Many of you arrived here by trying to visit RelevantlySpeaking.com. Others, came from blog.advaliant.com. I wanted to take an opportunity to tell you about about some of the changes going on at MediaTrust that will help clarify things.

I think the current economy has made every business sit down and really look at their initiatives and see if the ROI is there. When we did this recently at HQ, we decided that we needed to revamp some things in our blog/podcast strategy.

First, Relevantly Speaking as you know it today will change drastically. First, the blog portion will cease to exist. As proud as I am of the work we’ve done on it, we just don’t have the resources to continue writing two blogs for our company. That said, all of our blogging will be done here at blog.MediaTrust.com. The focus of that effort will be performance marketing, company news, and offer promotion. The goal is to really concentrate on our brand and make sure our blogging efforts really support our core business of performance based marketing.

Second, the focus of our video podcast series will change significantly. Like the blog, we’ll be focusing on performance marketing related content. We’ll still be attending events and shooting content, but it will now complement our core business strategy. The format will also change – we will no longer be doing a strictly interview show hosted by Christopher Smith. Instead, the show will be an anchor desk news-style show that I’ll be hosting. It will be a 3-5 minute weekly show that’s focused on industry news, hot offers at Advaliant and insight from around the web. Throughout the year, we’ll continue to head to performance marketing related events to speak with the movers and shakers in the space. We hope you’ll find it to be an interesting twist on the existing Relevantly Speaking concept. Even though the show will continue to be called “Relevantly Speaking,” it will find it’s home at blog.mediatrust.com

Of all the work I’ve ever done in New Media, I’m most proud of the work that Christopher and I did for Relevantly Speaking. In the last year we’ve interviewed industry legends Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuk, Michael Geoghegan, Tim Bourquin, Susan Bratton and Shiv Singh. We’ve interviewed executives at Google, HBO, Skype and Qik (Search for “relevantly speaking” and the person’s name or company and you can still find them online). We’ve traveled from coast to coast, from event to event, to get some really top-notch content. In the process, Christopher and I have become great friends. I’ve learned a lot from his enthusiasm and his dedication to doing things right. Even though he’s passing the baton to me as the host of the show, I’ll look forward to him appearing from time to time as field reporter from whatever event his new role in the company takes him.

Thanks to everyone for all the comments and participation over the last year. We hope you’ll give RS 2.0 a shot. If you’re in the digital advertising space, I think you’ll find it informative and entertaining. Look for the new show to launch the week of January 5, 2009.

As for blog.advaliant.com, that one is a little easier to explain. Essentially, we’re focusing our social media efforts across our entire company instead of just our performance marketing platform. You’ll still find the same great content you’ve come to expect from the Advaliant Blog, except it will now be housed here.