Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS
Expert RSS Interviews
Rok Hrastnik, MarketingStudies.net
http://www.marketingstudies.net
Version: 1.0
Last updated: 2005-01-10
Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to all the people that made this e-book possible, especially …
• to my better half, Simona, who stood by me and supported me during all this time;
• to Crt Jakhel who stood by as my on-the-fly editor and helped me edit the first version of this e-book, as well as provided some much needed expert technical insight;
• to Robin Good for all of his great ideas on what additional information should be included in the book, for his support and for his critical views of the content provided here;
• to Bill French who started all of this with an interview he gave me and then waited patiently for publication, as well as provided much needed motivation to finish this work;
• to Olga Farber who is always standing by with new resources from around the internet and also wrote the External Promotion chapter;
• and to all the wonderful people that contributed to this e-book and made it possible, not listed in any particular order: Robin Good, Bill French, F. Andy Seidl, Tom Hespos, Bill Flitter, Alex Williams, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Raj Devasagayam, Shawn Collins, Tom Barnes, Paul Chaney, Jim Gray, Alex Barnett, Alan Webb, Crt Jakhel, Jeanne Jennings, Dwight Shih, James Robertson, Kim Bloomer, Trina Schiller, Rick Bruner, Derek Scruggs, Christopher Knight, Chad Williams, Tig Tillinghast, Alain Jourdier, Heiko Hebig, John Moore, Laura Ries, Amy Gahran, Sally Falkow, Åsk Wäppling, Eric Ward, Kevin Bidwell and last but not least Doug Hudiburg;
• and to John Botscharow for all of our wonderful and highly controversial debates on RSS and for introducing me to the topic of RSS a few years ago.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents ...... 3
Section IX: RSS and Blogging Interviews ...... 5
Robin Good, MasterNewMedia.org...... 6 Dana VanDen Heuvel, blogSavant and Raj Devasagayam, PhD...... 19 Bill French and F. Andy Seidl, MyST Technology Partners...... 32 Tom Hespos, Underscore Marketing ...... 50 Bill Flitter, Pheedo...... 59 Alex Williams, DecisionCast ...... 66 Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting ...... 71 Tom Barnes, MediaThink...... 76 Paul Chaney, Radiant Marketing Group ...... 83 Jim Gray, Quikonnex.com...... 90 Alex Barnett, Microsoft...... 97 Alan Webb, ABAKUS...... 103 Crt Jakhel, Dergan...... 107 Jeanne S. Jennings, JeanneJennings.com ...... 111 Dwight Shih, Ideoplex ...... 121 James Robertson, Cincom...... 125 Kim Bloomer, KimBloomer.com...... 134 Trina Schiller, TLC Promotions...... 145 Rick Bruner, Executive Summary Consulting ...... 153 Derek Scruggs, FanPrints...... 157 Christopher Knight, EmailUniverse.com ...... 163 Chad Williams, RSSads...... 168 Tig Tillinghast, MarketingVox...... 172 Alain Jourdier, MarketingDriven...... 181 Heiko Hebig, Six Apart...... 185 John Moore, Brand Autopsy ...... 189 Laura Ries, Ries & Ries...... 196 Amy Gahran, Gahran.com...... 199
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Åsk Wäppling, Adland...... 204 Fergus Burns, Nooked.com ...... 210 Views and Experience From Other Marketers...... 216 Eric Ward, EricWard.com ...... 216 Kevin Bidwell, All-In-One-Business.com ...... 217 Doug Hudiburg, The Daily Marketing Ace ...... 219
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Section IX: RSS and Blogging Interviews
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Robin Good, MasterNewMedia.org
Web site: http://www.masternewmedia.org
1. Robin, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Thank you for inviting me and a big hello to your readers.
I am Robin Good, a new media researcher, analyst and advisor who likes to play the role of the technology explorer that scouts and tests new technologies for effective communication and distance learning.
Now-a-days there is very little true communication taking place between companies and customers in these new industries, and while press releases still play the major part in the public communication efforts of a company, the customers are looking for more honest, truthful, unhyped and genuine information about the companies they want to buy from.
So, I talk a lot to users as well as to companies. I get lots of bad, boring and amateurish online demos and I truly spend quite some time testing and trying out many of these new technologies.
To make all of this research activity valuable I have also chosen to become an independent online publisher, and through a mini-network of sites I am sharing 95% of what I discover with the public. You can see some of this work in free display at MasterNewMedia (http://www.masternewmedia.org/), Kolabora (http://www.Kolabora.com/) and MasterViews (http://www.masterviews.com/).
I also like to give wings to other independent reporters, change agents, and online activists. I provide the means and facilities for talented writers, journalists and tech specialists to gain rapidly experience and credentials by contributing news to my own sites or by supporting the development of their own independent channels. (See the Communication Agents Initiative and is growing set of sites at http://www.communicationagents.com/ and http://robingood.typepad.com/ .
I share with them my communication expertise and help them bring to reality their desired calls to action and attention.
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2. How do you believe RSS will shape the future of the business and marketing world?
RSS is such a powerful and revolutionary online force that I think it is very difficult to clearly anticipate where it will lead us exactly.
The impacts maybe numerous and very diverse.
Being RSS a highly cost-effective, and easy to implement information distribution channel, it will give wings to all of those applications where the ability to share in near real-time updates to news or to other information that is in constant, periodical change, is of critical importance.
RSS is outstandingly good for news distribution, for product updates and customer support, for creating information feeds out of processes and tasks that we normally discount as possible sources of useful information.
Since RSS does not expose the recipients to risks of spam or continued interruptive marketing communications, businesses can utilize RSS to provide niche information channels with customers and partners on topics that are very specialized, without incurring in any large investment or need for extra human resources to maintain it.
Marketing can also take immense advantages of RSS by leveraging its fast growing distribution to extend the reach and visibility of important company news and information to major technology publishers, RSS search engines and directories.
RSS is an evolved equivalent of the traditional press release channels, with the advantage that there is no need here to fake the prose or to hype the traits of any product or service. RSS closely reflects the direct and veilless communication style of professional blogs, where direct, genuine information and stories are shared with readers in an open digital conversation.
Early intelligent use of RSS (and blogs) can give a significant competitive edge to those companies adopting this communication paradigm early rather than late.
3. In your experience, what are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Let me say that I foresee a very great number of possible uses for RSS in business and marketing which will surface in the coming 12-18 months.
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As of now, I see what I call newsmastering (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/07/11/top_emarketers_discover_rss_n ewsmastering.htm ) as being probably the most effective use of RSS for creating a viable information-based business online.
Let me explain this to you in simple terms:
A newsmaster is someone capable of designing search formulas and filters that tap into the vast amounts of online information including the Web and the full RSS universe (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/19/the_birth_of_the_newsmaster.htm ) .
By continuously refining such search rules and filters the newsmaster is capable of creating unique information feeds that cover very, very narrow topics. It is like creating a Web Alert on Google that sends you an email when a web page appears that matches that content. RSS search filters can do much of the same and the result obtained is a newsfeed containing very focused items. If the work is done well, there may be very few items appearing in the feed, and even many days were none appear. But by combining multiple of such very specialized newsfeeds into one, the newsmaster is capable of creating dynamic news compilations that have no rivals in the world of competitive intelligence, market analysis, data monitoring or in the emerging enterprise information integration industry.
These native RSS newsfeeds, can be utilized to create visibility, exposure and to rapidly extend reach through the major search engines. To achieve this it is necessary to operate in parallel on two fronts. On one end by promoting and submitting your RSS feeds to the growing number of qualified RSS search engine and directories, and on the other by generating full-content Web-based information sites, which are fed by the same feeds but which do provide access to the full content of each news item.
RSS newsfeeds can easily be converted into Web pages, so it is not difficult to create parallel niche Web sites that complement the rich exposure generated by RSS feeds.
In the business model I am envisaging and which I have myself experimented, the RSS channel is the messenger keeping my readers and supporters informed, while the web site is where they go to get a full fix of anything they want to dig into deeper.
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In this view, the RSS channel carries only a limited amount of information relative to the whole article or essay being published, and allows the RSS users to have enough content to evaluate if the news item is of their interest or not. It allows easy scannability of my updates.
There is something you like or are terribly interested in? Well, just clicking on the RSS article title link allows anyone to dig deeper into anyone of my stories while taking them home to one of my web sites.
Where is the business?
My web site pages carry themselves contextual, non-intrusive promotional messages, recommendations for books (which I can personally direct or leave to automatic selection – wish I could the same for the ads) and other complementary, relevant and backed-by-the-editor (me) sponsorships.
This produces, if well executed, tangible return in terms of advertising profits (Google AdSense and others).
If properly linked by existing credible resources, a newsmaster channel on a dedicated topic can generate profits in less than 3 months time.
And the more and the better this is implemented, the greater the financial returns can be.
4. But what are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
Costs, efficiency, reach, ease of use, exposure, visibility, re-use, syndication, access.
RSS is really a godsend in that it provides a content distribution and delivery mechanism that is completely controlled by the end user. This is an important aspect of the media revolution we are witnessing today. Across all new media fronts, consumers are taking control. In news and content media, consumers are becoming producers of content and RSS greatly facilitates this process.
It makes it easy to distribute content to online audiences in a competitive way to traditional newsletters.
Implementation costs are next to zero.
It significantly extends reach and visibility online.
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It favors re-use, syndication and the new media politics of remixing and newsmastering.
It leaves end users free to decide what information they want to receive, in control of when to read, or stop receiving what they have selected.
It allows others to repurpose and rebroadcast your content, message or news while doing this in a sustainable way. Viral marketing at its best!
Please note that this apparent automated and simple-to-use process is instead rather difficult to be executed in an effective way, unless the newsmaster is a) well skilled in research methods and techniques, b) has good familiarity with IT, c) can mix and match the use of different technologies, and d) is willing to continuously refine and extend his information channels.
(http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/03/02/the_rss_newsmaster.htm and http://mysttechnology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/51065)
Ethics play also an important role in this job, as the newsmaster really needs to work out filters, resources and clues that make his compilation of news truly valuable and unique.
Thus, this apparent unskillful profession not only requires passionate and culturally thick human beings, but it does serve a major important role in the evolution of collective intelligence through the fantastic mechanism of this system called the Internet.
Through newsmastering activities, individuals become effective live librarians and organizers of the online content being created every second. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/03/24/the_future_of_news_the.htm)
We NEED newsmasters to create meaningful content channels out of the enormous amount of information that is growing in front of us by the minute.
Newsmasters are information DJs, content curators, digital information librarians, research masters and enterprise information integrators in a live and quickly growing information universe.
Without them we could possibly drown inside this information tsunami.
With them a thousand opportunities emerge that may enrich our know-how, our just-in-time need for learning, our insatiable desire for knowing more.
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Newsmasters help organize the network while providing a sustainable and socially beneficial activity to everyone. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/19/the_birth_of_the_newsmaster.htm)
5. Where do you see the future of RSS?
The future of RSS is in its re-use.
Really Simple Syndication. That is the acronym that fits best RSS purpose and mission.
When you start to syndicate heavy amounts of this RSS stuff you can see what kind of things can happen.
Nonetheless I like to think of myself as a futurist and one who can see a bit further ahead than most if my ICT and new media colleagues, I am completely overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities and applications that a technology like RSS will be able to generate.
The newsmaster road by itself is a fascinating and highly attractive scenario. I think that it will keep us busy for a while, and my expectation is that as more people discover this opportunity and start to use it, the more we will start discovering what other related opportunities maybe.
6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
I now view these claims as similar to the ones coming from the Web conferencing industry and affirming that people are adopting conferencing tools because of the terrorism scare or to save money in flights. This is just a marketing play.
Yes, people do not need to travel anymore to meet and discuss with someone else, but web conferences DO NOT replace face-to-face meetings. They offer new ways and opportunities to have them as well as creating the option to try to convert some of the traditional ones into virtual ones. But the two things, at least in my view, are very different.
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Web conferencing enables meetings and exchanges that are quite different from the traditional ones we used to have. It opens up new opportunities and ways to do business with others. It extends and complements in a very rich way what traditional physical meetings have offered us for a long time.
In a similar way, RSS is not here to replace email, but to complement that medium and possibly to contribute to its evolution.
Newsletters will keep on being sent via email. Along with an RSS version on the side.
Letters to a new possible partners or business customers will still be sent via email and not certainly via RSS.
It is clear that generic news-type of information, as well as other publicly relevant data could greatly benefit from free RSS distribution to interested parties rather than through a newsletter or email report.
On the other hand personal exchanges, discussions and two-way types of conversations requiring multiple parties engaged on clarifying or deciding about an important issue are still better managed by email, by chat or live voice-over-IP technologies than with RSS.
In my view RSS will not replace email in the near future.
7. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS still has to overcome?
There is still plenty to improve.
Large adoption will become reality as soon as standard tools start to embed RSS reading and RSS output into them.
Search engines are tasting the flavor of it but are somehow hesitant.
Office applications have not awoken of this opportunity yet.
Browsers are gradually adopting and integrating RSS reading technology inside of them.
Publishing tools are slowly integrating RSS generation, syndication and aggregation.
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Research tools are emerging that have understood part of the potential (Onfolio http://www.onfolio.com/ , Pluck http://www.pluck.com/ , Near-Time Flow http://www.near-time.com/ , iNetAdviser http://www.offliner.com/site/en/products/ihelper/ , SurfSaver http://www.surfsaver.com/ , Netsnippets http://www.netsnippets.com/ , ContentSaver http://www.macropool.de/en/ , eGems http://www.egems.com/ and more etc.)
Collaboration and conferencing tools are completely dormient about the potential of RSS to create highly useful recording artifacts of virtual conferences and meetings including text transcripts, image feeds, slides, and more.
Email is ahead of the bunch and has already found successful products and services leveraging the ability to read RSS newsfeeds inside email or to easily convert emails into RSS feeds.
I maybe superficial and unable to bring up prestigious statistics on this, but my personal feeling is that RSS is NOT encountering major challenges in being adopted.
Yes, it may take some time before reaching mass adoption, but just wait for Microsoft to integrate it into its next browser or OS release and you will see that change rapidly.
8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix.
From what I can see RSS is an effective marketing channel in that it allows easy and extended distribution of your core news and information channels to the widest possible audience with very low costs, maximum compatibility with a great number of media devices and with the added ability for the customer to take on this information and reuse it to hir (his + her) benefit.
That allows customers to further become marketers and promoters of your own products and services. If we openly allow the content of public RSS feeds to be freely subscribed, syndicated, re-aggregated and republished we will only find that new and greater value can be extracted every time someone goes about doing this.
So it is important not to keep RSS newsfeeds under locks.
RSS is one of the purest viral marketing channels. Its virality being spelled clearly in its acronym: Really Simple Syndication.
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Yes, you need to make these three words make sense to you in order to leverage the maximum out of this content format.
Allow syndication. Don't limit it.
Let others take your RSS feed and do things with it. Encourage them to do so. Have them use it to republish your news (among others) on their home page. Help them achieve that. Write and explain with short stories or simple tutorials how easy it is to search, filter and aggregate content from different RSS feeds and to create dedicated niche newsfeeds on most any topic you can think of. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/08/20/rip_mix_feed_alan_levine.htm ) Explain openly that if you do create such dedicated newschannels they can be as easily republished as news Web site, which can carry contextual ads (Google AdSense - https://www.google.com/adsense/) from day one. Very sustainable if not altogether profitable.
Look for example at the work being done by Waypath with their Blender experiment (http://blender.waypath.com/) and see other useful and complementary uses of RSS that can be economically profitable.
9. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches?
RSS is one more ammunition available to your strategic marketing and distribution arsenal. All by itself it is of limited use today. Used in conjunction with quality web sites, blogs or dedicated information services it can be a very powerful addition.
RSS is not the communication tool on which to invest all of your attention, but it is a very important component of any valuable and long lasting online information strategy.
10. We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
RSS is a perfect complement to email as it provides a parallel, spam-free channel that puts users in the driver' seat.
If you use email for a discussion list, RSS can complement and enhance your existing infrastructure by adding an RSS channel that carries all of the messages taking place in the discussion. If some readers prefer RSS, they have the option to switch to that medium.
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Any email, newsletter or discussion list can be easily converted into RSS. YahooGroups does this by default, and services like iUpload Mail2RSS (http://mail.byrss.com/) offer one of the many alternative roads available.
My suggestion is therefore to complement your email marketing campaigns with one or more RSS feeds providing your customers with a quality alternative to traditional email updates.
Also for newsletter publishers I suggest making all of the content of their newsletters to be available as a RSS newsfeed that will certainly extend the reach and visibility that same content may have online.
I myself convert all of my newsletters content to RSS and it always surprises me how much extra reach I can achieve with this extra distribution channel. (See http://mail.byrss.com/Pages.asp?ID=36358&N=365 or http://mail.byrss.com/pages.asp?ID=34744)
One important thing to keep in mind is that unless you promote and submit your RSS newsfeeds to a good number of the major RSS and blog search engine and directories your content may remain accessible by only a few. (See http://tinyurl.com/3eb5j )
It is by spreading the RSS content around through multiple communication channels that one can leverage at maximum its potential.
11. For instance, you're offering a number of RSS feeds as well as an e- mail update service on your web site. Could you perhaps compare their individual impact on your business? Which do people use more? Have you noticed any differences in the responsiveness of your e-mail subscribers in comparison with your RSS readers?
It is difficult to give you a good and reliable answer on this. As of now, the instruments that I use to measure the return of the two vehicles are not sophisticated enough to allow me to share some definitive opinion on this. These tools are improving every day and soon everyone will be able to monitor, track and verify the quality and effectiveness of its different content distribution channels.
In my opinion the impact of email and RSS is very complementary, at least for now. I have readers and supporters who read my content both through email and through RSS. They know that if they want to see my latest news in near real-time they need to check my RSS feed and not my daily or weekly emailing.
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RSS allows my readers to scan many of their preferred news sources together in one location (their RSS newsreader or online aggregator) and I do see a growing number of people making use of this innovative channel.
Some readers are very new to the Web and they feel more comfortable with email. Others are more educated in terms of technology use and prefer to get my RSS feeds.
I have yet no final clickthrough data comparing RSS newsfeeds to traditional email alerts or newsletter reports but it is my strong impression that both would have very high rates of responsiveness. With new publishing services capable of integrating contextual ads, sponsorships or relevant promotions inside RSS feeds we will soon be able to give a more definite answer on this.
12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
I think that the best way to expose RSS to new users is by way of providing them with something that they have not seen before, that is highly useful for them, and that they could not do otherwise. So what you do is you create RSS newsfeeds on highly specialized topics and you promote and make these feeds accessible from as many news aggregators, distributors and syndicators as possible.
The more your RSS newsfeed is a specialized information channel on a specific topic the more readers can appreciate its uniqueness and value. The more this is just another channel for distributing your rants the more confusion and the less appreciation you will get.
Outside of these strategic issues, here are a few simple pro-active steps that anyone can take to contribute to the popularization of RSS and in helping more people understand what RSS is al about:
1) Use RSS feeds in your email signature – Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com/ ) can help you out.
2) Create RSS newsfeeds for each category of information you cover. The more, the better.
3) Provide easy access to all your RSS feeds next to the content you traditionally publish.
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4) Offer direct one-click subscription to personal RSS news aggregators with tools like Quicksub (http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/ ).
5) Publish a rich tutorial about RSS and display a link to it next to all the RSS feed links you promote.
6) Submit your RSS newsfeed to the best search engine and directories specializing in blogs and RSS (See http://tinyurl.com/3eb5j )
7) Promote through articles or editorials the use of a good RSS newsreader or aggregator. Focus on a few of what you believe are the best ones. I like Kinja (http://www.kinja.com/) and Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) which are both Web-based, as well as Feeddemon (PC - http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp) , Newzcrawler (PC - http://www.newzcrawler.com/ ), NetNewswire (Mac - http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ ) on my desktop. There are certainly many other good ones out there (http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information _Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/ News_Readers/ ).
13. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Create as many RSS newsfeeds for your content as are the topic/themes that you cover. Do not pack all of your content under one generic RSS channel.
If you are a would-be RSS newsmaster, this is one of the best time investments you can make of your passion and talents (http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/_archives/2004/4/21/37574.html )
You need not to sell someone else marketing book, or promote a software package you like only in part. Your task is the one of delivering quality, focused, niche content information on a very specific topic.
One of the ways to get at it is to aggregate, filter, select and mix multiple and disparate source of information, by extracting relevant content from RSS search engines, directories and other unique content sources.
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By complementing this effort with contextual advertising mechanisms, such as Google AdSense (https://www.google.com/adsense/) , sponsorships or affiliate Amazon book sales (http://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/ntg/browse/-/567864 ) one can rapidly build a self-sustainable online publishing business. Once again the beauty of this is that while providing a truly useful service to subscribers one can also make a good living at it.
Stop surfing, start making waves.
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Dana VanDen Heuvel, blogSavant
Web site: http://www.blogsavant.com
With: Raj Devasagayam, PhD Siena College, NY
1. Dana, thank you for being here with us. Could you please tell our readers something more about yourself and why they should trust your advice?
There are a lot of smart bloggers out there and even more smart marketers. I bring a rather different perspective in that I pull in concepts from a cross section of disciplines such as marketing, sales, economics, change management, anthropology & sociology and other schools of thought.
From a more practical perspective, very few marketers have also been sales, and IT people, and vice versa. I bring a unique combination of experiences to bear on marketing and sales problems, and more specifically, Internet marketing and E- commerce sales problems that most others can't.
2. Your blog was also voted as the Best b-2-b marketing topic blog by MarketingSherpa readers. To what do you attribute this success?
There are a couple of factors that influenced this award.
First and foremost, sticking to the 'voice' that I developed for the weblog over a year ago. The voice of someone from the trenches of marketing and sales that shares some of the ideas that I encounter so that others might benefit.
Secondly, I did a fair bit of 'grass roots' promotion to ensure that the awareness of the weblog was at its peak. As a marketer, and as someone who promotes that value of weblogs for corporate and personal promotion, I did this as more of an experiment to test the power of the weblog community. Obviously, the experiment got the results I was hoping for.
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Lastly, this award was a 'people's choice award', if you will. The people that voted were people that I had somehow connected with over the past year by commenting on their blogs, linking to them, weighing in forums and newsgroups that they focus on, and by simply 'napsterizing my knowledge' to help out in the weblog community.
3. For those of our readers that don't know what a blog is, could you please define it?
Simply put, a weblog is merely a website with information shown in reverse chronological order. There are more advanced definitions that you can pursue, but at the end of the movie, that's the lowest common denominator.
Further, from a non-business perspective, a blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. As I mentioned earlier, blog postings are almost always arranged in reverse cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.
While I can certainly offer my view on 'what a weblog is', I submit that there may be others with views that may resonate with your audience.
Dave Winer's definition: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog
Dr. Jill Walker's definition: http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definition.html
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4. The key question here of course is how has your blog contributed to your business success? Are you seeing any direct or indirect results, especially when it comes to sales?
Without question, the weblog has exceeded every objective that I originally stated for the project. It has expanded my network, brought in both career and speaking opportunities, and has given my access-through-association to some amazing thought leaders in the marketing space. The act of having a weblog and blogging actually has eased entry into online communities that I would have otherwise had trouble gaining access to simply because my 'position on the issues' was well documented on my weblog, and engaging in virtual dialogue was but a click away.
I advise that people pick their own objectives and measures for their weblog. I meaure success from the weblog in a couple of ways. The first metric is the number of 'connections' that the weblog allows me to make with like minded professionals that I can add to my network where we might enjoy some mutual gain from idea sharing now, or in the future. I have connected with dozens of people through the weblog that have made a very significant impact on my career as a marketing and sales professional.
Another measure of success is a bit less quantifiable, but no less powerful, and that is the personal brand equity that the weblog is building for me. For example, I recently made a career change where the weblog contributed significantly to my obtaining interviews. Forward-thinking employers are very keen to read up on employees via there personal weblogs. The weblog shows a great deal about who you are, and provides a substantial differentiator from other candidates.
5. Can blogs be an effective sales tool?
That depends on what you mean by sales tool. If you're asking whether or not you can use blogs to “sell”, the answer is yes. People are selling content via blogs, using blogs to support product sales, and selling advertising within blogs. They are no different from websites in that regard. Whatever you can do on your average e- commerce site, a blog can support.
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If you're referring to them as a communication channel from a corporation, or from an individual salesperson. Insofar as they are communication tool between salesperson and customer, I believe that they can be, however, I have yet to see them used for that express purpose. Weblogs could add significant value where a sales person works on project-related sales where the progress of the project could be documented, and comments registered. This electronic record could then be turned into a credibility building tool illustrating the trustworthiness of the sales person and the thoroughness of their follow through and service during and after the sale.
In my current role, managing a sales operations group, I can instantly see the value that blogs can add in the information sharing and dissemination process, especially if you have field based salespeople that don't come in to the corporate office every day. Every company I've worked with has a 'communication problem' with their sales force. There's always too much 'push' information going out through email, and there's never a historical context to put new information in because it's all episodic, and old emails get deleted. Weblogs serve to correct the push issue viewers can pull information via RSS readers or from the website itself on an as needed basis, and they solve the history issue because posts can be archived according to category and are referenceable and searchable from and online database.
I would ultimately like to see weblogs, or weblog-like functionality, integrated with current CRM and SFA software that we is already deployed in the field sales force. More tools aren't the right answer, but the right tools, integrated well, can go a long way to increasing salesforce productivity.
6. If so, how should our readers begin to develop their own blogs? What advice can you give them? Could you perhaps break this down in to a simple to follow process?
Before you consider developing your own weblog, take the time to consider your purpose for creating a weblog, and craft a simple mission statement and a few objectives and expectations for your weblog. This exercise will help you through a couple of things, the first of which is deciding whether to obtain your own domain and install weblog software yourself, or whether you would be better served by a hosted weblog service.
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Once you've got a general purpose for this endeavor, I advise the people take the time to follow a ten-step process to ensure that their weblog is both on target and sustainable. If the blog is simply for personal use, there are a few steps that can pretty quickly be eliminated. However, if a business blog is in your sights, don't shortchange yourself by skimping on the planning stage.
Here are the 10 universally applicable steps that any company should take in on the path to blogging. Granted, one can argue that there are more, fewer, others and the like, but if you ask yourself these questions and come up with honest answers, you'll be well on your way to a successful weblog.
1. Check out (read and subscribe) other weblog sites in your industry, vertical market, or product category. What do others write about, what do the write about YOU, and how large is the community around the weblogs are all questions to pay attention to as you review what's already in the market. The objective here is to get some idea of who your community is and what they're interested in hearing, and to garner ideas on what to do, and what not to do with your own weblog.
2. Determine how your weblog maps to your marketing, sales, and/or business strategy and objectives. I separate those because if you're doing a sales blog, you're going to have a different purpose than if you're doing a blog for your entire business. The weblog has to mesh with your market segment, target market, and has to be positioned in the same customer frame of reference as your existing brand. There are a number of ways in which a blog will sync with your objectives:
• Illustrate your market leadership position
• Exude Thought leadership in your market or vertical
• Improve search placement
• Develop new customer communication channels
• Develop a resource center for your customers/prospects
3. Consider the risks inherent in blogging. One of the biggest being how to maintain and sustain your weblog presence and regularity in posting. This often comes down to a resource question. In fact, most issues around corporate blogging stem from issues of resources, including the question of “who should write the blog?”
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4. Set guidelines and parameters for your weblog. These can be as simple as, "Make your mother proud, don’t lie, write to inform."
5. Map the process for sustainable successful blogging in your company. How will the blog be sustained? Who will do the updates? How frequently? Who will review? Who will respond to comments? Who will manage an editorial calendar?
6. Brainstorm content topic areas, categories of information, and events/features that you can use to differentiate your weblog. (event promotion, new white paper, marketing news).
7. Determine key words we want associated with your company and look for a domain name that might contain those words. Pick a title that describes what we do and why people would want to visit our site.
8. Build a personal blog, test it out.
9. Build a company blog, populate with enough stuff to start promoting.
10. Begin promoting. Syndicate (RSS, XML feeds). Put link on main site, in resource center. Promote to customers (maybe by letter). Promote blog in your company email signatures. Register weblog with weblogs.com and others.
7. How can they then use their blogs as a powerful sales vehicle?
There are a couple of ways that I can see using the weblog as a vehicle for sales. As I mentioned earlier, you can do almost anything that you can with an e- commerce website. However, there are a couple things that you can do that are't typically within the realm of your average e-commerce site.
1. Keeping your customers aprised of the latest products & deals via the blog and RSS. Look at Amazon.com. They offer RSS feeds of many of their product categories, letting bibliophiles subscribe to the product area of their choice, getting the latest steals and deals fed right to their RSS readers. It's totally relevant, totally permission based, and readers love it. They could expand on this theme if they more effectively used weblogs to offer more content and value-added commentary on the products, garner more positive search rankings, and keep archives of the product information.
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2. Putting your thought leaders and technical people in the spotlight to drive customers toward specific product solutions, or to support their existing purchases. Sun Microsystems and Macromedia are doing a wonderful job with this tactic. They have a multitude of bloggers under the corporate umbrella posting relevant news that has really made an impact in the communities that exist around their product lines.
8. The next natural question is, how can blogging be applied to corporate sales strategies?
That's a pretty broad question to tackle, and I would argue that one needs to review the basic tenents of your average sales strategy to be able to determine where you might properly apply the leverage that a weblog can provide.
If we look at weblogs being used most basically as communication tools that can be plugged in to any of a number of corporate processes, then you begin to see where you might find value in utilizing weblogs as part of your sales strategy.
For example, a company might have three general objectives for their account executives in a given territory. Let's say that those objectives are account acquisition, account penetration, and account retention. Weblogs can be very useful in addressesing at least one of the hypothetical issues that might exist with each of those objectives.
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Strategic Objective Account Acquisition Account Penetration Account Retention
Strategic Question How can I better How can I introduce my How can I show my communicate my unique existing long-time current customers that value proposition to those customers to other they're not alone in customers who are services in my portfolio struggling with the searching for my services that they've been reluctant current turmoil that's in a specific area? to use? shaking our industry and that we do have solutions to meet their needs in these turbulent times?
Weblog Fit Weblogs are currently one Weblogs allow the author Weblogs are an of the most effective tools to tell a story of another excellent way to offer for showcasing one's customer's great third party confirmation understanding of a experience in a level of of issues through the particular customer's detail not afforded those comments, linking, and market, vertical, or who stick to the typical trackback features of business and can be corporate case history weblogs. Telling clients particularly helpful in format, and do so in a all the same story of improving one's ranking in unique and credible voice. how they're not alone the search engines with By featuring other and being able to little more than the customers' experiences reference industry content provided for the with each of the services analyst data, while weblog. The weblog also in a portfolio, a sales backing it up with other 'puts a personality' on the organization can better customers' comments is company and helps the equip their existing a great way to reinforce customer in their customers to vicariously your position as a evaluation of the core experience the consultative solution character of those whom advantages of the service seller in each of your they will be working with. and form their own accounts. The weblog opinions on how that helps the sales service might benefit organization do that them, paving the way for across multiple the sales conversation accounts. during the next customer visit.
These are but 3 examples. There are many more that one could come up with simply by applying the benefits of weblogs to some of the challenges they face with the sales organization.
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9. How about individual salespeople? Should they keep their own blogs as well and why? What are the best approaches for them?
I submit that whether or not individual salespeople keep their own blogs depends on the size of the organization they sell for, their own unique customer base and the weblog policy put forth by the company. If the organization is a large, public company that strives to keep a uniform voice across the salesforce, they would be wise to follow the model of the Jupiter Media analyts' weblogs, where each analyst has their own blog, but they're all available in one place.
Sales people who want to differentiate themselves would be wise to keep blogs. I have a friend who is trying to differentiate himself as a salesperson in New York City. The blog is a perfect vehicle for doing this.
The rules are pretty simple. Be smart, don't say anything dumb about your company, etc...
10. In addition to your own blog, could you recommend some of the best examples our readers could use to learn from? I'm of course talking about blogs that actually have an impact on sales …
Well, Lori Richardson over the the SalesProcessDiva weblog has some great content on lead generation and sales & business process. Her URL is http://loririchardson.typepad.com/salesprocessdiva/. Brian Carroll is a lead generation master and runs a weblog called the B2B Lead Generation Blog. His URL is http://blog.startwithalead.com.
The easiest way to find more weblogs on sales, or whatever topic you fancy, is to search Google for “your favorite topic” + blog or + weblog. You'll be amazed at the results you'll get.
11. Could you perhaps also share any interesting case studies with us?
There are number of case studies that fall in the realm of business & marketing weblogs, though they are not sales specific.
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Stonyfield Farm's, an environmentally conscious maker of gourmet dairy products, uses weblogs to maintain community with their loyal customer base is a great example of using weblogs to target unique customer segments by their affinity to the brand. For example, they have weblogs related to children's health and women's health, both representing unique segments for them. The weblog has allowed them to capitalize on their "personality" in the world--they care about the environment and maintain touch with their loyal, long-standing customer base. CEO, Gary Hirshberg, wants to "be real" and saw the blogs as a way to do that--inspired in part by the success of blogs within the Howard Dean presidential bid of early 2004.
Another case study of note is the ACCA, the trade association for 4,000 heating, ventilating and air conditioning companies. The ACCA has created is a highly efficient way of communicating with its members through its weblog, ACCAbuzz. VP for Member Services & Communications Kevin Holland describes ACCAbuzz as “not a primary communications vehicle yet. It’s more of a secondary channel.” But it’s a key part of his overall marketing and communications strategy. 15% of the 40,000 visitors per month to ACCA’s site click through to the blog page. He’s taking development of the blog step by step. In addition to guest bloggers, he will eventually explain to his members how to subscribe to the blog via an RSS feed. For now, “they understand the writing and the usefulness of the blog. But I don’t want to bother them with the technology.” His goal: to cross promote and re-purpose all the content he’s creating for the site, for his e-newsletters and for the quarterly print magazine.
12. I'm also wondering, how can blogs be integrated in to sales processes and models?
Blogs can certainly be integrated into the sales process. If you look at the sales process from a traditional perspective, there are a few areas where blogs can be integrated. Below, I highlight how salespeople can use weblogs in customer facing processes, but there are numerous applications inside sales organizations as well, which I'll save for another time.
First, during the prospecting phases, it would be helpful to have a weblog as a 'personal branding' tool to put a stake in the sand, so to speak, on exactly what value you purport to bring to your customer, and to showcase the open dialog that you have with your past and current customers. What better way to really open up the conversation than by being totally transparent and reference able.
