It’s been hard for me to get content out in blog post form for a while now. A busy life, with a full time job, multiple side projects, a bevy of tweetups, meetups, and groupups, and a wedding kept my posting at bay. But that has meant that I’ve a lot of time to contemplate not blogging.

I use twitter pretty heavily. I’m not talking @garyvee heavy, but heavy none the less. And I’ve stopped consuming RSS. I get all my info from the stream. Twitter has been around long enough to have everything I watch feed into it. If something isn’t directly tied in then I can just follow a champion for it on twitter (sounds like another blog post in the making).

So if I’m not consuming blog posts through RSS anymore, should I consider not producing content that is so RSS dependent? Shouldn’t there be another way that is more interconnected with world that I am directly involved in?

I’m not really sure. It seems to me that there is value in a twitter stream, but not all of it. And there is definitely value in pieces of information that are longer than 140 characters. I’m just not sure how to best marry the two. Because the current method just doesn’t seem optimal.

Think about that, and I will too. Maybe there is a solution out there, something truly mixed-medium that can bring the immediacy of speed of twitter with the value of blog posts and richness of video. Ok, thinking caps on.

Building brand loyalty is something that companies spend billions on. Well globally it’s something that the world econimies see Trillions spent on. Some people think loyalty is something you can’t buy. Well, let me tell you Brand Loyalty is certainly something you can buy. And cute webpages can help do the trick. But there’s more to it than cute webpages; you do need follow-through. Having good retail stores, good corporate policies, and a snazzy email newsletter can all help.
Starbucks has done a good job at this. Their employees are almost always happy and this helps a lot. Case in point see this post I just found at, funny enough, the brand builder blog. They catch a lot of crap from people for having completely permeated america, you really can’t go too far in any city worth its grit without running into a few of these places. But you can also trust that if you go into one you’ll get a good cup of joe, or latte, or whatever else you fancy. To top it off they have cool promos like this Make it your drink promo. It’s fun, and it’s just the thing that keeps you liking starbucks. Good Job.

Of course, being an email junkie, I have to get in on that side of things too. I am currently reading The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing by Bill Nussey (CEO of SilverPop). So far it hasn’t been terribly enlightening, but it’s a good read. Bill has talked quite a bit about the amount of damage (or benefit) you can do to your brand via email. It’s something that is often perceived as being simple and meaningless, but email communication is often the most direct communication you have with your customer, and it can be seen as the most personal. If you screw that up you can just throw out all the hard work you’ve done and the Trillions of dollars that have been spent.