Meeting the Federal Quantum Challenge: How F5 Enables Compliance with New Government Mandates
The U.S. government has made it crystal clear: the transition to quantum-resistant encryption isn't optional—it's mandatory. With new federal directives setting aggressive timelines and billion-dollar funding commitments, organizations must act now to prepare for a post-quantum world. Here's how F5's comprehensive post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions can help you meet these critical mandates while protecting your business from tomorrow's threats.Blog Roll 2015
It’s that time of year when we gift and re-gift, just like this text from last year. And the perfect opportunity to re-post, re-purpose and re-use all my 2015 blog entries. If you missed any of the 89 attempts including 59 videos, here they are wrapped in one simple entry. I read somewhere that lists in blogs are good. I broke it out by month to see what was happening at the time and let's be honest, pure self-promotion. Thanks for reading and watching throughout 2015. Have a Safe and Happy New Year. January 2015 OK 2015, Now What? The Analog Generation Application Availability Between Hybrid Data Centers Will Deflate-Gate Lead to Micro-Chipped Footballs? VMware Partner Exchange 2015: Video Preview February VMware PEX 2015 – Find F5 VMware PEX 2015 – What Customers Want From Security Vendors VMware PEX 2015 – BIG-IP on vCloud Air VMware PEX 2015 – F5 Channel Partner Ecosystem VMware PEX 2015 – That’s a Wrap! 5 Ways #IamF5 The Internet of Me, Myself & I Intelligent DNS Animated Whiteboard Mobile World Congress 2015 - The Preview Video March MWC 2015 - Find F5 MWC 2015 – NFV for Service Providers (feat Yue) MWC 2015 – Threats to Mobile Carrier Networks (feat George) MWC 2015 – How LTE Roaming Works (feat Nas) MWC 2015 – Getting Work Done on the Go (feat Carovano) MWC 2015 - SDN Demystified (feat Duncan) MWC 2015 – TCP Opt for Service Providers (feat Yue) MWC 2015 – Enhancing Subscriber’s Quality of Experience (feat Mahmoodi) MWC 2015 – The Mobile Revolution with F5 CEO John McAdam MWC 2015 – That’s a Wrap! Lost in Translation...in Italy April Healthcare in the Crosshairs What are These "Things”? IoT Influence on Society RSA 2015 - The Preview Video RSA2015 – Find F5 RSA2015 Partner Spotlight - RSA Risk Based Authentication RSA2015 – Defending the New Perimeter RSA2015 – The InfoSec Landscape with Jeremiah Grossman RSA2015 Partner Spotlight: FireEye Partnership RSA2015 – SSL Everywhere (feat Holmes) RSA2015 – That’s a Wrap! IoT Effect on Applications May IoT Ready Infrastructure F5 Agility EMEA 2015 - The Preview Video F5 EMEA Agility 2015 - Welcome to Edinburgh What Are You Looking Forward To At F5 Agility 2015? F5 Agility 2015 EMEA – ACI with F5 & Cisco F5 Agility 2015 EMEA – King Robert the Bruce F5 Agility 2015 EMEA – Sir William Wallace That’s a Wrap from EMEA F5 Agility 2015 June The IoT Ready Platform I Almost Bit...and Would've Been Bitten July F5 Animated Whiteboards Is 2015 Half Empty or Half Full? F5Agility15 - The Preview Video August Welcome to F5 Agility 2015 Innovate, Expand, Deliver with F5 CEO Manny Rivelo Get F5 Certified at F5 Agility 2015 Software Defined Data Center Made Easy with F5 and VMware F5 DevCentral Solves Your BIG-IP Questions That's a Wrap from #F5Agility15 Our Five Senses on Sensors VMworld2015 – The Preview Video VMworld2015 – Find F5 VMworld2015 – Realize the Virtual Possibilities (feat. de la Motte) September VMworld2015 – Business Mobility Made Easy with F5 and VMware (feat. Venezia) Software Defined Data Center Made Simple (feat. Pindell) - VMworld2015 That’s a Wrap from VMworld2015 F5 + Blue Medora: Gain Control of Your Applications with vRealize Is Your DNS Vulnerable? October AWS re:Invent 2015 – The Preview Video IoT: Tabs to be Read Later Find F5 at AWS re:Invent 2015 AWS re:Invent 2015 - Value of App Services in the Cloud (feat Vrankic) AWS re:Invent 2015 – SSL Everywhere…Including the Cloud (feat Stanley) AWS re:Invent 2015 – Web Application Firewall in the Cloud (feat Haynes) AWS re:Invent 2015 – Programmability in the Cloud (feat Applebaum) AWS re:Invent 2015 – The F5 Ready Program (feat Pickering) That’s a Wrap from AWS re:Invent 2015 The Wave of Change at Tech Events F5 + SimpliVity: Deploy and Simplify Application Deployments Together Wearables Head to Tail F5 + Nutanix: Invisible Infrastructure and SDAS Joining Forces November Ask the Expert – Are WAFs Dead? Ask the Expert – Why SSL Everywhere? Ask the Expert – Why Web Fraud Protection? Ask the Expert – Why Identity and Access Management? Connecting the Threads Identity Theft: Not So Scary Anymore? F5 Blog: Backseat Drivers, Your Wish Has Come True Inside the ALOHA! December Arguing with Things Punchbowl, Pearl Harbor and my Grandparents The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2016 And a couple special holiday themed entries from years past. e-card Malware X marks the Games ps Related Blog Roll 2014 Blog Roll 2013 Blog Roll 2012 Blog Roll 2011 Technorati Tags: f5,big-ip,security,cloud,mobile,video,silva,2015,blogs,iot,things Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Blog Roll 2014