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Second, throughout the discovery of needs, quoting and presentation stages, a salesperson could use unique client weblogs to house all of the data on the solution that is relevant to that customer. Using a solution like Movable Type or TypePad, you can own a blogging tool that allows you to create as many weblogs as you have clients. I've used this successfully with some of my clients in the past year.
Third, in the post sale follow-up, a weblog is a great way to dialog with customers and keep tabs on your project or post sale action items. Again, it's all about transparency of communication.
Lastly, ongoing service that you're providing to one customer and the knowledge you gain in solving unique customer problems can be leveraged on your 'public' weblog for the benefit of all customers. You really establish your added value proposition when you constantly add value long after the sale. With a weblog, or series of weblogs, salespeople will have a much easier time 'scaling' their knowledge across their customer base.
Source: Sales Executive Council “INFORMATION ON SALES PROCESSES”
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13. To move on to another topic, among other things you're also an expert on Sales Force Automation. What is SFA anyway and how can it improve our sales?
Sales Force Automation (SFA) is Software and systems that support sales staff lead generation, contact, scheduling, performance tracking and other functions. SFA functions are normally integrated with base systems that provide order, product, inventory status and other information and may be included as part of a larger customer relationship management (CRM) system.
SFA systems are designed to support automated processes like the sales process I just reviewed.
14. Can small businesses also use it and how?
Blogs are already being used in small business (by small business, let's assume that we're working off the same definition – “one that is independently owned and operated and which is not dominant in its field of operation”) for a number of reasons.
Companies like Northfield Construction (http://www.northfieldconstruction.net/) are using weblogs as their primary internet communication vehicle, and have integrated them wholesale into their website. Weblogs are ideal for small businesses because they require very little setup and can be very inexpensive to run and maintain. They also have the additional benefit of being very 'search friendly', meaning that they search engines are prone to picking up the content in a company's weblog simply as a result of the inherent design of the weblog architecture.
15. Could you perhaps share any best practices with us?
There are some simple best practices that my good friend Bill Flitter of Pheedo (http://www.pheedo.info/) put together that I'd like to share.
1. Focus on your core interest area to establish yourself as an expert.
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2. Create at least 15-20 meaningful posts BEFORE you open your blog to the public. When people visit for the first time, you’ll have more then one post to share with them. If your blog is rich with information, most likely people will continue to read it.
3. Figure out who the a-list bloggers are in your niche and participate on their blog using comments and trackbacks. Links to your blog, outside your blog and within in your blog are all important to search engines.
4. Continue to write on target content
The biggest challenge most companies have is keeping the blog current. What I always suggest is you must look at it as a prospecting/networking tool that needs to be included in your marketing mix. It is just one more tool in your sales and marketing toolbox.
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Bill French and F. Andy Seidl, MyST Technology Partners
Web site: http://myst-technology.com
1. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to conduct this interview. Could you please start by first explaining what MyST actually is and what marketing oriented, communicational and content delivery solutions it offers to modern enterprises?
Let’s start with "What is MyST?"
First, MyST has nothing to do with Myst, the game. "MyST" derives from a nickname for "MySmartTags", the name of the first web service solution we built. We liked the term and named our company MyST Technology Partners. We don't actually have a specific product named "MyST". Our knowledge server product is name the MyST Web Services Platform, which we frequently refer to simply as "MyST". Since this web services platform is the foundation for all of our other products and services, we often use the term "MyST" as an umbrella term that covers all of our technologies and solutions.
Our objective was to create an abstract information space, together with supporting services, designed to help companies solve its own specific "knowledge management" problems. We don't really like the "KM" phrase, but the reality is that information has become a key asset—if not the key asset—in most organizations[1] and there is a tremendous need for systems that help workers transform information (raw data) into knowledge (information that increases one's ability to act wisely)[2].
We designed MyST (the web services platform) around two basic concepts: agility and security. The platform defines a relatively simple and highly abstract model for dealing with information objects. This model includes a pervasive security model that permits granular permissions control over every aspect of the platform. It is useful to think of the objects at this level as elemental objects from which more specific (i.e., less abstract) knowledge solutions are built. To facilitate the creation of such solutions, the platform supports what we call business logic plug-ins.
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A business logic plug-in is a piece of software that "plugs in" to the MyST platform to add native support for the business logic needed for a specific knowledge solution. The platform can simultaneously support any number of plug-ins, giving it a chameleon like quality; the platform can easily look like whatever it needs to look like to most effectively address a specific knowledge solution. Our MySmartChannels Weblog Application Server is a concrete example of how a plug-in transforms the MyST platform into something more specific.
MySmartChannels refines MyST's abstract object model into one organized around idea of channels of information. Channels are created around specific subject matter areas and contain any number of information items that are about that subject. Channels themselves are organized into higher-level containers knows as spaces. To this, MySmartChannels adds the ability to transform (using industry standard XML and XSL technologies) channel content into not only HTML web pages, but virtually any imaginable format including XML, RSS, RDF, Microsoft Office smart tags, OPML, SharePoint WebParts, topic maps, even formats that have not yet been invented. The MySmartChannels channel metaphor embraces the idea of personal weblog publishing but extends the idea to weblog applications that are composed of many channels interacting as an application in a secure environment. Thus, MySmartChannels can be seen as both a concrete solution built on MyST and also as a platform for building specific weblog applications.
With this background, we can address the second part of the question, "How does this translate into our ability to deliver solutions for enterprises?"
By designing solutions as federations of loosely coupled services built on an abstract underlying platform, we have been able to rapidly offer solutions for a (seemingly) wide variety of business problems such as: secure enterprise weblogging, partner compliance monitoring, collaborative manuscript review, competitive intelligence monitoring, content management and syndication, secure RSS creation and management, weblog communities, search engine visibility optimization, project management, distance learning, Office XP smart tag authoring, and others. While these may seem like very different applications, they all share the fundamental qualities of using information to empower users to make decisions more effectively. The MyST platform, extended with business logic plug-ins such as MySmartChannels and others, is an ideal "box of legos" for creating solutions such as these.
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2. If I understand this correctly, MyST is not limited to delivering content only through RSS, but instead allows for different output formats? Which?
MyST (by virtue of the MySmartChannels business logic plug-in) can deliver content in virtually any imaginable format; RSS is just one example—dozens of examples, actually, when you consider different RSS versions and variants.
At its core, all information objects in the MyST platform is available in a canonical XML format we call MyST-ML (MyST Markup Language). The MySmartChannels presentation framework uses standard XSLT processing to transform information from its canonical form into any desired format. All content formats delivered by MySmartChannels—HTML pages, RSS, PHP, XML, RDF, etc.—are generated in this manner. New XSL transformations, which we call models, can be created by anyone familiar with standard XSL. Once registered with the MyST platform, these new presentation models extend the capability of the platform to deliver new formats.
As a concrete example, consider Microsoft Office XP smart tags. Smart sags are words or phrases in Office documents with links to relevant information. While this may sound like a normal hyperlink, it is different. Hyperlinks are defined by a document author; smart tags are added automatically and without modifying the document. Microsoft has provided an interface for developers to create their own smart tag recognizers that are called by Office XP to apply smart tags to a document. It is entirely possible for different users to see different smart tags in the same document. When properly developed, this allows relevant information to find you rather than you trying to find it.
Microsoft defined a data format (MOSTL) to exchange smart tag subscription information. By creating an XSL model that transforms MyST-ML into MOSTL data, MySmartChannels can transform any channel into a smart tag subscription document. This makes it possible for a user to subscribe to smart tags for channels of interest. Just as importantly, this new model turned MySmartChannels into a smart tag authoring and publishing environment that requires absolute no technical knowledge of smart tags, MOSTL, or Microsoft technology on the part of the author.
As new content delivery requirements arise, chances are the new requirements can be satisfied by simply creating new XSL models. Even for the most challenging new content deliver requirements, it is likely that the combination of a new business logic plug-in and one or more new XSL models will meet the requirements. A key point is that neither of these scenarios requires functional changes to the core server platform, even in the face of radically changing requirements.
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3. How about delivering content through e-mail? From my perspective what I expect in a CMS is inputting content once and then delivering it over a wide array of different internet media...
Since our platform makes it so easy to access information objects in any form, creating alternative processes is really quite simple. Although we have an integrated email notification component, we've been very busy building alternative forms of notification and awareness services (ergo, people are not asking for more email). Building our basic email platform services into content-oriented applications is fairly straight-forward for almost any developer - we currently use it for things like password changes, and other administrative processes for MySmartChannels.
4. True, people do not want more e-mail. However, many publishers want their users to have the choice of subscribing to RSS, e-mail or both, using just one subscription system and process. Is this possible and how?
Yes, this is possible with MySmartChannels (and applications built on it). However, we don't provide this type of functionality on our free public experience site. Users already know what e-mail notification looks like and how it works. Our platform has been hosted publicly as a sandbox for understanding new ways of working with information.
5. You use HTTP user authentication to grant access to content. Do you foresee this as a problem when it comes to integration with systems that use cookies to identify users instead?
No. HTTP authentication is not the only mechanism available; it just happens to be the one currently surfaced by the MySmartChannels HTTP interface.
6. So it actually will be possible to easily integrate your system in solutions that use cookies and then use cookies as a means of authentication? Do RSS readers support this?
Sure. We don't rule out other forms of authentication but so far the types of applications and integrations (such as we have with Microsoft Office Research Tasks) HTTP authentication works well and seems to be what enterprises are asking for.
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7. For instance if some company wanted a single-point access to all their content and wanted to use cookies as a means of authentication? Would that be possible or is there some other better solution?
The MyST technology stack is highly layered. At the core knowledge server level is an API that accepts authorization credentials as method parameters. The MyST Web Services Platform exposes a SOAP interface to the core knowledge server. These SOAP methods accept credentials as SOAP method parameters (optionally using an SSL message transport.) MySmartChannels exposes an HTTP GET/POST interface that uses HTTP authentication to obtain user credentials which are then supplied to the MyST platform via secure SOAP messages. This layered architecture provides the agility necessary to address different authentication requirements.
8. Does MyST make personalization (not customization) possible?
Yes. All MyST platform interaction is based on a named user context. As such, it's very easy to build XSL models that factor in presentation based on who the user is and what interests they may have. Currently, our platform does not include specific functionality for capturing interests; however, the platform itself is extensible enough to do so.
On a related note, the MyST platform provides for typed associations between information objects, so creating a highly personalized network of information is relatively straight-forward. We are currently exercising this capability when tracking invitations that are made and accepted by users. The current MySmartChannels user interface provides a way to see this in action.
9. Please take a look at www.babycenter.com and their e-mail information service. Can such a thing be easily built in MYST and using RSS?
Well, "easily" is term that needs a definition, and by definition, all content applications built on MyST naturally support RSS as well as other supported syndication and integration services like MOSTL (Microsoft Office Smart Tags). Sure - MyST can be used to build almost anything you can envision that involves content, but the bigger question - will users adopt RSS for this purpose? I believe that over time, they will unless something better than RSS interrupts that trend.
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10. You said that MyST and MySmartChannels meet the requirements of content delivery. Could you please provide some examples from the business world and explain what advantages your combination offers over other content delivery solutions?
Imagine a collection of business processes that collect information about a software vendor's partners and resellers; the objective of which is to determine if the vendor's name and products are prominently mentioned on the reseller's Web site and that link references to whitepaper downloads and demo applications are properly represented. This is a business intelligence process that requires automated introspection of dozens (perhaps hundreds) of partner sites. It also requires capture of the results and then sharing of the results to a team responsible for partner and reseller relationship management.
The content that the intelligence process gathers must be delivered in context to each team member's security and permissions. So for example, a partner manager must be able to review the intelligence reports about each partner and create action items necessary to get each reseller into compliance, whereas, the executive sales manager might only need to watch the overall progress of the effort to get all resellers into compliance.
MyST and MySmartChannels provide (with ease) the ability for the executive to subscribe to information at a summary level, while other participants in the process must see more details. The requirements for permission-based visibility don't stop at HTML pages; search, RSS feeds, and integrations with external applications must also exhibit these same visibility objectives. Our platform asserts a consistent content visibility across RSS feeds, Office XP integration, and every aspect of content delivery.
11. Could you please name a few companies using this and explain how specifically they are using it?
Well, as a matter of policy we don't disclose specific customers that are using our platform for business and market intelligence gathering for partner or competitor information. Our customers are using the MyST platform for exactly the process described in the previous question.
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12. If I understand this correctly MyST stores content in XML files? How about SQL or Oracle databases?
Actually, MyST does not store any content in XML files. MyST uses XML as its native data interchange format, making it appear that all content is stored as XML.
The MyST persistence layer is based on SQL. We currently use MySQL, but all database access is abstracted through a persistence layer, making it possible to replace MySQL a different SQL database.
13. How can integration between the user database from your system be integrated with already existing user databases companies have, for instance Web site user databases?
In our view, one of the best ways to integrate with any information space is to use XML (XSLT specifically). For example, we already integrate many different Weblog systems under one site called kLog News. This site demonstrates the use of extensive XSL-based aggregation capabilities to assimilate content from 15 different content databases.
14. Are your solutions, MySmartChannels for example, focused on any special target audience? And how appropriate are they for small businesses and entrepreneurs?
As far as specific target audiences - No. In fact, MySmartChannels started out as a demo application to exercise the MyST Web services platform. Some of our early users encouraged us to build it out with lots of things that make it look and feel like a Weblog tool. However, we quickly realized that every application built on MyST was fundamentally a platform for building less and less abstract things.
Today, MySmartChannels is hosted as a free public experience site where we welcome individuals, and companies (both large and small) to experiment. Our intent is to allow the marketplace to help us find appropriate uses for this technology. To date (with the encouragement of paying customers) we have built about a dozen different types of applications that are fairly specific in terms of functionality. In essence, each one is an exercise is transforming MySmartChannels to meet specific IT requirements.
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Small business users have found the public experience site useful for creating Weblogs, private knowledge channels for their clients, and enhancing Google visibility for their products and services. MySmartChannels seems to provide a wide array of uses for individuals and small businesses that need agile content services. We've even discovered a few are using it to create, host, and manage RSS content. This is a good use of our platform because it removes any need for the RSS author to actually know about the technical nuances. They just create channels, add items, and magically, all forms of RSS emerge.
For small business entrepreneurs we are particularly interested in establishing partnerships that will help them create new business ideas, products, and services that leverage our platform.
15. In order to take full advantage of MyST, how much technical expertise is required from the customer? Will technical issues be a problem for smaller businesses that do not posses adequate expertise in-house and cannot invest in outside experts?
That depends on who the "customer" is. Some customers will use the MyST platform but will never know they are using it - their user interface will be a Web application that runs in their Web browser and will be designed for very specific objectives. Other customers will be IT groups that install the MyST platform on their corporate network as a Weblog Application Server which will be used to create highly secure knowledge management applications. And we have already seen demand for our platform to build integration systems in larger firms.
The technical aspects would be considered demanding for small business owners, but not for entrepreneurs seeking highly leveragable technology assets for rapidly addressing the demands for new products and services. Anyone with a firm grasp of XSLT, is able to transform MySmartChannels into an application of their own design. If additional business logic components are required, a good understanding of Java servlets is necessary and perhaps SOAP (simple object access protocol).
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16. I think this might be an interesting niche for you, since many marketers right now are seriously looking in to RSS to deliver their content due to SPAM legislation and other problems ...
Well, yes - we would agree that this is a viable business niche that's likely to produce healthy revenues, however, we don't have the marketing skills necessary to attack this emerging segment adequately. We would prefer to find a "product champion" that knows more about marketing systems and how best to apply RSS while we focus on the technical details of the business requirements.
17. So it would be necessary for a marketer with limited XSLT expertise (if any at all) to use MyST? What should such marketers look for in a contractor for this job?
Yes, non-technical users currently employ MySmartChannels for a variety of information management tasks. One such objective is to create channels of content for marketing purposes and syndicate that content. This is fairly automatic since any and all content stored in the MyST platform is available in a variety of XML formats such as RSS, and may be syndicated by simply understanding syndication concepts.
To create custom applications, such as advertorial sites and other applications intended to support marketing initiatives, we recommend that people with XML and XSLT skills be involved. Or, our own professional services staff is available to assist.
18. I have a feeling that all the technical aspects of what we are discussing might be very overwhelming for most small business owners and marketers ... Don't you think this limit's your solutions' reach?
Yes - it is overwhelming for most, but by definition, this is one of the marks of disruption. Over time, many applications [suited to specific business processes] will be developed on the MyST and MySmartChannels platforms and eventually provide extremely easy-to-use systems for small businesses. At this date, MyST and MySmartChannels are intended to make it easy for content-oriented solutions providers build complex applications quickly and efficiently.
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19. Imagine a marketing professional looking to enhance his communication with his target audiences. What besides blogs could he specifically use MyST for? How can it specifically increase his bottom- line?
Blogs are one aspect (i.e., one specific model) for delivering information. We believe that the best content management platform is an agile one; making it possible for marketing professionals to provide alternative ways for messages to reach audiences. Ideally, such a platform would be able to handle ways that are most effective today, and able to adapt [without significant effort] to tomorrows desires.
A few years ago, content management platforms were built and sold without any anticipation that RSS would be important. Today, most of those platforms need to be retooled to provide RSS support and many are experiencing difficulties because these types of service requires some thought about encoding, security, and variants. In a few years, other XML formats will become important, and the MyST platform is already prepared to outlive today's requirements. In fact, MyST was designed with the express belief that it would face constantly shifting IT requirements.
20. You mention about a dozen different types of applications based on MySmartChannels. Could you please tell us which and how specifically they are being used by your clients? Their results?
Rather than use up a lot of space talking about more than a dozen applications, let's focus on a few.
PartnerWatch
PartnerWatch is a business intelligence service that evaluates partner and reseller Websites to determine how they reflect on a company's own products and services. This service provides vendors with the first cost-effective method for reviewing partner and reseller content for compliance. Imagine the embarrassment of a company when a published "premier partner" doesn't even mention a company's name on their Website.
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PartnerWatch provides a web-based business intelligence system for tracking the online behavior of partners and resellers with regard to a company’s products and services. By automatically searching, classifying, and reporting on the "web footprint" of each partner and reseller, PartnerWatch provides a sales [or marketing] staff with a complete picture of how their products and company is represented on other sites. This tool also assists in making certain that all partners and resellers comply with agreed-upon representation of products and services, which increases brand identity and product visibility on the Web. It does this by including a light workflow that utilizes integrated Weblogs and action channels to create actionable tasks to deal with the gathered intelligence. Through consistent follow-up with partners and resellers, our customers are also able to indirectly improve search engine rankings for their products and services - because there are simply more [accurate] representations of the company's brand.
Q&A
This interview was conducted with MyST application that provides a structured [and secure] space to ask questions and gather answers. Q&A is a basic application model that makes it more efficient to gather the feedback of multiple respondents to a set of questions. This is a process that occurs in many aspects of business and publishing. Ideally, users should have a secure space to ask questions and reuse the questions for multiple responses - indeed; this is the nature of km tools. MyST just happens to be a good platform for providing this functionality, but the use cases appeal to a number of information-worker processes.
These are just two instances of the many business and enterprise applications that are built on the MyST platform. Other applications include advertorial systems for generating greater Google visibility, market intelligence systems, integrated Weblog applications for knowledge management (kLogs), manuscript review, and even data integration components.
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21. You said that some are using your platform for RSS content management. Let's assume I have a static HTML web site. Is there a way for me to manage content through your platform and then deliver it though my static site?
Yes, but you might want to use a richer XML format than RSS. The MyST platform hosts many XML formats including one called MyST-ML. This format is available on all channels and spaces created in MyST and provides a complete XML feed of your content. So, by simply accessing this format, you have all the tools necessary to create, manage, and host content that may be utilized by other external applications and Web sites.
22. Small business entrepreneur partnerships: What are you looking for in a partner? And if they come to you with an idea how you can help them implement MyST in their business, how would this work? How much support could you provide them?
Ideally, we’re looking for existing companies (or startups) that need specific technology to build new types of products, services, and businesses. We believe that the MyST platform provides a remarkable reduction in time-to-market and superior benefits for rapidly building extremely agile distributed applications and we’re in a position to provide the technology, services, and OEM licenses as necessary to launch new entries in the IT services space.
At a fundamental level we’re tilting toward helping companies that are interested in creating disruptive products and services, however we're not interested in directly compensating anyone for helping to make this approach come to life.
We have a number of products and services that have been designed for our early [paying] customers. We believe that many of them represent emerging IT demands that will naturally fall out of our day-to-day control and into the hands of designated firms whose focus will take them to commercial viability. As such, we’re now in a position to seed new business relationships with actual products and services that are presently generating revenue.
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23. If we stay with small businesses for a while - imagine an internet marketer publishing a newsletter for his audience, small business owners. How could he go about converting them from e-mail to RSS and a news aggregator software?
Small business should provide incentives if they want to accelerate the adoption curve. For example, a specific feed may include some premium content for a limited introductory time frame. There are also many news reader application vendors that are looking for new users, so there are probably lots of ways to create pricing bundles that include (what appears to be) free news reader clients.
24. Don't you think this could be a huge problem, since most people are techno phobic and are not as willing to change their behavior and what they use?
Absolutely! Change is difficult for most people until it's more painful to stay the same. In 1912 very few people drove automobiles because it was cheaper to own a horse and feed and water it to get from point (a) to point (b). However, at some point along the emergence of automobile technology, the cost-benefit lines crossed and it became much easier and more satisfying to own an automobile, not a horse. The same lines are converging concerning XSLT, XML, and RSS; it's only a matter of time.
25. I think this problem applies to all e-mail marketers who are right now communicating with larger masses of people. In reality, is it possible for a publisher to convert his 10.000+ subscribers to new technology?
In our view there's presently no meaningful reason to simply convert customer bases to a new delivery mechanism. What is meaningful is to provide information in alternative publish-subscribe formats. Eventually, things like RSS will be a basic staple of doing business just like Web pages are now considered an essential presentation form.
Plotting how to move a customer base from one format to another is probably not the right objective. Rather, businesses should be considering these new concepts as potentially useful competitive advantages that can be used to disrupt information models in their respective segments.
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26. Take a venture capital funded small business. The owner regularly sends information to his investors by e-mail. Since your application of RSS can be more secure, how can he convert the investors to rather receiving content in secure RSS?
The only way people will switch to a different method is if there are benefits that exceed the current method. The business owner could point out that the email method requires creation of a report once monthly, whereas, the RSS feed is real- time; investors learn about happenings at the company as they happen. If investors feel like real-time information is better than latent information (as I suspect they do), perhaps they will make the leap to install a news reader. Don't underestimate them - there was a time when that exact audience would never have considered using an email client to read mail - but they all eventually installed one.
27. You make a good point, but an investor can also as log-on to a secure web site, published by the funded company, and get the info there without having to install new software. Why do it with RSS? What benefits can he be offered?
The one benefit that seems to resonate with all information workers is that information should find them automatically when and where they happen to working. In most cases, people tend to forget to visit sites and portals to catch up on the latest happenings. And even when they do remember, how many times (and how much money is wasted) logging into sites to find that nothing has changed since the last time visited. This is a massive waste of time and resources even for modest-sized companies. RSS eliminates this waste and creates an awareness of information change at the moment [or shortly after] the change occurs. It is simply more operationally efficient and this is why enterprises will likely adopt RSS in mass quantities long before marketing firms will.
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28. Given your track record, we're also interested in your entrepreneurial background. How did you develop the idea for MyST and then build your business around that idea? Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
Andy and I are both entrepreneurs - we like to say we're self-unemployed. ;-) All kidding aside, we created the idea for MyST during a series of instant message chats (the text of which will be published someday). The idea emerged from our experiences at Starbase Corporation (now part of Borland). We noticed two things in enterprise information systems - i) plenty of friction to publishing knowledge, and ii) plenty of friction in finding stuff. MyST is a very narrow attempt to provide ways to chip away at some of the knowledge management problems that corporations face. Eventually, it will provide additional functionality for finding stuff easily.
29. Are you developing your company more based on instinct or more based on formal business planning?
Well, that's an interesting question, and here's an equally interesting answer - we're developing a technology and collection of products, not a company. The company that emerges will be the outgrowth of very well-planned technology and persuasion by our early customers as to how best to employ the technology.
30. Where do you see your company in 5 years? What are you going to do to get there?
If history is any indication, we'll be working in a bigger company that has decided to leverage our skills and platform for many products and services.
31. Thank you for sharing all this information about MyST with us. Let us now move backwards and off your solution. Could you please explain in simple terms what RSS actually is and what benefits it provides?
RSS (Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is a defacto standard that emerged from the need to publish summary headlines about stories. It is an XML format that provides very simple collections of items that are easy to parse and utilize in many types of applications including Web sites and desktop tools. From our perspective, RSS provides a standards-compliant method for creating awareness about discrete information objects. Most of our customers use our tools for km- related solutions and RSS is a good format for creating a greater awareness of information changes.
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32. Right now many marketers are looking in to RSS to replace or compliment their e-mail publishing activities. What problems do you foresee with this? Is this the solution to growing e-mail delivery problems?
We're not specifically focusing on the use of RSS for marketing purposes simply because no customers have stepped forward indicating a great demand for our platform capabilities in that solution. However, there's no argument that RSS can augment [or perhaps replace] email as a marketing information stream. One of the problems with RSS is that it's not as easy to determine the affect a feed has on sales. Although RSS is not the solution today, it may become a significant disruptive force in the near term.
33. Who's innovating with RSS feeds -- what are the truly unique implementations of RSS that could get entrepreneurs and internet marketers thinking of creative applications? (G)
We tend to focus on business and enterprises uses of RSS, but I believe there are some unique things that could be done from a marketing perspective - so far though, I haven't seen any serious innovation in a marketing sense.
A few amazing RSS readers will eventually emerge in various customer segments like entertainment and journalism. But I think anyone that has written an RSS newsreader ought to consider rewriting to embrace an agility-based architecture. Newsreaders could be more flexible in terms of skins, brand- awareness, and presenting visually appealing UI's.
Imagine an RSS "reader micro-client framework" designed to deliver a customized visual experience based on the feed that the user has selected. Furthermore, consider that the same transport mechanism (RSS) carries instructional payloads and other content (through name-space extensions) that controls the look, the behavior, and the presentation of the content. Lastly, consider that this "framework" is a very "smart machine" that transforms the channel [between provider and customer] from a monolog, to a dialog - thus allowing the customer to interact with the provider in visible (human ways), and non-visible (machine-driven) ways.
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Under the covers, TiVo is a magnificent CRM system that walks the fine line between a simple interface and a significant improvement in customer experience; and they achieve this while gathering lots of useful information that helps the customer as much as it guides the content providers to create better content. RSS readers are approaching a crossroads where they must transform themselves from largely commoditized utilities to smarter and much easier to use applications.
34. What's really going to drive readers/customers to adopt RSS? Buyers of what products and services are most likely to adopt RSS? (G)
I don't think anyone wants to adopt RSS; rather they want timely information in a controlled and organized way such that it helps them do their jobs better, or manage their personal information diet. This is precisely the reason we adopted (for the most part) SMTP - but none of us considered "adopting SMTP". Email applications and the benefits of a store-and-forward architecture with reasonable assurance of delivery drove us into the realm of SMTP. And the driving force that seems to be causing early adopters to use RSS feeds has more to do with the volume of information and news that we find ourselves awash in each day.
There's no question; everyone will eventually adopt RSS (or similar formats) but we'll know that has happened when no one refers to it as RSS. ;-)
35. Who should be most interested in implementing and using RSS? I mean what kind of business model or product type is most suited for RSS. I guess I'm thinking from a marketing perspective here though... Help me expand this perspective some. (G)
Who should be most interested in implementing and using One of the great aspects of RSS hasn't been explored for the most part; name-space extensions. This would allow lots of unique and refined business and information processes to become very intelligent about what they do with RSS items. Imagine a feed where each item carries special meta-data to make the receiving application smarter. Or, consider the idea of embedded tags that include specific instructions that are generated in the feed based on the type of content item and the permissions of the receiving application or individual.
This is the future of RSS and it really doesn't look like your standard RSS 2.0 feed. These are the sort of research projects that we're using the MyST platform for.
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36. On to the topic of blogs. Do you think these are only one of the "next big things" or are they here to stay? I remember back in the days when all the talk were e-zines, and today it's blogs. What's next?
People tend to see things in very stark contrast. Actually, the current movement in technology circles is not specifically about blogs - rather, it's more about reducing content friction and increasing content agility. This is to say that perhaps in reality, the current "next big thing" is a continual adoption of technologies that reduce operational friction and increase operational agility. In a nutshell, this idea describes things like open standards; XML, XSLT, RSS, RDF, XTM, and a myriad of underpinnings that are now reaching stages that are mature enough to show extremely powerful results.
Blogs and RSS in marketing are simply slices of that "big thing". The next big things will occur in many business segments where entrepreneurs have applied the philosophical concepts of loosely-coupled information models. As proof that this pattern is predictable, consider the rapid drop in XML seminars and conferences since 1999. In that year, everyone attended XML conferences. Now, they're hard to find because the practitioners are now off in their own business domains implementing solutions that leverage XML technologies. There will be a similar behavior for RSS.
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Tom Hespos, Underscore Marketing
Web site: http://www.underscoremarketing.com
1. Tom, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Sure thing. I'm Tom Hespos and I'm the president of Underscore Marketing, an integrated media agency with offices in New York. Most people know me from columns that I've written for Mediapost, ClickZ and other publications that serve the interactive marketing community. 2004 marks 10 years in the industry for me, so I guess you could say I'm somewhat of a veteran in the space. Back in 2000, I started an online community known as the Old Timers List, which caters to experienced professionals in the online advertising and marketing industries.
I started Underscore in May of 2002 because I saw a need for a truly integrated media agency and wanted to capitalize on that opportunity. Today, we service such clients as Claritin, the European Travel Commission, The Mathworks, Eurail and Eyeblaster. We also provide media services to many agencies you all know and love.
2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you ask). I like to think of it as the best way for Internet users to manage the content that gets pushed to them every day. Essentially, consumers can subscribe to feeds published by their favorite websites with an application known as an RSS reader. (Personally, I use NewsGator.) Consumers can subscribe or unsubscribe to feeds whenever they like, which is RSS's primary differentiator from e-mail content delivery. Whereas consumers might be hesitant to give out their e-mail addresses for fear of receiving spam or unwanted e-mail, RSS is risk free. If you decide one day that you don't like a particular feed anymore, you can unsubscribe immediately and never hear from that content publisher again.
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3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
For content publishers, RSS is a terrific solution for content delivery because there's very little work that needs to be done to set up a feed. I'm a blogger, and the Movable Type software I use to manage my blog automatically updates my RSS feeds every time I update my blog. It's a great solution for people who like to read my stuff, but don't necessarily want to visit my blog every day. E-mail used to occupy that niche, and publishers used to have to develop newsletters to please that constituency. But RSS handles it in a more effective and efficient fashion.
4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results?
That depends on what you mean by »worked«. As an advertising guy, I'm still looking for ways to find an ad model for RSS. I'd like to reach consumers through that channel, but there are many challenges that need to be met before that can happen. Like so many channels in interactive media that came before it, RSS started as a decidedly non-commercial medium. Most people don't expect to see ads in their feeds, so it's quite risky to simply start plopping ads into feeds because subscribers can push the »unsubscribe« button at any time if they don't like the advertising. Still, I think feeds can be supported by either advertising or subscription revenues, depending on the preference of the consumer. Past experience tells me that most would rather put up with advertising than spend money on most types of content, so I think advertising will eventually come to RSS in a big way.
From a publishing perspective, I've used RSS a couple different ways. My blog has a feed that interested folks can subscribe to. The feed also updates a WINKsite I have that lets mobile users access my content on their phones and such. There are a great number of other ways publishers can use RSS to deliver content, but I haven't taken advantage of many of them because my number one priority is running Underscore – publishing is kind of a hobby for me, if anything.
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5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
I've said this before in prior interviews (and been raked over the coals for it by the RSS junkies out there), but my opinion on this hasn't changed. The tech community, particularly folks who blog, know what RSS is and use it in their everyday lives, but we're really not going to see the penetration RSS deserves until it grows beyond the early adopters. One of the ways that can happen quickly and efficiently is if RSS readers are built into applications like Microsoft Outlook. One could argue that Microsoft would be able to do this quickly by cutting a deal with (or acquiring) NewsGator or another company, but I'd guess that it would be easier for Microsoft to simply build the functionality itself.
For me, the acid test for penetration is whether my Mom knows about a particular technology. Right now, she hasn't the faintest idea what RSS is or how it can help her. Building the functionality into something she already uses would be the quickest way for someone like her to become aware of RSS and start using it. Mainstream online content publishers will really jump into this with both feet if they think the potential penetration of RSS usage is likely to climb upward like e-mail did years ago. But until that happens, the slow movers will likely ignore it.
Personally, I think RSS could get to 30-35 percent penetration among Internet users within a year or two if something like this were to happen.
6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
That's a function of penetration of the RSS readers. When you think about it, RSS has significant advantages over e-mail on the consumer side. Folks like you and I know that there's no spam involved with RSS, plus we can search and sort feeds in ways that allow us to get to the information we're looking for more quickly than we can with e-mail. With those advantages alone, what consumer wouldn't want to migrate toward RSS? The problem is one of awareness and penetration. Simply put, if more people become aware of it, more people will use it. One of the cardinal rules of publishing is that the dollars always follow the eyeballs, so if there's a significant number of consumers out there who want content via RSS, the publishers will push the feeds.
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7. Perhaps this also depends on the kinds of content we want to receive? For instance, I certainly want to receive my portfolio information daily by e-mail. Don't you think there are some types of content people want to be "pushed" with?
Sure. And the better the customization, the better RSS can compete with e-mail. If you're one of those folks who follow companies online, it would be great to get news releases, stock quotes and anything associated with the specific companies you follow. Don't get me wrong, I like getting Google News Alerts in my e-mail, but I'd rather have a custom feed that I could check a couple times a day instead of getting a ping in my inbox every 10 minutes. But different strokes for different folks...
8. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
RSS is all about consumer control. How many times have you thought about subscribing to an e-mail newsletter but thought, »Nah, they'll probably sell my e-mail address to spammers« and didn't subscribe? With RSS, consumers can unsubscribe from feeds at any time, so the risk of getting unwanted content or spam is virtually nil.
I think consumers have been waiting for something like this for quite some time. The added control will make them more likely to want to aggregate content from publishers they read regularly. As a marketing guy, I think it's appropriate to mention that moving to RSS is not without its risks. Content publishers know that it's somewhat cumbersome to unsubscribe from an e-mail newsletter, so they've taken certain chances with their e-mail newsletters that they won't be able to take with RSS – they carry standalone sponsor messages, load up their HTML newsletters with animated ads, maybe take a risk with some of the stories they write. Since the »unsubscribe« button is right there for feed subscribers, publishers might not get a second chance if they screw up. With RSS, there's no broadcasting a »Please come back« message to people who unsubscribe. If you lose someone, you lose them until they decide to come back. So I'm sure publishers will need to handle RSS with kid gloves until they get a sense of what their subscribers will like and what will make them run for the door.
