December 20, 2024

Politics and Political Blogs

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Whatever your political persuasion — right, left, or center — the blogosphere is a great place for bloggers to share their political views and make plenty of friends and enemies. We try to follow the conservative, liberal, and everything in between of politics and political blogs/blogging — but only when it intersects with business blogging.

Have a read below of our latest entries on politics and political blogging…

Verizon Wakes Up To Blogs and Social Media

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 09/26/06

Verizon Communication has seen the blogging light.

Speaking on a panel on engaging the in-control consumer at the MIXX Conference in New York, Jerri DeVard, senior vice president of marketing and brand management for Verizon said they had been ‘asleep at the wheel a bit’ and that they’ll be playing catch-up in the fields of online and social networking. They plan to launch a blog that will be a no-holds barred “all issues on the table” dialogue with consumers–and support it with a round-the-clock response team.

Sounds like they have the right idea, and one other corporations could implement.

“We would rather do business with a company that openly communicates and that provides the service or product that we are paying for. And we would rather not do business with companies that don’t; and companies that don’t do either one, eventually will not have customers, profits and finally a business at all,” writes Marianne Richmond in her Resonance Partnership blog post called Sprint, can you hear me now?

She goes on to say, “A few weeks ago Josh Hallet at Hyku wrote a post with the title Corporations Visiting Blogs, But Not Commenting=Prank Calling? Allan Jenkins, David Parmet and I left comments agreeing with his premise that corporations were obviously monitoring blogs for information but not taking the extra few minutes it would take to leave a comment…not even a “form” comment that could say, “We heard you, please call 1-800-IDO-CARE to discuss.” And then have that as a “working” number.”

Monitoring blogs is a vital PR activity, but unless you respond and enter the conversation, you’ve missed the point of social media and the in-control customer landscape we’re operating in.

How Do You Say “Page Rank” in Arabic?

Posted by: of Thinking Home Business on 09/23/06

For any company doing business in Arabic-speaking countries or communities a good feed to have is for the Maktoob Business Blog.

Online since December 2005, the blog covers aspects of business in the Middle East, with a stated aim of focusing on marketing, advertising and media. There are several contributors.

The blog is a product of Maktoob Business – whose website banner claims that the group has the world’s largest Arabic community.

araby.com logo

A recent blog post reports on Maktoob’s newly-launched (beta) Arabic search engine, Araby.com, which Maktoob claims has a number of competitive advantages over the Arabic version of the engines developed first for English:

  • optimized to deliver Arabic-language results from Arabic sources
  • specialized search channels including Arabic news sites, photos, blogs and forums
  • a dedicated channel for searching Islamic topics

The press release here provides more detail and some pr elaboration.

Not being able to read Arabic, for me the Araby.com site is a closed book. But could Araby.com be a serious Arabic competitor to Google and Yahoo! A contender in its rather large niche? This blog post by one of the developers, Isam Bayazidi, sounds a cautionary note – it’s beta, he’s saying:

One thing for sure, Araby.com, and the verticals in it have a long way to go with development. We only released early to give users a peak into what is cooking, and get feedback on it.

Business Blogging Seminars from SixApart

SixApart is hosting a series of Business Blogging Seminars in cities across the US. According to their informational page, participants will:

  • Learn how to create effective blogging strategies and policies
  • Hear dynamic use cases from specific industries
  • See the latest blogging technologies demonstrated, including RSS and podcasting
  • Have your specific business blogging questions addressed in our Q&A sessions

Now, of course this will undoubtably feature how to use a TypePad or Movable Type blogging platform to create a presence in the blogosphere. However, there will probably be good information even if your a dyed-in-the-wool WordPresser.

Current cities include:

  • Washington, DC (9/28) (10/19)
  • Detroit, MI (10/30)
  • Boston, MA (11/2)
  • San Francisco, CA (11/13)
  • Chicago, IL (11/16)
  • NYC, NY (12/11)
  • Miami, FL (12/14)

Hey, Six Apart! How about Portland, ME? I’ll even put you up.

If you’d like to get more information or register, go for it. (BTW, in the interest of transparency, that’s an affiliate link.)