It’s that time of year when we gift and re-gift, just like this text from last year. And the perfect opportunity to re-post, re-purpose and re-use all my 2014 blog entries. If you missed any of the 96 attempts including 57 videos, here they are wrapped in one simple entry. I read somewhere that lists in blogs are good. I broke it out by month to see what was happening at the time and let's be honest, pure self promotion. Thanks for reading and watching throughout 2014. Have a Safe and Happy New Year. January OK 2014, Now What Bricks (Thru the Window) and Mortar (Rounds) The Icebox Cometh Playground 2.0 February Mobile Malware Milestone VMware PEX 2014: Find F5 VMware PEX 2014: F5 VMware Technology Alliance – Horizon View (feat Strobel) VMware PEX 2014: Optimized Horizon View Technical Whiteboard (feat Pindell) VMware PEX 2014: NSX Integration Demo (Cano solo) VMware PEX 2014: That’s a Wrap VMware PEX 2014: The Video Outtakes A 'Horizon' View from Above RSA 2014: Find F5 RSA 2014: Anti-Fraud Solution (feat DiMinico) RSA 2014: Secure Web Gateway (feat Moses) RSA 2014: DDoS Protection (feat Bocchino) RSA 2014: High Performance IPS (feat Blair) RSA 2014 Customer Spotlight: CARFAX RSA 2014: API Integration (feat Marshall) RSA 2014: Layering Federated Identity with SWG (feat Koyfman) RSA 2014: Jeremiah Grossman Interview RSA 2014: That’s a Wrap! RSA 2014: The Video Outtakes March So Where Do We Go From Here? The Applications of Our Lives Infrastructure as a Journey Malware costs $491 Billion in Perspective April Interop 2014: Find F5 Pop Up Edition Interop 2014: F5 in the NOC (feat Bocchino & Wojcik) Interop 2014: F5 Synthesis Whiteboard (feat Wagner) Interop 2014: F5 Interop NOC Stats Interop 2014: That’s a Wrap Interop 2014: The Blooper Reel The DNS of Things The Weekend of Discontent A Decade of Breaches May The Reach of a Breach Uncle DDoS'd, Talking TVs and a Hug Moving Target Welcome to the The Phygital World June A Living Architecture CloudExpo 2014: Future of the Cloud My Ten Years at F5 Velocity 2014 - Find F5 Velocity 2014 - Acceleration Reference Architecture (feat Haynes) Velocity 2014 – LineRate Storefront (feat Rafii) Velocity 2014 – HTTP 2.0 Gateway (feat Parzych) Velocity 2014 – TMOS & LineRate: A Tale of Two Proxies (feat Giacomoni) Velocity 2014 – BIG-IP Image Optimization (feat Parzych) Velocity 2014 – That’s a Wrap! July Will the Cloud Soak Your Fireworks? Apps Driving Attention Fear and Loathing ID Theft The Cloud is Still a Datacenter Somewhere Internet of Things OWASP Top 10 August Highly Available Hybrid The Internet of Sports Is IoT Hype For Real? VMworld 2014 – Find F5 VMworld 2014 – Global Applications with vCloud Air (feat Church) VMworld 2014 – Security Considerations for the SDDC (feat Frelich) VMworld 2014 – The F5 Reference Architecture for VMware NSX (feat Pearce) VMworld 2014 Partner Spotlight – BIG-IP & AirWatch Integration (feat AirWatch’s Berenato) VMworld 2014 – F5 & VMware Alliance (feat Rowland) VMworld 2014 – From VDI to EUC: The End User Computing Timeline (feat Pindell) VMworld 2014 – F5 Management Plug-in for vCenter Orchestrator (feat Munson) VMworld 2014 - Best Partner Solution in the Cloud Automation Category Award VMworld 2014 – That’s a Wrap! September The Breach of Things Internet of Food Oh, Is That The Internet You're Wearing? I Think, Therefore I am Connected Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Find F5 Oracle OpenWorld 2014: F5 & Oracle Integration (feat Gauthier) Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Delivering Oracle Apps from the Cloud (feat George) Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Partner Architectural Solutions (feat Wallace) Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Identity & Access Management in the Cloud (feat Deang) October Oracle OpenWorld 2014: That’s a Wrap! Play Ball! My Sensored Family The Internet of...