Go see No Impact Man.

It’s been a humbling experience trying to keep up with G.L. – fellow JobDig blogger and critically acclaimed author of What Would Dad Say (WWDS). His daily traffic numbers crush mine, as do his Technorati rank and authority, his Career 100 rank, and his RSS subscribers. An already sizable lead will be infinitely expanded when he begins his stint blogging on a weekly basis for U.S. News & World Report’s online career center in the next week or so. But I was completely blown away by G.L.’s growing readership as evidenced by this recent picture that was emailed to us this week.

Unbelievable. I have no hope of catching up now.

Tags: WWDS, What Would Dad Say, G.L. Hoffman, WWJD, The Church Despises WWDS, What Would Jesus Do, He’d Read G.L.’s Blog, Great Web Sites, ChurchSignGenerator.com, The Web Is Amazing

There Is No Positive Alpha In Daily Newspaper Stocks

Shocking that a recent post on seekingalpha.com shows how poorly daily newspapers fared in maintaining, let alone growing, their market share in 2007. Of the 17 media companies examined, the 3 worst performers were New York Times, McClatchy, and Gannett. Also not surprising was the fact that Google crushed everyone else in grabbing the most market share during the year.

Justice Department Clears XM/Sirius Merger

While a merger between the two satellite radio companies, which would make absolutely perfect sense and would definitely serve the interest of consumers, has a lot more hurdles to clear, a big one was cleared when the Justice Department ruled that the combined company would not dampen competition. Let’s hope the hacks in Washington and the FCC finally see the logical merit of this transaction and step aside to let it happen.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for including Diggings as one of the 40 best blogs in the Career category on Alltop, his new web content aggregation company.

Also, thanks to John Sumser for his post about JobDig and Jobing on Recruiting.com. I appreciate the kind words and support for our business.

Tags: Seeking Alpha, Where Not To Find Alpha In The Capital Markets, Daily Newspapers Losing Market Share, XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, XM Sirius Merger, Guy Kawasaki, Alltop, John Sumser, Recruiting.com

I am curious to see what type of traffic I can generate by posting a blog with the words Eliot Spitzer and Ashley Alexandra Dupre in it. I apologize if this ticks off any of my 5 regular readers, but I just want to see what happens.

The idea actually came to me courtesy of ftm.com who recommended that daily newspapers that were on the ball this week should have/could have/probably did bid on these Google & Yahoo keywords. Anyway, I will post the results if anything interesting happens.

Sorry again for the lack of content in the post.

Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, New York Governor Resigns, New York Governor, Emperor’s Club, Google, Yahoo, SEO Test, SEO Strategies

Earlier this week, Jason Davis announced the winners for the best recruiting blogs of 2007 on Recruitingblogs.com. While I was decimated by the news that I had finished 2nd in my category (best sourcing blog) behind CyberSleuthing, I was amazed that I finished 4th out of 52 recruiting blogs nominated in the category for best overall recruiting blog on the web. It was a fun deal to be part of, and Jason and ZoomInfo should be applauded for organizing and sponsoring it.

On a somewhat related note, I saw that Matt Martone, a Media Sales Strategy guy for Yahoo and author of an excellent blog Job|Search Marketing, posted his RSS subscriber stats. I was encouraged that he too has found it challenging to increase his RSS subscribers. This is the chart of my RSS subscribers:

While I am pleased with the growth in 2007, my goal is to raise the number substantially in 2007. So if you read this blog on any kind of a regular basis, please subscribe to the RSS feed in your RSS readers. If you read blogs a lot and don’t use an RSS reader, you should as it is far more convenient than bookmarking blogs in your browser and visiting them on occasion. I use NewsGator’s NetNewsWire on a Mac and love it. There are also web-based feed aggregators like BlogLines that work well. If you use Google’s homepage, or NetVibes, or some other customizable homepage, you can also add my blog to your homepage.

Also, links to this blog are tremendously appreciated and if you like this blog and feel so inclined, please rate me on BlogHop by clicking on the green smiley face on the upper-right corner of this page and leave positive comments on sites like Technorati. One of the small, perhaps slightly irrational joys of writing a blog is watching your site stats, positive rankings, and general readership grow over time.

