Without passion, a blog cannot become established as an authority or sustain readers. Forrester believes a lack of passion is the “biggest killer for most blogs out there.” He goes on to say that if a blog does not have passion, it will run out of steam before it can reach success.

Passion results in value, which leads to loyal readers. When businesses and people enforce these practices, the readers will go on to share this valuable information socially and produce links, which will establish the blog as a resource.

“This is a business like any other, and it requires time and investment,” said Forrester.

Incidentally, these are challenges that everyone faces including Microsoft and MSN. Due to their size, however, they also have scale to deal with. Forrester pointed out that social media helps, since it aggregates users’ sentiment and provides a means to communicate with them.

Microsoft recently put this into practice with Xbox when it addressed customer service issues through Twitter. It actually broke a Guinness World record for being the most responsive brand on Twitter. Apart from the record, this move additionally resulted in more links and a stronger brand.

In this interview, Forrester also offered up tips for conversion optimization that are addressed in his book, Turn Clicks into Customers.

“If you’re running an e-commerce-style business, it is critical that you optimize for conversions,” he said.

He further mentioned BeanCast, which is a marketing podcast that addresses some very specific issues such as the Twitter Tax and advertising in Captchas.

James says the main stumbling block for advertisers is finding how to integrate search into the media mix. Advertising and searching used to be based on one keyword, but now searchers have become smarter and therefore, so have their queries.

For search engines, the challenge is to address the user’s motive for going to search. As search has developed, they are better able to detect user behavior and also the information a user readily provides to social networks.

James says search integration is the key to uncovering the right solution for advertisers. Microsoft strives to find the right mix of media to provide an effective result for advertisers. They are also making sure that their solutions are compatible with what people are doing online.

According to Virginia Nussey and her liveblog of the Orion Panel James spoke on, there is growth potential in search engines offering new outlets for the advertisers. She also reports that Microsoft is “very interested in becoming the key search provider for Facebook and offering educational opportunities to advertisers…”

For you’re your convenience, here are some of the links to items/pages/sites referenced in this week’s video:

WebProNews on Quattrone/Google/Yahoo

ZDNet Summary of Yahoo/MSN dealings

Google Analytics Graphing

Google Talk Enhancements

Google App Engine:
On WebProNews
On Matt Cutts Blog

Yahoo Ad Sales

USA Today Alerts

SEO Book Search Engine Rank Tool

Hope you find the links/articles useful. See you next time!