(Drum Roll Please)...Band-Aids?!? Available Applications Anywhere November The Digital Dress Code CloudExpo 2014: The DNS of Things AWS re:Invent 2014: Find F5 AWS re:Invent 2014: BIG-IP Test Drive on AWS (feat Stathatos) AWS re:Invent 2014: LineRate to the Rescue (feat Rafii) AWS re:Invent 2014: F5 Licensing for the Cloud (feat Rublowsky) AWS re:Invent 2014: That’s a Wrap! Collaborate in the Cloud December Gartner Data Center 2014 – Find F5 GartnerDC 2014 – Hybrid is the New Normal (feat. Haynes) GartnerDC 2014 – Application Availability Between Hybrid Data Centers GartnerDC 2014 – That’s a Wrap! Pearl Harbor, Punchbowl and my Grandparents The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2015 And a couple special holiday themed entries from years past. e-card Malware X marks the Games ps Related Blog Roll 2013 Blog Roll 2012 Blog Roll 2011 Technorati Tags: f5,big-ip,security,cloud,mobile,video,silva,2014,blogs,iot,things Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Blog Roll 2013
It’s that time of year when we gift and re-gift, just like this text from last year. And the perfect opportunity to re-post, re-purpose and re-use all my 2013 blog entries. If you missed any of the 112 attempts including 67 videos, here they are wrapped in one simple entry. I read somewhere that lists in blogs are good. This year I broke it out by month to see what was happening at the time and let's be honest, pure self promotion. Thanks for reading and watching throughout 2013. Have a Safe and Happy New Year. January Is TV's Warm Glowing Warming Glow Fading? Lost Records a Day Shows Doctors are Blasé Inside Look - Enterprise Manager v3.1 HELLO, My Name is Cloud_009... Security Bloggers Network Voting Solving Substantiation with SAML In 5 Minutes or Less: BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager Inside Look - SAML Federation with BIG-IP APM February Inside Look - BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager 16 Racks (16 Tons Parody) Is BYO Already D? In 5 Minutes Guest Edition - BIG-IP LTM Integration with Quarri POQ BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager Inside Look: BIG-IP ASM Botnet and Web Scraping Protection RSA2013: Aloha from RSA RSA2013: Find F5 RSA2013: Gimme 90 Seconds Security Edition RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Websense RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Quarri RSA2013: F5 RSA Security Trends Survey RSA2013: BIG-IP SSL/TLS Services RSA2013: BIG-IP DNS Services RSA2013: Interview with Jeremiah Grossman RSA2013: That’s a Wrap March Pulse2013 - Find F5 Pulse2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds: IBM Edition Pulse2013 – BIG-IP ASM & IBM InfoSphere Guardium Pulse2013 – IBM Maximo Optimization & SSO with BIG-IP APM Pulse2013 – That’s a Wrap RSA2013 & Pulse2013 - The Video Outtakes Pulse2013 - IBM Technology Evangelist Kathy Zeidenstein This Blog May Have Jumped the Shark Every Day is a 0-Day Nowadays Q. The Safest Mobile Device? A. Depends April Mobile Threats Rise 261% in Perspective Ride The Crime Coaster Conversation with One of CloudNOW’s Top 10 Women: Lori MacVittie Most of the Time We Get it Wrong The Prosecution Calls Your Smartphone to the Stand Targets of Opportunity F5 Tech Talk - Streamline, Secure and Optimize XA and XD Deployments May Interop2013: Find F5 Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Interop2013: F5 Certification Program Interop2013: BIG-IQ Cloud Interop2013: Partner Spotlight - Big Switch Networks Interop2013: Partner Spotlight – ICSA Labs Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Follow Up Interop2013: That's a Wrap 50/50 Odds for BYOD Interop2013: The Video Outtakes FedRAMP Federates Further iRules - Is There Anything You Can't Do? June TechEd2013 – Find F5 TechEd2013 – Network Virtualization & Cloud Solutions TechEd2013 – Secure Windows Azure Access TechEd2013 – The Top 5 Questions TechEd2013 – NVGRE with Microsoft’s System Center 2012 VMM (feat. Korock) TechEd2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds Betcha Didn’t Know Edition (feat. Simpson) TechEd2013 – That’s a Wrap TechEd2013 – The Video Outtakes Small Business is a Big Target Is 2013 Half Empty or Half Full? Inside Look - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View In 5 Minutes or Less - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View BYOD Behavior - Size Does Matter July The First Six Remix BYOD - More Than an IT Issue BYOD 2.0 -- Moving Beyond