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.

In the past I have put together a list of my favorite WordPress plugins that will help extend your blog's functionality, search engine optimize it and so forth. In addition, there are a number of tools that are not plugins that you could add to the blog or incorporate into your blog. Here is my list of favorites (in no particular order): 

• Feedburner - track readership of your RSS feeds
• Flickr - a tool for moblogging; it provides a gateway to post your cameraphone photos directly onto your blog just by emailing them as attachments
• Swicki - add web search and a "what's hot" buzzcloud to your blog
• Favicon Generator - easily create a custom favicon for your blog
• NetNewsWire - awesome RSS newsreader for the Mac
• coComment - track your conversations on others' blogs
• TalkDigger - monitor discussions that reference your URLs
• Google Analytics - free, hosted web stats service (from Google's Urchin acquisition)
• del.icio.us - add favorite sites to this social bookmarks site using the bookmarklet provided, then display your favorite links on your blog's sidebar with a del.icio.us plugin
• FeedBlitz - so your blog readers can subscribe to an email newsletter version of your blog
• Ecto or Qumana - draft blog posts while offline
• Technorati - "claim" your blog and create a profile to improve your visibility in this blog search engine
• Pheedo and BlogAds and AdSense - make money with your blog from advertisers

What did I miss? Post a comment and let me know!

I'm finally getting a chance to blog my panel session which took place last week in Las Vegas at the Shop.org conference.

The session was titled "Alternative Marketing: What Happened When Etailers Dove into Blogs, Podcasting, and RSS"

Moderator:
(yours truly!)

Panelists:
Seth Greenberg, CEO, eHobbies
Pinny Gniwisch, Founder & EVP Marketing, Ice.com
Steve Spangler, Founder & CEO, Steve Spangler Science

You can download the Powerpoint slides here.

My esteemed colleague Brian Klais, one of our VPs here at Netconcepts, graciously took notes for me which I am posting below:

Stephan:
- Gave an overview of RSS technology and blogs
- 439 million Google search results for "blog"
- RSS is not the same thing as a blog, it is a way to deliver / syndicate content to consumers
- Search for "trustrank" in Google for an example of how RSS builds inbound links = top rankings
- Retailers can deliver news alerts, specials, new resources that have been posted to the site
- VMware builds customized feed around my interests
- Highlights of podcasting, moblogging, and a new buzzword "vodcasting"
- You don't have to blog to benefit from blogosphere
- Voltaic has a solar powered backpack, blogging friend Treehugger blogged it, then picked up by CoolHunting then Gizmodo and sales skyrocketed
- Negative buzz for Kryptonite = blogstorm
- The power of link text from the blogosphere that contain your brand names profoundly impacts your rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN. Just look at what ranks in top 10 for "kryptonite"

Seth:
- Blogs: ehobbies.blogs.com/sethgreenberg and ehobbies.blogs.com/rc
- Seth admits this is a new pioneering area and wanted to experiment with the channel
- Was able to "dumb down" the sign-up for RSS: the link to the "Bestsellers RSS Feed" beneath the Best Sellers sidebar takes the user to an instruction page.
- Launched the feeds just a week ago, so too new to reveal results. Feels similar to email channel.
- Affiliates could be a great application of RSS technology.
- Goal for blog: build trust, keep customers coming back, build loyalty
- Ran a promotion that resulted in 5% of all purchases redeeming the blogged "coupon"
- In June, added "blog" to the header navigation. 5% of sitewide traffic touched blog. Conversion of those who touch blog is 2x non-blog readers.
- Their "male nurse" collectible doll blog post was indexed next day by Google.
- Summarized experience as the good, bad, and ugly. The good: organic search results very good, personality, good press, effective for audience. The bad: more of a diary than a dialog with customers (message boards still have a proper place), has to convey an overall company strategy, has to be nurtured. The ugly: new technology is hard to pinpoint when things go wrong

