Content Overload
I love marketing, okay? I am an old school, direct marketer from way back. I remember one year I went to a DMA conference in Dallas to learn all about "the Information Superhighway," and how it was going to change direct marketing forever. I went with my sister-in-law who was pregnant at the time. My niece is now 13. Yeah. That long ago.
So a few years ago when I was asked to include in the marketing plan for my employer how I was going to go about getting them at the top of Google, I immediately became hooked on learning everything there was to know about deploying direct marketing online. I mean, it's addictive! Everything moves at warp speed compared to mail, t.v., FSI's, etc. But even though I had years of experience at setting up experimental design tests, beating controls and figuring out what drove my results, the mechanics of pulling that off online are a little different.
What did I do? I started subscribing to newsletters, setting up Google alerts, and cruising blogs like crazy. And books, yes, I ready books, some of them iconic, but there is nothing quite like the thrill of looking at the publication date and realizing you are one of the first people to read a new blog. At first, it was amazing, mind-boggling, positively invigorating to have such a wonderful education available for free. But after awhile it got, well, exhausting. I mean, there is SO MUCH great information out there, how do you prioritize? Of course I read the big guys like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Avinash Kaushik, etc., but there are many other excellent, relevant, albeit lesser-known bloggers out there who need to be read.
I hope you weren't reading to the end to find out how I've solved this dilemma. I haven't. My email in-box continues to fill up with a master-class in digital marketing. And I read. Oh, yes, I do read! But even though I can never reach the top of my reading pile, I'm so in love with all my subscriptions, I can never cancel them. I can't even delete the emails from my in-box that I haven't had time to read yet! Is that sick? And somewhere along the way, I actually have to go out and do the stuff I'm reading about, too. It seems all the forces in my life conspire to keep me away from my reading.