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9. Very good point. Let's presume we're running a quite well-read feed. How do we get the message to these people about our new product, without the fear of being canceled? With e-mail we have solo mailings, how about here?
I think the key is to manage expectations about what will be contained in the feed. Let's say I'm marketing Harley-Davidson motorcycles online. Publishing only a single feed that encompasses everything about Harleys probably wouldn't be the approach here. They've got so many different stories to tell – there's the brand lore, stories about how people enjoy their motorcycles in the real world, aftermarket parts, cool customizations, etc. Maybe it would be best to publish several feeds, among them a feed on new product releases. Anyone subscribing to the new product release feed is going to want that information and won't likely unsubscribe once they receive it.
That's not to say that you can't cross-promote new product releases within the other feeds. But maybe the story within the feed simply says »The new 2005s are in. Click here for more information« in other feeds, while the new product release feed has detailed specs on the 2005 Fatboy.
10. Also, many internet marketers are using e-mail autoresponders and autoresponder series as a marketing tool. Is there a way to get that same kind of functionality with RSS? Or does the long-term switch to RSS mean that we will also have to change are marketing approaches and strategies?
I've used autoresponders a couple times, most recently to promote an event I was putting on. Attendees could e-mail the autoresponder to get all the details about the event, including driving directions, times and contact phone numbers in case they had trouble making it to the event. It was a neat trick that people dug, but after I set it up, I asked myself »Wouldn't it have been easier if I simply posted this information on a web page?« Between the web and RSS, it would be pretty easy to fulfill on any objective we're trying to reach by using an autoresponder. But if autoresponders float your boat, it's cool – e-mail isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
11. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
You might expect an ad guy like me to say that the first step is advertising in feeds. Nah.
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First, I think RSS presents an interesting opportunity for marketers who also publish content. If I'm a pharmaceutical marketer who wants to provide lifestyle information to consumers who suffer from a particular medical condition, RSS is a great way to do it. There's no need to pay a vendor to transmit e-mail to a list or invest in software that will allow for communication of this content to e-mail subscribers. Instead, you seek opportunities to advertise and publicize the feed, push your content out to subscribers with very simple tools and cultivate a reader base that way. I think scenarios like this represent the first marketing opportunities for RSS.
Down the line, ad-supported feeds may become accepted, but for right now I wouldn't take the chance of putting a client into an RSS environment unless the ad was very relevant. If I was working for a golf club manufacturer, I might place an ad for a new line of clubs into an RSS feed about popular golf courses. But if I were working for Coca-Cola, I wouldn't plaster every RSS feed I could find with Coke ads, even though almost everyone is in the target audience for Coke. I think the ad has to have strong, contextually relevant ties to the content or the campaign would likely be a disaster for both the advertiser and the publisher.
12. How about other relevant business uses?
It doesn't take much to set up an RSS feed, so if you're already publishing e-mail newsletters, I'd recommend setting one up as soon as you can, particularly if your audience overlaps with the tech early adopter community to any degree. There may be some folks out there who might not want to subscribe to your newsletter, but would subscribe to an RSS feed if given the opportunity. Since publishing a feed is easy and doesn't cost much, it only makes sense to offer your consumers a choice as to how to receive your content.
13. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
As I mentioned before, let folks choose between RSS and e-mail (or both). In a medium driven by consumer choice, this only makes sense. The focus should be on covering all the bases with consumers.
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14. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
None of our clients is currently pushing this, but if I had to offer some tactical advice, I'd say promoting your feed wherever you promote your newsletters is a good first step. It also wouldn't hurt to let your website visitors know where they can download a free RSS reader.
I think Yahoo is among the publishers doing a pretty good job of promoting RSS. You can add feeds to your page on My Yahoo pretty easily, so when you encounter news items from publishers who publish feeds, subscribing to the feeds through My Yahoo is simple.
15. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
I don't know that converting e-mail subscribers to RSS would be a desirable objective for too many content publishers right now, unless they wanted to reduce their costs to disseminate e-mail to their subscribers. If I were running a major content site with a significant e-mail subscriber base, I'd likely leave them in the channel they're currently in and let them make the transition to RSS organically. Some people will always like getting their updates and news via e-mail and as marketers, we need to respect that. As RSS becomes more popular and evolves over time, I'd let whichever subscribers wanted to switch to RSS do so and not pressure any e-mail subscribers to switch if they don't want to. Additionally, there might be subscribers who want both RSS and e-mail. For instance, I like getting the RSS feed from MarketingVox so I can search and organize the information, but I'm also subscribed to their daily newsletter so that I can get the daily update in my e- mail and scan it for important stories. I'm not likely to switch to one or the other anytime soon, so why prompt me to commit to one channel?
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16. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
It's easy to subscribe to an RSS feed with a single click or a »copy and paste«. Bloggers have pretty much gotten a handle on this – simply post the address of the feed on the home page and anywhere else it's relevant, including the areas in which newsletters are promoted.
If I were promoting a feed for a client, I'd advertise it in all the obvious areas of the client's site. But I'd like to see some external promotion as well. One of the tactics we've been able to employ to get targeted subscribers efficiently is »co- registration«. We place our newsletter subscription offer in areas where consumers are already signing up for offers that are relevant to their interests and lifestyles. For example, if I'm trying to get subscribers for an e-mail newsletter about lawn care, I might buy a placement on a site that's offering coupons for home improvement stores and pitch consumers there. We pay the publisher only when people subscribe to our newsletter. This tactic is easily adaptable to promoting RSS feeds.
It might also pay off to place some paid advertising for the feed in relevant areas. By way of hypothetical example, let's say Chevy produced a feed for Corvette enthusiasts and wanted to promote it to Corvette owners. After I placed »subscribe now« links in the Corvette portion of the GM website, I'd look to advertise the feed in places like CorvetteForum.com, where enthusiasts hang out. I might also look to promote it with paid search and organic search optimization, so that people seeking that kind of information would be able to find it easily. I think some promotion ought to be done with some of the feed aggregators and such, so that folks looking searching engines like Blogdigger, Technorati, etc. will be able to find the feed and the stories contained within it fairly easily.
17. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
I haven't looked into this as much as I'd like to, but I think basic metrics can be gleaned from server logs. From the logfile requests for the RSS feed, we can get an idea of the number of unique users, clicks to content on the main website and other metrics that can give a basic idea of what's going on with readership.
I'd also look at blogs and feed aggregators to see whether the blogging community is picking up on stories contained in the feed and whether searchers can find the stories without too much of a hassle.
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18. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks for having me.
I guess the thing I'd like to add is a wake-up call for all the folks I'm likely to get hate mail from for suggesting some ways marketers might leverage RSS. As I mentioned before, there are purists out there who oppose any sort of marketing or commercial presence in new Internet channels. I can respect that because no one likes to see ad clutter or flagrantly obvious product placements alongside content that previously existed in the non-commercial space. None of us likes it when we go to our favorite non-commercial website one day and find ads there. At the same time, there are lots of folks out there who subscribe to the misguided notion that all content should be free and that marketers have no place in emerging channels like RSS. But I'd argue that there's a certain point at which publishers, even amateur ones, spend so much time creating and aggregating content that they can't possible invest any more time unless there's a paycheck in it. It can't be a hobby forever - Either they have to start running ads or they have to start charging subscription fees. Given what I've seen about the willingness for people to pay money for content, I think it's inevitable that some of the people publishing in RSS will need to support their feeds with advertising. It's part of the development of any medium that reaches a significant number of people. To take the next step forward, publishers need to be able to monetize the content they put so much effort into producing. Right now, advertising is a proven model for doing so.
Again, thanks for having me.
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Bill Flitter, Pheedo
Web site: http://www.pheedo.com
1. Bill, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Rok, thank you for this opportunity. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Pheedo. I oversee both the sales team and outbound marketing efforts.
2. Your company is one of the few today that are focused on RSS publishing and marketing. How do you see this market developing in the future?
I only see growth in content syndication. The format (RSS/ATOM) doesn't matter much to me. I care about what it does. More specifically, I care about the marketing implications of RSS.
Just to clarify, I use RSS generically, like many may use Xerox or Kleenex. When I mention RSS, many times I mean content syndication. RSS Advertising flows off the tongue well.
RSS has been around for about 5 years. Adoption has been slow but within the last year, it's looking like a hockey stick. I feel RSS will replace email in certain situations. Email is good for one to one or one to many communications. RSS is good for one to many but I do see that changing on a mass scale.
For example. Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more efficient then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed.
Secondly, if the problem of SPAM doesn't get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to communicate with their customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email – one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that.
In both cases, RSS is just a more efficient means of communication.
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3. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS anyway?
I'll give you 7 reasons:
1. Sender ID 2. CAN SPAM ACT 3. Blacklists 4. Known Sender 5. Email Filters 6. Bonded Sender Program 7. Cost of Sending Email
These seven items are a result of SPAM. The items represent an effort being put forth to stop SPAM but it is still a huge problem. I do believe RSS will be around no matter if SPAM was eradicated.
RSS has some distinct advantages over email marketing, which include:
1. 100% opt-in – no worries of legal threats by consumers.
2. One-click unsubscribe – RSS raises the bar. Marketers will need to think about what their sending before they hit the enter button. I think this is a good thing. There is no free ride with RSS. Consumers are demanding control (do-not-call list, CAN SPAM Act, Privacy Bills etc.) and RSS delivers that control.
3. 100% deliver rate – If I publish a feed or advertise in a feed, it reaches the intended recipient. This is minus any technological hiccups. Point being I don't have to worry about SPAM filters, Blacklists, Sender ID, etc. My biggest worry now is whether or not I am publishing relevant content when my customers want it.
4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal?
It’s growing. The feeds we are working with are seeing double-digit increases in their traffic every month. There are pockets where RSS is more popular like technology. Marketers who test RSS advertising will be ahead of the game when RSS goes mainstream.
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5. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today?
1. External Communication: Create an RSS feed on your site. If you publish a newsletter already, creating a feed from that information is easy. It takes little effort. I strongly encourage this practice if you are in the tech sector.
2. Internal Communication: Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more efficient then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed.
3. Advertising: If the problem of SPAM doesn't get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to reach new customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email – one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that. RSS puts the control in the hands of the publisher and consumer. It will become a more effective marketing channel because the market will demand that publishers be more conscience of the amount and relevance of the ads in feeds. Consumers will act as the filter. If the noise-to-value ration is out of whack, the consumer will simply vote with their mice.
6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
In May 2004, we did a case study with Fortune 500 company. We tested several ads in Infoworld’s RSS feed. The six-week effort outperformed the best click through rate in email by over 26% as compared to the industry average of 8.7% CTR reported in DoubleClick’s Q4 2003 Email Trend Report. Furthermore, we were able to lower the effective CPM by three times of that over email, saving the client thousands of dollars.
7. Are there any other practical uses you can think of?
There are only a few of us testing RSS as a marketing vehicle. Infoworld and Nethawk Interactive have been testing it but have been tight-lipped about the results. Kanoodle is sticking ads in RSS by using an XML feed. That’s how early RSS advertising is.
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8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
If you’re publishing a newsletter already, create an RSS feed of the information. It’s easy to create and costs virtually nothing. Everyone wins. I do not subscribe to email newsletters any longer and I know I am not alone.
9. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing, especially if the publisher doesn't want to make content available as it is created, but in one single issue?
This is just a technology issue not related to RSS. You can publish the information in one batch if you wish.
10. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
Promote your RSS feed in your newsletter and offer RSS as an option to your newsletter subscribers. Link to Lockergnome’s quick-start guide for consuming RSS feeds http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/resources/articles/quickstart.phtml
Place the orange RSS buttons on your website with a “?” next to them. Link the mark to detailed information on what RSS means and why you like it.
Additionally, on your unsubscribe page, offer another alternative besides email to consume the information you publish. Quickly explain RSS and its benefits over email. If you can even save 1-5% of your subscriptions by offering this information on the unsubscribe page of your website, it’s worth the effort.
11. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Yes (see answers to 10 above on how). Bottom line is to promote it every place you promote your newsletter including signature files, business cards, website etc.
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Again, RSS is a great tool for one to many communications. A customer has to be proactive to start reading your feed but this a very good thing. You know this customer really wants your information. You can argue an RSS subscriber is a better customer because of the steps involved in subscribing to a feed. Additionally, because the unsubscribe process is so easy, you know everyone reading your newsletter is a quality customer.
12. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
Anywhere you promote your newsletter or website, promote your RSS feed. I don’t think there are any tricks. Make your customers aware that you have a feed available. Very simple.
13. Do you perhaps have any advice in terms of writing for RSS?
Nothing new here then what you’re doing with your newsletter content. Write compelling, relevant content. Headlines grab your customer’s attention as well as the attention of search engines. In a time starved world, keep it short. It seems more people like full feeds versus partial feeds that you have to go back to the site to read the full content. This is a business decision you need to make. If your site produces ad revenue, having readers come back to the site for the full content makes sense. Listen to your readers.
14. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
The state of art measurement is click-through-rates and reviewing your log files. Obviously, that is not enough. RSS is early and measurement tools will be developed. Email marketing has evolved quite considerably since the early 90’s. The measurement tools got much better. I see the same progression happening with RSS. Matter of fact, Pheedo is working on a few now.
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15. Lets now move further to RSS advertising. How does this work and how successful can it be? How can publishers for instance use their own feeds to promote their own products? How can they sell advertising to third-parties?
As our case study proves, RSS advertising has significant advantages over email. The results speak for themselves. Buying ads in RSS feeds is much like buying ads in newsletters with one exception. The targeting can be better because ads can be matched on the fly to content in the feeds. Or category matching can be done as well. We created a quick demo that can be seen here http://pheedo.com/#
Currently, selling ads in your own feeds is a manual process. How manual this is depends on the tools you use to create the feed. You can include a separate post for an ad or attach an ad to a post. My suggestion is to clearly label the ad as such.
Another idea we are testing is the idea of sponsoring an entire feed. For example, “Today’s content is brought you by XYZ.” This is also proving to be a viable RSS ad unit. We are also testing spliced feeds.
Test, test, test. Listen to your customers.
16. So how can RSS publishers get "on board" with your services? What benefits do you offer them?
Currently, we are testing our technology, unique ad units and tracking tools. We are reaching out to publishers willing to test ads in feeds. When we do a launch of the product, we want to be certain we have the right solution that works. We have to consider the entire value chain – advertisers, publishers and readers. Ads in feeds are a little controversial. I expect that to change. It is just where the market is at with the early adaptors.
17. One final question. Many web sites now offer more than one feed. How do you feel about that and what do you suggest?
Again, this is start-of-the-art. This will change. You’ll be able to create one uber- feed from all the feed the publisher creates. Tools will get smarter and more user friendly. You’ll see tools like Pubsub for the enterprise.
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18. In your experience is offering multiple feeds good business practice, or does it just add complexity?
Offering multiple is where we are at today. If it’s right for your business do it. Keep the user experience in mind because, yes, if you have too many feeds it can be overwhelming for your consumers. Your consumers will tell you what they want. Just listen.
Tomorrow, I see a time when I visit my favorite online newspaper, like the New York Time for example, I’ll have the ability to create a custom feed. It will be my own personal newspaper delivered to my computer as the news breaks. That is pretty powerful for the publisher. That is one-to-one marketing at its best.
19. Would you like to add anything?
RSS is not perfect. Today, it is not user friendly. Click on an RSS button on most sites today and you land on a page of code. To the average Internet user who knows nothing about RSS, this means nothing. They may even think the page is broken seeing all the code.
Lack of measurement is a problem for publishers. How many subscribers do I have? What are they reading? When are they reading it? What works, what doesn’t?
Again this will all change as RSS adoption increases. These are some of the problems Pheedo is attempting to solve.
20. Is there a way to get around people seeing just all the code after clicking on the RSS button? What do you suggest?
Yes, you can use XSLT programming. However, users who view your feed with a browser that does not support XSLT will see the code instead. It transforms the page where the XML feed sits into a consumer friendly page. Here is a sample page: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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Alex Williams, DecisionCast
Web site: http://www.decisioncast.com
1. Alex, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? What is your company's experience with RSS?
Thanks, Rok. Glad to help spread the word about RSS. I just love RSS. It's changed how I use the Internet. It's a big part of my business strategy. I use RSS in my webcasts to spread news about the event s I do. It helps increase the number of people who register for my events. It is also handy during events for publishing content that I am producing on the fly. RSS gets the word out. And it's viral. Someone who sees something about my events may blog about it. That person's RSS subscribers may then read about it and blog it themselves. I use RSS in the blogs I write. And I use it as a search engine tool.
RSS is a big part of my business. Our core business focus is to produce webcasts and provide social networking systems that integrate webcasts and web conferencing with web-based applications that are connected with RSS based services. Our webcasts focus on issues related to the technology sector. We are doing several events over the next several months. From Sept. 30-Oct. 2 we will webcast Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. In November, we will do a webcast about outsourcing called Outsourcing Conversations. In January, we will do RSS WinterFest and in March we will do Searchfest. Each event will use webcasting, RSS tools, weblog applications and wiki's (open editing environments.) Our events are a mirror of the services we provide clients. The webcasting platform is the foundation for the service we provide. From there, we help clients integrate other collaborative and content authoring networks. We will create events built around the client's market focus. We will get the speakers, do the PR, find media sponsors and make it all work together. But if a company just wants a webcast platform, we can provide that, too. In this regard, we are currently offering a special, 30-day webcast trial. You can register for a free account at: http://microurl.com/658190735
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2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
Sure. But let me give you a reference, too. Go to www.socialtext.net/rss- winterfest. You'll see a link to »Explaining RSS.« There are some good explanations there.
RSS is a publishing and subscribing format that for me is about speed and convenience. With RSS, a web site publisher can publish newly updated information from their web site that automatically feeds to the site's subscribers. How can your readers use it? One of the best ways is to start a blog, using a service that offers RSS feeds. I use a service from MyST Technology Partners: http://www.myst- technology.com.
Here's a haiku I wrote about RSS:
publish and subscribe
really fast, simple to do
no e-mail, spam mess
RSS is not e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe. And you do not have to wade through a ton of messages to get the information you want. RSS allows you to scan hundreds of feeds without having to visit hundreds of web sites.
Finally, here’s how I explained blogs and RSS last winter to my 10-year-old daughter’s class
3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
It's fast and it's viral.
4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with that results?
I use it to promote events and webcasts. I find that registrations go up at a very steady rate when I promote my events through RSS feeds. Plus, I use it during my events to get updates and news about what others are saying about my events.
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5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
That's the million dollar question. RSS penetration is still tiny but companies like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Sun are using RSS in many ways. Increasingly, media companies are using it. Search companies have adopted it. Efforts are underway to make it seamless so it's just part of the OS. I think it will go far, especially as a services tool. The real issue is about content. It is easy to publish content to the Internet. RSS allows for content to be published and subscribed to quite easily. As more content goes online, the more valuable RSS and syndication becomes.
6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
Has radio been replaced by TV? No. Did the VCR kill the movie theater? No. Is RSS disruptive? Yes. RSS has changed how I navigate the Internet. I do not subscribe to e-mail newsletters as nearly as much as I once did. Will I stop using e- mail? No. Will I continue to publish an e-mail newsletter? Yes. My habits will change but e-mail, at least for me, is here to stay.
7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
Do you use e-mail for the most part as correspondence? I do. E-mail is great for correspondence. RSS is great for publishing blogs and updates to your web site. Unlike e-mail, I rarely use blogs as a correspondence tool.
8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
It's one of the best PR/brand marketing tools out there when used with blogs. It really works. It helps a company be a real information provider. That's a big deal. It's one of those technologies that can really affect a company's bottom line. Imagine if your customer service people published blogs with tips, updates, etc. Now, what if your CEO wrote a blog? Blogs work when taken to this level.
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9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Ask Microsoft about what Robert Scoble has done for them. He is a huge PR machine, simply because he publishes a weblog that has an RSS feed. He is passionate and has thousands of avid subscribers. He gets quoted.
10. How about other relevant business uses?
Affiliate marketing: Keep affiliates updated about your products. One company, PubSub, offers an IM client that gives a running feed of the feeds you follow. They can get breaking news very fast to people. As may be expected, this company is getting a lot of attention from the media and financial services sectors.
11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
I see RSS as one tool that can be used with e-mail and other media. You do not want to publish everything with RSS. A company description on a web site does not get updated that often to need an RSS feed. RSS is designed for sites that update often. That's how it should be used. E-mail and RSS do work together quite well. For example, I will often refer people in my e-mail newsletter to my blog. I will offer people to subscribe to the blog in the e-mail newsletter. You can also offer the e-mail newsletter in your blog, in case people want e-mail updates.
12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
Offer simple instructions for how to use RSS. Give your readers resources they can use. Offer webcasts on how to use the RSS feed. It's a PR opportunity. Simple as that. Treat it as a campaign like you would for a new product or service.
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13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Yes. There are free services. i-Upload offers a service called MailbyRSS. Why should a marketer offer this service? It is another way for your voice to be heard, People may choose to get your RSS feeds. They may also want to continue receiving your e-mail newsletter.
14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
Keep publishing good content. Make it interesting for people. Also, think about your entire content publishing platform. At DecisionCast, we help companies integrate different content publishing and rich media tools so they can create webcast and content authoring networks. There is a huge opportunity for companies that really embrace these social networking tools and services.
15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
Use off-site promotions to promote your blogs and RSS feeds. In the newsletter, tell people that they can get more information at the web site. Offer them something that will drive them to the site.
16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
There are tools available. A good tool set is offered by Feedburner. They have done an excellent job. Plus they create an image for you that you can cut and paste into any html document. It uses Java script so it scrolls your latest blog entry in the image.
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Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting
Web site: http://www.shawncollinsconsulting.com
1. Shawn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Hi Rok, it's my pleasure. I am the CEO of Shawn Collins Consulting, which is an affiliate program management agency, as well as the Webmaster of the AffiliateTip.com affiliate program directory, and a founder of the Affiliate Summit conference. I've been involved with affiliate marketing since 1997, and I authored the book, “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants” (Pearson Education), as well as the AffStat affiliate marketing benchmark reports.
Currently, my focus with Shawn Collins Consulting is on managing affiliate programs, and on of the elements I've been introducing to the affiliate programs, as a means to communicate with current affiliates and recruit new affiliates is to run a blog for the programs.
2. Shawn, what do you think of using RSS for internet marketing and publishing? How should we do it?
I think RSS is definitely the future for Internet marketing and publishing. It's so versatile and easy to publish, though I think there needs to be more progress in the accessibility for newbies. It's sort of the realm of marketing geeks right now.
As far as how to do it, there are endless ways to implement RSS creatively. Some common applications are to publish articles via blogs, rather than the typical dynamic content management systems. The old, dynamic way is not so search engine friendly, while RSS enables articles to be picked up quickly by search engines and indexed quickly.
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In order to get widespread pick-up of the RSS feeds, it's essential to make the feeds as accessible as possible. It's a good idea to make feeds available in as many of the following as possible: ATOM, RDF, RSD, and XML.
Additionally, do your best to get the individual reader to opt-in by having a newsletter subscribe area on every page, and enable them to spread the word with a tell-a-friend link on all pages.
Also, make the content of the blogs available for reprint, so long as there's a link to the blog referencing it as the source.
3. Do you believe RSS can someday replace e-mail as a content delivery tool?
That seems pretty impossible to imagine right now. I don't know that e-mail would be replaced by RSS, because RSS can be so much more than email. I do think that plug-ins like NewsGator will become more popular, so that more savvy end-users will bring RSS feeds into their e-mail clients in greater numbers. But ultimately, RSS has the potential to be stronger than e-mail, even in its current state. For example, My Yahoo users can currently have RSS feeds delivered to their homepage. I think many more big portals, destination sites, and membership groups will use it as a means to communicate updates and news without having to labor through Spam filters.
4. But how can we use RSS and e-mail in combination?
We, or at least some of us, are already doing it. I signed on for the trial of NewsGator a couple months back, and quickly became addicted to it. I subscribed to key blogs, and whenever they are updated, I have the posts delivered straight into a folder in Outlook. When the post arrives, I get a notification.
5. How about from the marketer's perspective? What I'm basically interested in is how to combine e-mail and RSS as marketing tools?
I'm sure there are a lot of great synergies out there. For now, I'm fusing them together in pretty simplistic ways, like promoting individual posts via email newsletters. That's the extent of my bringing the two technologies together so far.
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6. I'm really interested, since you are an affiliate marketing expert, what in your mind and experience are the best ways of using RSS for affiliate marketing, from the affiliate owner viewpoint?
Since it's increasingly challenging to reach the inbox of affiliates, with Spam filters, ISP black lists, abandoned email addresses, etc., I think RSS will emerge as the preferred tool for communicating with affiliates.
7. But won't there be a problem with personal one-on-one communication with affiliates, since RSS is still mainly a one-way delivery system?
No, I think this is really the perfect solution. Affiliates don't generally have a difficult time reaching affiliate managers (except in the cases where it's a bad affiliate manager that is unresponsive). For instance, I make my phone, email, fax, and AIM contact available to affiliates.
My vision for the usefulness of RSS is to be a one-way form of communication – sharing updates, news, and tools with affiliates in an uncensored environment, since email has become too difficult with all of the Spam and other assorted hassles.
Besides, it you wish to enable comments on a blog for feedback and interaction, you can do so.
8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Yes, I am a DMOZ editor in the affiliate marketing category, and about a month or so ago, I started up a new subcategory for affiliate marketing blogs at http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Web master_Resources/Affiliate_Programs/Blogs/
There are lots of general affiliate marketing blogs, as well as a growing number dedicated to affiliate programs, such as ClubMom, Collectibles Today, Mondera, and Rockler.
One of the premier sites for affiliate marketing blogs is ReveNews.com. Currently, they are hosting a handful of great affiliate marketing blogs, and I understand there are plans to offer branded blogs to affiliate managers there in the near future.
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9. How are you using your feed for affiliate marketing purposes? What success are you achieving with this? Do you perhaps have any hard-data in regards to e-mail VS RSS in these areas from your own personal experience?
Currently, I'm using it strictly as a communication device, where I can post daily or more frequent than daily updates if necessary, and they won't be an imposition on the affiliates. If they have an RSS reader, they can access the content at their leisure.
I don't have any substantial feedback so far, and no mechanism to see how much penetration I am getting. My only benchmarks are that I am seeing my RSS pages picked up by spiders in the search engines, and I consider each of those to be a subtle recruitment ad for the respective affiliate program.
10. How about from the viewpoint of an internet marketing affiliate?
RSS is a fantastic way to update and maintain a content site for an affiliate. So long as the site is being spidered by the important search engines and listed in the various blog directories, the blog posts will be quickly syndicated.
Many affiliates are catching on to the fact that if they churn out content around 'elephant terms' (keywords that yield top commissions in Google Adsense), they can make a bundle. In addition to Google, affiliates putting out quality articles in RSS can generate revenue with BlogWords, and blogs are the big target as potential affiliates by affiliate managers in the know.
11. How about using blogs in affiliate marketing, again from the affiliate program owner's viewpoint?
It makes all the sense in the world for affiliate programs to pursue and place increased value on blogs as affiliates. In general, contextual placement of ads is the best way to make money in affiliate marketing, especially if an affiliate has unique content, and they integrate text links into their content (i.e. making every instance of the word book link through an Amazon affiliate link).
In my experience, content affiliates convert better than other types of affiliates, so I go out of my way to bring in as many bloggers as affiliates.
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12. Do you perhaps know of any great examples of affiliate owner's publishing their own blogs?
I know of lots of great examples, but if I shared them, the owner's of the blogs would have my head, and I'd no longer have them as affiliates. ;-)
13. How much impact do you believe publishing a blog might have on an affiliate program's success?
It's hard to put a figure on it, since it's a pretty new concept for affiliate programs. However, I think any affiliate program publishing a blog is going to have extended reach and penetration with their affiliates, and that's priceless when it comes to communicating news, tips, resources, and changed terms in a program.
Any program with an active blog should expect incremental revenue as a result of reaching affiliates they would not otherwise reach, as well as recruiting new affiliates.
14. Could you perhaps give our readers some more advice on how to best publish a blog for their own affiliate program?
The quickest, free way to get a blog going is to use a no-cost service like blogger.com. However, judging from the affiliate program blogs that are out there now, it seems that Moveable Type is the vendor of choice, as they are very affordable and customizable. It's a fairly easy job technically to install and launch a blog, but due to other benefits, like a built in audience and targeted syndication, I'd suggest going with a site like ReveNews.
15. How about in terms of content?
The content will vary from program to program, but I would suggest breaking news down to different categories, so affiliates can easily decide if it's an item of interest to them. Some suggested categories are: coupon, data feed updates, newsletter, and tips. I also post news items when the merchant company is in the news.
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Tom Barnes, MediaThink
Web site: http://www.mediathink.com
1. Tom, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I'm CEO of Mediathink. Mediathink is a Marketing Services company that focuses on measurement and accountability. We work with companies who have an urgent need to quantify the performance of their marketing spend and improve their efficiency.
2. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
The greatest benefit of RSS is that it allows a more nuanced relationship with customers who aren't quite ready to identify themselves as prospects and provide personal information. We think technologies like RSS force companies to improve the relevancy and increase the quantity of content that relates to their offering.
3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
Publishers have embraced RSS faster than any technology that has preceded it. Eventually everyone who has contact management software will need to use it. RSS will change the face of media as more consumers insist on pulling content and look to evade commercial interruptions.
4. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
A lot of smart people think that wide adoption of RSS will mean the end of email. We don't. We're telling clients that RSS is an adjunct to email. Email is a point to point communications tool. RSS is more like broadcast—one to many.
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RSS will certainly end the »Spray and Pray« email insanity. This will make spam even easier to identify. This is a huge step forward for legitimate marketers. It will also force people to send smarter email—email tuned to specs the recipient defines. Conditional content becomes essential in email marketing with the advent of RSS.
Every new media technology brings predictions of the end of old media. It happens only with storage. TV didn't kill radio and the web didn't kill TV
5. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
Right now the best use of RSS in a marketing context is to educate customers and prospects about a company's offering and the environment in which the offering is used. The best kind of info for RSS is that which is highly perishable and minimally confidential — info that is immediately relevant that benefits the company when made widely public quickly.
6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
• Delta Airlines sends me a number of opt-in newsletters. In my opinion, some of that content would work better in an RSS feed, while other content still works best only as email.
• I receive special fare offers to cities I’ve defined, from cities I’ve defined. This is conditional customized content that comes to me when conditions that are part of my data set are met. This content should continue to come as email. But—
• I also receive generic offers that are strictly price-driven with no conditions around my preferences other than my home airport. They are great offers, I like getting them, but, given the nature of the offer (low price) they are not tailored to my profile. These offers should come via RSS when I’m in the mood to travel. I could subscribe to the feed prior to a vacation or mood and then unsubscribe when it’s not relevant. This makes the offers more urgent too—helping Delta move their clearance inventory faster. RSS users will know EVERYONE is seeing the offer so interested parties will find incentive to move quickly.
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• If I were a very frequent flyer I might subscribe to an RSS feed for security wait times only when I’m traveling—being notified only when airports I’m interested in have delays. I wouldn’t have to profile myself-- so anyone, not just Delta--could provide me that information. What a great opportunity for a travel provider, who has no current relationship with me, to offer up a valuable unilateral concession and build some brand equity.
7. How about other relevant business uses?
For internal communications it could be revolutionary-- provided it can be made secure. You could build interdepartmental feeds that, for example, could keep a remote salesforce on top of critical inventory and price fluctuations. Secure RSS and Rich Media RSS are the future of web communications.
8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? Could you perhaps recommend some effective business strategies to use with RSS?
It depends on the business. If I'm building software games I'm constantly posting tips and tricks to my RSS feed. If I'm in the insurance business I'm building a feed about changes in benefits planning and H.R. law. Feed the information that will make prospects more similar to your best customers.
9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
Determine the relevancy of the feed vs. an email. The whole game here is to weigh the value of the personal information you get in a newsletter subscription vs., an RSS feed. While you can get metrics on your RSS you don't get the kind of one- to-one data you get from email. RSS is an intermediate step between a one time anonyms web site visit and a highly intimate email newsletter subscription
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10. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Sure—if you want to. If you can't send conditional content (or don't want to) RSS is the perfect replacement. If your open rates stink, and you've done everything you can to improve your email efforts use RSS to »build down« your customer relationships. Simply email instructions a few times as part of your regular e-mail campaigns.
AOL offered me a 2.95 a month deal to keep me on when I wanted to bail. It worked. RSS allows you to keep in touch with people who don't want or need your email any more. There are a lot of people who get fatigued just by looking at their in- box. You don't want to abandon your relationship. Get more personal with your email functionality or get less intimate with RSS. Let your customer decide.
11. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
Converting site visitors into RSS subscribers is WAY more important than converting newsletter subscribers. Again RSS is an intermediate step. It's a date— not a relationship. That's why it's so important to marketers.
Of course you have to be committed to content development to make RSS work for you. RSS means it's easier-- not only to distribute content on the publishing side --but to filter it on the recipient side as well. So once you embrace that reality you are forced to generate even more relevant content and deploy it more strategically. Grow quality and quantity of content and your RSS subscriber base will grow too.
12. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
If you vend to a customer who needs content help you can build content for them that links back to you. Use Adwords to drive readers to your content and encourage them to subscribe. Use RSS 2.0. It’s easier and backwards compatible.
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13. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
From a guy much smarter than me, Greg Reinacker, and his blog:
http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=641
“This problem has been discussed before, and I know Derek Scruggs has built at least one prototype of something that can do subscriber tracking. We're using the same mechanism to power the NewsGator Tips feed, which is customized for each individual user. It's simple really:
1. Get a user request for the RSS feed, say /rss.xml
2. Redirect the request with a 301 permanent redirect to /rss.xml?user=123456789
There you go. If you assign users an individual ID, you can track them to some extent. You can't just look at how many times the feed has been retrieved (not relevant), but by looking at all the data in aggregate, you can tell how many users you have subscribed, the date they subscribed, the approximate date they stopped reading, and other useful data. You can tell, with pretty decent accuracy, how many individual people are reading each post.
And if you are lucky enough to know something about an individual subscriber, you can customize the feed just for them. For example, with the NewsGator Tips feed, we trickle out tips one per day, based on the date you subscribed. It's not hard - you just need a smart server, and your clients need to react correctly to certain HTTP status codes.”