Pinny:
- Blogs: SparkleLiketheStars.com, JustAskLeslie.com, Blog.ice.com
- 10 commandments of corporate blogging
1) Editorial - uses blog for editorial to converse with customers on jewelry advice
2) PR - PR blog talks about charity events
3) Current - hired a writer to talk about the stars and current events, talks about style, and then promotes similar products available from ice.com
4) Promotions - targeting "ice discounts" etc to target discounted jewelry
5) Customer feedback - customers can provide feedback
6) Natural search rankings - links from blog improved rankings over 2-6 weeks time
7) Sales - low volume but acquisition clear
8) Company vibe
9) Being at forefront - press is good and easy to get
10) picture of him with Beyonce

Steve:
- Blogs at SteveSpangler.com
- Steve pulled out his flaming wallet
- Steve played a funny video clip showing Diet Coke + Mentos explosion, and later gave the recipe. Was an example of a video podcast.
- One of Steve's products, "Instasnow," got posted onto BoingBoing popular blog, and created a 3x sales outcome. Record high for that product sales.
- Steve was sold on blogs, and launched
- Steve had the audience rolling over with his stories of Instasnow and related fun science products.
- Sales spikes were directly related to blog posts.
- Played an experiment: Can I own a search market by blogging it? Tried it with "launching potatoes."
- A blog post can be 3 sentences.
- Result = top 10 rankings.
- Steve says to blog best selling products, behind-the-scenes information, "Did you know?" product information, lets him voice his opinion and feelings on subjects.
- Podcast - can talk about what he is doing by speaking it, not writing it.
- Has learned the art of linking to other blogs, and filling his posts with links.
- 13% of online sales attribute to blogs
- Closing tip: 1 roll mentos, 2 liter bottle of soda for the explosion experiment!

Q&A:

Q: How do you calculate ROI?

Pinny: Don't look at blogs from ROI perspective. Low cost. Took time to get system in place, difficult to calculate actual cost and therefore ROI. Looks at it as free money.
Steve: Maybe 30 minutes per post, tries to blog a few times per week.

Q: Are blogs being commercialized?

Seth: They tend to be more informational
Pinny: Not done for sales, more for info.
Steve: Blog is a soft sell, a sense of authority, people enjoy it

Q: Do you need special skills or expensive software to blog or just use Typepad or similar?

Stephan: Advocates just download software (eg WordPress) and install on your webserver - free, functional.

Main takeaways:

1 - Have the proper motivation of trying to provide useful customer information and sales follow - often with dramatic though unpredictable results.
2 - Experiment with the technology and gain some learnings
3 - Check out Steve Spangler's funny science videos!

I was recently interviewed by a journalist on business blogging and its benefits. He wanted to know specifically what it's done for me to have a blog. Here's what I told him:

• I've gotten inquiries from prospects who found Netconcepts through my blog.
• My blog helps me get speaking gigs and PR. In fact, I recently got one of my blog entries taken verbatim by a well-respected US magazine — DM News — and published as an article.
• It builds credibility and establishes me as a thought leader in the eyes of prospects and clients. For example, one of our recent clients choose us over a competitor for online marketing services partly because of my blog.
• It's helped upsell existing clients on additional services, as many of them are regularly reading my blog. For example, some of our clients are going to start a blog and use us for blog design, blog consulting, etc.
• I've gotten links from popular bloggers, like Robert Scoble of Microsoft. It's much more difficult to get a mention from Scoble (or other prominent bloggers) if you're not a blogger. Scoble's blog, called Scobleizer, is one of the most well-linked blogs on the Internet. Some bloggers have even included me on their blogroll, like Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog (Thanks, Toby!)
• It's helped me with recruiting panelists for Thoughts Leaders Summits that I organized and moderated for MarketingProfs. For example, the lineup of panelists for one of the recent summits included Internet marketing gurus: Seth Godin, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Debbie Weil. My blog played a role in establishing my credibility with them and getting them to respond to my "cold call" email message.
• Blogs are also great for SEO (search engine optimization). Links are important to the search engines, and the blogosphere is richly interlinked with bloggers linking so much to each other. Blogs are also rich in content, which search engines also like. If I blog about RSS and SEO (which I have), for example, next thing I know I'm #1 in Google for [rss and seo].
• I've also built some great business relationships with other respected bloggers. They have referred business to me, shared speaking opportunities with me, etc.