At any rate, thanks to anyone who reads this blog, has helped my site stats, or has posted comments. It’s been a very enjoyable and rewarding experience, and I’m looking forward to continuing it in 2008.

Tags: Recruitingblogs.com, Jason Davis, CyberSleuthing, Best Recruiting Blogs, NetNewsWire, RSS Feeds, RSS Stats, RSS Data, BlogLines, Technorati

On New Year’s eve, I wrote a post of my predictions for the year. The last prediction was that by the end of 2008, at least one major metro market in the U.S. would lose its daily newspaper altogether. I should have elaborated slightly to better define the parameters I envisioned, but I elected to keep it somewhat vague to improve my chances of being accurate. Had I included those parameters, I would have stated that the metro market needed to be in the top 100, that the market was served primarily by a single daily newspaper, and that the paper would stop printing but could continue to exist in an online-only format.

Before the day was even over, my prediction almost came true when the Cincinnati Post announced that it was printing its last edition and moving to an online only format – kypost.com. While this is a fairly significant event in the ongoing demise of the daily newspaper industry, it does not qualify as fulfilling my prediction. The Cincinnati Post, a 126 year-old paper owned by E.W. Scripps, was one of the few remaining afternoon dailies in the country, and the market is primarily served by the Cincinnati Enquirer, owned by Gannett. When a joint operating agreement with the Enquirer expired on 12/31/07, the Post elected to stop the presses. Nevertheless, I think the announcement is a harbinger of worse things to come in 2008 (despite arguments to the contrary) as the daily newspapers continue to struggle mightily in the face of fierce competition, inept management, deteriorating economics, a weakening value proposition, and an inability to adapt with sufficient alacrity to changing media and technology landscapes. While stock prices and market caps are not perfect measures, I’d argue that markets are relatively efficient in the long run, and losing $23 billion in value or 42% of total value in just 3 years stands as a pretty good sign that the industry is in really, really tough shape.

As a side note, thanks to John Sumser and Jason Davis for their kind comments. I couldn’t find a link to where Jason posted his comments, so I had to post them here (when your blog notoriety is as low as mine, you have to highlight the compliments wherever you can):

“I think though it is important that people with blogs remember that just having a blog that promotes your own business is not really a blog as far as I am concerned. You need to link to others and write about things for the most part that have nothing to do with your own company but rather the industry that you operate in. For instance, there [are a lot of blogs that do] nothing other than to promote themselves (99% of the time). Then you can look at Toby Dayton’s blog ‘Diggings’ and it is full of stuff that has nothing to do with his own company – that is a real good thing and keeping in line with a blog. I suspect this is why it has been nominated for one of the best recruiting blogs of 2007″

Tags: Cincinnati Post, Cincinnati Enquirer, Gannett, E.W. Scripps, Daily Newspapers, Decline of the Dailies, Newspapers Are Dying, Newspaper Industry, John Sumser, Jason Davis

ZoomInfo is sponsoring RecruitingBlogs.com’s Best Recruiting Blog Awards of 2007 and the voting has begun. Diggings was nominated for the Best Sourcing Blog, and I would be honored to represent all 13 of my readers among the prestigious winners of this year’s awards. If you like this blog and feel so inclined, I would greatly appreciate your vote. If you really like this blog, tell everyone you know to vote for me. Click here to vote (actually, you’ll need to click on the ‘click here to vote’ link once you go to recruitingblogs.com) or click on the light blue ‘Vote For My Blog’ banner ad on the right side of this blog. Thanks!

Tags: Vote For Pedro, Class Presidents, Vending Machines in the Cafeteria, Slimy Politicians, Kiss-Ass Politicians, Begging For Votes, ZoomInfo, RecruitingBlogs.com, Jason Davis, Groveling

Jason Davis, RecruitingBlogs.com, and ZoomInfo are accepting nominations for the best recruiting blog on the web, with voting to begin December 14th. A few days ago, I went to the site to nominate my own blog (as all good bloggers do, right?) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that someone had already nominated Diggings. I have no idea who nominated my blog, but thanks to whoever did. At any rate, if you like this blog and feel so inclined, please feel free to click here after December 14th and vote for my blog.