______
I realize the above is a bit technical. The long and short of it is: The tracking capabilities are much less sophisticated with RSS... but that’s the point—mitigating intimacy to allow customers or prospects to control their proximity to you and your brand. Don’t make people build a rule for their inbox that sends your mar-com straight to the trash heap
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14. Let's now move on to the topic of blogs. What basically is a blog, who should write it, why and how?
Everyone should have at least one and probably two: one professional and one personal. As they become more entertaining and more relevant they will gain readership. As a matter of course we build a unique blog for every one of our clients. We'll use an obscure URL and blog relevant links with commentary. It shows we care. It's easier for our clients to look at it when ever they want and it builds a newsfeed for anyone who loads a reader. It's all about enabling our clients whimsy without making us crazy.
15. So you do believe that blogs can be a great marketing tool? How do you think one could integrate his blog and e-zine?
Absolutely. People are already doing it. Who doesn't love gorillamask.net or boingboing.net?
16. And how could one maximize his blogs effectiveness in terms of marketing himself, his services or his products?
To say content is king is a cliché, but it's more true now than ever. The thing that gets me pumped about all this technology is that distribution power is losing its tyrannical hold over the media business—content and creativity are finally ascendant. That's important.
You have to have a third eye for your clients needs. Sense your customer's content demand and turn into an overnight sensation. My favorite example is how posting a link to the Paris Hilton video made a couple of bloggers into media stars literally overnight.
17. How should blogs be integrated in to marketing strategies?
Customers who build blogs about you or your competitive space (or mention you or your business in their blogs) should be rewarded. Links back to your site will result in superior search engine results leading to an increase in traffic and perhaps to increased sales.
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18. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Integration is the most important factor. This is not an either or proposition it is about customizing the mix of web channels to the needs of your brand and your customers propensity to embrace new technology and the dynamics of your industry.
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Paul Chaney, Radiant Marketing Group
http://www.radiantmarketinggroup.com
1. Paul, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
By profession, I am an internet marketer. I work full-time for a non-profit association as the Online Marketing Manager and outbound email list administrator. In addition, I own Radiant Marketing Group (www.radiantmarketinggroup.com), a consultancy geared to helping small businesses establish and enhance their presence on the internet. I provide a variety of services including web design, SEO/SEM, email list marketing, and blogging.
2. You are one of the marketers declaring the demise of e-mail. What do you believe will happen and why?
Email is fraught with problems. Here are the major ones I see. . .
1. CAN SPAM The difficulties and hurdles associated with CAN SPAM compliance is proving to be a major headache for marketers. Apparently, it has had little effect on the amount of spam as well, in spite of recent fines and prosecutions.
2. Spam filtering, especially AOL. In spite of the high bar that has been set by email best practices, it is not unusual to see bounce rates as high as 30%. AOL can be particularly tedious to deal with, but you have to because so many people use the ISP. While CAN SPAM set the low bar for standards, the ones that still own the playing field are the ISPs, and it's a bit like the Wild West out there. The law in the form of CAN SPAM may have come to Dodge City, but out in the territory, the outlaws (ISPs) still make the rules.
3. SPAM Spam is still so prevalent, in spite of efforts to stop it. Need I say more.
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4. Overcrowded inboxes I believe people are weary of so much email in their inboxes that less attention is paid to it, with the exception of personal mail from friends and family, or business-related mail, of course.
Because of the above, I feel email will lose its status as 'king of the hill' in online marketing and content syndication. It won't happen today or tomorrow, but it will happen. In fact, perhaps the slide has already begun. I would love to see some research tracing a history of email performance over the last few years, to determine if such a slide is in place.
I think that as RSS evolves and the ability to track performance becomes more enhanced (Believe me, someone will figure out a way!), you will see email continue to decline. I give it two years for the landscape to change.
3. So you do see RSS replacing e-mail as a content delivery vehicle?
Having said what I've stated above, I believe that for the present, using BOTH email and RSS is the best of all possible worlds. To answer this question more succinctly. . . er. . . OK, I'll go for it. YES! I think it will. That is not to suggest that email has no place. I just feel with the advent of RSS, blogging, wikis, and other forms of social media, email can't help but lose its status.
The future will be more a la carte and less main entre. In other words, there will be several forms of syndication, not just one main one. Blogs, RSS, and email used in tandem are an unbeatable combination for the present.
4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal? Where do you see the future taking us?
RSS is an arrow in flight. If you attempt to take a snapshot of its penetration or effectiveness at any given moment, it will have already passed that point.
RSS is not a mainstream technology yet, that's true. Give it time. More and more mainstream news/content sites are beginning to use the technology. Therefore, it is getting in front of more eyes. RSS readers are becoming more prevalent and user- friendly. It won't be long before RSS readers are integrated into operating systems and/or email programs such as Outlook. When that happens, it will explode! Give it two years. . .no more, and you will see a sea change in the landscape.
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5. Don't you think we could somehow integrate e-mail and RSS communications? If we could, how would it be best done?
It's already being done. The software we use for our outbound email, Listmanager by Lyris, has integrated RSS feeds into its latest version. So, our readers can get the content either way. Other listserver software providers will certainly follow suit if they are not doing so already. In terms of the 'best way', I think that is pretty good.
6. Why and how should marketers and publishers start using RSS anyway? Could you perhaps give us some basic steps?
Why? Any additional means to syndicate content is a good thing, in my opinion.
How? The way we've done it is to create XML feeds for any website content that changes frequently (What's new page, news, press releases, feature articles, product announcements, etc.). We're integrating RSS with our email broadcasts as well.
Blogs are, of course, a primo way to integrate content syndication. I am huge fan of business-related or corporate blogs. RSS syndication is built-in on virtually all blogging software platforms with which I am familiar.
Basic steps:
• Create XML feeds for frequently changing web content.
• Integrate RSS with email
• Start a blog that is RSS enabled.
7. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today?
This is a reiteration of the question above. Again, any web content that changes with frequency should have an RSS feed tied to it.
Blogs are absolutely necessary, whether they are employee blogs, PR blogs, product marketing blogs, or more top-down corporate blogs. I would say blogs and RSS go together like peanut butter and jelly! It never hurts for the CEO to blog as well. (Bill Gates, take a hint from Jonathan Schwartz or Mark Cuban.) My mantra is: If you have a business, you need a blog! READ MY LIPS: Blogs are a key component to the mainstream adaptation of RSS.
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8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Sure. Here are several. . .
CEO blogs:
Jonathan Schwartz Weblog - http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
Mark Cuban's Blog – http://www.blogmaverick.com
News RSS feeds:
AgapePress News – a Christian news service – http://www.agapepress.org
Yahoo! News - http://news.yahoo.com/rss
Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/fdc/rss.shtml
Bizjournals.com - http://www.bizjournals.com/rss_promo/
Consumer Products Blogs:
Weatherbug Blog - http://weatherbug.blogs.com/ - using it to track Hurricane Frances, and to market the Weatherbug desktop app.
Quickbooks Blog - http://quickbooks_online_blog.typepad.com/ - used to market and create buzz about Quickbooks.
Moreover.com – Here's am extensive list of RSS feeds. . . http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html
9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
You have to educate subscribers for sure. Most laymen have no clue at this point, in my opinion. Here are some ideas that, combined, could help RSS reach the tipping point in terms of mainstream usage. . .
• As blogs become more mainstream, so will RSS.
• As readers see the 'Syndicate this site' type phrases, and the little orange buttons more and more, they will learn the ropes.
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• A good, simple explanation of what RSS is all about listed on the website would certainly help. (Simple is important. Don't send readers to Lockergnome's explanation, send them to Wikipedia.)
• As RSS readers become more user-friendly, and knowledge of them becomes more prevalent, usage will pick up.
• As RSS readers are built into operating systems and/or email clients, they will certainly help.
• As more and more websites use RSS, that will help.
12. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Sure it's possible. There is a certain segment of the population (me being one of them) that likes to try new things just because they are new. Others will try it because a trusted source encourages it. Still others because they are weary of the problems associated with email.
How? Educating subscribers as to the advantages of RSS as compared to email is certainly needful. Providing easy access to feeds, even providing links to credible RSS readers. For example, the non-profit organization I work with is partnering with one such company who will provide us with a custom reader. Our RSS feeds will be built-in and the main window of the app will a special landing page version of our website. All our readers have to do is download and install the app, and everything we are syndicating is there ready for them to read!
Why? It depends on the goal I guess. If the marketer's main concern is metrics, then RSS is going to prove less than satisfactory. If the issue is getting the message out, then a combination of email and RSS is called for.
Personally, I believe the synergy between RSS and email will be such that one could benefit the other. I think usage of RSS could contribute to an increase in email subscriptions, not detract from it.
It's not unlike a shopping mall concept. In any mall you will find businesses that provide the same or similar products (clothing, music, restaurants, etc.) located in proximity to one another. The natural inclination would be to think that would be bad for business. Conversely, the convenience of mall shopping is an enhancement.
While that analogy may not be perfect, I think it is fitting.
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13. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
Provide the feeds. Provide an explanation of what RSS is. Provide a link to download a reader, or partner with some company to provide a reader customized with your feeds already built in. I like the way Yahoo! has done it - http://news.yahoo.com/rss.
14. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
One thing that comes to mind it to include the same type of information as mentioned above (or links to it) in your email marketing messages. Just include links in the footer or sidebar. Make it part of the template.
You could say things like, 'Want another way to receive this content? Subscribe to our RSS feed.' or 'Don't want to have to wait until we send this message to get the content, subscribe to our RSS feed.'
Usage will increase not merely because you are promoting it yourself, but because of the variety of ways news and information about RSS is getting out into internet space from manifold sources. It is the cumulative effort that will achieve the desired ends.
15. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
RSS is not optimal for that in its present generation, obviously. Some indicate that it won't ever be. I think that kind of talk is malarkey! I'm not a developer or programmer mind you. I am an advocate of the old adage, 'Where there is a will, there's a way.' and 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'
Metrics are the marketer's Holy Grail. Give it another couple of years (maybe less) and I'd bet you'll see improved metrics for RSS.
16. Would you like to add anything?
Here's just a summary of some of my thoughts. . .
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Simply put, RSS is the internet's rising star. Email is the albatross. While I won't go so far as to consign email to extinction, I will say that its effectiveness will continue to lessen. (I'd love for someone to prove me wrong!)
RSS will continue to evolve and improve. Eventually, it will be fraught with its own set of problems, however, and the next best mousetrap will have to be invented.
For the moment, the most practical use of RSS is to combine it with email as a parallel marketing strategy. As metrics improve for RSS, perhaps we will be able to be ascertain its effectiveness in adding to the bottom line.
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Jim Gray, Quikonnex.com
http://www.quikonnex.com
1. Jim, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Certainly, I'm Jim Gray, Co-Founder of Ebizworks, LLC. I've personally been working on the World Wide Web part of the Internet since early 1994 and I'm pushing almost 30 years of experience with computer technology. My business partner, Carolyn Peltier, and I started Ebizworks about 4 years ago with the intention of providing online education for folks building and managing websites. However, with some of the challenges that have come about in the past couple of years with email, we found a new niche in the delivery of information directly to user's desktops. We started developing the Quikonnex.com model in February of 2003 and started accepting customers for our services last September.
2. How do you see the impact of RSS on the business and even more importantly marketing world?
The RSS impact will be significant as it requires a whole shift in thinking by business and the marketing community. The mindset has to shift from 'What do I want my readers to know?' to 'What do my readers want to know?' It's all about putting the customer in control and the marketing community, in my opinion, is reluctant to do that.
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3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
RSS has only scratched the surface. It has been around for since 1999, when RSS 0.90 came out, however, it's largely been held prisoner by the techno-geeks of the Internet. While I'd seen the RSS/XML icons on various websites, I ignored them (and some folks call me a geek, so you'd think I'd have paid attention) because there was no real communications about what they were. Carolyn and I got into it because we were simply looking for a way to deliver our content reliably to customers without the need to worry about spam filters or getting our domain shutdown by a malicious spam complaint. We wanted something on user's desktops that would alert them to new information available from Ebizworks. RSS provided an answer to our need, but then we recognized that it could also provide an answer for Ezine publishers struggling with the same challenges.
The ability for RSS and other XML methods to become a ubiquitous means of communication is only limited by the imagination and creativity of the people publishing with it. Microsoft sees it as being a part of their next operating system, so it won't be that many years down the road when we see RSS (or something similar) on everyone’s computer.
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4. And where do you see the future of RSS? What can we expect?
To be 100% honest with you ROK, I could care less about the future of RSS. What I care about is what technologies provide the most effective ways to disseminate and distribute information. Quikonnex is about getting people connected and RSS is simply our tool of preference today to get the job done. However, I do expect that over the next 5 years, publishers using RSS & XML as their primary newsletter distribution tool will be equated to the email marketing gurus of 2 years ago. If you think about it, the age of the Email Ezine started about 5-6 years ago and peaked about 2 years ago. The 'gurus' have been looking around for the last year and a half for a new bandwagon to jump on and they're starting to see one with RSS and Direct to Desktop Communications. In a year, instead of all the offline seminar promoting the building of email lists, we'll see them all standing on stages talking about building RSS subscriber lists. In reality, there's not anyone person now that fully understands the implications of this type of technology. We're facing several standards right now with RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM and they're not inoperable. Most people using feeds do not realize that these are not version numbers, but totally different standards for delivering a feed. In 5 years, we may be facing 3 different versions of ATOM along with the 3 versions of RSS. The folks developing the news aggregators are going to have a real challenge.
5. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses and strategies for RSS? Do you perhaps know of any interesting case studies on this subject?
To effectively utilize RSS, the information transmitted must be linked to high quality and relevant content. What actually goes into the RSS feed itself should be short, simple and hard hitting... a teaser to get folks to click through to read more information. Putting ads directly in a feed is not an effective use of the bandwidth. What business should do is provide quality information, use the feed to announce this information, and entice them back to their websites and there expose them to advertising in the periphery of their sites. Once a business is producing great content, the real secret is not in getting their own visitors to subscribe to their newsfeed, it's in getting other website owners to syndicate the content.
6. How do you see RSS in relation to e-mail?
I'd personally like to see email fixed. I really like it for one on one personal and business communications. However, as a delivery vehicle for one to many, it's never going to be restored to heyday of 5 years ago. It's too invasive and prone to abuse.
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7. As you mentioned in your introduction you are one of the people behind Quikonnex. What exactly is Q?
Quikonnex is what Carolyn and I call a channel service provider. We chose the name 'channel' for very specific reasons. To just be a provider of RSS feeds and blog pages is too limiting. The word channel gives us the flexibility to utilize any technology to deliver information to people. For example, we do a lot of teaching to our members online utilizing voice conferencing rooms and web conferencing rooms. These are simply other channels that get information delivered. Our private messaging system (QMTP) is another channel for communications.
But Q is more than just the technology; it's a community of publishers. It's the members that make Q what it is, not the technology.
8. From what I gather, you managed to bring your product much further than just simple RSS content delivery? How exactly are you utilizing RSS?
RSS is one component of Quikonnex. We've integrated it into our blogging and content management system, we've integrated our QMTP system into the RSS feed, and we're teaching our publishers (and giving them the tools) to utilize this technology to get their content syndicated on other websites. We're also very close to being able to provide RSS feeds that are password protected. Our publishers will soon be able to determine down to an individual, who can have access to their feeds.
9. The one thing that really amazed me with you was the level of evangelism you managed to achieve with your customers. How did you do it?
Carolyn and I are very approachable. We actively invite our members and publishers to join us in regular voice and web conferencing rooms. We're available via instant messaging, live support, and telephone. And yes, we even check email.
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10. What system enhancements do you have planned for the future?
I just mentioned one and that's the private channel. This will be valuable to sites and publishers that want to provide subscription based information. We're developing quite a few code generators to make it easier for publishers and users to integrate Q content on their websites and to provide easy syndication of content. The main thing that we've been concentrating on though, is making it easier for publishers to get subscribers converted over. Frankly, the orange XML button is for geeks only.
11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
You've hit the nail on the head with this question. It is ALL about integrating new technologies into the marketing mix. RSS/Blogs/Email/Instant Messaging are all just tools to those businesses can use to communicate with their customer base. People on the Internet jump on new technologies abandoning older system... this is wrong. If you've noticed, you may have recently receive postcards and information packages from some well know online marketers such as Armand Morin and Corey Rudl. They look at traditional 'snail mail' as a part of their marketing mix. RSS should be viewed the same. Right now, blogs and RSS feeds are hot with the search engines, so a website owner should have one... period. However, to use it exclusively would be a mistake. The perfect mix is to use an RSS feed for the one to many communications and to use email for one on one customer correspondence.
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12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
The best way to convert a subscriber from email to RSS is to not let them realize that's what they're doing. If a publisher is producing good content, then subscribers will want to get their information. They just need to make it easy. That's our challenge. We're always revisiting what we can do to make it easy on the subscriber. You step the subscriber that's new to RSS through a learning process. It's not unlike the early days of email, when the first obstacle was to convince someone to get an email address, to use something other than their AOL email system to manage it, and then to personalize it by getting their own domain name.
13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Absolutely. There are a lot of advantages for email subscribers getting information via feeds: it's reliable, searchable, and virus free. For publishers and marketers I just want to say one thing... Google. Does the content you distribute via email get into Google or the other search engines?
14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
RSS Publishers can use many of the same techniques that email publishers use. Drop down subscription boxes can be RSS enabled. I expect the marketing community to develop all kinds of innovative ways to get new subscribers into RSS over the next year. I know Carolyn and I are working on some pretty creative techniques. I can't discuss them yet, but viral marketing will definitely play a part in it. But the simplest thing for a website owner to do now is to get rid of that ORANGE XML/RSS button! It's geeky and doesn't tell a visitor what to do with it. Start talking plain English!
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15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
There's a rash of new search engines being created just for the purposes of helping user find relevant feeds. Before Google and Yahoo, there were thousands of directories and search engines that accepted website submissions. Over the next year, we'll see thousands of RSS search engines spring up, each one hoping to become the Google of RSS. Take advantage of the ability to submit your feed URL to them. We've got some ideas up our sleeve too on how to provide a mechanism for feed providers to get the word out about the information they provide, but I can't talk about it here as I'm still a couple of months away from launching them. But, creativity if everything on the Net. Syndication, viral marketing, SEO all will play a huge part in getting this technology into the hands of the masses. The important thing to remember though is that quality content will be everything.
16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
Our publishers see exactly the same information through Quikonnex's statistics system. They know how many users are accessing their feeds, viewing their blog pages, and clicking through to read items. RSS feeds do not have to be manually generated files. With database driven feeds, programmers can capture any information that a publisher wants. The only limitation is in what information is obtained from a user during the process. Some of our subscribers are 100% anonymous, but for most, we've got their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The person manually creating a feed with their text editor is missing a huge opportunity. They're going to be like the majority of email newsletter publishers. They'll be providing information to a huge list, not realizing whether or not their subscribers are reading their stuff or just sucking down bandwidth.
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Alex Barnett, Microsoft
Web site: http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn
1. Alex, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I am Online Customer Experience Manager at Microsoft UK, part of the team responsible for our online marketing communications, including email marketing, websites development & management and CRM.
2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format (in fact an XML schema) designed for the syndication of online content.
'Publishers' (typically news sites) who want to syndicate out their content can do so in standard way so 'Readers' who want to consume that content can know which part of an article is the title, the author, the date published, and which part is the content itself. A 'Publisher' in this definition means any application (including websites) that want to make its content available online for a 'Reader' to consume. By 'Readers' I mean any applications that consume RSS.
Examples are websites who republish content provided by another website onto their own website, or programs that are RSS aggregators
The standardization of syndicated content means that anyone who wants to easily make their content available
3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
RSS has benefits at multiple levels for multiple scenarios. The beauty of RSS is that any type of content can be made easily exposed for consumption.
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Firstly, at a technical level, RSS has become the dominant 'industry standard' format for the syndication of content. Without a standard that both Publishers and Readers can refer to, it means that each Publisher and each Reader has to agree, separately, on how the content should be formatted. Without this standardization, syndication of online content between parties becomes a potentially expensive and complex exercise to set up and then maintain. RSS takes this friction out of the process.
For the Publisher, the additional benefit exists in that if they choose to, they can make their content easily available for consumption.
These days anyone can become online publisher, but there is little point of publishing if no-one reads the content.
4. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
RSS has been around for about 5 years now. In the last year in particular, more and more of the high traffic news are making their content available through RSS, including the BBC, CNN, Reuters and New York Times. Everyday I'm seeing another major news site offering RSS.
It’s not just the big news sites offering RSS. Applications such as Amazon, eBay, and Google are now providing RSS-enabled services. Blogs practically come with RSS as standard. From the content provision perspective, RSS content is practically everywhere and the momentum is set to continue.
The other side of the RSS coin is consumption. Many sites that you visit today are probably consuming RSS content from another provider and republishing this either as their own content (through arrangement) or with links to the original source. This is one form of consumption, the other, aggregation is more explicit. Yahoo, MSN and other services are now allowing customers to 'subscribe' to RSS feeds via web-based interfaces. RSS readers are another from of aggregation, where a user downloads an application (a reader) that then collects all the RSS content they have 'subscribed' to.
There is very little research today in the way of data on the consumption through aggregators. One recent study suggests that as little as 1.4% of internet users use any type of RSS aggregator. It is still early days yet.
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I believe the climate is right for this early trend to become very significant. Firstly, most of the content on the web is becoming RSS enabled. So the content is there. Secondly, spam and time-management are real issues for internet users today and RSS has the potential to help in these two problem areas. Thirdly, RSS is being looked at very closely by the software development industry – RSS may well become part of the fabric of the next generation of software so its adoption will come as default.
5. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
The discussions I've been aware of are about RSS replacing marketing content delivered by email. There are two extreme camps in this debate. One camp argues that RSS is too cumbersome; its penetration too low and too complex for the average Jo to use, so RSS will never take off. The other camp argues that email marketing is dead, that spam will force users to subscribe in a purely opt-in manner via RSS and that users will never subscribe to an email newsletter once they've tasted RSS.
Lost in all this is the customer's preference. It should be about giving the customers choices. If they want to visit the website only via their browser, mobile device, or IM alerts or their fridge...let them. If they want to receive your communications via email – let them subscribe. If they prefer RSS then cater for that too.
It needs to be about providing a mix, just as any marketer should know.
The fact is that spam today is a very real problem. There may be a fix down the road, but as sure as eggs is eggs, in my view, will a temporary halting to the spam onslaught - the arms race will continue. Spam may never go away.
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Given this circumstance, users are less likely to give away an email address than ever before. But does that matter? Remember that email marketing is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The fear that some marketers have around RSS is that it will become the consumer's preferred method of receiving content instead of email, meaning that email addresses will be harder to come by. But if your audience is getting the content (and say, clicking through to complete a transaction) then why do you need an email address? The anonymous default nature of RSS is also disconcerting to markers – if you don't know who (demographically for example) is subscribing then how can you target? There are two possible solutions to this. One – create specific RSS channels focused on topics, so that the at least you know the subscription base is actually interested in the content in those channels. This then allows you to direct messaging appropriately. Second – provide a personalized RSS feed that requires the user to provide you with the marketing profile information you actually need before they can get access to the feed. We're experimenting with the latter at Microsoft.
Another consideration on all this is your target market. RSS is at an early adopter phase. These early adopters are generally technically savvy, so if you audience is comfortable with new technologies then RSS is an inexpensive way to get your content out there.
Marketers need to understand the ROI and effectiveness of RSS and compare these to the other tools available. It is still very early days regarding the measurability and metrics definition around RSS, but I think we'll see a lot of activity in this area on 2005. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have a role to play in this and will hopefully take a part in this debate soon.
6. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
There are many ways to compare RSS and email, so I'll touch on just a few and it depends from which perspective you look at it from - the marketer's or the consumer's.
From the email marketer's point of view there are pros and cons.
Pros:
• RSS is easy and inexpensive to implement and maintain; there is no overhead concerning DPA issues; is viral in its nature; counters the unsubscribe trend.
Cons:
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• RSS is generally anonymous in its subscription base; is easy for a subscriber to unsubscribe, ill-defined metrics, limited in presentational formatting compared to full html email
For the consumer, there are very few cons and plenty of pros.
Pros:
• RSS is easy to subscribe to, no personal information to give away (generally) including email address; is spam free, is easy to unsubscribe from.
Cons:
• RSS reader is another application to learn and use.
A more comprehensive analysis is available at Email v RSS, let us move on...
7. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
There are several effective marketing uses of RSS
• Make email newsletters available via RSS. Example: ZDNet is essentially making their daily email news update available via RSS: Between the Lines daily updates
• Make your website content available via RSS, ideally broken down into topic channels. Example: Microsoft is making large amounts of its product news content available via specialized RSS channels.
• Provide customizable RSS feeds. Two examples:
o Yahoo News lets allows users to create an RSS feed alerting the user when news articles appear that contain user defined key words. (http://news.yahoo.com/rss)
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o In the UK, Microsoft is providing a customizable RSS feed to developers that register their interests with us. The content is aggregated and delivered through a single RSS feed that is based on the answers the user provides on two profiling questions. The feedback we've had from our developers on this has been very positive. We seem to have struck the right balance around the data we ask for and the value provided through the service. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/preferences.aspx
• Include the occasional marketing message in your non marketing RSS content feed.
• If buying online media, find out if the media owner will allow an ad to be placed within their RSS feeds.
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Alan Webb, ABAKUS
Web site: http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en
1. Alan, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Sure, I am the founder of ABAKUS Internet Marketing, which is a search engine marketing company with special focus on achieving top rankings on the organic results of Google. The company was launched in 2002 although I have been reverse engineering algorithms since AltaVista and Infoseek days. I currently write articles and moderate in various search engine marketing forums such as SEOchat.com and Searchguild.com.
2. If I'm not mistaken, you are primarily a search engine optimization expert. What can marketers do to get the highest possible ranking for their blogs? Can you give us some step-by-step advice and instructions?
Each blog script is different. There are however some general rules which apply to not just blogs but all dynamic websites. These are...
a. Make sure your blog does not create session ids for guests. Session ids are the death for indexation and therefore ranking on search engines. If your blog script does create session ids you can program your blog not to create one for HTTP_user_Agent Googlebot, slurp, scooter, MSNbot and Yahoo! Slurp (the main search engine spider user agents).
b. Keep the number of parameters in a URL to a minimum. Although Google can index up to 4 query strings ('?' + '&'), it is generally better to keep them down so if your blog has over 2 query strings you may consider using mod_rewrite or php url rewriting to make the urls 'flat'. Meaning no '?' or '&' in the url.
c. For rankings be sure that the individual post page has an appropriate title which would be something that would likely be searched for in a google box. Avoid framesets at all costs.
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d. Be sure to get as many inbound links as possible. You should also make sure that internal linking is thorough. Try to get it so that from the homepage of the site, every blog post is no more than 2 clicks away. This helps with the Google PageRank distribution and indexation.
e. Get a DMOZ entry.
f. There are whole bunch of on-page optimization aspects that should be addressed. I have written a tutorial on the basics which can be found here...
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/seo-tutorial/grundlag.htm
3. And does having an RSS feed as well help here in any way?
Yes, building link popularity is really a public relations exercise. The more that find you blog the more chance that if it is good a link will be placed to the site. It does in itself however give no ranking boost apart from the link popularity aspect which however is very important nowadays.
4. Could you also recommend some other promotional strategies and tactics that in your experience work especially well for promoting blogs and RSS feeds?
A good idea is to contribute in forums on your theme with your blog in the signature. Notice I stress contribute not spam!
You can also contribute to your topic specific newsgroups/usenet.
The key to getting a good pagerank and ranking is very inbound link focused nowadays. Get as many links as you possibly can. This comes naturally with quality blogs. Being of course the first to announce something major can also bring a lot of interest to your blog. Regular posting is also important to get a link. No one will link to a blog that posts just once every two weeks or so unless the post is something special each time. If it is a company blog mention it in press releases. A lot of SEO nowadays requires public relations skills. Getting the word out is crucial so consider ways to promote the blog through all marketing channels, not just SEO.
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5. How has your blog helped you in your work by now? What advice on how to best use their blogs for marketing purposes can you give to our readers?
In our own case, we have gained respect from peers as we have announced significant research and have been the first on many SEO news issues such as new Google data centers and found tools that have yet to be announced for example by Google. This in turn gives the blog links which in turn increases its pagerank which is then distributed through out the rest of the site helping rankings for the whole site in general. Links anywhere into a domain are always a plus for the whole site as long as the internal linkage is thorough. We also now have attracted the attention of major media players such as major online and offline magazines that read the blog regularly. Hence it is great for the other PR (Public Relations). Another important factor is it adds with each post a new page to our website which is potential entry point into the site. This means more search engine traffic overall, my forum does the same so I now have over 70,000 pages that are indexed in Google. Each a potential landing point into the site.
6. How are you integrating your blog and your e-mail newsletter? Could you please explain your strategy here?
Truth be told, I'm not. I do point out the blog to the 3,000 newsletter subscribers I have.
7. In addition to your e-mail newsletter you are also publishing an RSS feed. How do these two work together for you? How are you combining them in your marketing strategy?
I try and get as many outlets as possible in order to promote my company. I decided early on I wanted the lot. Forum, newsletter, blog, articles, rss feed etc. Were developed to a. Provide good content that could be spidered and b. To get linked to and help in building link popularity. I do not have a marketing budget as I don't need one. I receive over 3,000 unique visitors a day from search engines landing on my forum, blog and content pages. So overheads are low due to my main concentration on search engine traffic and syndication of my articles and Blog.
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8. Could you please give us some hard-data on how many people subscribe to your e-mail newsletter and how many access your web site through your RSS feed? Have you noticed any differences in the effectiveness of both?
Email subscribers are split into my German language and English language newsletters. In total there are around 3,000 subscribers. The newsletter is quite popular as I write articles and not just the latest news in the search engine world. As for the feed, I have no hard stats on that but I notice in referrals that the traffic from rss feeds is rising steadily week on week.
9. If you could publish only using e-mail or only using RSS, which would you choose and why?
RSS as it is more likely to reach those that are larger media players and could mean some good publicity in a major publication. Writing the newsletter is not easy I have to do it in both English and German language. I would never give the newsletter writing up though as it is fun and it is important for repeat visitors. The newsletters btw are all archived...
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/newsletter.htm
10. What are the strongest benefits you see in using RSS? What in your mind are the most important marketing uses?
Mass distribution without mass expenditure in short.
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Crt Jakhel, Dergan
http://www.dergan.net
1. Crt, could you please quickly introduce yourself to our readers, especially your experience?
Coming from a mixed background of programming / mathematics and stock market trading, in 1998 I've tied together these two areas and set up an online forum and data archive aimed at individual investors; at the time this was a rarity in Slovenia since both the internet and the stock market had not yet become household terms. In 2000, I've accepted a proposition from the Finance daily newspaper to convert and upgrade the site into Finance's internet edition which has moved on to become the fastest-growing online news source in Slovenia in terms of population growth and also the most heavily frequented one. In late 2003 I've left Finance to once again start from zero, this time concentrating on mutual funds. The project is still under construction.
2. When did you first start using RSS?
A RSS channel was implemented in Finance from the start; I've toyed with the format before but there were various factors limiting its practical use; for the most part they are actually still in force today. One, there was not all that much demand for it apart from people who build their own sites and needed a news source. Two, hardly anyone had an RSS reader installed. Three, for the advanced, tech-literate users that were actually capable and likely to use such a method of news distribution, there were simpler file formats that did the job just as well and anything XML-ish was just overhead.
Speaking of overhead, Finance uses a data feed from the local stock exchange. Their market snapshot used to be a tab-separated file. Since they switched to XML, it's some 20 times larger and its practical content is just about the same. Setting up a bit of code to read the feed in a different format takes an hour at most. Downloading 20 times the amount of data for the sake of it being in format A instead of B is just plain masochistic.
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While I understand the value of standardization and coming to a common ground, it is questionable to what extent this actually is a practical and not only an intellectual point. I continue to believe that there are many situations in which RSS is far from being an efficient method of delivery. In general terms, this is the dilemma of developing a universal, all-purpose solution which also takes care of your problem versus writing something that's optimized to your needs, that's all it does and it does it just great.
3. Could you perhaps share some results with us?
As Finance grew from 2,000 to about 15,000 unique users per day, the number of people using the RSS feeds has, nominally, grown to several hundreds. Of those people, maybe 3 have actually communicated concerning the feeds. During three years of my watch at Finance there were maybe 5 questions about RSS. We believe that most of the feeds were activated but not used. On the other hand, the Finance morning bulletin which comes by email continues to be the biggest single generator of site traffic.
4. It seems that RSS means many different things to many different people. For me it's only a content delivery vehicle, one of the many. What is it to you?
It is a content delivery vehicle, and not a particularly good one at that, which has been blown out of proportion. This has happened because of the increasing need to do something about the noise level and delivery difficulties of email. (Remember that RSS was a "sleeper" technology for years; it's only been resurrected recently and is in no way something new.) It is, however, questionable whether the end users feel the same pressing need to move away from email as do the people who actually send email as their main way of doing business. I would say that there is some danger of RSS "overheating", of collapsing under the weight of misplaced / misdirected expectations. But then I'm a person who likes to stick to the stock market saying "take care of your downside and the upside will take care of itself". I tend to look for deficiencies, shoot things down and go with the survivors.
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5. What in your mind are the most appropriate practical RSS business uses? How can small to large size businesses best take advantage of it?
Software is the showstopper. I would say RSS can realistically be of good use in a controlled environment, such as a company intranet, where you can rely on, or dictate, RSS readers being installed. Apart from that I see some difficulty in telling the general audience "you have to install a special piece of software so we can talk to you". You'd have to be a pretty unique source of information to push that through.
6. How would you rate RSS penetration? Do you believe it will ever become a mass medium? What will it take?
I believe RSS penetration in Slovenia is just about zero and honestly I don't see people, end users, crying out for it. Worldwide, I've been neglecting my "big picture" somewhat in the last months since I've transitioned to a new project, but I think RSS has reached a status of something that can indeed be useful to many - but not as an obvious choice satisfying a pressing need.
But this is related to the question above - infrastructure. If (possibly "and only if") a RSS reader becomes part of Microsoft Outlook, there's the chance of things changing overnight. I can't really speculate on the probability of that happening. Microsoft has, in my view, demonstrated that it's big enough to shape the online world instead of just following it, so I don't see them being under pressure about it. (Why don't I talk about open source products? Hey, I love them. I use them myself. I'm a Linux admin of 10+ years. And all of this just doesn't cut it with the office staff. Let's stay focused, okay?)
