RSS Pad - Really Simple Syndication ... Really!

Essential of Business Blogging

Steve Broback and his BlogBusinessSummit team are putting on a great conference that they call the Essentials of Business Blogging.  The location of the event is the Westin Los Angeles.

We have only hit the first couple of sessions and the mentions on the power of RSS have been numerous.  What is great about it is that the attendees are a mix of bloggers and traditional businesses.  They want the visibility that RSS provides with Blogs being a vehicle.

One of the major tips that was given multiple times throughout the morning is that of using press releases.  Broback poked a little bit of fun at what some folks in the blog space said, "the press release is dead."  Broback explained that press releases, particularly those from PRWeb have huge link value for the blogs and will drive traffic to the blog.

Anil Dash, VP of Professional Products for Six Apart, the creators of TypePad referenced made specific reference to power of TrackBacks and their availability on PRWeb.  The TrackBacks allows for someone to track the conversation around a topic by linking the press release and the comments on the blogs.

All in all if you want to learn more about RSS in action do attend this event.

OPA 2006 London

The Online Publisher's Association (OPA) hosted what they termed as the forum of the future in London England at the Landmark Hotel.  The location was outstanding and brought all of the English charm that could be expected.  While this is not a travel blog it is worth noting that it was really cool!

Now to the business of RSS. The conference was filled with a large number of traditional journalists from the areas of print and broadcast alike.   The argument of of making content available for free verses subscription comes up.  Free can be powerful.

One thing that  is certain is that via RSS you can economically distribute a load of content and deliver it to users that want it.  This is a great way to get your message out and create a revenue on the back end as a result of the traffic.

I'm reminded of the rock music group "The Grateful Dead" who were known to not place restrictions on the audience recording their music.  As a result they had a very large grass roots adoption and sold millions of albums.

One of the other points that came out of the conference is that their is so much information on the web that it is more difficult to know what content is worth sifting through.  Tom Glocer of Reuters said something interesting in this regard.  Glocer said, "People have limited time and do not want to waste time looking for content....  Brands serve as a filter between supplier and consumer."

Another point that came out of the conference was that readers want three things:

1. Empowerment
2. Community
3. Be Entertained.

All three of these can be achieved much more quickly via RSS.  The user is empowered because they can receive the information that they want, when they want and on the device they want.  They can stay immediately current on something they are following via RSS that gives them a sense of community.  Of course they can be entertained all along the way.

Over all the conference was very worth while.  It was definitely operating on a high level in terms of the companies and executives that were in attendance, but it shows that RSS and Online publishing are becoming the norm.

 

 

Search Engine Strategies New York

Everyone in the SE/SEAM industry knows that when they attend the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conferences they will leave with more useful knowledge than they came with.  Hopefully nobody is so arrogant to assume they don't have anything to learn with the Internet landscape changing so rapidly.

That said one of the things that I learned at the SES New York was from some of the data that was presented the theme of "Vertical Creep" that was presented in a panel that Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro participated in.  We generally understand the need to be found in more ways as people begin to exercise the new found technological freedom of receiving their information any old way that they want; be it by mobile phone, Blackberry, Treo,  blue tooth to their PDA, in their RSS newsreader, their desktop, their laptop their, iPod, or their.........

Bottom line there are numerous examples of what we see in the online area alone when it comes to written content like this blog, photos, online video, podcasts, etc and how the search engines are indexing and ranking results.  That said you need to be found in various verticals in order to maximize the online visibility of your message.

One example that I like is that of David McInnis  the founder of PRWeb.com and it's surrounding properties.  When you do a search for David McInnis you find that there are hundreds of thousands results of which hundreds if not thousands of those point to the David McInnis of PRWeb.  However, the thing that is striking is that the number one  Google result and the number four Yahoo! result is that of David's profile and photograph as it is found on PRWebphotowire.

At first you might think that it is the result of of vertical creep.  However, the relevance of the photo is really based on the organic currency that it has by being connected to the huge quantity of text associated with associated with David McInnis.   

The remarkable thing is that the PRWebphotowire site was launched in early January as a place where high-resolution photographs could be stored online for future retrieval.  However, the relevance that the photowire content can augment your text efforts.  While a picture can be worth a thousand words search engines don't read photographs.  They index text.

I won't pretend to understand the world of algorithms but a relevant photograph that is linked to legitimate and relevant text does very well.  Of course the photo without the associated text will likely not perform so well.  In the case of David McInnis there is a ton of relevant text that can be tied together.

So what does all of this have to do with RSS.  It is about getting the information that people want to them when they are looking for it. Next time you put out a press release take the time to use the PRWebphotowire service at PRWeb as well.  You will be glad you did.