MDM 20,000 For Every 1 Big Data Getting Attention Corporate Mobile Data and BYOD Infographic(s) August Hackable Homes Back to School BYOB Style DNS Doldrums VMworld2013 - Find F5 VMworld2013 - F5 VMware Alliance VMworld2013 - Defy Convention VMworld2013 - VMware NSX VMworld2013 - vCenter Orchestrator VMworld2013 - That's a Wrap VMworld2013 - The Video Outtakes September You Got a Minute? Are You Ready For Some...Technology!! The Malware Mess World's Biggest Data Breaches [Infographic] BIG-IP Edge Client v1.0.6 for iOS 7 BYOD Injuries October Bring Your Own A-Z The Hacker Will See You Now The Million Mobile Malware March Privacy for a Price Identity Theft Hits Close to Home November DNS Does the Job F5 Synthesis: The Reference Architectures AWS re:Invent 2013 – Find F5 AWS re:Invent 2013 - Cloud Bursting Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce) AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Migration Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce) AWS re:Invent 2013 – F5 AWS Solutions (feat. Pearce & Huang) AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Federation Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce) AWS re:Invent 2013 – LineRate Systems (feat. Moshiri) AWS re:Invent 2013 – That’s a Wrap AWS re:Invent 2013 – The Video Outtakes Behind the 'ALOHA!' December The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2014 Gartner Data Center 2013: Find F5 GartnerDC 2013: DDoS Reference Architecture (feat. Holmes) GartnerDC 2013: Application Services Reference Architecture (feat. Haynes) GartnerDC 2013: Intelligent DNS Scale Reference Architecture (feat Silva) GartnerDC 2013: That’s a Wrap GartnerDC 2013: The Video Outtakes And a couple special holiday themed entries from years past. e-card Malware X marks the Games ps Related Blog Roll 2011 Blog Roll 2012 Connect with Peter: Connect with F5: Technorati Tags: f5,devcentral,blogs,silva,social media,2013,video,cloud,security,mobileThe First Six Remix
With 2013 cruising along and half the year in the rear view, I thought a rest stop with all the off-ramps thus far would catch you up on this road trip. 67 stops, 44 watchable. BYOD Behavior - Size Does Matter In 5 Minutes or Less - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View Inside Look - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View Is 2013 Half Empty or Half Full? Small Business is a Big Target TechEd2013 – The Video Outtakes TechEd2013 – That’s a Wrap TechEd2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds Betcha Didn’t Know Edition (feat. Simpson) TechEd2013 – NVGRE with Microsoft’s System Center 2012 VMM (feat. Korock) TechEd2013 – The Top 5 Questions TechEd2013 – Secure Windows Azure Access TechEd2013 – Network Virtualization & Cloud Solutions TechEd2013 – Find F5 iRules - Is There Anything You Can't Do? FedRAMP Federates Further Interop2013: The Video Outtakes 50/50 Odds for BYOD Interop2013: That's a Wrap Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Follow Up Interop2013: Partner Spotlight – ICSA Labs Interop2013: Partner Spotlight - Big Switch Networks Interop2013: BIG-IQ Cloud Interop2013: F5 Certification Program Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Interop2013: Find F5 F5 Tech Talk - Streamline, Secure and Optimize XA and XD Deployments Targets of Opportunity The Prosecution Calls Your Smartphone to the Stand Most of the Time We Get it Wrong Conversation with One of CloudNOW’s Top 10 Women: Lori MacVittie Ride The Crime Coaster Mobile Threats Rise 261% in Perspective Q. The Safest Mobile Device? A. Depends Every Day is a 0-Day Nowadays This Blog May Have Jumped the Shark Pulse2013 - IBM Technology Evangelist Kathy Zeidenstein RSA2013 & Pulse2013 - The Video Outtakes Pulse2013 – That’s a Wrap Pulse2013 – IBM Maximo Optimization & SSO with BIG-IP APM Pulse2013 – BIG-IP ASM & IBM InfoSphere Guardium Pulse2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds: IBM Edition Pulse2013 - Find F5 RSA2013: That’s a Wrap RSA2013: Interview with Jeremiah Grossman RSA2013: BIG-IP DNS Services RSA2013: BIG-IP SSL/TLS Services RSA2013: F5 RSA Security Trends Survey RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Quarri RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Websense RSA2013: Gimme 90 Seconds Security Edition RSA2013: Find F5 RSA2013: Aloha from RSA Inside Look: BIG-IP ASM Botnet and Web Scraping Protection Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager In 5 Minutes Guest Edition - BIG-IP LTM Integration with Quarri POQ Is BYO Already D? 16 Racks (16 Tons Parody) Inside Look - BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager Inside Look - SAML Federation with BIG-IP APM In 5 Minutes or Less: BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager Solving Substantiation with SAML Security Bloggers Network Voting HELLO, My Name is Cloud_009... Inside Look - Enterprise Manager v3.1 Lost Records a Day Shows Doctors are Blasé Is TV's Warm Glowing Warming Glow Fading? ps Technorati Tags: f5,big-ip,silva,blogs,devcentral,2013,video,byod,security,cloud,mobile device Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:
