Information Overload * Keeping up with all the great CGM

As I get deeper involved in the conversation happening across the Internet, I am experiencing information overload. There are so many great conversations out there driven by so many talented people. How do you keep up with it all?

First, I set up my Google reader and subscribed to some of my favorite blogs. Daily I browse new content and go back and read my starred content. Here are some of my favorites of this week:

In the area of consumer generated media, one of my favorite quotes this week comes from Max Kaleoff "Marketers: Don't get burned by consumer generated media" where he is quoted in iMediaConnection saying, "You can no longer market a product that sucks". Isn't that what this is all about, honesty in marketing, honesty in delivery of the brand promise?

Shel Israel pointed to this posting by Douglas Karr where he shares his story of how he increased traffic to his site after changing the name. I think I'll go back to read Naked Conversations again.

Shel and Robert talk about how the Amazon recommendation engine is recommending their book along with The Long Tail and increased their rankings to #575. A great story of the power of influence and recommendation engines. By the way, I just bought The Long Tail as a result of this posting!

Scoble pointed me to Matt Cutts of Google who talks about the challenges of getting accurate metrics. Most methodologies have some bias and constrains the demographics of the viewers/readers/websurfers they address. Isn't there an opportunity to bring that all together into an integrated dataset? As I discussed in a previous posting, I still believe that getting data from Comcast, TiVO and their competitors would give a much more comprehensive and accurate assessment of viewers behavior than the age old Nielsen families.

I also enjoyed the most recent Marketing Voices by Jennifer Jones where she interviews Dave Balter, CEO and Founder of BzzAgent. David does a good job of explaining what's changed in the world of word of mouth marketing. After all, we have all been talking about brands for years, what's different? What's different is the ability to spread the word of mouth message quickly and that marketers have an opportunity to participate in the conversations like never before.

And last, to demonstrate that it's not just about CGM, I really enjoyed the recent BusinessWeek article Your Attention Please where the authors lay out the challenges and opportunities in the changing media landscape sharing specific stories including the innovation at BBC. A must read for all marketers. Several bloggers such as Peter Blackshaw and Andy Lark add their own thoughts on this topic.

The challenge I face is for every great posting you read, there are links to 3 or more other postings that also of interest (as demonstrated by the 13 links above). It's a large content universe with many relevant conversations for your area of interest. How do you keep up with it all? You can get lost in this media landscape and spend hours reading, learning, and participating in conversations relevant to your area of interest. For those that don't have the time this week, hopefully I pointed you to some that will interest you.