If you're at the DMA Annual Conference (DMA06), then I encourage you to check out the panel session I'm doing later today here in San Francisco at 4:30pm called Blogs, Podcasts and RSS: New Tools for Customer Acquisition and CRM. Hope to see you there!

I've been busy, so apologies for the lack of posting.

Last week I was in NYC speaking at the Shop.org annual summit. I moderated the Vertical Search panel at the Web 2.0 bootcamp. If you want to download my Powerpoint, which is a short intro to vertical search, you can get it here.

Since at least a few people seem to want me to expand on my presentation from the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, I have put a one-hour screencast together. In addition to covering all the slides in the Powerpoint deck, I also ran through an example of a corporate website that is powered by WordPress and that uses, in novel ways, a lot of the blog optimization techniques discussed in my presentation. The corporate site I am referring to is that of my company, Netconcepts.

Enjoy! And do let me know what you think of it.

Download or watch the video via streaming: Flash (10 M or WMV (22 M or Quicktime MPEG4 / iPod Video (59 M

As promised, I've posted my Powerpoint deck from the session I gave earlier today here at Search Engine Strategies San Jose.

I was thinking I might create an extended version of my presentation (like 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes) and make it available as a screencast video, if enough of you folks request it. Would you like me to do this?

RSS feeds are your tether -- your lifeline -- to your prospects after they've left your site. Unless they've ordered from you, how else can you reach out to that nameless, faceless hoard? It used to be that your email newsletter served that purpose, but consumers are bombarded with so much email now that they are reticent to subscribe to many more newsletters. RSS to the rescue!

A-List blogger Robert Scoble from Microsoft has said: "You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed." I love that quote!

Don't just offer one single RSS feed. One size does not fit all. I may only be interested in one particular product category and not your entire online catalog. (Here's just a sampling of Amazon's category-specific feeds.) I may be interested in your new product arrivals. Or just your best sellers. Or just your clearance items. Customers may want more than a feed of products; they may also want product reviews, coupons and specials, tips and articles.

Ideally you should allow your shoppers to create custom RSS feeds that are tailored to their interests. For example, an RSS feed comprised of reviews, coupons, and tips, but not tech specs or press releases, and for only 2 of your 10 product categories. See the screenshot below for a nice example of a custom feed subscription form.

RSS feeds offer more than just to a direct-to-consumer channel that bypasses spam filters. It also tends to boost your link gain (PageRank). Bloggers subscribe to RSS feeds, and bloggers link to items of interest found in those RSS feeds. Heck, if you're really lucky you may get entire feeds syndicated (that's the second S in RSS) onto other sites!

I spoke at the Strategic Branding conference in Auckland yesterday. My session was on new ways to brand in the online channel. Of course branding campaigns appear in many forms online besides the ubiquitous banner ad. It was my job to provide the audience of brand marketers a crash course in blogs, RSS feeds, paid search, natural search, contextual advertising, text link advertising, microsites, and podcasts, and to do all that within an hour! Well I managed it, and I have the information-packed slide deck to prove it. Feel free to download the PPT.

Duncan Shand has some nice coverage of the conference sessions here.

Today I presented at the Search Engine Strategies conference on the "Blog and Feed Search SEO" panel. I spoke on optimization tips and tactics for blogs and for RSS feeds. I had to pack in a lot of material into a short amount of time, but I managed! We got some great questions in the Q&A. The session was blogged at Search Engine Roundtable.

Feel free to download my Powerpoint deck. There's tons of great stuff in there. Over 50 slides.

Larry Chase of WDFM pontificates about key trends for Internet marketing in 2006. These include, in summary:

1. RSS? Yes, but...
   
   Real Simple Syndication (RSS) finally takes off, and while great for stuff like sampling content, subscriber acquisition, product updates, and grabbing the attention of search engines, he contends that neither is it the second coming for advertising nor is it the replacement for email.
2. Podcast Means "Narrowcast"
   
   It may have been the 2005 Word of the Year, but to employ "podcast" technology for marketing purposes? The ability to "timeshift" and consume content on-the-go on your schedule is innovative, but isn't it possible most of these sound files are being listened to on desktop or laptop computers? And when considering podcasts as part of your marketing plan, think about the payback. A simple press release may be better.
3. Email Marketing - The Tower of Babble
   