Lessons learned by a business blogger

Jessica Duquette, founder of In Perfect Order and blogger at It’s Not About Your Stuff, graciously allowed me to interview her via email. I asked Jessica for an interview because I was so impressed with her blog.

Jessica learned plenty of lessons about business blogging that she was happy to share, particularly about defining her niche and building relationships with other bloggers.

One “a-ha” Jessica shared was how valuable Sitemeter can be if you just know where to look; she regularly checks referral stats, who is linking to her, and the most commonly used search terms. This has proved to be a “goldmine” because it has enabled her to tailor posts to the topics people were most interested in, as well as establish contacts and collaborate with other bloggers in her field. For example, Jessica wrote about a post about how to do a cubicle makeover and as result got a flood of traffic from searchers querying for “cubicle makeover”; so now she is in the process of contacting a woman in Seattle who wrote a book on cubicle makeovers so that she can do a podcast with this author to post on the blog.

One crucial piece of advice for business bloggers that Jessica offered is to spend as much time connecting with other bloggers as you do on your own posts by visiting their site, commenting on specific postings that can then link back to your site, participating in blog carnivals, quoting excerpts from their posts and linking to their sites, and allowing others to do the same from your posts. “It only takes one lucky link from someone to turn you from 120 people a day to 12,000 visitors a day!” she says.

What about the benefits of blogging for her business? She’s already been featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Blog Watch column. And she’s slated to become a contributing blogger to Arianna Huffington’s new portal in the next few weeks.

She’s not only building her brand as an organizing expert with a twist, but is now collaborating with others on future new information products. As for those Google AdSense ads on her blog, they’re brand new so the jury’s still out on the revenue impact.

Of course there’s stuff she wished she knew before she got stung — like not quoting too much from other people’s blog postings instead of just summarizing with a link. Ouch! And how to be nicer to people who upset you! “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” she says. “Perhaps the blogosphere needs more clearly defined laws or set cultural norms about quoting others. But for now, it’s better to err on the side of caution.” 

That said, Jessica has found the blogosphere to be a warm, friendly and extremely supportive space and has been impressed by the willingness of A-list bloggers to share information, tips, and and correct her without asking.

“For that, I feel so grateful and humbled,” says Jessica. “My life and business have been immeasurably enriched by having a blog.”

You can read the full interview here.

VideoBlogging: A Great Option for Corporate Bloggers

Posted by: of andrewbourland on 09/18/06

There was quite a bit of controversy over at TechMeme this past weekend over the question of whether bloggers should videoblog or just stick to text.

I’d like to weigh in on this issue, given my credentials as a brand spankin new videoblogger that just launched a new business oriented videoblog (we interview entrepreneurs from early stage companies).

For the most part, sticking to text is best. It’s easier, cheaper and far less work and maintenance than having to put up a videocast of whatever you would normally blog about. People can scan text quicker and it’s easier to reprint a particularly informative blog entry to pass around the office.

But there are times where video could come in real handy…

An interview with a key player at your company or within your industry.

A quick demo of a new product or service you are launching.

Some quick interviews with partners and clients you run into at a conference or trade show.

A Channel 9 type “mini-documentary” of projects you have underway and the people in charge.

Video helps you capture that human essence that words cannot always do… An expression on a person’s face, the tone of their voice, a hesitation in saying something… Impossible to capture in text. Easy on video.

You don’t necessarily need a production grade videocamera, special lighting or even a studio to add video to your blog. The resources you need are surprisingly affordable and easy to use.

Bottom line, it’s not an either/or question… really more of a “which is more appropriate for what I’m trying to communicate here?” type of a question.

Video is growing in leaps and bounds on the net, and it behooves you to learn how best you can benefit from it.

Blogs, Podcasts, RSS and B2B: New Research Study Available

KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann have begun to release an emerging media series study into how blogs, podcasts and other RSS technologies affect technology purchasing decisions.