7. RSS is often compared with e-mail. What do you think on this subject?
We keep coming back to two basic questions: one, exactly who feels the need to move away from email? It is really the recipient's need or is it mainly the need of the professional senders? Two, how do you make people install readers, in effect having them pay in time and effort to hear you? What makes you so valuable to them?
Email stinks in the sense that democracy stinks: it's far from perfect but nothing better has come up yet. (In fact, the problem of email noise / signal ratio is quite similar to that of the noise in a democratic society where everybody speaks and often nobody listens; and to the question of information overload. But let's not digress.)
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8. In addition, RSS is dubbed as the "perfect spam-free medium". Would you agree?
That would depend. If you define spam as somebody inserting unwanted messages, I would say that RSS or other straight-from-the-source methods is quite safe on that front. However, at least from the user's point of view, that's far from being everything that can bother you. If RSS grabs market share, everybody will concentrate on it, including people hard-pressed to make a sale. In this future I see ad-covered readers and channels where topical information is interspersed heavily by ads. Ads in general can be damn close to spam on the noise and nastiness scale as far as the user is concerned. Of course in a perfect world that would not be so; and yet it is. Nothing is perfect. Perfection is for suckers.
9. Where do you see the future of RSS?
For one thing, I believe I've spent much more time thinking about RSS in this interview that I will spend in the next few months of actually putting content online and delivering it to my users. :)
In general terms I see RSS as a niche mechanism in controlled environments and a supporting player in distribution of high-attraction content. I'll be somewhat surprised if it comes to more than that. As in the stock market, in the online world it's in your interest to always be prepared, but always stay flexible. If I'm ever surprised by RSS's success, hey, that's great; I'll go along as it comes. But right now: no demand and a real danger of over hyping.
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Jeanne S. Jennings, JeanneJennings.com
Web site: http://www.JeanneJennings.com
1. Jeanne, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Sure, Rok. I help organizations become more effective and profitable online. I'm an independent consultant with over 15 years of experience in marketing strategy, focusing in the online world – e-mail, websites and Internet, and before that CompuSerrve's business services network. Reed Business Information US, Hasbro and The United States Chamber of Commerce are just a few of the organizations that have benefited from my expertise.
I write a monthly column on E-mail Marketing Optimization for ClickZ.com, publish The Jennings Report, a free e-mail newsletter for e-mail marketing professionals and speak to industry groups on standards and best practices in e-mail marketing on a regular basis. I earned my MBA from Georgetown University in the late 1980s and still live in Washington, DC. You can subscribe to my newsletter and learn more about my expertise and how I help my clients at my website, http://www.JeanneJennings.com
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2. What do you see as the biggest problems e-mail marketing and publishing are facing today? Do you believe RSS can be used to "save the day"?
Delivery is one of the biggest challenges facing e-mail marketers and online publishers today. The onslaught of spam in inboxes necessitates the use of more and more stringent spam filters, at the personal, corporate and ISP levels. Assurance Systems recently reported that 15% of legitimate e-mail does not make it to the intended inbox; one ISP was found to be blocking over 25% of the legitimate messages entering its system. These 'false positives' (when legitimate permission- based e-mail is incorrectly filtered as spam) are only going to increase as the fight against spam intensifies.
RSS has many of the advantages of e-mail (timely delivery, HTML formatting, live links etc.) but with one important difference: it's not delivered to the recipient's inbox. Instead of being delivered via e-mail, RSS is a separate feed, outside the e- mail channel. To date there are no filters on this pipeline.
And because of how RSS is set up, there should never have to be. RSS feeds are 100% opt-in; a recipient must sign-up to receive a specific publishers' or marketers' RSS feed; they can also opt-out of that feed at any time. The control lies completely with the recipient. There are no 'unsolicited' RSS feeds – and therefore no need for filters.
3. That's all true, but how about personal communications? Do you believe RSS can be used there as well, especially considering the problems with e-mail delivery
Can it? Sure. Does it make sense? To my mind, probably not on a large scale. I think it's a good solution for one-to-many communications (publishing and marketing) but less so for one-to-one communications (which most personal messages are). While it would address the filter issue, I believe that SPF/Sender ID, automatically whitelisting people in your address book and other technical solutions like that are going to be the real way to save personal e-mail from filters.
4. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS?
As the instance of 'false positives' rises, RSS becomes more and more appealing to anyone sending legitimate content via e-mail. It's the most reliable way to be sure you content gets to its' intended recipients.
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5. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal?
Penetration is low. But then again, you're talking to someone who was setting up private networks (the precursors to websites) and e-mail programs in the late 1980s, before 'Internet' was a household word and before e-mail was a channel for mass communication. Penetration, usage, even knowledge of the existence of these things was very limited just 15 years ago. Many people never imagined that e-mail and the World Wide Web would be so widely accepted and integrated into our personal and business lives. The same may happen with RSS. But it is too early to tell.
6. So, in your opinion, the safest bet would be to start publishing in RSS right now?
If you have the resources to do so, yes.
7. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS is facing?
Other technologies. The advent of SenderID, SPF and other technologies positioned to resolve the spam problem are one threat; if they succeed before RSS becomes widely accepted, the benefit of RSS is greatly diminished. Also a challenge: other technologies, some of which may not even be developed yet, which help publishers and marketers 'get around' the spam filter problem.
RSS isn't new; it's a decade-old technology originally introduced by Netscape. It's just getting more attention now because it's a way to get around the new issues surrounding e-mail, spam and false positives.
8. Could you perhaps give us more information about SenderID and SPF. Do you really think these can solve the delivery problem?
Let me try to give you an explanation in plain English, rather than tech speak. SPF and SenderID are two flavors of a single technology to confirm that the sender e-mail address domain is in agreement with the server it was sent from. An example: if an e-mail had a from address of ''[email protected]' the receiving server would check to be sure the server it came from was designated by hotmail as one of the servers they send mail. If it was it would be delivered; if not, it would be rejected.
There are a few steps that need to be undertaken to make this work. For example:
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• organizations who send e-mail need to publisher their SPF records (basically registered their servers).
• organizations that receive e-mail need to build in the process to check incoming mail against the SPF records.
There are also still kinks to be worked out. One example: the web-based 'forward to a friend' mechanisms which send from the publisher's server but use the e-mail address of the person who wants to send this to their friend in the 'from' line. That said, Microsoft and the other big ISPs are working together to resolve issues and put a framework in place for this to be used on a wide scale.
Do I believe this will 'solve' the delivery problems entirely? Not at first and probably not alone, But it's a step in the right direction to weeding out the fraudulent mail in a way that isn't a threat to legitimate senders of e-mail.
9. How about the technologies that will help us "get around" the spam filter?
I believe that SenderID will be the first of many technological responses to the spam/spam filter problem that will make our current technologies unnecessary and obsolete, which is a good thing. Right now filtering based on content, blacklists, whitelists and the rest are the best we've got, but they are taking a broad, rather than a targeted, approach. Addressing the key issues in a more focused way, as SenderID does, should result in fewer false positives.
10. RSS is 100% opt-in and is not exactly what we would call a "push" medium. But marketers sometimes need a little "push". What are your thoughts on this in relation to RSS?
Obviously as a marketer you'd rather have the 'push.' You'd rather be in control. But the Internet is a relatively new marketing/publishing channel and you need to tailor your techniques to fit it. Seth Godin was one of the first to talk about the different dynamic of e-mail and online marketing, where the prospect, not the marketer, controls the relationship. This is just an extension of that concept. Whether it's hitting the 'delete' key, unsubscribing from future e-mails or turning 'off' an RSS feed, it's in the prospects control and we have to recognize and honor that. It's how online works.
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11. A great point. But how about when we, subscribers, want a little "push"? Such as getting our stock portfolio updates by e-mail?
Hmmm. Not sure I know where you're going with this one. I've not come across any targeted content one-to-one RSS feeds to date. I guess you could do it, but I'm not sure if the cost would be worth the benefit. My impression of RSS to date is that it's not made for this type of one-to-one dynamic content delivery. That's a real benefit of e-mail and I'm not sure its one RSS can match or beat.
12. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today?
To talk to existing prospects and customers, to build relationships with them. RSS today isn't about acquiring new prospects; it's not like traditional direct mail marketing, where you rent a slew of third-party lists and look for new people. It's about building relationships with people who know enough about your company to be willing to learn more. It's not cold calling; it's following up with warm leads.
13. What are the best ways of doing all of this?
If you have a website, you have an invaluable tool for building your e-mail or RSS subscriber list. I believe every website should have at least now and preferably both (offer the visitor a choice) of these options – here's why. I like to think of a website as an online trade show booth. At an offline trade show you set up a booth, provide information about your company and collect business cards so you can follow-up with qualified prospects. A smart sales organization wouldn't hand out literature and hope that interested prospects contacted them. You've got to get the business cards and take the initiative to follow-up. And the web is no different.
And that's where an e-mail/RSS strategy comes in. You need to have a strategy for acquisition, also known as growing your list, and also for communication, to follow-up with those folks in a timely manner, probably using a combination (depending on your product and the quality of the lead) of telephone (for direct selling) and either e-mail or RSS (to keep in touch with prospects and turn warm prospects into hot ones).
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14. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Online publishing is obvious. The array of publishers, in all different industries, who have RSS feeds, is staggering. From small electronic industry publishers like Marketing Sherpa to large print general news outlets like the New York Times, they are taking this delivery channel for a spin.
But that's not all. Large and small organizations that market and sell products are also getting into the act. Toys R Us publishes an RSS feed on top selling toys; Newlook Marketing publishes an RSS-based hosiery catalog and Apple publishes an iTunes RSS feed to sell music. Are they great sales and marketing efforts? Probably not yet. But the potential is there. And as the incidence of false positives rises, the incentive to put resources behind it to make it more effective grows.
15. Are there any other practical uses you can think of?
Too many to mention here. It's a channel for the distribution of information, just as television, radio, telephone, print, e-mail and the Internet are. There are some types of information that are better suited to one channel than to the others (Imaging sending a spreadsheet via e-mail versus trying to provide the same information via telephone), but past that there's really no limit to what can be conveyed by each channel.
16. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
The jury is still out on RSS, very much the way it was in the early days of e-mail. With e-mail companies began experimenting cautiously, shifting small portions of their budget into this untested channel with low penetration. As e-mail became more mainstream and companies started to see a positive return on their investment (or at least the possibility of one), they expanded their programs. I believe it's wise to use the same approach with RSS.
Multi-channel marketing, done well, can greatly increase the impact of your message and lift response. If you're having e-mail delivery issues, you might offer the RSS feed of your content as an alternative to your readers via your website, direct mail and/or your standard e-mail communications.
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17. Are there any ways we can do this with the people that are subscribed to our e-mail lists, but aren't receiving our e-mail due to various barriers?
If it's just the occasional e-mail that's filtered, you can send out a 'you could be missing our e-mails' note and offer RSS as an option. If you know or suspect you have a longer term problem, where no e-mail is getting through, you need to go a step further. You can send an e-mail to these folks from another e-mail account which might get through (depends on what is triggering the filter) or you can go offline using phone or direct mail to contact them. If you have a serious problem, you probably want to use a multi-channel strategy, starting with e-mail (which tends to be most cost-effective), then sending a direct mail piece and finally following up via telephone (usually the most costly, depending on your quantities). Each effort should build on the last and you should increase your list conversion rate with each effort.
18. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing, especially if the publisher doesn't want to make content available as it is created, but in one single issue?
For publishers, I like the idea of keeping with the 'issue' format rather than a 'piece meal' approach. It's more in line with what readers are used to. You can control what you send and when, so setting your RSS up to handle a single issue should not be a problem.
19. But don't you think that with RSS people are expecting more content pieces more often, but shorter? Or is it just that we're getting them used to this?
It's what a lot of organizations are doing now, but it doesn't mean that's the standard. RSS is relatively new and still evolving. With e-mail everyone was used to text, but now most are able to read and prefer HTML. It's all in which format is best to deliver the information. And much like e-mail, in the early stages you might give people a choice: do you want to receive articles as they are available or in a less frequent issue format. Much the same way we used to offer people (and many still do) daily e-mail updates vs. weekly.
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20. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
It's an education process. You need to explain the benefit and then, if they're interested, provide step-by-step instructions for setting up an RSS reader and signing up for your RSS feed. Again, we did a lot of this back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was with CompuServe, educating people about logging on (remember phone couplers and dial-up?) and later about installing graphical user interface software to 'front' the text-only system. It takes some thought, but done effectively you can educate your readers and facilitate their shift to RSS.
21. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
Sure it is. We've converted many print newspaper readers to getting their news from websites. This is a much easier shift. As I said above, it's all about education, if you decide to do it. Should you decide to do it? That depends. I'm not convinced RSS is a solution for the long term (I was convinced early on that e-mail was).
To use an example from the consumer goods world, I'm not yet sure whether RSS is the VHS (the video technology that took hold) or the Beta (the one that didn't). The 8-track tape (dud) or the cassette tape (stud). And even in those cases, those 'long term' solutions were replaced by DVDs and CDs respectively.
Bottom-line: use caution. If you are having significant delivery problems, you might put a large effort on shifting readers to RSS. If not, dabble in RSS for readers who want it and educate yourself. That way if it does become the delivery vehicle of choice you'll already be partially up the learning curve.
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22. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
Education. Step-by-step instructions with live links, lots of FAQs and technical support. Also motivation for the subscriber to invest the time and possibly the money (to buy a reader) in the new channel – tell them what's in it for them. Don't force the issue (switch or lose our content); but make it attractive for them to take it out for a test drive.
23. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
We could do an entire interview just on this! Direct mail or inserts in print communications can be very effective here (just as they can be for growing your e- mail list). The key is to explain the benefit, provide an incentive, give them step-by- step instructions, offer support and keep doing it. People need to see some things 3 to 5 times before they take hold. Once is not enough if you're serious about changing a habit, which is what reliance on any communication channel really boils down to. We faced these same challenges with e-mail and now it's a widely accepted medium.
24. Do you perhaps have any advice in terms of writing for RSS? What kind of content is appropriate?
Again, it's a channel. What kind of information do your readers want to receive from you. What do they value? It makes the value proposition, whether you're talking marketing or publishing, that much more critical, because the day the reader decides the value isn't there is the day they cancel the RSS feed. And you lose the opportunity to continue communicating with them via RSS.
25. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
We're working on that. As with any new technology, it's not necessarily 'fully formed' in the early years. We weren't able to track e-mail open rates on a wide- scale until roughly the year 2000; e-mail marketing and publishing existed before that (I launched my first website and e-mail newsletter on the Internet (as opposed to on the CompuServe Network) in the mid-1990s). As the technology grows, so will our ability to track behavior.
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26. Is there anything else you would like to add?
While I believe the jury is still out on RSS, I encourage organizations to experiment with it. The more organizations and individuals who are working with RSS, the quicker we will identify its strengths and weaknesses as a communication vehicle. And the sooner we'll know whether it's here to stay or just another blip in the online world.
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Dwight Shih, Ideoplex
Web site: http://www.ideoplex.com/blog
1. Dwight, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I'm an unemployed code/content wrangler in southwestern Connecticut.
2. How do you see the impact of RSS on the business and even more importantly marketing world?
Is this a trick question? I'm not optimistic about RSS as a standalone content format. I think that it's the combination of weblog for search permanence and RSS for dissemination that represents the true opportunity.
In business, the ability to distinguish between the urgent and important, the important, the urgent and the neither urgent nor important is a major time management issue. Email has the unfortunate tendency of making everything appear both urgent and important. If a significant portion (important, urgent and neither) could be institutionally shifted to RSS and weblog, then business could more effectively manage their inboxes. For example, human resources and facilities broadcast messages are a prime candidate for RSS and weblog.
In marketing, I think that we're finding that yesterday's mass markets have become today's fractionalized markets. And that weblogs represent a potential vehicle for communicating to those fractions. I think that the major hurdle for marketing is that there is a tendency to rely upon glitz rather than message and that's just not going to work over RSS.
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3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
I am pessimistic about the future of RSS in general marketing. RSS is still in search of the killer application. Although the weblog community finds it essential to follow large numbers of sites, most people are better served by hunting down their information as they need it. Marketing will not develop and craft messages for RSS delivery until an audience is established.
One of the reasons that I'm very interested in email based aggregators and the aggregator within my.yahoo.com is that they represent an opportunity for RSS to infiltrate current behavior rather than require new behavior. My thinking is that aggregators need to get onto user's desktops via stealth, not brute force.
Until we reach a critical mass of aggregator adoption, I think that RSS marketing will be limited to technical audiences.
4. And where do you see the future of RSS?
My previous answers may indicate that I'm pessimistic about RSS. That's only true in comparison to email. I don't think that RSS will ever become as big as email was before it broke. But RSS can assume the broadcast role that email once provided and be a major factor.
Consider your typical sales/marketing funnel. It's tempting to say that the final stage is most important, because it yields the highest quality prospects. But if the mouth of your funnel isn't wide enough, then the final stage won't provide the volume.
I see RSS as broadcast and email as narrowcast. You need both.
5. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some examples?
I’m a believer in one to one marketing. I think that RSS provides a vehicle for transforming anonymous masses to identifiable prospects. Once upon a time, people were willing to provide their email addresses for mass marketing. Now, they are much too protective of their privacy. If we look at the range of communication vehicles; we have websites for anonymous pull, RSS for anonymous push, and email for personal push. That’s the new internet marketing funnel.
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As I stated previously, I think there is an opportunity for weblogs and RSS to dominate the important, the urgent and the neither important nor urgent communications within business. From a knowledge management standpoint, email inboxes are untapped black boxes. If we can move that knowledge from the inbox to the weblog, then that knowledge becomes searchable and publicly accessible.
I think that we’ll start to see weblogs and RSS replacing email for project management communications. The weblog will provide a permanent record of the project evolution and RSS will provide a de-politicized dissemination of project status.
6. What does RSS mean for content management solutions?
I don’t know. I think that CMS is still a solution looking for a problem. In one sense, RSS is just another implementation of the publish-subscribe idiom. Since email is a perfectly acceptable alternative for internal business applications, I don’t think that RSS is going to open the door for a new set of internal CMS applications.
For outward facing applications, I think that the barrier lies in the minds of the content publishers. I think that bugmenot demonstrates that readers don’t want to register for access to content. Once publishers accept that, we’ll start to see growth in the use of CMS driven RSS.
7. We're especially interested in more advanced uses of RSS that can only come from full CMS integration, and not just basic content delivery. For instance customized and personalized RSS feeds, limited-access RSS feeds, etc. What are your thoughts on this?
I view RSS as a broadcast communication channel. I think that it will be a mistake to personalize RSS, that's a role that email should fill. But if we define personalization as targeting for the individual and customization as targeting for the group, then customization has promise.
For example, customers of a networking company are probably not interested in a feed that covers the full product line. But if I use a Wi-Fi access point, then I may be interested in a feed that covers just that product line: security updates, firmware upgrades and new product announcements.
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8. So how far can we actually take RSS? What are the basic requirements for this? Do we start with a CMS or something else first?
I believe that the power of RSS lies in its relationship to permanent content. And for a sufficiently broad definition of CMS, I think that effective RSS requires a CMS. I used to think that it made sense to save RSS items. I now see RSS as notification with search engines as the global store. I think that gmail, with its 1 GB store and its admonition to never delete, is an affirmation of this approach.
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James Robertson, Cincom
Web site: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView
1. James, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I'm the Product Manager for the Cincom Smalltalk product line. You can find information on that here: http://smalltalk.cincom.com. I've been the Product Manager for three years now. Before that I was a technical sales consultant and trainer for the company that owned VisualWorks (part of Cincom Smalltalk) before Cincom. As Product Manager, I keep 'an ear to the ground' for trends, changes, and requirements in the IT sector (specifically, development). I read a lot of trade journals, and I follow a lot of websites. I also interact with customers and engineering on a regular basis – both in meetings and in conference calls.
More formally, I make high level decisions on what we should (and should not) support in our products. My daily research helps me in that regard, as does constant communication with our customers. I also impart information back to our customers (and other interested parties) via my blog: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView. The blog is the reason that I got interested in RSS and syndication in the first place.
2. In your experience, what are the best marketing and business uses for RSS?
Syndication feeds are an excellent way of publicizing something like a blog or Wiki. In my case, I create new content for my blog daily – as I write this, I've got two items queued up for posting as soon as I get a network connection. A blog provides a place to offer a compelling, honest, and unfiltered view into a company. Press Releases tend to be highly processed (and typically, quite dull). A blog provides actual emotion and opinions. Where does RSS enter into this? Reading websites takes time. I currently subscribe to 283 syndication feeds in BottomFeeder (a free, open source RSS/Atom news aggregator – http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder). There's simply no way that I keep track of that breadth of information via web browser bookmarks.
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3. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
By itself, RSS isn't that interesting. When combined with an aggregator, it's a powerful tool. When I navigate to a site in my browser, I have to 'eyeball' it in order to figure out if there's new content or not. With an aggregator, I subscribe, and the tool tells me when there's something new. It also allows me to sort, search, and filter – all so that I can instantly find the things I actually care about, and ignore the things I don't need to worry about. As an end user, RSS (or Atom) are tremendously useful – they help me do my job. They also help me serve my (potential) end users. By syndicating the content of things people will find of interest, I make it easy for them to keep up with what we are doing. At present, we syndicate:
• All of the Cincom Smalltalk community blogs: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs. These blogs offer opinions, information, and commentary on happenings in the Smalltalk world
• The Cincom Smalltalk Wiki server – http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki. The Wiki provides product information (releases, support, patches, etc.)
• The Cincom Smalltalk public Repository. This is a source code database, and reporting on it lets people know what kinds of projects are actually being worked on – both at Cincom, and in the wider user community.
• Cincom Press releases are syndicated, allowing interested parties to be notified right away - http://www.cincom.com/rss/Cincom-pr.xml.
4. Could you perhaps share some hard-data results with us? How are your RSS feeds working out for you?
When I started my blog, I was getting 10-15 page views a day, and I stayed at that level for months. After awhile, I got an email from someone asking me to provide an RSS feed. After we went through the requisite 'what the heck is RSS' conversation, I added one. My daily page views (html, not counting the RSS at all) tripled. It continued a steady rise after that as well – I'm now getting between 3000 and 5000 page views (again, html, not counting RSS) per day. I provide full text RSS feeds, and the feed still drives a significant level of traffic to my HTML page.
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Consider that for a moment. Within an XML feed, there's really no easy way to track readers – on your main site, there are ways to do that. My experience is that having an RSS feed – even a full content one – drives traffic to the main site. Once your audience is there, you can use whatever methods you use now in order to entice them to stay and find more information.
RSS is currently used by 'leading edge' people – many of whom are influencers (in a marketing sense). Once you've reached them, you've effectively reached a much wider audience.
5. Also, could you please define a Wiki for us and tell us how marketers can benefit from developing their own Wiki web site?
A Wiki is a user editable website – see http://www.cinconmsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki for an example. Wikis require maintenance, and work best when used by a community of users (in the case of the above Wiki, that community is Cincom Smalltalk customers). A Wiki is a great way for you to get content out to a wide audience quickly – using a simplified markup system, anyone can produce decent looking html pages. They do require maintenance though – like everything else on the web, they are subject to spam attacks and defacing.
6. But what are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
The ability to inform a wide audience of changes and information immediately. With a website change, the interested user has to scan the site 'manually' in search of new information. Even information that is marked as new can be missed easily – I miss things that way all the time. With RSS, interested parties get notified immediately – and this allows for better communication with our customers and prospects. Anything that improves communication with paying customers is a good thing.
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7. How about other possibilities and benefits?
As I mentioned above, RSS is mostly being used by a 'leading edge', early adopter audience at present. These users tend to be influencers, and getting their attention can be highly useful (depending, of course, on what your market is). In our case, Smalltalk has a reputation as an 'old' language – something we need to counter from a marketing perspective. Using my blog – with its RSS feed – I've managed to reach a number of influential developers in the Java and .NET camps. It would have been extremely difficult for us to get a message out to that audience in any other way – they would be extremely wary of traditional marketing messages. RSS has helped us reach out and 'punch above our weight class'
8. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration? Where do you see the future of RSS?
Right now, it's very much in the bleeding edge, early adopter phase. Those of us who use aggregators and write blog content can easily get sucked into the perception that 'everyone' knows about these channels. All you need to do is meet a group of customers and interested parties at a conference or meeting to find out otherwise. I'm very active in evangelizing RSS, and I point out the free aggregator which I author (BottomFeeder) regularly. I also keep it up to date and add features on a regular basis in order to keep it fresh.
I suspect that RSS is getting close to the crossover point – Microsoft is encouraging staffers to blog (about 1000 or so people there blog now). That tells me that MS is probably going to add support for RSS to IE – Opera already has it, and there are Mozilla plugins. Once that happens, it will be as big as the web is.
9. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
I don't think that RSS will replace email for personal communication – it's not immediate enough. I can see a combination of RSS and IM tools replacing it though:
• RSS for mailing lists
• IM for personal communication. Especially now that IM is making its way to phones
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10. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS still has to overcome?
Ease of use. At present, it's still too hard for most people to subscribe to a feed. Most people expect to click a link in a browser, and have 'the right thing' happen. It does for web pages, for music, videos, etc. For RSS, clicking on the orange button yields one of two things:
• An ugly bunch of XML – which looks like programming errata to the non- technical user
• An error, because the browser doesn't understand the extension (.rss, .atom, etc)
For lots of people, they try an orange XML icon once, and then learn that it's simply something they don't understand (and apparently don't need). We really need a standard URL form that would automatically subscribe a user to the appropriate feed when selected. There are a variety of aggregator specific 'hacks' for this at present, but it needs to be universal.
11. Could you perhaps give us some examples of these possible solutions?
There's a proposal out for a link format that would subscribe users to the 'default' aggregator (the same way that a normal link launches the 'default' browser). BottomFeeder supports this proposal, and there are (technical) details here: http://www.25hoursaday.com/draft-obasanjo-feed-URI-scheme-01.html. There are other solutions, such as URLs that are specific to the aggregator running on your desktop (BottomFeeder supports its own format for that, as well as the formats for most other popular aggregators). The main drawback at present is a lack of consensus as to how to proceed in this direction. Everyone has ideas; so far, none of those ideas have progressed to the point of becoming the defacto answer.
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12. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
It's another channel. It's a full replacement for mailing lists (eventually – you need to offer these things in both forms for now). It's a way of getting your message out through the currently 'cool' new technology that everyone's talking about, so it helps make you look 'with it'.
13. But what kind of content to publish using this channel? Do we for instance go the way of mass e-zines or should we employ RSS in other ways as well? How about internal corporate communications, etc.?
You should use RSS wherever it makes sense, just like any other technology. For instance – we have an RSS feed hanging off of our source code control system on the Smalltalk team. There are two other interfaces into the system – a web interface, and a 'smart client' interface. Most of the developers like having the feed, because they can apply filters in their aggregator to show them only the items that are of interest to them. That way, they can use one of the other interfaces into the system (when they need to modify an item) when they are notified of things they need to know about.
I think RSS is also a full replacement for mailing lists – both internal and external. It removes the problem of spam.
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14. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
RSS is fairly easy to figure out (for a technical person) – and there are tools for producing it. Every blog tool can push it out. SharePoint supports it, as do most Wiki tools. There are tools available for syndicating mailing lists (in fact, all Yahoo mailing lists are available via RSS now). The harder part is getting people to subscribe. There's no 'magic' to this, unfortunately. If you want people to read (and subscribe) to your content, you have to write regularly and compellingly. Keyword hacking for Google pagerank isn't going to cut it – I've grown my blog's readership from 10 page views a day to over 5000 via the hard work of writing on a variety of Smalltalk and IT industry topics. Over the last two years, other bloggers have noticed and linked to me (as I, in turn, do with content I find to be interesting).
For customer specific channels (mailing lists, bug feeds, press releases, etc), it's somewhat easier. You can inform your customers of the new service via the channels you use now, and include links to:
• One of the many 'What is RSS?' pages out there. I recommend this one: http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/
• Include one or more recommendations for aggregators – and make sure to include links to tools that will work on Linux and Mac! You'll likely be surprised at how many of your intended audience uses those platforms
15. But won't this be too complicated for most users? And especially for instance for managers who are pressed for time as it is?
Most of the tools out there install very cleanly, and come with a few default feeds pre-installed. BottomFeeder even comes with full documentation and a tutorial, and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Using an aggregator is no more complex than using a mail client. As well, there are server based tools as well – BlogLines being the most well known. Like Gmail, it lives in your browser, and uses the web metaphor that most users already understand quite well. The bottom line is, there are tools for everyone in this space – your best bet is to have someone try a few out, and then make recommendations.
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16. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
I don't really think there's any shortcut to this. You have to create content that people find compelling, and are willing to come back for. You can slap anyone on a mailing list (they may have your mail end up in the junk folder though). You can't force people to subscribe – by its very definition, it's an opt in audience. I unsubscribe from content when it doesn't interest me anymore, and there's really no way to get around that. You have to be willing to put in the effort to create fresh, original, and useful content on an ongoing basis.
17. Is there any way to make the subscription as easy as possible?
Certainly. Provide auto-subscribe links on your web page that support the popular tools. That way, users will just have to follow the metaphor they already understand – clicking a link – to subscribe
18. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
There are a number of services that will syndicate your content for you and others which will propagate your own feed – I use Artima and Syndic8 for that purpose. These are both widely read, and Syndic8 (http://www.syndic8.com) is regularly searched. I also registered my feeds with Feedster (http://www.feedster.com) and Blogdigger (http://www.blogdigger.com) – both are RSS/Atom search engines. Having your content keyword searchable through these channels is crucial; I can find out what someone said on a topic via Feedster faster (and usually more reliably) than I can with Google. If you plan to syndicate content, you have to register with these sites
Another thing you can do is make sure that you ping the servers that people check for fresh content. Technorati is the most well known here; there's a free service called ping-o-matic (http://pingomatic.com/) - updating that server will end up propagating out to over a dozen other services. These were very important in helping me grow traffic in the early days of my blog, and they are just as useful now.
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19. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
RSS is accessed via HTTP – the same way that your web page is accessed. Ultimately, you can use all the techniques available for website tracking.
20. Could you perhaps recommend some software marketers can use to better publish and market using RSS?
Well, I've done all of my work in Cincom Smalltalk. Mind you, I'm a marketing guy, but I've been able to crank out RSS support for our blogs, our Wikis, our source code tools, and our bug reporting tools. There are also pre-packaged solutions out there for email lists and tools like SharePoint. To be honest, I've written all of our (Cincom's) tools myself – part of my purpose is to demonstrate the ease of use and productivity of our product.
21. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Nothing that I can think of. Thanks for being interested! If you have any follow up questions, I'll be happy to field them.
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Kim Bloomer, KimBloomer.com
Web site: http://www.kimbloomer.com
1. Kim, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Yes, and thank you Roc for inviting me to this interview.
I am a firm believer in multiple streams of income so I have just that:
• I always take a proactive approach to all I do so I publish a RSS channel on holistic pet care, AspenbloomWellPet, offering the products I use and adhere to for my family and my pets, along with lots of articles, news and information to help people take an informative approach to the wellness of their pets.
• I also co-publish a channel with Cathy Carlton, Kick The Email Habit. I met Cathy during one of the training conferences offered by the Quikonnex system I use to publish my channels. We took an instant liking to each other, and since Cathy had already formulated and designed the whole channel and website, we decided to combine our efforts and strengths into the service that Kick The Email Habit has evolved into. We now offer an article bank on Kick The Email Habit, a free e-book on how to publish on Quikonnex in an easy, step-by-step How To, and we also offer channel building and management services for those who want the capability of publishing through RSS but don't want to learn it or don't have the time to manage a channel themselves. Last but not least we offer advertising space. http://www.KickTheEmailHabit.com
• We also recently starting building and managing the channel for the International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce (IVWCC) of which we're members.
• I also just recently started another channel under the »AspenbloomWellPet umbrella«. We have unlimited subchannels we can use so I publish one specifically on natural Pet Products and talk about those products which I use and sell. The new subchannel is specifically all Christian and I have several co- publishers involved in this effort including Cathy Carlton.
My website is http://KimBloomer.com
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I originally thought one channel would be enough but then ideas multiply and I just keep adding channels! It's so much fun and not hard to do, especially when you have a partner like I do who can explain what I can't and vice versa.
2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
I can sit here and sort of laugh at that question Roc because I'm not entirely sure I totally understand what RSS really is. The explanation I do understand is that in a nutshell it is Really Simple Syndication. I've actually written a couple of articles on this subject. When you think of syndication what do you think of? Well, I think of television series for one. Every week during PrimeTime television each network has several shows that come on during a specific time slot and the whole nation sees the show at the same time in their time zone. Those shows are syndicated shows. They were produced once but all the stations on each network carry that same show all over the country. The show doesn't have to be redone for each station in each city – it's syndicated. It's duplication at its finest!
So, if you want to use RSS on the Internet the principle is the same. When you have your syndication code figured out (I don't have to do that as that's part of the service I receive on Quikonnex), you offer your code rather than a link exchange. So, now let's say many sites have picked up your syndication code due to your diligent offering of this code, right? Well every single time you update your RSS feed with content, that same content is simultaneously updated on all the sites carrying your code. Like I said, duplication at it's finest.
3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
First of all the fact that I don't have to update my content to all the sites carrying my links that's real easy! I'm going to really break the mold here when I say I've never delivered my content in any other format. Nope, not email. I was on the threshold of doing just that though.
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Here's how it went: I am always being asked questions about pets and rather than having to continually have to repeat myself and bring my point home each time on why holistic is the way to go, I decided I would knock out two with one meaning I would deliver an email newsletter to everyone I knew to start and hope they'd share that with everyone they know and so on. Then I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself PLUS I'd promote my business. That's what I read over and over again on business promotion so I knew I'd have to do that. Then I started finding out about autoresponders, lists, opt-in/opt-out, spamming, and etc., etc.
I was none too happy about all of that but was resigned to the fact when I chance happened upon a banner on an article bank website I was inputting an article to. The banner said something like »Do you want to deliver your newsletter without all the hassles, in RSS/XML format« So, I clicked through the banner got to the Quikonnex site, and the rest is as they say history. I kept going back and forth over that for a few days but I just couldn't turn away. I KNEW emphatically that this was the way I was going to go. I had been reading about blogs and RSS in some techy newsletters I subscribe to.
Oh and not because I'm so technically inclined either. I subscribed to them to try and get some bit of a handle on what the happenings were on the Internet. I am anything but technically inclined and yet I am publishing in RSS.
4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results?