   Improve email campaign deliverability by adding your SPF text record to your domain's DNS record. Mail servers look for the sending server's IP address before passing the email through to the recipient. Also look into adopting SenderID and the other competing protocols put forward by inbox providers and ISPs, to further ensure your emails get delivered. And remember, the cleaner your list, the more emails will be delivered.
4. Video Downloads Will Be Huge
   
   With millions of videos already being downloaded from iTunes, it's a growing market. While folks are tapping into a missed episode of their favorite TV program sans commercials or downloading entire movies, what is the application for marketers? Video on the Internet featuring product demos, or how-to videos to help buyers with their purchase decision, perhaps?
5. Newspapers Get Bold
   
   Print media has had to rev up its act to tap into the new generations. The world's #1 most downloaded podcast The Ricky Gervais Show at Guardian Unlimited is a glimpse of great things to come from the newspaper industry. But where is the money? It's got to be about more than traffic.
6. Multidimensional Marketing
   
   Sure, mashing online maps with overlays of data have far-reaching implications for Internet Marketing. Mapping properties for sale or rent, visualizing where visitors to your website come from, or finding WiFi hotspots or dead zones for cellular networks, are all great applications. And there will be more exciting innovations to come. The rapid advances in Internet technology will be a boon to marketers and researchers alike. But in the urge to innovate or die, don't make the classic mistake of assuming your audiences are adopting new technologies at the same rate you are. There's still a place for the traditional.

What do I think about Larry's predictions? I say he's pretty much spot on. Of course we won't know for sure until the end of the year. ;-)

If you've picked up the buzz and are considering adding RSS feeds to your site, Amanda Watlington has some pointers on how to approach it, which I've summarized:

1. Add new content to your site
   
   You need to be providing a steady flow of new information to readers who have subscribed to your feed. Without it, your subscribers will lose interest. Areas to update on your website may be news or press releases, and/or careers information. Do not offer RSS feeds until you are able to provide regularly updated content.
2. Offer multiple feeds
   
   Most websites have multiple audiences. Content that interests reporters will be different to that of interest to job seekers. If you are releasing new products or service updates, consider having a separate feed for each. There is no limit to how many feeds you should offer. Look at it from a marketing standpoint.
3. Frequency and recency
   
   Consider how often you update your website. This will dictate how often you update your feeds. Since the success of your RSS campaign depends on a regular flow of information, you may want to create a schedule that plans for regular updates.
4. RSS format for your feeds
   
   What format or version of RSS you will use? Typically, the choices include RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. A third choice is Atom, which performs the same basic functions as RSS. Decide if your feed format is to support enclosures such as image and audio files, an important functionality that RSS 2.0 feeds provide.
5. How much will you syndicate in your feed
   
   Decide how much content you will offer subscribers. Will it be a headline, a teaser, or more? If you are a content provider, you may want to offer headlines only, then readers will come to your site to read the entire article. Remember, however, that partial or headline-only feeds can be annoying to readers who expect to receive the entire article in their RSS reader. Know your audience and clarify your goals before deciding how much content to provide.
6. Encourage others to syndicate your content onto their site
   
   Expand your readership dramatically by offering a feed syndication tool that enables other site owners to create a customized feed of your headlines on their site. Properly constructed, these feeds will drive traffic to your site and add valuable links for search marketing.
7. Yes or no to advertising
   
   There are several schools of thought on this one, with arguments both in favor of carrying advertising and for creating feeds that are completely advertising free. You will want to take a stance on this during the planning process.
8. Measuring success
   
   The three key metrics of circulation, readership and clickthrough rates apply here. Circulation measures the number of subscribers your feed has. Readership measures the number of readers who viewed your feed in their RSS aggregator. Clickthroughs measure the number of readers who click from the feed to your site. Determine how aggressively you want to measure feed performance, set benchmarks and put tools in place to enable you to gather the data you need to measure success.
9. Advising your audience about RSS
   
   Letting readers know they can easily subscribe to your feeds may be as simple as putting an orange XML or RSS button prominently on your site, or providing extensive explanations and assistance to your readers. A press announcement about the availability of feeds on your site may be an option.
10. Monitor the rapidly changing RSS landscape
    
    As uses for RSS expand and new tools arrive to make it easier to implement RSS on sites, be sure that someone in your organization is monitoring the landscape regularly to ensure that you are as up to date on this evolving technology as possible.