Tags: Jason Davis, RecruitingBlogs.com, ZoomInfo, Best Blogs, Best Recruiting Blog, Adam Vinatieri, Vote For Me I want My ESPY, Shameless Self-Promotion, Grovelling For Votes, I’d Never Make It As A Politician

Last week, I wrote a post on how writing a blog helps you better understand the phenomena of search and search engine optimization (SEO). I don’t know why, or if it’s common among bloggers, but I am fascinated by the search phrases that lead people to my blog and the impact that various posts have on SEO. I recall reading an article in Wired magazine about Google, where the author described the computers in Google’s lobby that showed, in real time, search phrases being entered into Google’s search engine. The author observed that these lobby monitors served as incredibly powerful, unfiltered windows into the human psyche. It’s a good thing I don’t work at Google, because I’d never leave the lobby and while my pathetic traffic stats provide no such power, I am riveted nevertheless by the search engine-generated-traffic I capture and why.

At any rate, I discovered this weekend, in looking at referring URLs, that by searching on the phrase ‘freaky aliens,’ my blog is the 3rd search result of the 1,680,000 search results generated by Google, thanks to this post. With the title of this post you’re reading right now, I just might climb up to the #1 or #2 spot for this most coveted of search phrases.

Tags: Freaky Aliens, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Google, Why Blog, Wired Magazine, Worthless Ways To Waste Time On Weekends

As I mentioned in a post some time ago about why I write a blog, one of the most significant benefits of doing so is that it increases one’s knowledge of and appreciation for the web. By blogging on a somewhat regular basis and actively participating in the community of bloggers related to what we do at JobDig, I have meaningfully expanded my horizon and increased my knowledge about the industry we’re in. This hyper-awareness of the media, advertising, and recruiting ’space’ could conceivably be possible by simply reading other people’s blogs, but certainly not to the extent possible by actively participating in the dialogue. It’s like listening to a great conversation versus being part of that conversation – the latter is far more rewarding, interesting, and educational.

Diggings has also helped me stay more aware of the ridiculous pace of change taking place on the web. I pay more attention to trends, search, new technologies, and the rapidly evolving social media that are all fundamentally transforming the web. A few small examples might include Ning, Swicki, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Feedburner and RSS, and me.dium. Of course that list is by no means complete, as I have looked at dozens and dozens of new technologies and companies over the past year. Some of these technologies I have integrated into my blog, and others I have passed on or not yet adopted. Some are well-known and some are more obscure. Some have been interesting and additive, while others have not been as useful. And while it is possible to simply read about these emerging companies and technologies, it’s a very different exercise to actually analyze them, understand them from a user standpoint, and watch the actual results that are derived from using them.

One of the most significant benefits of a blog is deepening my understanding of search and search engine optimization (SEO). Just as simple an exercise of observing the search phrases that generate traffic to Diggings has been educational about how people use search engines, how powerful tags can be, and how and why SEO is such a critical component for success on the web. While I certainly am not an expert on SEO, I now pay significant attention to not only SEO as a topic, but more importantly the ‘above-board’ tactics that are recommended, the impact that SEO can have on site performance, and how and why SEO matters from a real hands-on perspective. It’s also just fascinating not just from a technical standpoint, but from a sociological standpoint as well.

Some of the search phrases that have recently generated traffic to this blog include company smoking policies, Dolan Media IPO, newspaper cost-cutting, how to recruit people, newspaper decline, Tampa classifieds, and Audit Bureau of Circulations Star Tribune. Some of the stranger ones, but ones that also make sense based on the topics or words in certain posts include to charities in France, to puke or not to puke, best new TV shows 2007, and ugly death. Again, it’s fascinating and educational to see what people search on to get to Diggings, and if for no other reason, I’d recommend blogging as a way to gain visibility into the phenomena of search. It’s also just entertaining. Yesterday, I received a visit from someone who had searched on the phrase ‘Minneapolis Star Trib, the worst paper ever?’. Of the 368,000 search results for that query, I was the 7th result.

Tags: Why Blog, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Blogs, Why Blog?, Ning, Swicki, Technorati, MyBlogLog, Feedburner, RSS, Overusing Tags To Generate Search Results