As I've stated all through this interview, I use it daily in publishing my channels on Quikonnex. How has it worked for me? Well, I would not want to publish any other way. I can actually sit back and grin when I read what all the other ezine publishers are going through. Not because I'm so great or think that they're less than, absolutely not. In fact, there are many very savvy ezine publishers out there today. The difference is, I don't have to worry about all the hassles normally associated with email publishing. The results are that I have far more readers (which is what I truly want) people who take the time to read what I write and utilize what I write in their own lives. Even more, I can track »hits« just like you do on a website. I can see how many are stopping by each day and what »item« is the most read, etc. The biggest hits are on the syndication feeds, picking them up and putting those links on their sites. My hits are growing exponentially as a result.
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5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
Well that's somewhat of a loaded question to ask a technically challenged person! My thoughts on the current RSS penetration is that we haven't even skimmed the surface YET. So, the depth and width is wide open. It's going to grow exponentially just like my channels are. In fact, I think it's a mounting huge snowball waiting to gather major momentum.
6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
Hmmm. I've thought on this and talked at length on this with many, many people Rok. My answer is ambiguous at best I think. Email isn't dead but it might kill you as Carolyn Peltier, Quikonnex founder is always telling us. The reason we say that is because of all, and I do keep repeating myself, all of the hassles associated with getting a newsletter delivered to an inbox these days. Every single day I read that it's still a great delivery of marketing and every day I read why it's not so great, so maybe I should be asking you what you think of email marketing, Rok, as a delivery tool? Actually, sitting where I am using RSS and loving it, I would love to see way more people get comfortable using it as a means of content delivery. It brings back the fun to publishing and it makes it much more comfortable to subscribers and readers –gives them back the control they're lacking in email. I try to unsubscribe to those Yahoo Groups I've joined and they never unsub me. It's very frustrating. Of course, those are quite different than an email newsletter but the delivery is the same and most times, I don't have time to read an entire newsletter so, quite frankly, I dump it. I would rather read an article a day from each publisher rather than an entire newsletter and that's doable on the system I use.
So, I don't know if RSS will replace email, but I hope so, so I can read what all these great publishers and writers are offering without it cluttering up my email inbox along with all those stupid spam emails. Let's not even go to virus troubles...whole other subject!
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7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
Oh, I have a great big grin on my face! Easy, ever try comparing a horse to a Lear Jet? Well that's email compared to RSS. Both will get you there but at what speed and in what style? I love horses, always have but I sure don't want to ride one from here to say NY – I live in NM. Would I blaze across the country in a Lear Jet? Absolutely!
8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
Well, I won't pretend to be the expert on marketing uses or practices here Rok. I usually, and this is the absolute truth, go with my gut on most things. I'm not always right, and I'm not the savvy type either, I just kind of do everything based on past experiences and mistakes and advice and go forward from there. In this case, I took the step into RSS without thinking about marketing it or anything. I just think of it as a very simple way to deliver the content I want to share to promote wellness and my products in keeping with that. Guess I never think much about the direct marketing implication here, it just plain ol' makes sense to me to use something that duplicates my efforts repeatedly without any extra work on my part. I market the Quikonnex system along with what I do, and that's easy for me to do because I use the system, and it delivers on the promises. It makes it all very simple to share and explain.
9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Sure, I'd love to. Here's what I do to share the RSS experience and I just wait to see how many catch on or not.
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Like I stated earlier, I belong to the IVWCC. All of our virtual meetings are done online through moderated email lists. So, when we have for example our monthly Meet & Greet, my inbox is swamped with up to 800 or more email just from this group alone over a 48 hour period. Then I have to quickly sift through all of the ones I want to connect with and so forth. Well, I think a lot of information gets missed that way. How do I know, because I know I skim rather than read through during those. I send out, very consistently, during these Meet & Greets information on Quikonnex, on Kick The Email Habit, and the services we offer. Even so, after the Meets I still get women contacting asking me, what is RSS? What is Quikonnex? What is a channel? So, I am putting together a FAQ to answer these questions by posting that FAQ to our channels. They get really excited when they understand the viability of the delivery of their content, their profiles, etc. Some have said they wouldn't have started an email newsletter if they'd known about this and others decide to continue while watching what we're doing, and dabbling as free co-publishers to get a feel for the whole thing. I love it!
So, that's how I apply the practical marketing – find a need and fill it. I like keeping things simple, and really simple syndication plays right into that for me.
10. How about other relevant business uses?
I use my channels like an ezine, blog, and website all-in-one almost. It delivers my content, promotes my products, and I make my announcements, news, etc., all right here in one easy to use system. I don't have to database anything myself, I don't have to keep track of subscribers, I have a 2-way communication Private Message system for readers/subscribers to be able to talk to me, and it operates like a forum in that we have a place for readers to leave comments. Of course, if I don't like what's posted I can delete it but that hasn't happened yet.
Not only that, but it all links up with my website. It's all done in one place so that simplifies things even more for me. The best part, I don't get spammed on my channels.
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11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
Well, I'll be honest here and say I do still use email. I have to because so many of the things I do still require me to do so. If email has to still be used, I'd rather see it used as a form of communication and leave the marketing in RSS. Once everyone starts to realize how viral and dynamic RSS is, they won't want to continue to market in email, at least that's my opinion. So RSS and email together, hmmm. Tough one. I don't think we should have a wall dividing those who use RSS on one side and email on the other. Rather, I'd like to think we could all use RSS to market our goods and take back some control of what's gotten so out of hand on the Internet. Then use email for simple communication. I'm really, at this point Rok, not sure how we can integrate it. I consistently try to show everyone how they can continue to use email while getting their feet wet in RSS. Then, as they get excited about how it all works, they'll want to leave the email behind. It's not that I'm against email per se, just that I'm not sure it's such a great way any longer to market ourselves. This is not a finished answer and I don't think it will be for some time to come yet.
12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
One of the things other publishers who use this system are saying is that they lost many subscribers because the subscribers didn't get it. I have never had to worry over that since I've only ever published using RSS. However, what I believe most of the publishers have told me is that although their subscriber base shrank, the readers they have are actually reading what they write. Who wouldn't when you can pop in for a couple of minutes a day and read the latest post without having to sit through an entire newsletter?
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I think, after how I've been explaining RSS over and over again, the best thing to do is learn about RSS. It's not as scary as anyone thinks, I mean look at me – a technical dummy 101! I am using it though. I learned about it by reading. So read what you can find, then put together a FAQ for your subscribers. Explain to them how the power will be back in their hands. No more missed delivery dates, no more bounces because of an IP ban. They'll always have access to your news. Start an RSS feed before quitting your newsletter and prime the pump so to speak. Get them used to going over and reading your feeds, ask for feedback and comments. Then one day you'll just want to announce that you are now switching to the RSS feed. Explain how you won't need to use their email address any longer because they'll be getting your feed live in living color when they want it, not on a day they may not have time to read it. Every day they can pop in and read your news. I know on Quikonnex the founders are working on a lot of things that will make it so easy to use that subscribers will use our system simply because they'll be in control of when and how much they want to read in a format that will make their email newsletters unnecessary because they won't need to access their inbox for their news.
Lastly, you'll have to ask them to subscribe to your feed over and over again. I do in nearly every single post I make to my channel – or I try to. Why? Well think about TV commercials. Do you always run out and buy the item the first time you see it on TV? I don't think so. Nope, you probably see the commercial so much that you finally HAVE to go get that item. Same thing with RSS subscribing.
13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
I not only think it's possible I know it is. Maybe not your entire list but then, a lot of your list subscribers are, how shall I say this – dead weight. They aren't really reading what you put in your newsletters, they're just subscribing. Now, when you publish an RSS channel/feed people are actually looking to read news feeds, and if they know they'll be in control of the subscription like they are on our Q channels, it gives your subscribers a feeling of power they haven't had before through email subscriptions.
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How, you ask. My partner Cathy Carlton, would be a great one to ask that question to. She had so much trouble with her email newsletter she actually just told her subscribers she was moving the whole operation to RSS through Quikonnex and some stayed with her and others didn't. She knew that since the search engines get pinged every time she inputs an item into her feed she would have subscribers back way quicker than it ever took to build her email list.
I on the other hand have never had to convert email subscribers to RSS. I'll tell you Rok that I am really very pleased with the minimal effort it takes to publish this way. I do send out a notice to my address email box whenever I start a new RSS channel feed. I also do word of mouth offline, and online I plug it every single chance I get. In networks, meetings, whatever, I tell about my RSS channels. It's like email in that respect but much easier and broader than an email list. Sure you may have huge lists but there are so many who are switching to RSS feeds/channels simply to get out from under all the complications of getting an email newsletter out only to have it deleted.
So why should you do it? Because if you don't I think you'll regret that decision in a couple of years. We all need to keep up with the technological changes that are coming our way as much as possible. Plus, I think in a way email is like an old car – you have to keep repairing it over and over until the repairs are way more money than a new car with payments, not to mention the unreliability of it. RSS is fast and dynamic and it gives the marketer a chance to get back to what they do well – market, and publish. The subscriber can control what they read and access your database easily – at least through Quikonnex they can, and have a little bit from you each day if you choose to do that.
14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
I honestly don't have the answer to that Rok because I guess I'm not that savvy.
I provide content I want to share according to what I value, and would buy. Then, like I said, I ask viewers to subscribe nearly every single time I post. I haven't done that yet on my newest channel though and I am already growing that viewership daily. Maybe that's a better way to think of subscribers in this venue – as viewers. Tell them to check in daily to see what news you have. Give them an incentive to stop by and view your feeds daily. I know you're good at that Rok. The reason that viewership is even growing is because the search engines and blogs get pinged every single time I input something so guess what? I keep on inputting!
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15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
Okay, once again I'm laughing out loud because I share by word of mouth. That's just what I do. I tell people and hand them my business card with the URL to the channels. If they are animal lovers I give them the URL to my pet wellness channel, if they are into marketing/advertising, I give them our URL to Kick The Email Habit, and so on. Most people think it's a website because the average person still doesn't know what RSS is but they do know that they can get »live news« online. Same thing. I usually say I publish an RSS channel on »holistic pet« or »Christianity«, etc. That usually gets them curious enough to go check it out. Like a commercial we've got to be repetitive to be heard where this is concerned. It's gaining momentum though folks.
The more you talk about it and share it the more you'll want to know and the more you'll learn. Funny but RSS is like that.
16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
Well, here I go again sounding like a commercial for Quikonnex but it's the truth – we have a stats page already set up for us. So I just check on the stats and of course the biggest hits are on the RSS feed. I've watched my stats regularly since I started publishing back in April and they just continue to go up and up each month. Mostly all I do is publish, and tell others about it. Initially with each new channel I do submissions to directories and then continue to input content.
17. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Yes, Rok, why don't you come and do some co-publishing with me on my channels – you can do that as an affiliate for free, and get the hang of it. Then you decide if you think it's worth changing over. I know you're doing RSS feeds on your site but what about just publishing separate from your website, in RSS, without email and just see how you like it?
I am not saying that tongue-in-cheek here either.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you Rok, I hope I've helped with some of the doubts and concerns. Doubt is good because it keeps you seeking to find out the truth.
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You can check out my channels here:
http://www.Aspenbloom-WellPet.com
http://www.KickTheEmailHabit.net (joint effort with Cathy Carlton)
http://www.sharingspirit.net (several co-publishers on this one including Cathy Carlton)
http://quikonnex.com/channel/page/ivwcc (Cathy and I manage this one for the IVWCC)
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Trina Schiller, TLC Promotions
Web site: http://www.tlcpromotions.net
1. Trina, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I'd be happy to Rok. I am Trina Schiller, of TLC Promotions, publisher of The Trii-Zine Ezine. I am a stay-at-home mom, who just happens to be a business owner, both on and off line. Self improvement, writing, networking and RSS are my passions. Publishing the Trii-Zine, allows me to experience those passions all in one place.
I bought my first computer in 1998, intending to find some way to generate an income from home. I spent my first two years on the Internet teaching myself how to use my computer, and searching for my niche. In 2000, I built my first web site, and a year later I published the first issue of the Trii-Zine.
I provide a variety of services to my clients; from business consultations to web design, advertising to channel management. I've even done some scam busting.
I really feel that learning is a process, and sharing what you know with others, is part of that process.
2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
The easiest way for me to describe RSS is to compare it to a news ticker, or teletype machine. It's a system that spits out information as it is updated by its source.
Using an XML application and a feed reader (aggregator), RSS files are created to transmit a data feed, containing headlines, complete articles, private messages, blogs, or just about any other content you can think of.
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Just as your browser reads HTML and translates it into a viewable, readable web page, the aggregator translates RSS data into something readable. However, unlike a web page, which must constantly be revisited, to check for updated content, an RSS feed is dynamic, providing the feed subscriber with automatically updated material each time the user opens the aggregator program. (Provided, of course, that the feed has been updated from its source.)
RSS feeds can be used for just about anything you can think of. It can be used as a delivery vehicle for publishers, a training ground for anyone teaching any subject, it can be used for private messaging, and even for keeping in touch with family and friends. Because it is a media rich application, you can easily share your home movies with family members around the world.
3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
I'd have to say that first on my list is the 100% opt-in guarantee. There is no way that any person can be unknowingly, or unwillingly subscribed to an RSS feed. Alternately, unsubscribing is just a matter of deleting the feed from your bookmarks, similar to deleting a channel from your television menu.
Next on the list would have to be the fact that subscribers are guaranteed to get the material they've asked for. There are no ISPs or filters involved no accidental deletions. Readers do not have to search through their inboxes, trying to find what they subscribed to. In addition, as a publisher, I don't have to fudge my words, use special characters, or scan my content for filter trigger words. It also allows me the option of sharing audio and video files with readers, without having to send them to various other locations to download, or view them.
Then, of course, there is the syndication factor. RSS feeds are syndicatable; therefore, my articles can be shared exponentially, much the same as Dear Abby makes it to breakfast tables all over the world. You just can't get that kind of exposure through any other medium.
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4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results?
It provides my readers, on-demand access to my publications, with very little effort on their part. It has also allowed me to more easily and interactively train and relay information to my Melaleuca marketing team, and it provides me with a secure personal communications system, that my friends, family and business associates can count on to reach me, without getting lost in the shuffle. The feedback that I have received from others has been very positive.
My subscriber rate is steadily rising, and the interaction between my readers and myself has been rising as well. The fact that my readers can post comments directly to the feed, I feel, has brought me closer to those I write for.
5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
RSS has actually been around for quite awhile. However, it was reserved for the technically inclined, up until now. Now that blogging is becoming more popular, I see the de-geeking of the technology more rapidly unfolding, making it a more practical application for everyone.
Once people get past the learning curve, as was necessary with email, I see no limit to its use. The technology itself is not restricted to web blogs, but has unlimited potential.
6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
Not only do I think it could happen, but I think it should happen. For one thing, I think it is the only real practical solution to the spam issues that plague online publishing. It puts the subscriber back into the driver's seat, giving them control over the subscribe/ unsubscribe process, rather than relying on the publisher and/or and autoresponder script.
I've seen many online publishers close up shop simply because of having to deal with all of the red tape involved with compliance to the new spam laws. For myself, I have found the transition to be liberating. I am able to devote more time to writing quality content, now that I do not have to worry about whether or not each issue will pass the filter test, or be misconstrued as spam, by a forgetful subscriber.
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7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
Email was a great medium, until spammers became superior in technology and methodology. But they [spammers] continue to be several steps ahead of those working to fight against them, and all of this warring over the inboxes of the world has really made email delivery impractical, even risky.
Publishers online, just as their off line counterparts, rely on advertising to pay the bills. The inclusion of advertising in an email publication tags the email as commercial. This puts the publisher's livelihood at risk.
The use of RSS removes all of the risk variables from the equation. It's free, fast, secure and guaranteed. Not only that, but it removes the dangers of viruses, trojans, worms and other nasties that can be impregnated into an email.
8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
Two words: Syndicated advertising. Syndication amounts to massive continual exposure. The more web sites syndicating a feed, the more exposure the contents of that feed will get. That is why I have started a new advertising service, utilizing RSS syndication.
Not only will syndication put your feed all over the place, but it is an unobtrusive way to brand other web sites, with your name. It is like link trading on steroids. Not only are you putting your name on another's site, but you are putting your content there as well. The participating webmaster has his back scratched as well, by being able to offer his customers your content, without a lot of work.
Another issue to take into consideration when thinking about RSS vs. Email marketing is this: There is every indication that companies like MSN, AOL and others are going to capitalize on the spam problem by following Habeas' lead, implementing bonded sender programs, requiring huge fees. This will most assuredly put small business owners out of the game. RSS will keep those small business owners off the bench and in the field.
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9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
The best example that I can offer you is an explanation of what I have done with RSS, outside of ezine publishing. That would be advertising syndication. My partners and I have formed a new advertising agency totally based on RSS. The reason being that, on top of the exposure that syndication itself provides, search engines love RSS feeds. Feeds rank well among search engines; therefore, using them as an advertising tool just makes sense.
We offer a service where our clients write advertisements, in an article format, we post them to our feed, after optimizing them for the search engines, of course, and the feed is spidered by the search engines, allowing our clients articles to show up in the search results for the keywords they are based on.
It has been my experience that pulling customers to you is more effective than pushing your ads in their face. The pull comes from being listed in search results. Plain and simple, people use search engines to find what they are looking for, so to attract new customers, you need to put yourself in those search results. RSS can do that, where classifieds and email advertising can't.
10. How about other relevant business uses?
RSS can be used in many business applications, being that it is a one-to-many communications system. It can be used as an interactive training forum, and as a secure, in-house communications platform, for interdepartmental relays. It can be used to transmit files without handling bulky file attachments, simply by uploading the file(s) to your server, and posting a link to the feed, for download.
The system is secure so that there is no need to worry over whether or not your transmission is going to be hijacked, somewhere along the way, infecting those you are communicating with.
Feeds can even be privatized, requiring a password for access, to keep secure information that is not for public use.
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11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
RSS is best used for the one-to-many communication needs of companies, whereas instant messaging systems and email, although less secure, would be the one-to-one methods for communications.
12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
The best way to raise awareness, among subscribers, is to write articles about the benefits of RSS. When you can educate the public about the benefits of anything, you will peak their interest. Human beings are curious by nature. Although most people are resistant to change, if you can show them that the benefits are valuable to them, they will try it, if for no other reason than to see whether or not you know what you're talking about. Besides that, no one wants to be left behind, when it comes to being, 'in the know.'
13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
It is already proven that subscribers can be converted to RSS. It is being done every day. All I have done to convert subscribers is to explain why I choose to publish this way, the email-freeness, of it and show them where to go to subscribe. (Most people find it to be a kick. The most common response I get, following subscription, is, 'Wow! This is cool.'
RSS simplifies communication. I can communicate directly with real people, quickly and efficiently. People know that if they use my RSS based messaging system, that I will read what they've sent me. No more guess-work. Communication is what networking and marketing are all about.
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Why risk losing that important contact, sifting through your inbox? Here's an example of what I mean: Those that choose to communicate with me via email, know that they should never send mail to my own domain. I will never see it. The reason being, tlcpromotions.net receives well over 9,000 pieces of email every day. That's after filtering. It's 99.9% spam, what I refer to as, sex, drugs and bootleg software. My daily task is to empty the box, nothing more.
AOL subscribers, that could not receive my ezine before, are now able to subscribe and read it; they can communicate with me, by knocking on my desktop, rather than shooting in the dark, trying to hit my inbox.
I would have to ask, 'Why wouldn't people want to convert?' There's no down side to it.
So you have to learn something new. Isn't that why we're on the net in the first place?
14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
That first part is the magic question. The same problem exists with email... How to you get large number of subscribers. It's really not a matter of how many; it's a matter of the quality of the subscriber. You can apply the same methods with RSS subscribers as has been done with email, you just need to be a little more creative and walk them through the process.
A hundred regular and loyal readers are much more valuable than a thousand email recipients that you don't know from Adam.
15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
As I said earlier... syndication. By writing good, quality content, other webmasters will want to syndicate your content on their websites. Word of mouth is the best off-site promotion method around.
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16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
I can only answer that by using Quikonnex.com as an example. I do not know what other systems have in place, as far as stats tracking goes, but I can tell you what the folks at Quikonnex have put in place for their channel [feed] publishers.
Their system is set up so that publishers have a fully operational control panel, such as a webmaster has for his/ her web site. Within this control panel you can track the hits to your channel pages, feed links, subscribe links, the whole ball of wax. It captures IP addresses, not email addresses.
One of the reasons I use Quikonnex as my feed system is the fact that they have made it incredibly user friendly. I didn't have to go back to college to learn how to use it. That is something that is very important to me. Basically, if you can copy and paste, you can publish a channel feed.
17. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
You are most welcome Rok. Thank you, for inviting me to discuss this topic with you and your readers. I would like to invite anyone, having questions about RSS to give me a shout. I am always more than happy to share what I know with others, and if I don't know the answer to a question, I promise to find out.
If anyone would like to send me a message, your best bet is to reach me through my personal messenger, RSS powered, of course. http://triizine.quikonnex.com or visit my zine http://www.ezines1.com/triizine
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Rick Bruner, Executive Summary Consulting
Web site: http://www.executivesummary.com
1. Rick, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Could you please explain to our readers who you are and what you do?
I am an Internet marketing analyst and consultant. I mainly do market research around the effectiveness of online advertising and marketing strategies. I run a company called Executive Summary Consulting, www.executivesummary.com. I also am an evangelist for business blogging -- that is blogging in a corporate context. I publish a weblog on that topic at www.businessblogconsulting.com .
2. What are your thoughts on using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
In general, it is excellent. Way back in 1996, I did PR for a company called Marimba that was at the center of what was then a hot new Internet trend that the media called "push technology." The idea was a way to distribute content down to people's desktops without requiring them to come visit your site all the time. It was all the rage for a while and publishers were very enthusiastic about the idea, but loads of different developers had competing, incompatible platforms for "push," so as a user you had to download one piece of software to subscribe to Site A and another for Site B and another for Site C and so on.
So, several years later, RSS brings that idea back, but with the crucial difference that it is one standard protocol (actually, there are a handful of related protocols, including RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom and so on, but they're fairly compatible), so that people can read the syndicated content from lots of different sites with one single reader application. There are, in fact, dozens of different reader applications and web sites out there, but they all use the same protocols, so it's just a matter of which reader tool people like best, they all do more or less the same thing.
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Using an RSS reader (or, more accurately, an XML syndication reader, as that also describes related protocols like Atom, which is something like the next generation of RSS), a person can monitor updates to dozens or hundreds of sites in one interface without having to visit each site. XML syndication strips the content down to its essence, so you don't have to wait for all the elements of the site to load. It also lets the user control some variables, such as showing only the first few words of new articles or the articles in their entirety. Publishers, meanwhile, have similar controls on their end to control how syndicated articles are shown. They can, for example, provide just summaries and require people to click through to read the full article, or they can syndicate the entire article down the pipe, with or without graphics, etc., whatever they prefer, within some limitations.
3. But how would you compare RSS with e-mail? Many marketers are starting to believe that RSS just might replace e-mail as the preferred content delivery tool. What do you think?
I disagree. Just like TV didn't replace radio (entirely) or the Web didn't replace newspapers, RSS isn't going to replace email. For one thing, according to research I just conducted in July 2004 for an email marketing services client called Quris, of the 2,543 respondents to our survey (Internet-using Americans age 18+), only 1.4% currently use RSS. Therefore, it would be ridiculous for marketers to abandon their email marketing programs in favor of RSS, given that virtually 100% of Internet users currently use email.
That said, there is a good reason to also implement RSS. There is a grain of logic to the argument for using RSS instead of email, namely that permission marketing email is struggling against the onslaught of spam. In particular, it's having trouble getting through a lot of the anti-spam filters on networks and people's PCs. Also, people are more reticent about opting into email programs because of spam and general email overload.
RSS, by contrast, is impossible to force on someone. It is purely an opt-in subscription model: the person copies a URL into their reader to subscribe. The marketer doesn't have any identifiable address for subscribers, so they can't force content on people, outside of that one syndication channel. If people tire of the subscription, they remove it from their reader application. There is no being removed from the marketer's database. The subscriber is in total control of the relationship. It's quite a simple protection from spam.
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Thus, I do think marketers would be wise to ALSO implement RSS subscriptions for their existing email programs, for the small but growing number of people who want to receive content that way. You should be able to do all the same customization, in fact, of RSS content that you can currently via email. But, as I say, the fallacy is to think that email should be abandoned in favor of RSS. If it ever comes to that, that would be years off. For now, running both programs in parallel makes the most sense.
4. So you do see a bright future for e-mail?
Yes. I firmly believe that a confluence of factors are going to stem the tide of spam in the next year or so, a combination of legislation, better filtering technology, bonded sender and sender ID programs, and increasing dependence on best practices among legitimate email marketers. Spam is so bad and there is so much attention about it, it really can't get worse at this point, it can only get better. And all the forces noted above are working towards that goal.
People are never going to give up email to communicate with other individuals, and for that reason, marketers still have a chance to get in on that platform. The onus is more than ever on marketers to embrace best practices, such as double-opt- in, frequency caps and keen attention to relevancy, because otherwise they will get stuck on blacklists, screened out by spam filters and otherwise experience diminishing returns. But for marketers that do it well, email continues to perform very well, despite spam, and its economics compared to traditional vehicles such as direct mail are incomparably more cost-effective.
5. How would you suggest marketers start using RSS today?
Simply start. Doing it now means you're still an innovator. But it's so easy to implement, you can't be afraid of any technical excuses to not getting started immediately. It's already built into many publishing applications; you just need to turn it on. And if it's not built into the applications you're using, you should complain about that to the developers of that system and meanwhile ask your tech folks to look at how hard it would be to implement a custom solution. It's not rocket science; RSS stands for (these day) Really Simple Syndication. If your tech folks can't figure it out given that name, they should be embarrassed.
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Lots of companies have rolled out RSS so far, including mainstream content publishers like Rolling Stone, BBC, Reuters and National Public Radio, merchants such as Amazon, eBay and Woot, and various other marketers for press releases and other web content, such as Apple and even the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Health. At minimum publishing your press releases in RSS is a no-brainer.
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Derek Scruggs, FanPrints
Web site: http://www.fanprints.com
1. Derek, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Thanks for the opportunity Rok. I have a few different irons in the fire. The thing that occupies most of my time right now is FanPrints – http://www.fanprints.com – which just launched last month. I am general manager, which encompasses marketing, operations and tech development. In addition to FanPrints, I also spend a fair amount of time wearing the general manager hat for Click Thru Stats – http://www.clickthrustats.com – a click-tracking ASP. Finally, I still do a little consulting via Escalan – http://www.escalan.com – but I've generally stopped taking on new projects to focus on FanPrints and Click Thru Stats.
2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it?
RSS is just a simple, standardized method of syndicating your content to other sites as well as pushing it to end users who choose to subscribe to it. The most common use of it right now is with blogs. Blogs have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, so I won't spend much time on that. However, you don't have to have a blog to make use of RSS. You can use it to drive site traffic via syndication, deliver press releases, or as a value-added service. For example, at Click Thru Stats we have experimented with delivering our reports via RSS and will do more of this in the future. This is very useful. Instead of logging into as web site view a report, your aggregator can periodically go fetch the report for you.
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3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
Syndication, open standards and ease of use. Syndication allows your content to be on a lot of sites as well as delivered to subscribers' desktops. Because RSS is an open standard, it's easy to find tools that support it and there are no worries about Microsoft or someone like that holding your content hostage. Ease of use in that there are none of the headaches associated with email – bounce handling, spam filtering, managing email addresses responsible. You just publish the content and let the aggregators come get it.
4. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go?
This is an important issue. There is something of a chicken & egg problem with RSS in that you need for a lot of end users to start using aggregators before its value can be fully assessed. This will be a slow process, but it's moving in the right direction. Yahoo has integrated RSS with the next version of My Yahoo, which will be in general release soon. The next big wins will be for AOL and Microsoft/MSN to integrate them.
5. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
For some things, yes. As more users gravitate to RSS, I think you'll see more and more companies posting a link on their home page to their RSS feed. But I don't think they'll necessarily call it “RSS feed.“ It will just say “click here to stay updated on our site/company/cause”. The little XML icon and the phrase “Syndicate this site”, which is what you see on most blogs, have got to go. They have no meaning to the average end user, and what you see when you click on them is even worse. Companies like FeedBurner are doing a lot to move us to a more intuitive model. See http://feeds.feedburner.com/FanprintsBlog for an example of what happens when you click on an RSS feed served by FeedBurner. Compare that to what you see at http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml.
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6. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
RSS is less of a hassle in terms of delivery headaches and is seamless with your web site. On the downside, it's not as good for metrics and it can be a bandwidth pig. Email is very good for measuring and testing, but the spam problem has made it a huge pain in the a** to the point that you can't really trust the metrics – “Did we really deliver 1,000,000 messages, or did 200,000 get swallowed by an errant spam filter?”
7. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS?
Right now I mostly use it in the context of a blog. Blogs are a great tool for establishing an online “voice,” and RSS is the “transmitter” of that voice. Another very important byproduct of a successful blog is what I call search engine “mojo.” If you blog on a regular basis, Google starts to notice that and spiders your site more often. If you start linking to other sites and getting other sites to link to you via your blog, it's a win-win for all involved – more voice, more content and more fun.
8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
FanPrints (http://www.FanPrints.com), one of my companies, develops personalized trading cards for sports fans. In order to penetrate the online sports market cheaply, we've focused on making connections with the many sports-oriented blogs. We link to them in our blogs and post comments on their blogs. (These are “real” comments, not spam.) It's still early days -- we just started the blog about three weeks ago -- but one of those fan sites is already our top referrer after Google AdWords, which of course costs more.
9. How about other relevant business uses?
I've never used it myself, but NewsGator has a case study about using RSS with Visual SourceSafe, a source code management tool. See http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=615
NewsGator also features a plug-in that allows posted RSS items to automatically schedule things in your Outlook Calendar. See http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=706 This may seem kind of meaningless, but imagine having a feed for a series of seminars held around the company. A user could subscribe to be notified when one is happening in his area and automatically have it posted in his calendar. This is still down the road, but the future is being created now.
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10. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
Limited for now, except as in the example above. We have not started our newsletter yet, but when we do we will mirror it from email to a blog (and thus to an RSS feed). We will do the same for press releases, and in all cases we'll submit our feeds to sites like Syndic8 to make sure the world knows we exist.
11. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
Frankly, I would not spend a lot of time on this with the possible of exception of content publishers. Everyone else, I would add a link labeled “What's this?” right next to the feed and link to a site that does a good job explaining RSS. One is CNET - http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10088_7-5143656-1.html?tag=ne.rss. Another more home-grown looking explanation is at This is True - http://www.thisistrue.com/rss.html
Content publishers may want to go the extra mile like CNET has and put up their own explanation with links to aggregators from their site, which is what This is True did.
12. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
It's possible, I suppose, but I haven't seen any metrics that suggest it's worth the trouble. Until I see a case study showing a demonstrable ROI for doing this, I'll stick with the status quo.
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13. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
I've never tried to “convert” RSS subscribers in any way. As a user, I've noticed that I subscribe to something for one of two reasons (or both): excellent content or a desire to somehow stay connected to a web site. For example, I often stumble across new products and technologies that I may want to use someday, though not right now. So I'll look for an RSS feed for that site to keep me in touch. As an example, I'm currently subscribed to the Pheedo feed (http://www.pheedo.com/) because I may use their services one day. I subscribed to the FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) feed for a while before trying out their service, which we use with FanPrints.
So I guess the answer to your question is, “convert subscribers by having relevant, reasonably frequent content and make it easy for people to keep tabs on you by RSS.”
14. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
If you're publishing a blog, here are a few things you should do:
Make sure you're pinging the various weblog search services. The easiest way to do this is to configure your blog to send pings to Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com/
Submit your feed to Syndic8 – http://www.syndic8.com
Post trackbacks to other blogs. Don't be a spammer, but if you have something relevant to say in response to someone else's post, copy the trackback URL from their post and paste it into the trackback field for your blog. Why? Because then you'll be linked from the original blog's site, increasing the chance that people will find you (and helping your Google mojo).
From a search engine optimization perspective, try to use keywords relevant to your site, both the title and the body of the post
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15. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS?
Last year Greg Reinacker of NewsGator and I experimented with developing tools for tracking success (see http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=641). We came up with a pretty good system, but we didn't evangelize it very well. NewsGator supports it, and I believe FeedDemon does too. But most aggregators don't, so it's not reliable.
The good news is that some of the things that work with email, notably open- tracking, usually work with RSS. The bad news is that most RSS publishing tools don't support them very well. FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) is a step in the right direction, though they still tend to have more of a publishing metaphor to their stats (e.g. focusing on “circulation” stats). This is how email marketing evolved, so that's not surprising. I once worked with an email service provider called Email Publishing (which eventually became part of DoubleClick). Their early revenue came from publishers. Marketers came along later.
16. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
At one time I was very gung ho about RSS for marketing. I'm still optimistic about it, but I believe it can potentially go in a couple of different directions. One is a publishing and content focus, which is the status quo. Another possible direction is personalized marketing like with email. This is still rather speculative. In the worst case, RSS will continue to be a great content distribution mechanism and, for marketers, a source of clicks in the same way the email newsletters are.
I'd love to see RSS evolve to support more direct marketing principles – personalization, segmentation, testing etc. – but that really depends on what the access gorillas such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN do. Perhaps Google will bring something new to the table with Gmail.
So far, none of these guys is doing much to push it in the direct marketing direction, so who knows whether any of that will come to pass? But it wouldn't surprise me to see a startup come along and Change Everything. As computer pioneer Alan Kay said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
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Christopher Knight, EmailUniverse.com
Web site: http://emailuniverse.com
1. Chris, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Sure, my name is Christopher Knight and I'm an author, entrepreneur and business builder. My last company delivered over 8 billion permission based emails annually on behalf of over 1,000 business clients who hired us to manage over 50 million of their email list members.
This past Summer I have been working on email deliverability research as well as ezine marketing for my next training manual/book product that will be out in October.
I can be found on the web at: http://EmailUniverse.com/
2. E-mail is currently facing many huge issues, which have become so big that many are now starting to debate that it might be nearing its end and being replaced by RSS as the preferred content delivery vehicle. What are your thoughts on this?
Email is 35 years old as a basic technology and it's just getting started. People who say email is dead and RSS is the replacement are alarmists at best. It is no coincidence that those who say, »email is dead and RSS is the answer» are from businesses that are promoting RSS related services, tools or advertising.
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3. Where do you see the future of RSS in the internet marketing and publishing world?
RSS is just another incredible tool that gives power to the strength of the relationship between publishers and their members. In other words, it solves some of the problems that email currently is experiencing, but it's a much different tool. It's about PULL instead of PUSH. Email is PUSH whereas RSS is PULL.