So far only the podcasting study has been released (free with registration), but they’ve released some teaser factoids:

  • 53% of respondants get business and technology information from blogs
  • 59% of business and IT professionals are somewhat or very familiar with RSS
  • 70% pass along content from blogs

Of course, they don’t go into detail (at least yet) on whether these people are making a buying decision on what they read at Engadget, or whether an RSS feed is helping them choose the right server or keeping them up with last night’s episode of Lost.

You can read the abstract and register for the free report here.

Thanks to Media Buyer Planner for the link.

And blogs don’t just reach the young

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 09/4/06

The young and politically aware may well be a prime audience for bloggers, but you can reach all kinds of folk online.

“I thought blogging was for young people with political interests, but now I see it’s for anyone who wishes to interact with people all over the planet. And they can be good for business,� says Kate Loving Shenk, Nurse Entrepreneur and founder of Nursing Career Transformation, about her new blog,

Even Baby Boomers are online in growing numbers. Earlier this year ClickZ reported that three out of five adults 55 years and older, known to be the heaviest consumers of offline media such as newspapers and TV network news, say they use the Internet more today than they did a year ago.

The number of online adults aged 55 and older grew by 20 percent to reach over 27 million in 2005.

Of course they have to find the blog.  So your choice of subject matter and the  keywords and phrases you use will be vital to your success.

 

Church and State Agree: Blogs Reach A Net Savvy Younger Audience

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 09/4/06

“As a pastor, I shouldn’t be just leading a church but connecting with people using the same formats they use every day,â€? says Pastor Ben Arment of the HIstory Church in Oak HIll, Va. “Blogging is a forum that’s successful because it corresponds with how younger generations think.â€?

Mark Batterson, the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washingaton, D.C. Batterson estimates he spends 20 percent of his workday updating his blog, “Evotional.�

“I used to think that the blog supplemented my weekend message,� said Batterson, who draws upwards of 25,000 visitors a month to www.evotional.com. “Now I wonder if it isn’t the other way around. It’s hard for me to imagine why a church that has younger members wouldn’t have a blog component

NPR’s On The Media spoke at length yesterday about the power of consumer generated media, blogs, video and podcasts. Politicians need to take heed of the power of the Net, was the overarching message. Smart politician’s know that they need to take their message directly to the audiences relying on the Internet for news and information.

Senator Lieberman’s loss in the Connecticut Democatric primary to Net-savvy newcomer Ned Lamont was a case in point. Indiana Senator, Evan Bayh, is posting messages aimed at the younger generation on sites like YouTube and Facebook in preparation for his anticipated 2008 presidential bid.

And there’s a lesson to be learned here by business bloggers: that old PR adage that you should use the channel most familiar and acceptable to your audience still applies.

Measuring A Blog’s Success

Posted by: of One By One Media on 08/28/06
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Reading an article today in Media Buyer Planner regarding the latest flap in online marketing and advertising, it became clear that not everyone can determine the traffic success of a website or blog. Even the experts have difficulty determining what stats and traffic a site has and the numbers behind them.

I use a number of stats packages and try to blend the results as I can. There are many companies offering a stats software package, and none of them seem to agree on one method and none of the numbers seem to equal the other. This is probably not a problem for the likes of business blogs that are not talking about millions of page views a month, but for the media buyers out there it is big business. Paying for eyeballs is what it’s all about.

How do you measure the traffic of your blog and what is the significance? These are some very often asked questions of clients wanting to know if their efforts are worth their time and money. They want to know what the return is for their investment.

Here are some of the packages available to businesses that can help them see what the numbers are and packages that provide invaluable metrics to blog publishers.

Google Analytics

StatCounter

Performancing Blog Metrics

Sitemeter

Mint

My Blog Log

Measure Map

This list is certainly not a a list of the entire realm of packages, but it is some of the more popular software packages available.

Tracking your blogs performance is important from a business standpoint because you can find out who is talking about you, find out who is visiting, how many are visiting and many other worthwile metrics that can help you with determining your blog’s success.

What makes a blog a success? Once you have hit your goals for what you are trying to accomplish with the blog, you will know. Stats are important to track, but they don’t make a blog a success or failure. That measurement can only be established by the publisher. My advice is to set out your goals and follow your stats.

