is what differentiates products and services. Do you know what your experience is? Do you know what you want your experience to be? And do you know how to tell when your experience has gone sour? Those are questions I want to be able to answer.
So, I’m back to the blog. I did think to myself that I should scale back my posting schedule, but I suspect that is just a fleeting thought. I enjoy it too much.
