Being down with a home of flu attacked family members, my blog reading has been down the last two weeks leaving me with a large volume of reading to get through this weekend. Getting Google Reader installed on my Blackberry is on the top of the to do list for tomorrow so I can ‘catch up’ this week.

Here are a few of my top reads over the last week:

Mint Blogger’s: Why you need a customized theme
A great topic on my list of things to blog about. Rajeev suggests “a custom theme is necessary for every professional blog.” I would go so far as to add you should have a ‘premium’ theme that is customized He mentions Blog Branding, SEO, and features in an easy to understand way for even the newest bloggers.

ZDnet: Engineers are from Mars, Marketers are from Venus written by Oliver Mark

“Enterprises who do not use all the tools at their disposal, sometimes formally taking risks with IP protection with full knowledge and approval by senior management, risk becoming secure fortresses which are increasingly uncompetitive.”

This rings true for me.  Development is important but your marketing personal KNOW your audience and your tech team needs to develop FOR your audience.  The answer for me is to get your marketing team involved in the development planning, testing, and evaluating. You can lay as many eggs as you want but if you can’t sell them they will soon start to stink

Web Users Shaping Consumer Opinion: Jack Loechner’s discussion on Netpop Research’s report “Media Shifts to Social”.
A few key items:
# 105 million Americans contribute to social media
# Social networking has grown 93% since 2006
# 7 million Americans are “heavy” social media contributors (6+ activities) who connect with 248 people on a ‘one to many’ basis in a typical week

When everything becomes social, what is “social media? : Techno Marketer Matt Dickman
“instead of taking a narrow, short-term view of “social media”, we need to step back, look at all media and see what the social technology potential is and look at how to take advantage of that to deliver more relevant experiences.”