Blog Advertising: The New Black

Posted by: of One By One Media on 08/21/06

Advertising in the blogosphere is becoming more and more prevalent in the advertising world. We are seeing more and more companies launching into campaigns involving blogs such as the recent purchase of ad space using Blogads on 400 published blogs by the Ford Motor Company. This is beginning to show more popularity among the media buyers at agencies.

Blogads was given a request for the proposal from Ford directly. I spoke to Henry Copeland of Blogads about the newest trend in blog advertising. When I asked him why this trend was changing and becoming more popular he remarked:

Marketeers are gradually waking up to the idea that blog readers aren’t just “cool and/or affluent” which are the kind of buckets that traditional publishers peddle. Blog readers are cool, affluent AND at the heart of the Internet bee hive. So a target company are those that have a unique proposition that resonates intellectually or some story to tell… commodity products/services need not apply.

We see bloggers becoming a new media and where people are going for their news. Some traditional media players are beginning to see the writing on the wall as outlets like the Washington Post has begun it’s program called Blogroll as reported by Jeff Burkett. This is allowing bloggers in certain niche markets to sell their advertising real estate through the Washington Post and they will of course be revenue sharing. This is not unlike Blogburst which was launched this year, although Blogburst has yet to announce its plan for paying bloggers.

Henry Copeland had some advice for those media buyers out there that are not on the blog bandwagon yet:

The best blog advertising goes beyond trying to sell stuff to blog readers, focusing more broadly on swaying this uniquely hyperlinked and influential swarm. Overt selling can be counter productive. And in this context, traditional ad units (banners, buttons) can also defeat your purpose — if your company’s messaging is cookiecutter and one way, then your company is probably that way too. To reach bloggers and their readers you want to employ the idiom of the blogs — multiple links, arresting images.

I myself have used the Blogads system on my personal blog as well as my business blogs, and I have been surprised by the types of ads I have seen, but there are a few companies that are cutting edge and are recognizing the power of blogs in their media campaigns. Copeland is seeing some companies focusing solely on blogs as their source for advertising, such as book publishers and those looking for a specific target area. Blog advertising is becoming the latest in online advertising and it appears that for now at least it is the new black.

RSS and Content Syndication Series

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 08/21/06
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The first article in the six part series on RSS and content syndication is up today.  It’s an introduction to RSS and content syndication as a marketing and PR strategy

Online visibility and online traffic are, quite naturally, of paramount importance to everyone and anyone marketing or conducting business online, period.  While RSS may not be the key tool to improve your online visibility and traffic, its importance in helping you do this cannot be disputed, says Rok Hrastnik of MarketingStudies.net author of Unleash The Marketing Power of RSS.

 

Start Your Own Damn Newspaper

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 08/18/06

The latest issue of The Public Relations Strategist is all about blogs and blogging. There is some very good material, but it’s a subscription pub and so not all the articles are online.  

There is a great Q and A about why businesses should blog.  Ed Cafasso, Snr VP  in the Boston office of Manning, Selvage and Lee is a blogging skeptic and he asked some hard questions that were well ansere dby his team.These are the two I particularly liked.

Q: Many C level execs see blogging as just an online diary yet PR strategist say it is a must.  What should I say to clients?

A: Clients and prospects should know that a conversation about their brand is taking place in the blogosphere – it’s not really their choice.  Remember the old line for voicing a complaint?  ‘Start your own damn newspaper!”  Well, that’s what’s happening here.

Q: Risk and fear of the unknown are  big hurdles. What’s the  guaranteed minimum takeaway or behavior change we can claim with a blog? 

A: If your company fully embraces blogging we can guarantee that

  1. You and your employees will see the potential of blogs as an internal and external communication tool
  2. You’ll begin to see other ways to use social media: podcasts, RSS feeds, wikis, video blogs etc., in your external communication plans
  3. You’ll learn about your customers need and desires

What I tell clients who ask about blogs:

  1. There is a conversation in progress – it’s going on with or without you.  Listen first and learn what your customers are saying.  This is one guaranteed takeway.  You will gather a wealth of information about your product, your company and your industry.
  2. Once you know what your audience is interested in you can develop a content strategy that will meet their needs – and meet your goals.  Starting a blog or creating an RSS feed is easy today. But it’s what goes in the blog or feed blog determines your success. If what you write doesn’t resonate with your audience, they won’t be back.  