Every great publisher will embrace RSS over the coming year or two. No doubt about it.
4. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
I see RSS as more than just a publishing medium. It's a great tool for the delivery of critical information between partners, vendors, clients, employees, investors, and even the government. All stakeholders in every organization can use RSS beyond the basic »to publish information« model.
Unlike email, RSS as a tool is a closed system. It's more like IM (Instant Messaging) than it is like email because email can be spoofed. I have yet to see RSS be spoofed.
One great way to use email and RSS together is to use email to notify someone when your RSS feed address changes. ;-)
5. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing?
As simple as offering an RSS feed for each newsletter you offer. I would never do RSS-only though as that would be silly. Best to offer both email and RSS as the majority of your members most likely don't know what »RSS« means yet.
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6. Do you have any other advice on how to combine e-zine publishing with RSS? What in your mind are the best strategies and tactics? Do the same strategies and tactics as with e-mail delivery apply here as well?
I'll offer one scary tip to keep in mind when implementing RSS: In a »pull« type tool, your readership builds over time and compounds. If you ever change your feed, you just lost all of your members. In email, if you change your list name or move from one ESP (Email Service Provider) to another, your list members move with you.
7. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Consider asking everyone who wants to subscribe to your RSS feed to give their email address to you in exchange for the RSS feed address -- so you can notify them of additional RSS feeds you might offer in the future or notify them if you change anything in the future (such as moving to a new domain). Only a small handful of publishers are testing this model right now. I am not yet, but considering it.
Promoting an RSS feed is different than promoting a newsletter as you're able to open up to the blogosphere world to promote your RSS feed in all of the blog and RSS search engines, directories and other feed aggregators.
8. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
Excellent point. If your members are not early adopters or technology/Internet or computer related in niche, perhaps you are better off chilling for another year before turning off your members who are not ready to hear about RSS yet.
For those who are ready to introduce their members to it, I think it's clearly an educational process where you educate your email list members to the benefits of RSS, how to get an RSS reader and what they can get from RSS that they won't get from the email newsletter (perhaps more frequent updates and more inside information that perhaps you don't publish to your ezine.)
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9. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
You must offer RSS because email list members are abandoning their accounts. It use to be that people would UNSUBSCRIBE if they wanted to get off a list, but today – with spam being too loud of a problem, many are just shutting their accounts off and washing their hands of it.
Every newsletter could have that little RSS button so those who are ready to adopt it can just sign up. You may even find members want both, RSS feed and your email newsletter subscription so they have an additional level of assurance of getting your quality content.
10. You offer e-mail e-zines as well as RSS feeds on your web site. How is this working for you?
Awesome! Based on our stats, we have quite a few thousand members that have subscribed to our RSS feeds over the past half year. We've made a few mistakes along the way, but overall RSS rocks!
I can't wait until we'll be able to deliver dynamic RSS feeds based on keyword search terms. Others are already doing this and we'll be adding this functionality soon.
11. Have you perhaps noticed any differences in responsiveness from your RSS readers and e-mail subscribers?
We have not begun tracking order conversions between pitches made via email vs. an RSS feed pitch, but website analytics are in our near-term future.
There is a spike every time a new post is sent out via RSS and if it's during the business day, there will be a 20-40 minute residual spike and then it tapers off or comes back again after lunch. If we post into the evening, we don't always see the same sustained spike in traffic – but this varies by site and focus.
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12. Could you perhaps compare the number of your e-mail subscribers and the number of RSS readers for us?
We have 150k+ permission-based email list members and I'd estimate about 2000 RSS readers.
The number of RSS readers is a bit difficult to estimate as web aggregators such as Bloglines (one of the top referrers we see) allow many hundreds or thousands of visitors to see our content without having to be subscribed to our RSS feeds.
Our audience is mostly email newsletter publishers, email marketers and about 20% are email technology folks. I'd estimate that 90% of our email list members are only faintly aware of what RSS is and could care less. That will change in 2005 as RSS gets more traction as an irresistible technology.
ABOUT CHRISTOPHER M. KNIGHT: Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. You are invited to get your weekly dose of email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: [email protected] or visiting: http://EmailUniverse.com/ezine-tips/
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Chad Williams, RSSads
Web site: http://www.rssads.com
1. Chad, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I'm a technology consultant, and part-time web entrepreneur. My background is in enterprise software and services.
2. What made you start with the RSSads service?
Primarily because of frustration with RSS feeds that don't include enough content because publishers make money from banner ads and (for now) want to use RSS to lure users to web pages. Hopefully by allowing publishers to insert ads directly into RSS feeds, more content will be made available via RSS.
3. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS anyway?
It’s a really convenient way for people to monitor news and information sources. I think that marketers and publishers will find they can expand their user base and make it easier to establish a direct connection with users via RSS.
4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal?
It’s probably still an early-adopter technology. But my personal experience is that it’s useful enough that it will certainly thrive as a technology. Also, my personal belief is that it will do best in the 'business internet'. Maybe it’s not something that teenagers will be using right now. But for some niches it’s going to be really important.
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5. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today?
It depends on the use case but generally speaking I think that RSS works best when users are monitoring large volumes of non-critical information. Also, using RSS along with blogs is the most common scenario – in this case, the most important issue is to maintain some semblance of a human voice, and to be honest. There are a lot of areas out there where it can be really useful.
6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
For instance RSSJobs, which screen-scrapes various job sites, is a good use of RSS. Craigslist has RSS feeds, and works well for monitoring jobs, items for sale, etc. Large businesses might make use RSS for announcements to any audience of customers or business partners who are interested in that company's latest news.
7. Are there any other practical uses you can think of?
Almost any dynamic, changing information updates can be published via RSS.
8. Let's now move further in to the topic of RSS advertising. How exactly does this work from the publisher's point of view?
A publisher integrates technically so our system can insert ads into their feed(s). They then have a website they can log into to set prices and do ad approval. We're not launched yet so I can't get much more specific yet.
9. How about advertisers?
Advertisers can purchase ads via our website similar to the way Google AdWords works, except that the focus is on purchasing ads in specific publishers' feeds.
10. How would you compare RSS advertising with other internet advertising models?
It’s early but it appears to provide a way to reach niche audiences, and reach users who might have tuned out popup-ridden websites.
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11. What are the key benefits of RSS advertising?
User convenience is the most important benefit. Also, its early days so there's the ability to reach users who may have tuned out messages in email and other saturated channels.
12. What kind of metrics models are you going to use? What kind of data is going to be available to publishers and to marketing agencies / advertisers?
We'll provide view tracking, and other common usage metrics.
13. How about publishing your own ads for your own products in your own RSS feed. Do you have any advice for our readers on how to best do this?
I think this is the other major use for RSS advertising. The key is to publish information that people are really interested in, and not just boring press releases or something else that users will tune out. For instance, a high-tech manufacturer might provide an RSS feed for product liquidations that lets people monitor if a particular type of laptop is available below a certain price.
14. How about buying RSS ads from other RSS publishers? What should we be especially careful of? How should we approach these publishers?
I think the key is to be honest with your messages and select publishers relevant to advertise with. RSS and blogs are closely linked, and blogs that use Google Adsense have conditioned users to be okay with advertising but to expect a less intrusive and more relevant ad message than the banner ad world typically delivers.
15. And finally, what kinds of RSS ads work best in your experience?
Short text messages that tell users exactly what you're advertising.
Skip the unintelligible buzzwords and be honest.
16. Would you like to add anything?
Everyone should feel free to go to www.rssads.com and sign up with us today!
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Tig Tillinghast, MarketingVox
Web site: http://www.marketingvox.com
1. Tig, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
Sure, I publish MarketingVOX News, an online marketing trade journal.
2. Could you please explain your business model to us?
We're completely advertising supported. We have a small but highly-focused (probably the most highly-focused) audience of media buyers, planners, marketers, etc. These are tough people to reach. It turns out they get Ad Age and AdWeek in paper form, but it sits on their office floors unread. They go online to see what's new, and they do so briefly. We've gone into ad agencies and marketing departments and we see it happening first hand. This is where the trade press will wind up – not because companies like MarketingVOX drive it there, but because readers are driving it there.
It's arguably a blog – at least it has blog origins. I'm not a big fan of the »blog« term, as I really see it as a fairly pedestrian form of website we've been seeing for about a decade. Our editorial is mostly reviews of stories published on other sites, but put into perspective by actual practitioners. We've found that most trade journalism is perpetrated by liberal arts graduates (nothing against them) that haven't had any experience in the relevant discipline. Anyway, we're beginning to plow some of our earnings into freelance editorial that is more investigative, or at least interesting. This allows us not just to aggregate and comment upon news from other pubs, but also to move the ball forward, so to speak.
3. Very interesting. How is producing your own research content working out for you? Are the returns what you were expecting them to be?
This is so new that it is very hard to determine. I won't really know until winter what sort of general effect it will have had on traffic. Our first stories will come out in a couple weeks, and I hope to keep them coming out fortnightly. They generally take six weeks to put together, so it's not something other sites are doing.
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4. Could you please give our readers, mostly marketers and entrepreneurs, advice on how to best start their own blog and why?
I'm a blogger who's not particularly a fan of blogs. The self-referential »my opinions« blog bores me. I don't think these are read terribly well, either. These sorts of blogs are the ones that create the numbers imbalance between blogs and blog readers (about 2 million versus 4 million, according to some oldish figures). That said, I think blogs can be incredibly valuable when people have something to say regularly, especially when that's combined with specific expertise and/or experience.
Corporate blogs can be useful despite their tendency to lack these qualities. Corporate information is so guarded often that the presence of a blog gives an information outlet that serves both the company and press, customers, employees, etc.
5. Do you perhaps have any advice for corporations and even small businesses to overcome this problem?
The best thing a company can do is to appoint a trusted person the blogger and then effectively indemnify him/her for whatever they do. There must be a trust in one person's judgment; otherwise the blog smells like a fearful thing written by someone looking over his shoulder. As soon as there is a review process – or worse, the presence of a committee – it changes the dynamic of the blog and they might as well put up a series of press releases instead. One of the greatest benefits of a blog to a corporation is the voice it lends them, but they must let a voice come through cleanly. Companies are funny creatures, and they often find offense in very non- offensive statements. A blogger given reign, and then told to use judgment »or else« will very often produce a blog not worth reading. I think part of the process of putting up a corporate blog should be adding a rider to the employee's contract absolving the blogger of anti-disparagement clauses, etc. It sounds extreme, but it's from these circumstances that the personality of the site comes through.
6. From my experience the key element in running a successful blog is great content. How should one write for his blog?
Absolutely. Great content is a combination of a bunch of elements. All need to be present to some degree, but you can rely on one or two pretty heavily. You need newness, good writing, personality and voice, creativity, consistency (both in timing and content), hewing to a specific audience niche, willingness to pick up a phone and do some reportage and, finally, an openness to reader input.
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7. But how can you get "real" news? This question is especially relevant for those that don't have experience in investigative journalism …
I had an early journalism background, mostly daily paper stuff, so I know from reporting, and I've found that news comes to blogs rather quickly. Since blogs are partly communal, you wind up with lots of people tipping you off to interesting tidbits. Some of these things can be »blogged« right away as tiny stories – what most bloggers do. Many of them can be developed into full-blown stories, which few bloggers seem to want to do, either from fear of not knowing how or from lassitude. Some »low fruit« potential blog stories I see all the time:
• Submitted leads
• News reports written by non-experts that can be spun or set right by getting research or comment from audience experts.
• Often a news site or trade rag will fail to ask the obvious question when doing a story. Blog writers are often the people best equipped to follow-up.
• Interviews. Conventional news sources always seem to interview the celebrity folks in an industry or area, not the most interesting people. Note: don't fall into the email interview trap, where you give a list of questions and get a list of answers without follow-up. I can tell which interviews were conducted this way because the answers are highly-self serving and often fail to cover the most interesting aspects of the questions. When you have a phone conversation, or at least a series of email follow-ups, the interviewees sense an interactive relationship in which they need to be more open.
8. Can you give any advice on "how often to post"?
I think a blogs traffic has a lot to do with frequency of posting. A daily blog will get many times more traffic than one that posts every other day. That said, if you have something to say only every other day, consider getting help from a colleague, or better still just publish every other day.
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9. By saying a "daily blog" do you think that one post per day is enough or would you recommend more? How much? I'm asking because publishers need a way to determine how much to invest and what to expect in return?
I suppose it depends on the content type. Most blogs are opinion blogs, and writing more than one entry a day can stress the production of most thinkers. News blogs, like MarketingVOX could never get away with just a post a day, but the creative requirements are much lower per post. The most productive blogger I know is the man behind PaidContent.org. I would have sworn it was the product of four or five posting bloggers, but Rafat Ali does it all by himself.
A good rule of thumb is to go by audience expectations. If the blog is a replacement for a trade rag, you'll need to have a minimum of three and probably more like ten posts per day, very likely requiring more than one person.
10. Once we do start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business?
Blog-generated business must be reader driven. Blogs that flog tend to be tedious. Concentrate on the content. If you must make a pitch, do it in an adjacent ad, which will lend more credibility to the editorial content.
11. You're also publishing a daily e-mail newsletter. How does that work in combination with the blog? And more importantly, how does that work in combination with RSS?
Great question. We're still learning about this. The newsletter is just another means, like the RSS feed, for folks to access the content. It's also another means for our advertisers to access the audience. Interestingly, some advertisers are more interested in one form or the other. Also interestingly, these advertisers tend to do much better in one form over the other. Most interestingly, this format in which they do best often isn't the one they insist they buy. We're working on lining them up correctly. It's tough to predict. Product categories sometimes are indicative, but it also is sometimes a product of their creative.
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12. Could you perhaps give us some specifics?
As for RSS, this is used mostly as a traffic generator to the site, rather than as an ad vehicle itself. To give some scope, we have about ten times the number of people coming to the site as come to the RSS feed (We use the very nice, and free, Feedburner service to account for this). We may introduce ads into that content, but frankly, the economies aren't that great yet. When we go up another order of magnitude, it'll probably be worth it.
13. Could you perhaps share some hard data with us on how many people subscribe to the e-mail notification service and how many use the RSS feed?
Sure, we have about 14,000 unique site visitors in a given week. About 600-700 RSS readers in a given 24-hour period. Emails go out to more than 6,000 folks each business day. It's an intensely-read email. We get about 60 percent + open rates after an hour or two of sending it. I get counts of about a thousand opens before mine even arrives into my account. It's as though people are hanging onto their return keys waiting for the silly thing to show up. Sometimes I wonder for the mental health of our audience. They should get out more. If you've been in the agency business, you'd know what I mean.
14. Have you noticed any differences in the success of both delivery vehicles? For instance, are e-mail subscribers more "active" and "responsive" than RSS readers?
It's very hard for me to know what the heck the RSS folks are doing. Feedburner tells us how many of them are clicking on this article or that. We've been changing the format of our feed almost weekly, trying to tweak things. Once we get it right, we'll measure more robustly. I have a gut feeling that RSS people are info junkies that put our feed next to 50 others, meaning that they'll sometimes dive down into interesting content, but that they're going to be much less »sticky.«
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15. An interesting comment. I admit to doing the same. So you are actually feeling that e-mail readers are more "valuable" in terms of readership and responsiveness?
Maybe. I can't claim to know just yet. That theory might be countered by the frequency with which RSS people come. Once you're part of their feed, they might look over your headlines several times a day. It might be low impact, but it's high frequency. Once they get to your site, I do suspect that they're not as valuable as the email or – more still – the web site visitors, at least in terms of stickiness. Will be interesting to measure.
16. How in your experience can RSS and e-mail be both used to work together?
I haven't had time to try linking these rascals. Frankly, when I see stories about how RSS is going to replace email for marketing, newsletters, etc., I wonder what these writers are looking at. RSS is the creative equivalent of text messaging. Fax machines give better content.
Don't get me wrong. I use RSS, but for a highly-specialized purpose: skimming through hundreds or thousands of headlines extremely quickly. I think that's how most everyone uses it. If RSS is the answer to spam-laden email, I'll take email. The vast majority of people don't want another application to futz with for internet viewing. When the web came along with the browser, FTP programs largely went away as a consumer application. I don't think RSS is an email killer, or even much of a complementer.
17. How about when rich media will be added to RSS (if that happens)? And when it becomes more integrated in to applications such as MS Outlook?
Those are two elements that definitely make RSS much more attractive. RSS isn't even an early adopter technology, it's an early, early adopter technology. I wish I could remember off hand the most recent stats I saw, but it's a terribly small percentage of web users employing feeds. It's for tech weenie or media weenies right now. Those one of those two changes you suggest may be coming down the pike could change that in terms of adoption. The imminent introduction of better distribution - Safari, in a few months for browsers and in email readers Outlook will definitely increase the universe. But the richer media experiences don't mesh well with the RSS killer app.
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Here is my beef with RSS in terms of its potential to replace email:
• In its current mostly-text format, it serves the purpose of allowing people to skim vast amounts of content quickly. My suspicion is that this is the killer app for RSS.
• As a result, some (few new) people make collections of relevant feeds so that they can do this efficiently. Publishers like me put their rich web content into feed format so as to gain additional distribution, or even sell RSS ads.
• If the feeds become richer, they impede the efficient review of that vast collection of content. If they become very rich, they effectively become web pages, and we already have people using browsers for that.
• I can see browsers and email programs stealing some of the features of RSS as well. For instance, you can have lists of bookmarks that get downloaded in the backgrounds so that a user can click quickly through them and have new content marked up. Browsers have attempted this before (IE used to have better features for this years ago), but they never went the full distance.
• Email newsletter publishers have great flexibility, tracking ability, richness capabilities that don't infringe on the raison d'etre of the containing application, and – most importantly of all – predictability of circulation. Deliverability concerns in the email space will eventually be taken care of – a topic for another day. Put that against the potential for RSS to gain these qualities and also gain a similar audience universe, and it looks improbable to me. That said, I'm often wrong, so we're trying to figure out the RSS model simultaneously.
18. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog?
Create great content. Humor helps immensely. Funny stories get passed around. I've used AdSense, AdWords, and their ilk from search engines other than Google. Results weren't spectacular. We had some humorous press releases that got passed around, which helped us get started.
19. Could you perhaps give us examples of these press releases?
I'm reluctant to because our branding has evolved from a highly informal blog to a sometimes funny trade magazine. We are striving to become more interesting less by our informality and more through our expertise, daring and competence. This isn't something we'd put out now that we've grown up. But here's an example:
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http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2003/09/08/we_screwed_the_pooch _up2speed_changes_name_to_marketingwonk/index.php
One thing I'm going to be trying shortly is sending out releases on specific stories we're doing. For instance, I have a reporter in Beijing and one states side doing a story on the blockage of »inappropriate« political content in China on U.S. internet company sites. No one's really looked into the complicity U.S. media firms have with Chinese censorship. That'll get ballyhooed about as something for other news outlets to cover.
Our marketing strategy is largely to spend money on great freelancers working on terribly interesting stories (if obliquely related to online marketing), and let that attract the appropriate attention.
20. What are you looking for in a freelancer?
First, the basic identity of someone who can be a hungry reporter – digging for details others might not even think to seek. This person needs to know the material, which is often online advertising, but sometimes something completely different. The two folks doing the China story wouldn't know an online ad if it sat down next to them in tourist class. But they know Chinese officials and dissidents. And, somewhat importantly, Chinese.
Creativity is necessary. We'll come up with a few great story ideas, but sometimes the original assumptions won't pan out. That will often kill the story completely, but a great reporter will see where there IS an angle and bounce off in that direction, often bringing back something much better than we originally intended.
For any given story, there will be a bunch of options for freelancers, and I winnow them down based on their writing. Reporters that are good enough writers and confident enough to be able to be humorous will often get the nod. Being funny requires more effort and skill than people often assume. Even for pieces that are decidedly unfunny, the author capable of being so will give me much better copy.
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21. And for the last question, how do you measure the success of your blog and the success of your different content delivery vehicles?
We rely on profit and loss statements to a great extent. That said, some loss leaders are appropriate. RSS is a good example of something that doesn't drive any revenue, but probably drives traffic to other sources of revenue. If it isn't making money, then the audience doesn't much care for the content, and/or the advertisers don't much care for the audience.
There is a place for blogs that garner audiences that advertisers don't care about – and these blogs shouldn't be judged, obviously, on profits. This just isn't one of those blogs.
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Alain Jourdier, MarketingDriven
Web site: http://marketingdriven.blogspot.com
1. Alain, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I am a marketing strategist and business communicator. I primarily work in healthcare and with CEOs to get them to better understand and think through their marketing and business development strategies and activities. Invariably, I end being a coach and an advocate for the CEOs as we work together. I believe to be effective at what I do, I must understand the very soul of a company and its leaders. I search for an intimate relationship that allows me to be honest, direct and supportive.
My philosophy is that marketing and business development are activities that are far more complex than is generally understood, which means that it's not about marcom, it's about the total essence of the business from the person who sweeps the floor to the CEO and the board of directors. It's a mindset that is thoughtful about all details in the delivery of the promise that is the brand. What I do is ask as many questions as I can about all aspects of the business as if I don't know anything and you have to explain it to me. What I do is ask the right questions and simply listen. What I do is look for the creative and innovative fiber that must be in every organization in order to survive and thrive. I believe that often the knowledge that my clients are looking for is locked within the organization and it's my job to become the archaeologist that digs them out and makes sense of them. That's why my tagline is Every Act Is A Marketing Act...Everyone Is A Marketer.
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2. How do you see the impact of RSS and blogging on the business and even more importantly marketing world? Can these two make a huge difference? And if they can, what kind of difference? What will be different? How should we start preparing for that right now?
RSS has been my savior in tracking the blogs that most matter to me. I believe that the value for business has yet to be discovered. The pace of information is so brutal that it is nearly impossible to keep up. With RSS, the ability to manage information is much more controlled so that in the course of a busy day, you're able to be more discerning about the barrage of information you get and need.
I eventually see RSS being the knight in shining armor in our fight against spam as more and more people go to an RSS format to communicate directly with opt-in people. With RSS, the decision making is in the hands of the recipient, not the other way around. That's a critical distinction and one marketers need to focus on. Creating a world of customers and potential customers who feel they have control in how you communicate to them will have a freeing effect that will build the kind of receptive relationship all marketers seek.
We should start preparing for this by supporting those who are diligently working on making RSS more powerful and sophisticated. We should be looking at how we can integrate this technology into our marketing mix. When the Internet became a reality, we marketers had to go from understanding print and electronic marketing channels, such as television, to rearranging our brains to think differently. As we all know click throughs and banner ads and other online concepts became extinct and the real work of improving this channel started. When you think of RSS, you're really talking about a creative approach to have that all important dialogue with people who want to hear from you.
3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Where do you see the future of RSS?
I think RSS is in its infancy, just like blogs. I'm not sure we really know how far this can go up the evolutionary scale. Somewhere in some place we've probably never heard of, someone has a better idea for making it better and more useful. I think all technology has an exponential potential, it all depends on its intrinsic value in the course of each person's life. If it helps me manage my busy world, then it's a part of my day. As blogs become important you're going to see people adopt RSS.
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4. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
I believe that currently the best use of RSS is to bring pertinent information in a systematic way to our best customers. It's a way to develop a clean, well qualified list of people who are genuinely interested in what you offer. As we all know, a clean prospect list heightens the probability of success. For example, I get my daily email from Healthorbit.ca which aggregates new health related news and product development and research findings. Many top companies like Bayer, Medtronic, et al. use this channel to get the word out and get people to link up to them. It's an excellent example of how to simplify my life so that I can keep up.
5. How about for blogging? What companies and individuals should blog, why and how?
Excellent question! Anyone, or company, who isn't blogging is missing a terrific opportunity to relate to customers and potential customers in a much more intimate way. Here's why: No matter how hard you work at making your website topical and pertinent, it's still a website often filled with corporate speak. You don't really »see« the company or its »soul«, yet with a blog you can actually have a dialogue, you can discuss issues that show how you think, how you resolve problems, how you position yourself and your clients. It's about having a face-to-face meeting with the world. How could you not want that? I find that my blog is more important to me than my website so I am in the process of streamlining my website and directing people to my weblog as a way to really stand out as a professional. I see it as a way to help prospective customers and existing customers make a decision about me and what I offer. It's my differentiation strategy. I am getting more business from my weblog because people have a way to discerning what I stand for and how I can help them by seeing what interests me and how I feel about them.
6. What would you advise a small internet business, considering using RSS and blogs?
Like Nike said for all those years, Just Do It! Build that unique community of like- minded people who want to hear from you. It's the best way to create relationships that are meaningful to the bottom line as well as to what you are truly passionate about. Why else are you in business?
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7. What do you believe are the best ways of promoting a blog and the best ways of getting people to "subscribe" to an RSS feed?
Promoting a blog and RSS feed probably needs to start the old-fashioned way, with every piece of communication you send out whether on paper or online. You need to create buzz within your own world and then extend to everyone....but first you need to have something that is well thought out, purposeful...and make it fun, life is way too short.
8. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Finally, I encourage people to be fanatical about what they do and make sure the world knows about it. Not in the extreme sense, but in a learning and teaching way. Most of what marketers do is educate about what marketing is and how it can be used for a particular company's business process. To be passionate is to be engaged in life. Thanks for the opportunity to share.
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Heiko Hebig, Six Apart
Web site: http://www.hebig.com
1. Heiko, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I am a 31-year-old German living in Hamburg and heading up Six Apart's German operations. So I am basically busy promoting TypePad and Movable Type and educating Germans about the benefits of weblogs.
2. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle?
First of all, by saying RSS, I really mean any existing syndication format. RSS or Atom, you will not see me engage in religious war over standards. What they both have in common is that they enable syndication, and that is what matters to the users. I, the writer, can offer my news to the world in an easy-to-read format and I, the consumer, can subscribe to thousands of feeds from around the globe and actually manage, track, and read them in newsreaders and similar applications.
3. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing e- mail as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why?
About one year ago, I put some thought into a Syndicated Communication Client [1], inspired by a longer conversation I had with Ethan Diamond, Phil Wolff and Steve Gillmor. It's nothing more than a rough sketch of how to unify the user experience of jointly consuming email and news feeds.
[1] http://www.hebig.com/syndicated_communication/
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The issue at stake is rather complex though. First of all, why should we replace email? Many claim that email is broken and then complain about the amount of spam piling up in their inboxes. The counter argument is that if too much spam gets through to your inbox, you just don't know how to configure and use spam filters. It's much like asking: How much do I need to know about how an engine works in order to drive a car?
From an end-user’s perspective, he or she should not have to worry about configuring spam filters. Yes, certainly the end-user needs to be educated about spam, but that's about it. Everything else should be handled by ISPs, Email- providers, or similar services – unless you are an experienced user and know what you are doing.
So provided you are in control of the spam problem, email actually works just fine.
However, seeing RSS-Mail as a feed that is jointly updated by whoever is on the distribution list, it is of course much less prone to spam. Spam just can't get into your way if only a limited amount of entities know – or are able to guess – your address. So if any two-way communication generates a random RSS file (which ideally is encrypted or at least auto-password protected), and this conversation is managed and tracked by an RSS-Mail-Client, we would maybe have a pretty good conversation mechanism in place.
How does it scale? How about storage? Quite frankly, I don't know. Currently, my email spam filters work just fine.
4. The key question is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS, especially in terms of e-commerce and community portals?
I think and hope that RSS will replace many if not most email newsletters. »Subscribe to our Newsletter« should be replaced by »Subscribe to our product (or services) feed«. If your customers matter to you, you should at least give them an option between both formats. In the end I certainly hope that RSS wins over email newsletters.
Now some marketers might argue that email is more disruptive than an RSS feed and they bet their money on this surprising moment of me discovering their irrelevant message in my inbox. Well, sorry, but this bet will be lost.
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5. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
Any marketers interested in taking this further should take a look at how C|Net is using RSS feeds, or examine the wide variety of press feeds are available from Nokia's web site. That should get their minds going. Now abstract that functionality to your specific business area, be creative, and test your ideas. Make sure you understand how people use newsreaders. Make sure information is well structured and can be filtered.
6. How about other relevant business uses?
I think if you sit back for five minutes and put your mind to the basics of news syndication, you will start to see many practical uses that might enhance or change the way you do business today. There are many, many options, and we are only at an early stage. RSS does not have to be generated or read by human beings. What if I could track my FedEx shipment via a personalized RSS feed? What will be different? Is that an advantage? If yes, to whom?
7. But how can we integrate RSS with our other internet communications, especially e-mail?
If you look at newsreaders like Newsgator that plug seamlessly into email clients like Outlook, I think we have come a long way already. Oddpost also does a great job in trying to unify the user experience of RSS and email and I think they will come up with great ideas for the next generation Yahoo! Mail service now that the team has been acquired by Yahoo! Inc.
At the end of the day, we have to ask: What types of information is distributed and consumed via RSS, when is that information needed, who needs access to that information and when? And while the approach might sound simple, the answer to your question certainly isn't.
8. Do you perhaps also have some advice on the subject of news syndication? How can publishers profit from this and how can they best implement it?
First of all, publishers need to have a clear strategy in place. Simply jumping on a train by putting up an XML button on a web page is no benefit to anyone. If all of your readers love your content and the way you distribute it, and your format of choice is not RSS, well, that's ok.
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Looking around in Germany, publishers seem to be more concerned about ePaper and locking up their content behind registration bars than letting news flow via syndication.
And quite honestly, I don't have a business case hidden in my pocket that outlines how to profit from well-implemented news syndication. But I also know that hardly anyone is signing up for online news in ePaper format.
You have to have a goal. Increase reach, build up audience, target a specific segment, spread a specific message or create a certain image. RSS may help you in the process.
9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
I had to teach my parents how to use a web browser and the email client; I will be happy to teach them how to read RSS files in a newsreader. It's not more complicated than writing an email. It's just less common.
Publishers don't seem to have a problem offering PDF files for download. Now consuming a PDF file is complicated. Users have to download Adobe Acrobat Reader and install it. Then they click on the PDF file and if they are lucky, the PDF file loads inside their web browser, completely changing the UI and user experience of the browser.
Once you have a proper newsreader installed, subscribing to RSS feeds is really just a matter or right-clicking an XML button. It's not more complicated than reading a PDF file.
10. Can we now move to the subject of blogs? How has your blog helped you increase your business? What is your strategy?
While my blog has certainly helped me increase my personal network of friends and business partners that has never been the aim of my postings. The weblog evolved from emails I sent out to a small group of friends, colleagues and associates on a more or less frequent basis. Instead of spamming their inboxes with yet another interesting link, I decided that a weblog would be a better distribution mechanism, causing less noise, and allowing push through RSS feeds.
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I continue to post stuff that I like. Things I find interesting. Issues I find worth discussing. Sometimes, my audience reacts. Sometimes my audience remains silent.
Did I mention I got my job through my weblog?
11. How would you suggest other marketers start with their own blogs? How should they do it? How can they best use their blog for marketing purposes?
Be honest. Be yourself. If you are an expert, share knowledge. Share experience. Be passionate. Have an opinion. Don't be afraid. And keep on going. Don't be discouraged if, after six weeks, the world has not taken notice yet. Become an active member of a community. Get involved. Share your thoughts. Provide a second opinion.
But also: set your own rules. Make yourself a home. Be friendly to your neighbors. And if you have a barking dog, but up a warning sign.
12. Could you also give us some advice on how to best promote the blog? What strategies and tactics do you use?
Don't focus on how to get the next referring link from your favorite blogger. Don't focus on traffic or unique readers. Provide a consistent flow of useful information and candid opinion. Don't force it. I said it above: be yourself.
John Moore, Brand Autopsy
Web site: http://www.brandautopsy.com
1. Could you start by introducing yourself and what you do…?
I’m John Moore, former director of national marketing for Whole Foods Market and former corporate marketer and field marketer for Starbucks Coffee. Currently, I’m involved with setting up the Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice which will diagnose a company’s marketing problem (i.e. disease) and then prescribe a marketing prosperity program (i.e. remedy/treatment).
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2. How did you do it (the Brand Autopsy blog) and what can we learn from your example?
With Paul Williams, my co-blogger and Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice partner, we dissect … I mean … blog about all things marketing and branding related. Basically, the Brand Autopsy blog is a forum for Paul and me to share our thoughts, learnings, and passion for marketing. We’ve always had opinions on current marketing goings-on and with the blog, we now have the opportunity to share our thoughts/opinions to a broader audience beyond our marketing peers at work and beyond our circle of “offline” friends.
Our blogging process is rather simple – when we run across something that interests our marketing/branding minds … be it from an article, a television/radio commercial, a press release, a mention on another blog, or something from our current work projects … we blog about it. Now, we do try to flavor our posts with a little humor and some personality to keep things lively. While we take our jobs as marketers seriously, we take ourselves lightly.
3. You do not offer any content updates by e-mail. Why is that?
We currently do not have a Brand Autopsy Email Newsletter to give updates but that doesn’t mean we will not have one. The Brand Autopsy blog is an “extracurricular” activity for us and the free time we have to spend on the blog is somewhat limited. So, we choose to focus our limited time on posting new blogs and not on managing an email newsletter.
4. So the reason for not doing e-mail is basically the lack of time, joined with the ease of publishing via RSS, and not that you would believe that e-mail is an inadequate content delivery vehicle?
Lack of time and usability/accessibility of RSS makes doing an email newsletter less important to us. Spam is another deterrent to us doing an email newsletter. Trying to dodge all the spam filters on the market is becoming a job in itself for many companies maintaining an email newsletter. Plus at this time, Brand Autopsy does not need to generate a database of users so collecting email addresses is not an importance to keep our blog site going. And … we frankly like the fact that blogs and RSS feeds allow readers to pull information from us rather than us pushing information to them.
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5. Is RSS the best medium for content delivery right now?
One of the reasons we do not have the impetus to do a Brand Autopsy Email Newsletter is because of increasing usage of RSS feeds. RSS is one of the best and easiest methods for those online to pull relevant information. The usability and accessibility of RSS feeds has come a long way in a short time. Through RSS feeds I am able to better and more efficiently manage not only my blog subscriptions but also manage my access to traditional news sources like the New York Times.
6. Advice for other marketers/entrepreneurs on starting their own blog.
Starting a blog is easy … there are countless blogging applications on the market, some free and some for a low monthly fee.
Answering why one should they start their own blog is a little more difficult. If as a marketer/entrepreneur you believe in learning through sharing, then starting and maintaining an active blog is a great way to learn through sharing. I have become a better, smarter, and more engaged marketer since I started blogging.
Also, I encourage anyone who has a passion for anything, to share that passion with others. And blogging makes it easy to share your passions broadly with others around the world. If you have access to the internet, are passionate, can type, and have some initiative … you can (and should) blog. It is that easy.
