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.

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!

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.

Got a new article out in the November issue of Multichannel Merchant... RSS Made Simple. The article is specifically targeted to online retailers. So if you're selling online and thinking of using RSS to help you sell more, this is the article to read!

Here's a small excerpt...

Key benefits of RSS to online merchants:

• Bypasses spam filters
• Encourages links and garners PageRank score
• Serves as a content delivery channel to your affiliates, giving them something they can republish on their own Websites
• Easy for your subscribers to manage communications from you without clogging up their inboxes
• Allows you to change content midstream (no need to push an “unsend buttonâ€? as with e-mail)
• Is the only way your blog can be included in Google's new Blog Search (http://blogssearch.google.com)
• Increases the likelihood of media coverage because RSS is a hot topic retailers are slow to embrace.

Read on...

Ever feel like you blinked and you missed some hugely important new trend online? I admit it; sometimes I feel that way. I take a break from my RSS aggregator for a day and I feel totally out of the loop. But I usually catch up pretty quickly.

For those of you who don't live and die by your RSS aggregator (i.e. you have a life outside of your computer), there's some exciting stuff happening:

• Flock is reinventing the web browser
• 37 Signals' Writeboard is reinventing collaborative authoring
• Rollyo and Eurekster's Swicki are reinventing vertical search
• Memeorandum is reinventing how we consume tech news and spot trends
• Ning is reinventing the way we build complex, socially networked web applications

I love it when disruptive technologies leave "old school" companies wondering "Wha' happen'd?". One behemoth that won't be left in the dust, though, is Yahoo. Despite Yahoo's size, they are poised to cash in big-time to the transition of the Web from passive browsing to a platform for collaboration and social networking (in other words, Web 2.0). Yahoo!'s made some really smart Web 2.0-ish purchases lately, including Flickr and Upcoming.org. Not to be outdone there's also Ebay who just bought Skype and AOL who just bought Weblogs, Inc.

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!

Today I'll be running a panel on blogs, RSS, and podcasting at Shop.org's Annual Summit. My panelists include eHobbies, Ice.com, and SteveSpanglerScience.com.

So few online retailers are blogging, that it's very easy to get prime-time ink. eHobbies and Ice.com were featured in both the NY Times and USA Today this summer for their foray into blogging.

I'm sure there are other online retailers with blogs and/or RSS feeds besides my panelists. There have been mentions in the media of Bluefly.com and Gourmet Station blogging. There's also Backcountry Store, Stone Creek Coffee, and Aldo Coffee. As for RSS (that's not done in as part of a blog), there's Amazon.com and Audible.com. But who else? Post a comment if you know of any other online retailers doing blogs or RSS — particularly big online retailers.

Why do you think online retailers are so late in the game? Business blogs have been all the rage for well over a year now. My hypothesis is that online retailers can't accurately predict ROI and that's the world they have to live in. Every inch of printed catalog space has an ROI associated with it. Every keyword buy in AdWords has an ROI associated with it. I guess it can be pretty scary when the ROI predictor is "I dunno". Those brave few who do take the leap will be the ones who get written up incessently in the NY Times, USA Today, Business Week, Fortune, etc. Yes, it could be you!