 

FUD about letting employees blog

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 08/16/06
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Recent studies indicate that 85 percent of workers in America with Internet access admit to spending an average of 2 hours per day on personal e-mails and Internet activity, while 80 percent of employers monitor that activity, according to a press release from Bracewell & Giuliani

B  & G is giving Human Resource Management Association members in Texas the low down on employee surfing and blogging in the workplace and the legal implications of corporate monitoring of employee online activity.  

Different companies obviously see blogging very differently.  Here’s what Sun Microsystems has on their site;

Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

Sun certainly is not too concerned about their employees blogging. When he spoke at the Syndicate Conference late last year Jonathan Schwartz said they attribute the revitlization of Sun’s brand to their blogging.

But employee blogging can be a minefield.  Last year’s upset over the image posted by Niall Kennedy speaks volumes on this subject.  The flap over the image aside, Niall’s point about fear and the availability of the ‘new printing press’ in the hands of everyman is very valid.

Technorati supported Niall 100%, but it did create some backlash.

“We do not censor people’s blogs, and we take the censorship allegation extremely seriously,” wrote Dave Sifty. “I actively encourage our employees to blog, and to express their opinions. However, many readers do not make as clear a distinction between personal and work lives as many experienced bloggers do, and will view a provocative image on a blog in the worst possible light, especially when presented by the company’s Community Manager.”

There may well be bumps in the road when you start blogging in your business.   It’s a given with a new form of expression that gives a voice to anyone and everyone.

It’s wise to set guidelines for your employees when they blog.  But don’t let the FUD get you – the benefits blogging offers far outweigh any fears you may have.

 

 

Kazaa Australia Boss Sues Canadian Blogger

Posted by: of Thinking Home Business on 08/16/06
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In a case which has evident implications for Canadian bloggers but also for bloggers worldwide, Kazaa Australia boss Nikki Hemming is suing Canadian blogger Jon Newton and others for defamation, on the basis of an article earlier this year on Newton’s p2pnet site, as reported in this week’s IT Today section of the national daily The Australian (not a hyperlink permalink, no guarantee it will be there indefinitely).

The suit is over material posted on p2pnet and anonymous comments on that post, some months ago at a time when Hemming was in court in a Sydney case. Included in the suit with Newton are his ISP and four John Doe, anonymous commenters. The article has since been removed from the p2pnet site.

Jon Newton is disputing the suit vigorously and observes that if Hemming wins the case ‘it’ll open the door even wider for lawsuits against Canadian bloggers’  .

Canadian internet law professor Michael Geist has commented on the case and its implications in his BBC Online article Free speech, libel and the internet age. Geist draws attention to how the legal frameworks in different jurisdictions have a variety of implications for internet intermediaries, such as internet service providers and even individual bloggers who allow comments.  

The difficult question is not whether these sites and services have the right to voluntarily remove offending content if they so choose – no one doubts that they do – but rather whether sites can be compelled to remove allegedly unlawful or infringing content under threat of potential legal liability.

The answer is not as straightforward as one might expect since the law in Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia varies depending on the type of content or the nature of the allegations.

Canadian media lawyer Dan Burnett also comments on the different treatments in different jurisdictions, in his statement as reported at the August 5 Toronto Freedom of Speech Online concert and benefit. Burnett sees Canada as being laggard in reforming the law and comments:

In addition to the reforms we are lagging behind already, the internet age raises some new and fundamental questions. How does the right of reply on wiki and reader-post sites affect the law? Are we going to hold site operators liable for automatic posts by others? Are (we) going to recognize a defense for a person who operates a public forum for debate?

So where are bloggers without ready resource to internet lawyers to go for advice on these matters?