7. Advice for larger companies/brands starting their own blog…
First advice for companies staring their own blog is you need to listen. Second advice is to be prepared to implement some of the thoughts/ideas you hear from listening to customers. A blog is a conversation between a company and its “user” community. If a company’s culture is one that values conversing with customers, then they should start their own blog.
Another piece of advice is to assign day-to-day responsibility to someone who has a broad understanding of your business, your customers, and is someone who embodies the culture/values of your company. I would advise against having some from your internal or external Public Relations department manage the blog because they may be too accustomed to regurgitating company sound-bites and not be able to carry on an authentic, real, and spontaneous conversation.
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Finally, be prepared to not direct the conversation on the blog. This is probably the greatest hindrance to companies/brands wanting to start their blog as they are not prepared to give up control. Blogs are not the traditional top-down and highly crafted marketing communication tool that advertising is. Instead, blogs facilitate bottom-up conversations from customers to companies that is more organic and free-flowing in nature. For many companies, giving up control and letting grassroots communication from customers direct the conversation is frightening.
8. But how can companies overcome this problem? As a consultant, how would you approach the solution?
It is more a matter of company culture than anything else. Some company cultures are extremely protective about their so-called “proprietary and confidential” information while other company cultures promote being as transparent as possible. I’m a huge proponent of transparency and especially transparency in marketing. Given the access the public has to information, both “private” and public”, I believe a company should be forthright in disclosing as much information as possible because if they don’t disclose it … someone else will.
As a consultant, I recommend that companies operating their own blogs foster a culture of listening and responding to the comments and conversation generated from the blog. By listening and responding to customers on the blog, it will show company leadership the benefits of treating communicating to customers as a two- way street and not a one-way street.
Then again … transparency is new territory for businesses of all sectors. Some cultures will embrace transparency while others will not. I hope customers choose to do business with companies that embrace transparency and then … and only then will the non-transparent companies become more transparent.
9. Real-world examples
Unfortunately, I have yet to run across a corporate blog where the dialogue is truly authentic. I’m sure there are some out there but I haven’t found one yet.
Why is that? I think it’s because most companies believe the viral nature of the internet makes it too risky to share authentic and spontaneous company communication. I also think many companies fear over-sharing as in sharing proprietary and confidential information in a public setting. I also believe most companies do not value the listening conversations to be had from having a corporate blog.
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10. So one of the problems is the fact that they don't want to share information. What are your thoughts on this? In the 21st century, is it better to withhold your knowledge or freely share it with the world?
As mentioned above … due to technology, access to information is abundant and because of that access, I believe a company should be forthright in disclosing as much information as possible. If they don’t disclose information… someone else will.
11. So how can a blog be a branding tool? How can it enhance the brand?
I believe marketing is the articulation of the brand. Marketing should tell the story of why a company or product is meaningfully unique to a consumer. Anywhere a message exists about a company or product exists, marketing exists. Marketing happens at every customer touch-point. And blogs are another customer touch- point in a marketer’s arsenal.
However, the major differences between blogs and other marketing touch-points like radio/television commercials, print ads, in-store signage, and newspaper stories are … blogs have a built-in communication feedback system, blogs are timely, and blogs are personal.
What brand wouldn’t want to have more meaningful, timelier, and more personal connections with their customers? Blogs can allow a brand to do all that and much more with customers.
12. Could you recommend some blogging strategies?
There seems to be only one meaningful blogging strategy … blog about what you’re passionate about. This works for large companies, small companies, non- profits, and individuals.
Blogs work best when they are used to share passions. If a large company or brand is passionate about aerospace technology … blog about aerospace technology. If a small company is passionate about changing the way the world eats … then blog about changing the way the world eats. If a non-profit is passionate about feeding the homeless … blog about feeding the homeless. If a person is passionate about yo-yos … blog about yo-yos.
Also, focus your corporate weblog on telling the story of your company and its products and services and not on selling your company’s products or services.
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13. Should companies encourage their employees to publish their own blogs? What kind of rules should apply to this? Should they perhaps even control these blogs for content issues?
If a company’s culture is cool with its employees carrying on candid conversations with customers then they should encourage employees to blog. If a company is not comfortable with this then they shouldn’t encourage employees to blog.
The best rules I’ve seen for corporate blogs were written by Robert Scoble (Microsoft uber-blogger). (Go to www.changethis.com for his Corporate Weblog Manifesto.)
14. I gather it's basically a comfort-zone issue? But what would you suggest and why? Could employee blog communications enhance the brand and how?
Employee blogs can help to enhance a brand by personalizing the brand. Blogs have the power to humanize a company by putting a face, a voice, and a personality to a brand.
At some point in time, growth companies can grow so big they become “bad.” Microsoft’s bigness and dominance equates to being an evil empire in some people’s eyes. However, through Robert Scoble’s blog and John Porcaro’s blog, Microsoft doesn’t seem so big and so bad. Robert and John are Microsoft employees who, through blogging, personalize their work experience at Microsoft. Both Robert and John put an informative voice, a friendly face, and a nice personality to a brand that can be perceived as being big, bad, and evil.
Wal-Mart is currently trying to reverse their image of being bad because they are so big. What if Wal-Mart encouraged its employees to put an informative voice, a friendly face, and a nice personality to the Wal-Mart brand by maintaining weblogs? Maybe Wal-Mart wouldn’t seem so big, so bad, and so evil.
Same goes for Starbucks.
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15. Once you start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business?
I wouldn’t measure the success of a corporate weblog by whether or not it increases sales or generates business. Instead, I would measure the success by the quality of conversation that occurs on the blog and by whether or not the corporate reputation of the company has been enhanced.
16. Could you give us advice in terms of blog content?
Be truthful.
Be passionate.
Be personal
Be timely.
Be responsive.
Be forthcoming.
17. What are the best ways to promote a blog?
For corporate weblogs … feature the blog prominently on the homepage of your website and let the viral nature of the web take over. If you build it and make it remarkable … the online world will come.
For personal weblogs … be active in posting comments on other like-minded blogs. The blogging community is very welcoming to new voices and by posting on other blogs you tap into a virtuous networking cycle that will drive visits to your blog.
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Laura Ries, Ries & Ries
Web site: http://www.ries.com
1. Laura, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
My name is Laura Ries and with my partner and father Al Ries we run the marketing strategy firm Ries & Ries based in Atlanta, Georgia. I am co-author of four books including: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR and the recently released The Origin of Brands.
2. The first question comes quite natural for this e-book: why don't you do e-mail marketing & publishing, but you do RSS?
That's easy, I hate email. I think today almost everybody out there hates email. The wonderful aspect that the internet has to offer is it interactivity. Email is more like advertising, a one-way not necessarily usually wanted form of communication. After being bombarded with daily SPAM I felt, email was not the way to communicate with our fans. I do keep an email list, but only send out an email once or twice a year when a new book or something big happens.
3. How long have you been publishing your blog? And we're especially interested in what kind of results you are achieving with it? Is it having a positive impact on your business?
July 1, 2004 was the day I discovered blogging. I had been reading a lot about blogs and after finally visiting some; I realized what a phenomenal tool there were. I knew immediately bloging was something we needed to be doing. I put up my own blog that day at www.originofbrands.com (http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/)
The blog is a great success. A couple of thousand people are reading it every week already after only being less than three months.
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Public relations is the way brands are built. And it is my job to build the Laura Ries brand. Writing a blog is one tool I am using to do that. I also do interviews with magazines, newspapers. I have appeared on television as a branding expert on CNN, Fox News, CNBC and other stations. I travel around the world making speeches.
You bet it is working. Our brand name is stronger than ever.
4. Could you please give our readers, mostly marketers and entrepreneurs, advice on how to best start their own blog and why?
First you need to build a brand. When you have a brand that stands for something it will be easy to start your blog. The brand will have a specific point of view that you can then write about on your blog.
The most important thing about blogging and writing in general is to keep at it. Write and write and write and it will get easier and your writing will improve.
5. How about larger corporations and brands? How should they start their own blog?
Blogs are just the newest form of communication. I'm not sure every large company should start a blog. But they should be looking at using the powerful bloggers out there to help promote their brand. Blogs are a form of PR. Having your brand discussed on a blog should be the goal of any brand manager.
6. So how can a blog be used as a branding tool? How can it enhance the brand?
I use our blog to discuss current branding issues in the news from Toys 'R' Us, to Martha Steward, to the latest Six Flags ad. In addition I write about basic marketing principles like names and positioning strategies.
As a branding tool, we can only publish a book every other year. But with a blog we can reach people with our marketing thinking on a daily basis.
The blog reinforces our brand position. And the stronger our brand the more business we will have.
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7. Could you recommend some blogging strategies?
I am not a blogging expert at all. Just a marketing consultant and author that wanted to get her views out to the public. We were having trouble getting reviewers to discuss our controversial new book The Origin of Brands, so I decided to forget the media and publish our thoughts directly. So far it has worked well.
8. Should companies encourage their employees to publish their own blogs? What kind of rules should apply to this? Should they perhaps even control these blogs for content issues?
That is a difficult question, in general the more discussion about a company the better. But a large company also needs to keep control of the brand.
9. Once we do start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business?
A blog is great marketing and communication tool. But the way to generate more business is to have a strong brand.
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Amy Gahran, Gahran.com
Web site: http://gahran.com
1. Amy, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
I do many kinds of work related to content and communication. Lately, I've taken to thinking of myself as an “info-provocateur” -- basically, I like to find new ideas (or new ways of integrating existing ones), or intriguing perspectives, and throwing all that together for discussion and consideration. This is the big motivation behind my weblog CONTENTIOUS (http://blog.contentious.com)
Professionally, I'm a journalist, editor, consultant, and writing coach. More details on the work I do: http://gahran.com
2. How do you see the impact of RSS and blogging on the business and even more importantly marketing world? Can these two make a huge difference? And if they can, what kind of difference? What will be different? How should we start preparing for that right now?
First of all, I prefer to call this emerging communication medium “webfeed” -- a colloquial nickname that's more intuitive and descriptive than that geeky TLA (three- letter acronym). The term webfeed encompasses RSS, Atom, and any other standard that may emerge in the future. It's a media concept, not dependent on a specific standard.
How blogging will affect business: In short, I think business blogs will have the effect of re-humanizing and re-personalizing business. I'm not sure that's what a lot of businesses really want – I think many businesspeople are fond of the sense of power, remoteness, and invulnerability associated with being “corporate” rather than human.
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A lot of people think blogs are just another marketing tool for business. But once they get into it they'll inevitably be revealed publicly as human, for better or worse. Overall, I think that's an improvement over the way most business marketing and communication is handled now, it'll be more credible and realistic. But I don't doubt that it will be an awkward and uncomfortable transition for a lot of businesspeople.
For webfeeds, yes I think they can help businesses communicate much more effectively and reliably, especially with specific audiences. I'm surprised most businesses aren't already issuing product/service news, press releases, investor information, supply-chain information, etc. via webfeed. That potential is not being realized yet. It should be. I'm hoping it will be. Webfeeds are fine for any type of communication, but especially to communicate time-sensitive information, prone to updates, to specialized audiences.
How to start preparing? Get started, experiment with both blogs and webfeeds. This is something you only really learn by doing, and the best application will be unique to each company. The sooner the start, the sooner you'll figure out whether and how this can help your business.
3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Where do you see the future of RSS?
Right now webfeeds are still in the early adoption phase, but they're gaining momentum. I think they'll likely penetrate the business sector widely before the general audience because they've been getting a lot of coverage in the business press.
The main driver behind the growth of webfeeds, I think, is the fact that they're a spam-proof communication medium. The “syndication” side of it is actually turning out to be a very minor component. They're basically a way to transmit content and updates to people who request it, instantly, without running into spam problems. A lot of organizations currently use e-mail publishing for this – and spam is totally killing e-mail publishing.
Again, the potential uses for webfeeds extend far beyond how they're being used today. If you think creatively about them, the content/service/strategy options are virtually limitless.
I still think feed readers have a way to go to become truly user-friendly, but the fact is they are not hard to learn and there are many options. I think the bigger issue is motivating people to learn to use feed readers. Once people are motivated, they can do anything.
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4. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples?
• press releases and media alerts
• investor information
• new products and services
• specials and deals
• supply chain news (coordination with distributors, etc.)
• RFPs
• auctions
• Job postings
• Intranet applications (HR, training opportunities, events, etc.)
• etc.
5. How about for blogging? What companies and individuals should blog, why and how?
As I wrote yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/4a38b), you should choose the person who does the blogging carefully. Bloggers must be motivated, drawn to the medium, and adequately skilled in terms of writing and technology.
I think it's generally a mistake to rely on a CEO, etc. To blog unless that person also has the makings of a good blogger. It's just a painful, difficult process otherwise. You might be better off having a “corporate journalist” do most of the blogging, with occasional guest items from executives.
I think any company could blog. It's just a matter of defining whom you wish to reach (your target audience), and what sort of content most interests them. Would that target audience be interested in a blog? If so, what kind of blog? What style would succeed and what kinds of content?
Blogs are not just one-way. With the comments function they become a public discussion. Is your company prepared to publicly handle criticism, awkward questions, etc? If so, great. If not, blogging might not be right for you.
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6. What would you advise a small internet business, considering using RSS and blogs?
As I said above, just get started. Experiment. Install the tools, learn to use them, try some pilot projects. Talk to your intended audiences, see what they want. What can your company offer which is unique? Does your target audience need assistance learning what webfeeds are and how to use them? Always consider that value you're offering them, and make that point first. Motivate your audience.
7. What do you believe are the best ways of promoting a blog and the best ways of getting people to "subscribe" to an RSS feed?
For blogs: Use pingomatic.com, the easiest way to get your blog entries listed in all the major places people look for such stuff.
Also, read, link to, and comment on other relevant and complementary blogs. Even those of your competitors. The blogosphere is largely about mutual support and cooperation, so drop your defensiveness and competitiveness and just be willing to be one constructive voice among many. This will encourage people to like you – especially other bloggers, who will link to you.
With webfeeds, if they're public then make sure they're listed in Feedster, Blogdigger, and all the other major feed aggregators. Create a Technorati profile.
With any webfeed, public or private, make sure you announce it in all the relevant media --- on your site/intranet, in press releases, annual reports, on bills and other paperwork, in marketing materials, etc. Always offer the value proposition first. Offer assistance with helping people understand what webfeeds are and how to use them. Link to my backgrounder if you like, I cover all that: http://tinyurl.com/3znqu
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8. You offer an e-mail update service and an RSS feed for your blog. Do you have any information on how many people subscribe to each?
The hard thing about webfeeds is that currently it's not possible to track subscriber numbers or identities. This is one reason why a lot of online publishers are not yet offering webfeeds, because they're control freaks about such information. However, I estimate based on traffic to my feed file that approximately 3,000-6,000 people subscribe to my webfeed directly, and an additional 4,000 people get my e- mail alerts. Some people subscribe to both, too. About 300 people subscribe to my feed through bloglines alone. Many other people simply check my site occasionally via standard bookmarks.
9. Have you noticed any difference in the "quality" of readers you get through the e-mail update service and the e-mail service? We're especially interested in how responsive people are to each of the two delivery mediums …
I can't really answer that. For my blog, “responsiveness” is a very individual matter that doesn't seem dependent on a reader's preference for content alerts.
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Åsk Wäppling, Adland
Web site: http://ad-rag.com
1. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do?
My name is Åsk Wäppling, I'm an Art Director in Advertising who also hosts a large advertising community website with the largest Superbowl commercial collection on the web, a.k.a the Claymore project, it has 30 years worth of super bowl commercials. The community site serves advertising news and insider gossip and is meant as a meeting place for other advertising crazy professionals like myself. The ironic twist is that site aims to never be financed by any form of paid advertising on the site, and has succeeded in that.
2. How long has Adland been online and how long have you been publishing in RSS?
Adland was online as a small humble page in 1996, with only very basic guestbook abilities. In early 2000 we did a massive rebuild, an entire content management system with multiple users and administrators, forums, blog-pages, private messaging system and the cherry on top - RSS!
3. How have your integrated RSS in to your web community?
We carry three different feeds, RSS buttons on the front page alert visitors to the possibilities. We don't use feeds for the comments or the forums, the latter members can subscribe to via email if they wish to keep track of replies to their questions and job-classifieds.
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4. But do you also publish using e-mail? What is your strategy and how do you integrate it with RSS?
RSS feeds and newsletters serve different purposes, we never felt that a newsletter would be useful for the site as they are best served weekly or within a similar time frame. "Never send a newsletter unless you have something new to say" as the old advice goes. Since our news arrives 'as it happens', and commercials are posted daily, an RSS feed is a better way of keeping track of the site updates for people. Newsletters have other disadvantages as well, unsubscribing can still be a hassle for people, and people change email addresses often, not to mention a lot of mail gets lost when some ISP administrator adds yet another Spam-trap on the way, lots of offices have extremely misconfigurated spam-filters that silently drops mail, this renders mailing lists and newsletters useless as they never arrive but you as the sender never find out either. With feeds people feel more in control and can set it up regardless of what their email address happens to be at the moment. And they can access it from anywhere in a feedreader on the web, such as bloglines. We do use email, as I mentioned previously one can ask a question or post a job-ad in the forums and then subscribe to it, receiving all the responses in the mail. We also have a two-way-mailing list for discussions about advertising, an RSS feed can't replace that kind of mailing list.
5. Since you've been publishing in RSS since 2000, how has the number of people that use your feed increased during these 4 years and why?
In the beginning few people (in advertising) knew about RSS readers or had a site where they could add the feed, but that soon changed. Many carried the feed in their own homepages, or read it via syndic8, or had our feed in their friends-list at Livejournal. When more and simple web-based feedreaders came along, like bloglines, even more people started reading the feeds. Now that nearly every email reader offers a feed-reader, like Gmail and Oddpost, and people no longer need a stand alone program for it the feeds are more popular than ever.
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6. How would you say that your web community helped increase your success?
The community has huge influence in that they can add their own news that they find interesting and they can comment on anything, the popular topics create refreshing debates and they are a large part of the voice of the site. They can also rate any ad on the site, so data reflecting what is most popular as rated by members compared to "hits" created by anyone gives a better reflection of what members versus stray surfers appreciate the most. Our "email to a friend" buttons sets on fire at times as members and visitors pass fun news on to everyone know they know.
7. What in your mind are the greatest benefits of publishing in RSS and what are the best ways of "exploiting", in a positive way, these benefits?
Easy user control, close to real time updates and simplicity are great benefits you get with feeds. If your site is reporting from a convention or award show, your feed can reflect news 'as it happens', so to speak - each time you update the site it is reflected in your feed.
8. You are also publishing multiple RSS feeds? Which feeds and how is this working out for you? Could you give our readers some advice concerning running multiple feeds?
We publish three feeds, the adnews alone, the commercials alone, and the whole enchilada which is both. Since the advertising news can be read by anyone, but the commercials can only be viewed by members we thought offering choice in the feeds made sense as the continuous posting of commercials can drown out the advertising news on any given day. People use the advertising headlines feeds on their sites and subscribe to the whole enchilada in their own reader to keep track of the new commercials, some members choose to subscribe to both the news and the commercials but like to keep them in separate folders of their readers. It’s all part of giving people choices. I think running multiple feeds makes a lot of sense if a site has some areas closed off to members only, or if the site has a lot of news in different but related subjects, like PR news and Advertising news. If there is enough content multiple feeds can allow readers to sort the feeds differently, concentrate on the subjects that interest them the most and never miss any of the news.
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9. Have you ever measured the success of your RSS feeds? How? Do you have any idea how "active" your RSS users are?
It's always interesting to log in to various feedreaders such as bloglines, kinja and the likes to see how many are subscribing there, but the real measure of how popular a particular feed is can be found in the web server traffic statistics like everything else. Since each web-page of the site reveals (to us administrators) what the referring page is, we can see feed readers clicking through to the site from their Oddpost or Gmail or what they happen to be using,
10. What in your mind are the advantages (and the negative sides) of publishing with RSS in comparison to publishing with e-mail?
The two different publishing systems are useful for different things, newsletters should be either on a schedule, say every Friday or Monday, or sent out when special activities are on, competitions or any other 'big' news. Newsletters can carry longer articles and short half-paragraph bursts of news in the same email. The negative with newsletters is that the security in place - the "reply to this if you really do want to subscribe" - designed to prevent gratuitous subscribing of third parties is making the process more complex and turning some people off. Badly implemented spam filters that silently drop emails for offending word combinations like "The pen is mightier than the sword" (pen is = penis), human interaction spam-filters, overfilled email accounts, abandoned email accounts and auto replies may make subscribers 'fall off' a mailing list without the list owner ever noticing. At the same time, many prefer email, they can forward interesting things to colleagues and save things of interest in their mailboxes. Feeds can be served on other websites that have that capability, feeds are updated as often as the site itself is rather than in weekly bursts, and interesting things in feeds can be forwarded to colleagues via email just as easily as a newsletter. When we carry articles with big images or films people interested in the subject come to the site to view the images, rather than us sending large copyrighted material out which may not fit in recipients email boxes, may cost a fortune in bandwidth for us, and may make photographers charge more for the image. Many email-lists get around this by simply linking to their site instead, then why not use RSS which does exactly that? Feeds also don't send the entire article out - like a newsletter would - you'll see what articles people want to read more on when they click through to continue their reading. The only negative I've seen in RSS so far is that it has been so unknown and can sound rather technical, which may turn people off when they aren't familiar with the idea of RSS and RSS-readers.
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11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together?
Running ads within your RSS feed is a great way to make people unsubscribe from it. While text-ads within email newsletters have been accepted in general, a lot of readers choose RSS precisely to avoid ads, and still keep on top of the news headlines that they are interested in. If they are interested enough to read more, they'll click through to your site and see the ads there (if you have advertising on your site). For this reason I wouldn't try to advertise within someone’s feed, but look at other options like text ads, newsletter text ads and similar. I'd also try and sponsor web-based feed reader sites with text-ads, where the potential audience is.
An RSS feed with headline and the lead-in, and then a link to an article is an ad in itself! Putting an ad into something like that is like adding an ad to an ad. It's quite different if the entire article, images and content is sent out via RSS; then a small text-ad might not be so out of place.
12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed?
The problem is that RSS is seldom explained in plain English, the pages that answer "what is RSS" tend to be technical and describe the coding process which the average person may not even be remotely interested in.
If you carry an RSS feed, you could have a page explaining how people can use it, link to popular stand-alone RSS readers that you have used, list all the email- programs that can read RSS and list the RSS-readers on the web last. The latter requires a login and may turn people off as it's a "hassle" unless they are the types who like to keep their things "on the web" for easy access from any old computer, and not just their office computer.
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13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that?
If it ain't broke don't fix it, the best way to convert people is to offer them choices, if your weekly newsletter is also published on a website weekly why not keep your old newsletter and offer RSS for those who prefer it. Let the options run parallel to see how many are really interested in RSS as a replacement for the newsletter. You may gain new readers with an RSS feed that can be placed as headlines on other sites, but don't alienate those you already have in the newsletter while you are at it. Since RSS and newsletters are different, you shouldn't replace one with the other without considering the differences. Perhaps a newsletter is the best option for you, perhaps RSS could work with your website in other ways?
14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")?
Again, just offer them the choice. Clearly mark your RSS feed with the by now familiar orange buttons, and perhaps a link to a page where you explain what RSS is in plain English, and point them to popular RSS readers, such as the Oddpost and GMail email, Bloglines and others on the web, and stand alone programs that you yourself have used. You can also offer bloglines buttons, where any reader who is already signed up with them can click the button to add your feed to their collection of RSS-feeds. Point them to other related feeds that they may also be interested in - even the New York Times serves RSS feeds these days - and the option of getting many news-sources in one place may be what pushes those unfamiliar with it to take the plunge into RSS-reading.
15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well?
Make sure that your feed is registered with the countless web-based RSS feed readers out there, such as syndic8.com and bloglines.com and Kinja etcetera - you can find them all with a quick search in yahoos directories. There are also ways to 'ping' feed readers out there when you update, described on each the feed- collecting sites, this is a useful thing to do at the start as well to alert websites out there to your updates.
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Fergus Burns, Nooked.com
http://www.nooked.com
1. Fergus, thank you for taking the time for this interview. As is the norm with these interviews, I would like to ask you if you can explain what you do to our readers and especially about your solution.
I’m the CEO of Nooked - Nooked makes RSS publishing easy for corporate communications.
Nooked's online service – www.nooked.com - enables PR and marketing professionals to manage, create and publish corporate news in RSS feeds. Simple to deploy and easy to use, Nooked eliminates technical barriers common in RSS publishing and provides accurate reporting on your efforts.
2. With most RSS publishing solutions being free, what are the additional benefits that your solution offers?
Nooked provides 4 specific business benefits for our clients:
• Ease of use, with particular focus on the needs of busy PR & marketing executives
• Simple deployment of RSS channels
• Detailed reporting on all activities on RSS channels
• Extends the reach of a company’s corporate messages
Nooked is a service designed for corporate communications executives – built from real market feedback and customers.
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3. On your web site you say that Nooked is especially appropriate for corporate communications executives. What exactly does this mean?
Nooked has been designed for corporate communications executives. We’ve paid particular attention to ease of use and simple deployment requirements that these people have – 90% of PR & Marketing people wish to implement RSS without the baggage of technical issues.
Our product planning process is based on extensive dialogue with PR and marketing executives to understand their requirements for RSS and validate our solution.
Also, corporate communications professionals need to know that their RSS channel is getting picked up by all the syndication services available. The measurement, or metrics, on their RSS channel is also very important because they can demonstrate to management the ROI they are achieving through the use of RSS.
4. Could you perhaps explain how corporations can, in your mind, best use RSS? Especially for internal communications?
RSS is an enabling technology, which has many uses within corporations. With the growth of internal blogs and wiki’s, RSS is the main method of staying abreast of what is been said, and by whom.
For internal communications, one of our clients Object Marketing, a UK pr & marketing agency, are using Nooked and RSS in an interesting way. They use RSS channels to manage the media coverage they generate for their clients – the RSS channels in effect become a form of “clip book”, which enables them to keep their clients updated via RSS.
From our own experience, one of the major benefits of RSS is that it’s a clean channel – it avoids spam filters, annoying popups, and above all, if used in a corporate setting, can increase consumption of content versus traditional methods, such as email.
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5. Could you perhaps share a few examples or case studies with us?
One good example is a client of ours – Rococo Software. They implemented an RSS initiative back in July 2004.
The implementation of RSS for Rococo Software was seamless – they created an account on Nooked, populated the channels with some existing information on press releases, media coverage and forthcoming events.
The actual implementation took 2 minutes – their website administrator placed the 8 lines of HTML code that Nooked provides to place the RSS icons on their press room.
Since then they have updated their RSS channels via Nooked with news items as they appear on their website. They also use the RSS channel to publish additional media coverage and company related news that does not appear on the corporate website.
Through the Nooked Stats feature, they can track their RSS metrics – Rococo Software has grown their traffic via RSS by 20% per month, and their click through’s are growing at a steady pace every month.
More importantly, some of their key clients and industry analysts have subscribed to their Corporate News RSS channel, which has demonstrated real ROI to their senior management.
6. And how about other RSS uses?
There are many great services that use RSS – Newsgator, technorati, Feedster, Flickr, Moreover, etc.
Two services I really like, which are dependent on RSS, are Bloglines and PubSub.
With Bloglines, you get great RSS reading experience, but you also get extra goodies including information about how many readers subscribe to these channels, who those people are, etc. You also get great search capability.
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PubSub enables Nooked to keep our finger on the “blogosphere” – I get notified via an RSS channel when we are mentioned on the “blogosphere” – it’s simple to use, and it’s really powerful.
7. One of the things I found especially interesting is that you are also providing RSS metrics. Exactly what kind of RSS metrics does your solution provide?
Nooked provides the following real-time metrics on RSS
• Number of hits on your RSS channel
o RSS channels will get hits because we notify all available syndication services
o This is measured on a daily, weekly and monthly basis
• Number of click-throughs
o This is a key measurement – it measures who has clicked through on your content to actually read it
o We also measure the click throughs on a per item basis, so you can track what type of content is gaining most interest – Press releases or Media Coverage or events, etc.
• Sources
o We provide a full listing on the IP addresses of where the hits and click throughs originated from
o We will have this resolved to company names in our next version of the Nooked service, which our clients have requested.
• Other areas of work
o We are also working on how we can integrate with services such as Pub Sub, Technorati, Bloglines, etc, which would give our clients a richer picture on the RSS metrics around their channels.
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8. Where do you see the future of RSS metrics?
We are only at the early stages of RSS metrics – people want the Holy Grail which is similar to what they get with email metrics.
Given the relative anonymous nature of RSS, this presents many challenges to all the service providers within the industry.
From a Nooked perspective, we are fortunate that our clients are providing us with their business requirements on RSS metrics, which they use to determine ROI.
This ranges from identifying people & companies who are reading their RSS channel, through to growth in click through rates over a series of press releases they have released, etc.
Ultimately the answer comes from the publishers, aggregators and search engines – from these 3 sources, where allowed, you can build a very accurate picture of RSS metrics.
Nooked continues to make significant R+D investment into the area of “RSS Metrics”
9. How about of RSS as a whole? How is it going to impact the business world, most especially marketing? What new developments can we expect in the future?
RSS has impacted the business world considerably over the past 18 months.
More and more web publishers, both traditional and new, are using RSS as a distribution channel.
The blogosphere is also becoming an area where companies need to monitor their reputation – the speed with which either positive or negative news circulates the web has grown exponential over the past 12 months.
Other market influencers, such as Analysts, Journalists, and Fortune 1000 executives are all now consuming content via RSS aggregators.
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The main development is “where will RSS reach tipping point” – this ultimately comes from the consumption side. When we have RSS reading capability within the software that controls the majority of desktops today – Windows, Office, Explorer – then I expect to see RSS become part of every average Joe and Mary’s day.
10. Do you have any plans to offer RSS customization with your solution as well?
Our goal is simple – make it easy to manage, create, publish and measure your news with RSS.
Our business model is a subscription model – we are not in the business of putting advertisements into client channels.
The only customization in relation to RSS is that Nooked supports all the different flavors of RSS and Atom.
11. And for the last question, what in your experience are the best RSS strategies for small businesses, and then for larger corporations?
I spoke to Matthew Podboy of Voce Communications last week and he put it better that I can.
“Step 1 – put your company news into RSS” + “Step 2 – start talking in your own words via a blog”
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Views and Experience From Other Marketers
Eric Ward, EricWard.com
Web site: http://www.ericward.com
1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why?
I added an option to receive my content as an RSS feed about a year ago, however I have not discontinued using email and the web for delivery of that same content. The RSS feed now accounts for 55% of my site traffic.
2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why?
I have already implemented RSS, mainly because it is so remarkably easy to set up RSS feeds, as well as for users of RSS readers to subscribe to those feeds.
And since it is still so early in the adoption phase for this type of content delivery, you don't have as many competing feeds.
3. Do you perhaps have any statistics of your feed you would like to share?
Certainly.
In 2002, before I created the rss version of my headlines page, my the .html version of my headlines page was responsible for 90% of my site's traffic.
As of 9/2004, the rss version of the headlines page was generating 40% of my site traffic, and the .html version was generating 45%.
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Pretty amazing considering I never announced or submitted the rss feed to any feed engines.
I just quietly created it and uploaded it.
Nowadays it is much harder to get attention for a new rss feed. I conduct submission campaigns for many clients for their rss feed URLs, making surwe they are included in all the key rss search engines and directories. Most content publishers don't even know these rss search engines exist :)
4. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog?
I also publish a blog version of my content. I have found that by simply making sure the blog is included in all major blog search engines, and by indicating on my site that it is available, and linking directly to it, the blog gets plenty of traffic.
5. How do you see the future of e-mail?
Would not be surprised at all to see a new protocol other than SMTP developed that can be installed on ISP and corporate servers, and made available for an additional fee. This new protocol would be far less "open" than the original SMTP protocol, which was developed long ago and at a time when spam wasn't even a consideration.
I'd also like to see a more evolved challenge/response system where an email marketer has to include a fee sent via PayPal for any email a recipient opens.
Kevin Bidwell, All-In-One-Business.com
Web site: http://www.All-In-One-Business.com
1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why?
We are adding RSS as an addition to email marketing. We do not plan to replace email for a number of reasons, most importantly that email continues to be a great way to get our messages out quickly and effectively--we currently have a 60% open rate on our main emailing list.
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2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why?
We will be implementing RSS within the next few weeks for people who are interested in using RSS as opposed to email delivery. We see RSS as being a great new resource for reaching people who are opposed to email as a reception channel.
3. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog?
While we have looked at blogs, we have not yet adopted one.
4. How do you see the future of e-mail?
Email will evolve, but email is here to stay. Email has become such a fixture of people's lives that it is unlikely to be removed.
Imagine...
Any time I can get my newsletter or marketing piece in someone's inbox wedged between a email from Aunt Mabel and their Kiwanis meeting announcemet, I know I can be effective.
The real key is showing respect for my readers, rewarding them often and not insulting them with off-topic or irrelevant content. A newsletter needs to be a newsletter, not simply a marketing piece. People will appreciate and respond to the marketing when it is accompanied by revelvant content and frequent subscriber rewards. People resent the marketing when it pounds at them again and again with no real thought, plan or benefit.
Growing, unique content is key. I need to provide my readers with ideas and rewards they can't get anywhere else.
I have summarized some of these ideas in a special report on profitable email marketing. Free copies are available here:
http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/emailreport
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Doug Hudiburg, The Daily Marketing Ace
Web site: http://www.dailymarketingace.com
1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why?
Yes I have seriously considered it because I like the idea of being able to efficiently deliver content without the use of email. Email, while still supremely useful as a marketing tool, requires a lot of management. The 'pull' versus 'push' concept behind RSS eliminates most of the issues.
2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why?
Yes. I am building a new marketing resource site for small businesses and will implement a blog as part of the site. I will offer RSS syndication of the blog. I would like to offer an RSS feed of my daily eZine (The Daily Marketing Ace) but the way I have it set up requires personalization to each subscriber which, to my knowledge, is not possible with RSS.
3. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog?
I have not promoted a blog personally, but the most effective ones I've seen are an extension of the personal promotion a subject matter expert has done. For instance, a business consultant writes articles for several publications and websites on a regular basis. The articles drive traffic to his website where his blog provides a way for him to build a relationship and credibility with his visitors.
4. How do you see the future of e-mail?
Email is here to stay as a general communications medium. I see RSS displacing email to some degree for one-to-many communications. I have found that peer to peer colloboration (Groove) has completely eliminated email as a communication tool for the distributed teams that I manage.
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