Great advice, Amanda! Amanda also says: "Just remember that RSS is a marketing solution, not a technical problem. If you approach getting started in RSS from this perspective, you will find RSS an exciting new marketing communications medium."

You can also download her white paper, "The RSS Advertising Debate: Is It Just Commerce vs. Credibility?" at www.searchingforprofit.com/rssads.html.

Granted, RSS technology lacks the ease of use when compared to email. It's not that straightforward for the uninitiated to subscribe to and follow RSS feeds. It's hard enough explaining to an RSS newbie what an RSS feed is, let alone walking him/her through the installation and use of a newsreader program or a web-based aggregator.

And there are other problems too. "There’s the issue of recipient identity," said Neil Squillante, president of Landing Page Interactive at the MarketingProfs' Thought Leaders Summit on email marketing. "Currently most RSS feeds are just one feed for everyone to use, which means you lack the identity of email. Whereas with an email list of, say, 10,000 people, each email goes to just one person, and you can feel pretty confident that you have 10,000 people on your list."

Rok Hrastnik, owner of MarketingStudies.net and author of Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS highlighted ways within RSS to create a unique, trackable URL per subscriber, which do not have to be through HTTP authentication. There are also certain solutions in the market now that generally feed per user and even allow for data capture, e.g. the user can now register and receive a unique URL.

"One of the problems, however, is that if a user incorporates that into Bloglines and shares it with the world, you may have a situation where that one unique URL is actually being subscribed to by a bunch of people," says Rok. "That’s one situation where HTTP authentication can help, because that usually limits that particular feed to just one person."

Rok also added that email and RSS are often appropriate for different content types. "For instance, email is the top channel for delivery, whereas RSS is more useful for high-frequency content updates. It’s not only about getting your content delivered to end users, but about improving your online visibility, search engine rankings, driving new traffic through RSS search engine directories, syndicating your content on other web media and so on."

All good points. And in my view none of these are reasons to avoid or delay publishing your content via RSS. If you're not already offering RSS feeds, get on the stick! RSS augments your existing email and web marketing. It's a distinct channel that complements the email channel rather than cannibalizes it. And it's a channel that a non-negligible percentage of Internet users have come to love.

I'll be speaking on the topic of RSS at the New Communications Forum early next month, on a panel titled RSS as an Advertising Platform. Should be interesting. Hope to see you there!

RSS seems unlikely to stage a takeover anytime soon, according to panelists at a MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit on email marketing held earlier this year.

Rok Hrastnik, owner of MarketingStudies.net and author of the seminal e-book on RSS, "Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS had this to say:

Given the relative maturity of email marketing compared to RSS, you would be hard pressed to find the same level of marketing functionality, targeting, personalization, and metrics capabilities that "come standard" with most email marketing packages in RSS.

"RSS technology is progressing rapidly, but email technology is not standing still either," said Neil Squillante, president of Landing Page Interactive. "Much is being done to eliminate the spam problem. Mainstream media continues to report that the amount of spam being sent is increasing, but what they are failing to report is the amount getting through is decreasing. What the recipient is experiencing matters, and a lot of recipients are experiencing less spam than they used to."

Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk added that in the end, it is all about user choice. "Just as we have seen with email, some consumers simply won’t want to embrace RSS. But as Yahoo! rolls out RSS and MSN makes it available, consumers will have more exposure to RSS, and marketers will be looking for an additional tool to distribute the marketing messages they couldn’t maneuver past spam filters."

I agree with all these guys on this. Email marketing isn't on its way out, not by a long shot. I'm not unhappy about that either, since my company (Netconcepts) owns the email marketing service provider GravityMail. With that said, however, I think it would be foolish to ignore RSS as a marketing channel. It's about to enter a huge adoption phase.

NOTE: Don't miss Rok's webinar on marketing through RSS, this Thursday at 12pm Eastern, on MarketingProfs.com. Sign up HERE.