It seems not uncommon for bloggers to refer, on defamation and other legal issues, to the Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Guide for Bloggers. That’s good as far as it goes, and there is some good advice in the document, but unless I’m missing something the document is a legal guide for the United States of America, not a global guide. (Actually, from a chat today with a lawyer friend very knowledgeable in these matters, I would seriously doubt whether a comprehensive global guide of any depth in this area is likely to emerge in the near or distant future.) 

Whatever the peculiarities of various legal jurisdictions, clearly some degree of prudence is needed in terms of what we post to our blogs and what we allow in terms of comments. Dave Taylor had some good advice on this in his post last year SEO Book’s Aaron Wall sued over comments on his weblog: Dave saw the case as ‘a wakeup call to business bloggers who haven’t yet thought through their own comment and comment moderation strategies’. 

And however the currrent case in Canada turns out, it too is clearly a call to look at the posting and comment moderation policies for our own blogs and those of any companies to which we consult.

Business Blog Consulting Goes Commercial

Posted by: of ExecutiveSummary.com on 08/14/06

Putting out money where our mouths are, we’re hoping to put money where our mouths are. That is, this site is all about using blogs for business. Yet, despite the name of the site, that would imply we are a consulting company, up until now, BBC (as we contributors hubristically call it) has been something of a labor of love. Granted, of the contributors are consultants themselves, who benefit from the exposure this blog affords their practices. (Myself, I took a day job two years ago.) But basically, this has been a not-for-profit exercise in information sharing.

Then I noticed something a few weeks ago: we get a decent amount of traffic. Enough that I figured, well, if blogs are supposed to be a good way to make money, let’s give it a try. So, you will notice as of today, this blog has ads on it.

Mostly we write here about how to use blogs as a marketing vehicle for companies with other, larger business models. But we also do comment from time to time about pure-play blog publishing businesses, a la Gawker, Weblogs Inc or Federated Media. One of the real secrets of blog publishing, however, is the B2B model. I have several friends who are making a full-time living off of business-oriented ad-supported blogs, such as Steve Hall at Adrants, Rafat Ali at PaidContent and Tig Tillinghast at MarketingVOX. So I figured we should give it a try, too. We’ll let you know how it goes. As the man falling from the 20-story building said as he passed the 10th-floor window, “So far, so good.”

Are you making the most of your RSS feeds?

Posted by: of Expansion Plus on 08/10/06

After talking to more than 500 people one on one at SES San Jose over the last few days, I now know that very few people understand the power of RSS.  We asked questions of eveyone who came by our booth and this is what we discovered:

Most people know what RSS is, but only about 10% are using it on their websites.  Of course everyone who has a blog has a feed.  But the big surprise to me was that they don’t know what it can do – or why they should pay more attention to it.

In our panel about News Search Nan Dawkins of RedBoots spoke about how to use your blog and pitch other bloggers to get coverage in Yahoo News and Google News. I followed with our case study on the use of RSS and content syndication to get broad pick up and coverage in Yahoo News. (Featured July 21 in PR Week)

The question I got most frequently after that session was “How did you do that?”  When I asked them if they have a feed of their content, many who blog said yes.  But they has not done anything with it. Their feed was not even registered with the 100 + news aggregators.  Many bloggers don’t use Technorati tags or leverage the power RSS feeds can offer. 

They know they have a feed, but they have no idea what it does or how to promote it.

Over the next six weeks I will be writing a series of articles on The Power of RSS and Syndication – a little mini-course, if you will. If this is of interest to you, please let me know

 

 

 

Dreamhost Tells the Truth… and Keeps My Business

Posted by: of andrewbourland on 08/2/06

Over the past month I have had nothing but frustration with Dreamhost, who happens to be my ISP (Internet Service Provider). The server has been down or very slow for hours, seemingly days at a time. My email has been inaccessible on and off throughout the month. And to make things worse, I couldn’t even get through to their online support area to find out what was wrong.

Well, today I got their newsletter in which they included a link to their weblog, which went into excruciating detail about what their problems were for the month of July.

Here’s a link to the post.

A good lesson for all of us here is that when things go wrong in your company and customers are affected as I was, simply telling the truth about what happened and what you are doing to correct the situation is sufficient to keep their business and happy with you.

