This is a side post about blogging, marketing, blogging about marketing, and our own expectations…

I read lots of blogs.

At the moment I’m subscribed to 557 feeds.

Not all of those feeds are directly related to online (or offline) marketing, but about 75% of them are generally or tangentially connected to the phenomenon of buying something or some service based on the recommendations of others.

Rarely, if ever, do I see the following screen…

It’s rather easy to get lost in the constantly flowing stream of content that refills itself every half hour inside of my feed reader (Google Reader if you’re interested). It’s even easier to let that constant stream of content dictate my own thoughts about the nature of online marketing and restrict my willingness to cover certain topics.

Pouring through refreshed feeds and press releases at 2am EST just to find the next day’s big story was fun for a while, but eventually the pay off just was not there for me. Eventually, you realize that date sensitive content does not fully allow for the types of conversations or expressions that a blog requires to stay healthy, wealthy (?!) and wise.

In other words, making the front page of Techmeme everyday is a fun goal (and even more fun when it becomes a reality), but it’s just not worth it.

A few weeks ago I made these realizations, and it has made all the difference in my outlook on blogging, my attention to thought and my willingness to go out on limbs rather than letting my feed reader determine the content here. While I still pour through my feeds everyday, I’m not letting them control or direct my thoughts as much as in the past, and oddly enough CostPerNews’ page rank, page view, reach and feed subscribers have grown another 50% from this time last month. So, there must be something to escaping the echo chamber after all.

My point is, whether you are a blogger or not, you eventually come to the realization that time sensitive content is not a sustainable platform for either monetary or personal expression gains. CPN has hit the point of maturity where I don’t have to hope to establish a brand here. You all know what this place is about. If you’re a new reader, I welcome you… but this is not a “breaking news” site. It’s content heavy but history weak. After all, the academic side of me (or Prof Harrelson as he likes to be called) is labeled as a postmodernist theologian by colleagues in the academy and in professional organizations, so I reject notions of “history” anyway.

I’ve been experimenting with various templates here (in the background… no worries) which would allow for the content to be sorted in some way other than the top down day-by-day river of news type model so typical in blogging.

What I have in mind (but have no idea how to implement at this point) is something akin to a very simple and clean page with a cluster of tags (a tag cloud, if you will) without any associated dates. You the reader would pick from the type of content based on the cloud (simple, with just the main dozen or so topics/tags and not the hundreds of tags that have already been applied here). There might be a list of the most “recent” topics over on the side. It would look something like this very rough mock-up…

Of course, the site will never look that bad, but we have to move beyond time sensitive content eventually (especially in the blogosphere). So, I hope to find a template (or build another… ugh) which helps to promote that goal.

And of course for the time being, CostPerNews will continue to look the same as it does now (especially after the failed CPN2.uhoh experiment), but I’m constantly thinking of new ways to improve your experience here, and my abilities to reflect on the current scene in online marketing. Just wanted to share my experience and realizations with you.

Let me know what you think in the comments-
Sam