I had yet another experience with that last item, just today in fact. I'm speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Sales and Marketing East conference in Boston, and a fellow blogger from a competing SEO firm who was sitting at the table I was facilitating earlier today on blogging very kindly publicly commended my blog to the rest of the group for its content and thought leadership. (Thanks Stephen!) There's a guy who understands the benefits of coopetition (rather than competition)!

The journalist also wanted to know how my blog's traffic had grown over time. Here are the charts I shared with him showing the growth trends in pageviews and visitors:

Pageviews:

Visitors:

A pretty respectable trend, I'd say. If you're curious what the actual numbers are, I will give you a hint and say that the both charts measure into the tens of thousands of visitors per month. Hopefully the trend will continue.

One thing I really need to do to keep the numbers heading northward is to blog more frequently. I'm sure traffic growth will accelerate once I do. I just need to buckle down! I guess I'll just sleep less... (sigh). You other bloggers out there know what I'm saying here, don't you! More often than we'd like, it's the wee hours when we're blogging.

How might a blog pay off for you? For some general ideas, read this article of mine, on blogging, published in last month's issue of Multichannel Merchant magazine.

There has been plenty of discussion in the blogosphere about blogs and search engine optimization (SEO). Google in particular seems to love blogs. Blogs are rich in content, heavily linked, with links that tend to be contextual, and without much in the way of code bloat or gratuitous flash animation. In short, blogs are search engine friendly out-of-the-box.

But what about SEO'ing a podcast, the blog's newest cousin?

Podcasting (where anyone can become an Internet radio talk show host or DJ) presents unique opportunities to the marketer/content producer that blogging does not. I expound on this a bit more in my recent MarketingProfs article but the benefits of podcasting from an SEO standpoint wouldn't seem as obvious. Podcasts are usually audio content, so you don't get all this rich textual content that the search engine spiders can snarf up. You also don't get the rich inter-linking that happens with blogs because you can't embed clickable URLs throughout your MP3 files.

Nonetheless, I believe you can SEO your podcasts. Here's how:

1. Come up with a name for your podcast show that is rich with relevant heavily searched-on keywords.
2. Make sure your MP3 files have really good ID3 tags — rich with relevant keywords. ID3V2 even supports comment and URL fields. The major search engines may not pick up the ID3 tags now, but they will! And besides, there are specialty engines and software tools that already do.
3. Synopsize each podcast show in text and blog that. Put your most important keywords as high up in the blog post as possible but still keep it readable and interesting.
4. Encourage those who link directly to your MP3 file to also link to your blog post about the podcast.
5. Consider using a transcription service to transcribe your podcast or at least excerpts of it for use as search engine fodder. Break the transcript up into sections. Make sure each section is on a separate web page and each separate web page has a great keyword-rich title relating to that segment of the podcast. And, of course, link to the podcast MP3 from those web pages. There are many transcription services out there, where you can just email them the MP3 file or give them an URL and they send you back a Word document. Here's a partial list of transcription services .
6. Submit your podcast site to podcast directories and search engines such as audio.weblogs.com.
7. Let people in your industry, such as bloggers and the media, know that you have a podcast because podcasting is quite new and novel. It will be more newsworthy and linkworthy than just another blog in your industry.
8. Don't just get up on your soapbox. Have conversations with others, in the form of recorded phone interviews, and podcast those as well. Pick people who have great reputations on the web and great PageRank scores, and ask that they link to your site and to your podcast summary page.

This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of tactics. It is simply meant as a catalyst for creative thinking. SEO, in particular the link building aspect, isn't about just following a set list of formulae. It is about creatively thinking outside the box and differentiating yourself in ways that make your site eminently more linkworthy than your competitors.