Corporate Blogging: The Fallacy of Quantity vs Quality
As a corporate blogger I rarely post "off topic". There's a reason for that, and a reason why I'm doing so now. The core reason for doing so now is that it's a subject that's near and dear to me, having spent the majority of the past eight years writing and blogging in publishing and on the corporate side of the table, and I see far too many posts out there offering advice about blogging that's focused solely on "getting more hits". While that might be sound advice for personal blogs, it's off-key when it comes to corporate efforts. There is a belief, and it's wrong, that more is better - whether it's more posts or more hits - when it comes to corporate blogging. In fact, the opposite is true: quality is more important - whether it's readers or posts - than quantity. To understand the fallacy of quantity vs quality you first have to understand the history of trade publishing, and why it's suffered so much financial pain. Don touched on this briefly, having also spent a lot of time in the publishing industry (we like to work together, thank you, I know it's weird, but that's the way we are) but I'm going to expand further on the topic. Back in the old days (print) trade publications and, if we're honest, newspapers, were all based on one of three revenue models: advertising, subscriptions, or a hybrid of both. Magazines that subsisted on advertising only managed to do so by qualifying their circulation base, thus ensuring advertisers that they were paying those high rates because the reader-based was primarily their target market. When the Web exploded everyone demanded "free" content, including from trade publications and newspapers. The publishing industry was a bit confused and wasn't certain how to respond to the move to the web because the revenue model wasn't the same. An anonymous page view of an article is hardly equivalent to a well-qualified reader, and thus advertising revenue on the web was seriously impacted. Advertisers were no longer willing to pay the same rate for "views" because they couldn't be certain of the value of that page view; they couldn't qualify it as being part of their target market. Advertising rates plummeted, and trade publications - and newspapers - began to drop faster than the waistlines of girls' jeans over the past few years. The publishing industry as a whole floundered for a time, until it started to implement more gated content. Gated content requires you to provide certain pieces of information during the registration process before you're allowed to see the content. Some of that information is, not coincidentally, similar to that traditionally found on a qual card - the card you filled out to see if you're qualified for a "free" subscription to a trade publication. This model breathed new life into publishing, as advertisers are much more willing to sponsor micro-sites or pay higher rates for advertisements on specific types of gated content because they are more confident about the quality of the page view. Corporate blogging is becoming nearly a mandate for many organizations. Its value in promoting brand awareness, thought leadership, and market education cannot - and should not - be underestimated. But it is easy to fall into the trap of correlating quantity of hits to success; e.g. a thousand hits on a blog post is better than a hundred hits on a blog post, posting every day is better than two or three times a week. Quantity is often considered more important than quality. As the publishing industry has come to understand, and as corporations should already know because they drove the industry to understand it, the quantity of page views is less relevant than the quality of the reader, and a few good posts are better than many mediocre or irrelevant posts. It's actually fairly easy to write a post that will make the