If only Dell would learn this lesson

Does ranking feeds make sense?

Posted by: of billflitter on 07/26/06
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Steve Rubel thinks Yahoo! may be ranking RSS feeds. Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo! responds in the comments.

If this is true, what is the ranking based on, traffic? As a seller of RSS ad inventory, not all feeds are created equally. Measuring traffic alone doesn’t work in the advertising world. What is more important is who is reading it (demographics, decision makers, etc) and how active the feed is. Feeds that have 50 subscribers can make just as much money as those with 1,000. It all depends on the audience it reaches.

If your a blogger looking to generate revenue from your feed, don’t be too concerned about the size of the feed. If you are reaching a highly engaged audience that advertisers want to speak with, your feeds may be more valuable than you realize. However, if you do have a feed that is not highly targeted or the content is not tighly focused, don’t expect the money truck to be backing up to your front door anytime soon.

Influential Authorities on Blog Marketing

Posted by: of Online Marketing Blog on 07/23/06

Onalytica has published the results of their analysis on the most influential authorities on “blog marketing”. The top 20 influential sites/blogs include:

  • New York Times
  • Josh Hallett – hyku
  • Seth Godin
  • Steve Rubel – Micropersuasion
  • Businessweek
  • ClickZ
  • Wired
  • Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman – Next Level Biz Tips
  • WebProNews
  • Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Watch
  • Fast Company
  • Lee Odden – Top Rank Results
  • Marketing Sherpa
  • Darren Rowse – Problogger
  • AllBusiness.com
  • Hugh Mac Leod – Gaping Void
  • Jeff Jarvis – Buzz Machine
  • Ben McConnel and Jackie Huba – Church of the Customer
  • Mitch Joel – Twist Image
  • Steve Hall – Adrants

Business Blog Consulting alumni Steve Rubel was listed and I’m happy to report current contributor Josh Hallett of hyku and my own company TopRank were listed as well.

The analysis focuses on influence and popularity showing that the most popular authorities are not necessarily the most influential. Popularity was measured by the number of referrers and influence was measure by the authority of the referrers.

Limiting the measure of popularity to link referrers seems a bit simplistic. Traffic would appear to be a logical factor as well.

In the previous analysis on the most influential authorities on “business blogs” (full report pdf), Business Blog Consulting was listed as the fourth most influential sandwiched between BusinessWeek and CNN.

FeedBlitz Steps Up

Posted by: of Online Marketing Blog on 07/20/06
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FeedBlitz, the popular RSS to email service with over 50,000 active feeds has recently taken on financing and is also hiring. I took the opportunity to check up with Phil Hollows, founder of FeedBlitz to get an idea of how FeedBlitz has evolved as a blog marketing tool and what he has in store.

“As I look at the RSS to mail market today, one of the core strategic decisions I have to take is deciding what we’re not going to do, because the realm of possibilities is so large. It boils down to this. Our mission is messaging using RSS and related technologies to underpin what we deliver. And our philosophy is to make your messaging work with whatever services you want to use. So you will see us enabling greater and simpler integration with third party services, instead of adding features or services that are already successful and prevalent in the broader market. We will stay focused, in other words. We’ll also make it easy for third parties to integrate FeedBlitz into their sites and services. “

The insights offered in the interview range from how FeedBlitz got started, to how it was marketed to become the top RSS to email service, as well as some interesting ideas on how to use RSS as a marketing vehicle. Hollows also gives these three tips for blog owners that are users or considering use of RSS to email tools:

1) Why not? You’ll get 10-50% circulation boost, push content delivery, better SERP placement, gain lead information, develop metrics, all automatically.

2) Customize your emails to match your branding and messaging, and enable subscriber tracking metrics to measure your activity and effectiveness.

3) Don’t wait. It’s fundamentally free, takes only a minute or so to set up, just do it.

FeedBlitz also offers a blog/RSS search site called, FeedAdvisor which recommends feeds based on subscription patterns. Information about the new features coming up with FeedBlitz as well as the positions they are hiring for are posted on their blog.  The full interview is over at Online Marketing Blog.

 

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