In Other Words - SAS Senior VP and CMO Jim Davis talks about business, analytics and technology

I’d like to thank everyone who commented on my last post, “Is blogging a waste of my time?” I really appreciate the responses. It wasn’t just a ploy to get comments. I really am trying to figure out if this is worthwhile, and your comments helped my thinking.

First of all, you told me this blog is not a waste of my time. That’s good to know. As I said in the last post, time is hard to come by these days and I don’t like to waste it.

Michael Harvey expressed a concern that I hear from a lot of people. How do you find the time to filter out all the noise and get to the useful information? That’s a challenge for everyone. If you have tips for how you use social media effectively to get useful business information, please share them in the comments.

Chris McCann made an interesting point: You get responses if you ask questions. That’s clearly true, but it can sometimes be harder than it sounds. Writing a conversational post that encourages feedback means more than just tacking, “What do you think?” at the end. I’ll work on that. If you know bloggers who do that well, share that in the comments, too.

I found it interesting that our CIO, Suzanne Gordon, encouraged me to keep posting even if it meant posting less often, and to forget about Twitter. That of course flies in the face of conventional social media wisdom, but it also shows that the real world doesn’t always match what the experts preach.

By the way, my Twitter account is still dormant and I still haven’t found the time to jump into it. I can’t even keep up with my email.

Several people suggested I make this blog more personal, and I appreciate that suggestion. My first thought was that I never intended to turn this into a personal journal. (Chris Starke made it clear he doesn’t care what I have for dinner.) But I suppose the whole point of this blog is to put a personal face on my professional life at SAS, and I will think about ways to make that happen. You’ve given me good suggestions already for how to do that. Feel free to keep them coming.

For one, look for some of my photographs on this blog. Now I need to figure out how to post directly here from my iPhone.

Thank you again. We’ve been looking at the traffic for this blog and there’s no question that readership is trending in a positive direction. However, I do enjoy the feedback and want to continue to ensure I’m hitting the mark.

I welcome thoughts, feedback and criticism on a regular basis.