front page of Digg, or make it onto Slashdot and generate a ton of hits. Unfortunately for most corporate bloggers the kinds of posts that generate that kind of traffic and interest are rarely related to their industry and thus do not forward corporate blogging goals of brand awareness, education, or thought leadership which, in most cases, should be relevant to the industry in which a corporation operates. Unfortunately, a post exhorting the benefits of a CRM or an application delivery controller or a BI suite are just unlikely to engender that kind of attention. Relevant, engaging content that educates and forwards corporate goals should be the goal for corporate blogging efforts. Hit counts, while certainly nice, have been proven by the trials and tribulations of the publishing industry to be an unreliable measure of success and do little for the corporation unless it's well understood where the hits are coming from. Yes, writing relevant content often results in a lower hit count, one of the challenges discussed by Jeremiah Owyang in "The Many Challenges of Corporate Blogging". I write primarily on the subject of application delivery - from security to optimization to acceleration. It isn't, for the most part, controversial, nor is it as exciting as politics so its reach and audience is much smaller than, say, something of interest to the masses. But I've learned from long experience in publishing hits from the masses aren't likely to help "forward the cause". A page view from Sally in finance is unlikely to ever really be of value because she isn't involved in IT, would likely not understand the relevance of application delivery to the applications she uses at work, and isn't likely to discuss high availability or load balancing with the guys in IT or even be able to suggest or influence the option - she probably doesn't even know IT is looking into it. The page view from Sally is virtually worthless in terms of achieving corporate goals. The problem is that it's impossible to know if a page view came from Sally or from the CIO or IT manager responsible for architecting an application delivery network. Targeted, relevant content does a much better job of qualifying readership than general, unrelated topics. Readers of a post on cloud computing or virtualization are likely to be interested in the technology and thus their hits are both valuable and desired. But what about brand awareness? Don't we want to get our brand "out there"? Yes, and no. You want your brand out there, certainly, but you want it out there amidst people who will actually do something with that knowledge. You want to attract and educate non-customers who could be customers, not non-customers who will never, ever in a million years be customers. Mass advertising and blogging might work for a brand like GM or Apple, whose products are targeted at, well, everyone. But while John Q. Farmer might enjoy listening to an iPod while he's out riding his combine, he isn't likely to give a hoot about application delivery or information security or how awesome the latest SSL VPN might be. Blogs cannot - and should not - go the way of traditional publishing. We can't gate the content, that does us and readers a disservice. But in order to quantify success of corporate blogging initiatives it is important to qualify, somehow, whether we're reaching the audiences we want to reach. The best way to do that is to artificially gate readership through relevant, quality posts. Choose quality over quantity. Qualify through relevancy. Let's not repeat the painful process publishing had to experience to arrive where we're at today. Don't get sidetracked from your goals by lower hit counts than you'd hoped. If you're writing quality posts and seeing little growth, you may need to reach out to your audiences rather than let them come to you. Syndication, participation in appropriate social networking sites, link and bookmark sharing, etc... are all ways to reach out to and get your content in front of the appropriate audiences. What you want to see is consistent growth - even if it's small - over time in not only hit counts but referrals and returning and new visitors as well as lower exit and bounce rates. Hit count is only one factor that contributes to a complex calculation quantifying "success". As long as you're staying on focus and growing, you're doing it right and adding value and you can be more sure that the hits you are getting are worth the effort you're putting forward.
