The Social Customer Manifesto

RSS In The Mainstream

The folks at LearField Creative take a swing at simplifying RSS, adding to the conversation started here. (They define it as a "personal media outlet.") But I still think we've a ways to go before adoption is widespread based on that idea.

Dave thinks there are two "barriers to brain-dead simplicity":

• It must be easy to find relevant feeds
• Subscription has to be centralized

Those two points are correct, but are not the real barriers to brain-dead simplicity. The two points above are the barriers behind the barriers that are behind the barriers. The first barrier is this, as identified by Fred Wilson:

"When the soccer moms, myspace kids, construction workers, and grandmothers can use RSS, commercial email will give way to RSS."

I'd even take it a step further than that. When the soccer moms, myspace kids, construction workers and grandmothers can explain RSS to each other, then we'll be on our way.

I was at a presentation of Richard Saul Wurman's earlier this year, and the thing that I took away from the discussion was that understanding takes place when a person hearing a concept can connect it with something they already know, and understand the new concept in the context of the known one. The example he gave was explaining the concept of an "acre." We can say "an acre is 43,560 square feet." And that sorta gives an idea. On the other hand, we can say an acre is approximately the area covered by a football field. A-ha! Now I have an idea of what it really represents.

What is the football field analogy for RSS?

The Social Customer Manifesto Podcast 3FEB2006

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Summary: Leif Chastaine and Christopher Carfi discuss Yahoo's strategy, Google's censorship, the remix culture and customer "co-creation" of products, the American Marketing Association's "Ahead of the Curve" session in Scottsdale, and this week's RIM/BlackBerry update. (33:06)

Show notes for February 3, 2006

The audio file is available here (MP3, 32MB), or subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically have future shows downloaded to your MP3 player.

00:00 : Intro

01:04 : Yahoo "quits" the search race? Or do they?

09:08 : Google image censorship and strategy

16:30 : The importance of customer "co-creation" of products

27:30 : RIM: "Non-final" judgement regarding BlackBerry is just that

31:45 : Social Networking: Ahead of the Curve (Scottsdale)

32:23 : Wrapup

Links:
Dave Taylor ("What do Yahoo, Apple and Ferrari have in common?"), Yahoo quits, Yahoo gives up, Yahoo content to be Google's footstool, Yahoo gives up race with Google, Steve Rubel, Google image censorship, Paul Greenberg, BPT Partners, customer co-creation, NTP="No Tenable Patents?", RIM patent dispute, AMA High Tech Trends in Marketing

NYTimes: RSS Is Like An Email Newsletter

A timely article in the travel section of today's Times, entitled "There's a Popular New Code for Deals: RSS," (grab it before it rolls behind the registration wall) shows how travel company marketers are using RSS to supplement their existing email newsletter campaigns with RSS feeds.

The interesting thing about this article is that it introduces yet another metaphor for RSS : "it's like an email newsletter." (We were just talking about "better" metaphors for RSS here.) While this utterly trivializes the technical aspects and capabilities of the technology, it's a neccesary step to enable "true" mass adoption of the technology. The intricacies can be explained later, when needed.

It's certainly a better turn-of-phrase than "RSS is like an API for content," which is another contender.

Their elevator pitch:

"[T]hose willing to spend a few minutes to create a personalized home page on Yahoo, MSN, Google or other sites now have a useful alternative. Recently, these sites began allowing consumers to populate their home pages with similar information they'd find in e-mail newsletters, with two added benefits: all the relevant information from multiple sites appears on one page, instead of multiple e-mails, and the information is often considerably fresher, with several updates a week - or even a day.

What's more, the most recent information is there whenever you're in the mood to check it, not when your e-mail tells you to."

Read the Times article if you have the time to do so. After the headline, it has to invest seven paragraphs of background before being able to make first reference of "RSS." That's way too long. We need to keep making this easier, and this characterization is a good start.

The Social Customer Manifesto Podcast 27JAN2006

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Summary: Leif Chastaine and Christopher Carfi discuss the American Marketing Association's "Ahead of the Curve" session in Chicago, the marketing challenge for RSS, Salesforce.com taunts and tempts Siebel employees, launch of the "Healing Space" health and environment blog, and this week's RIM/BlackBerry Supreme Court decision. (33:32)

Show notes for January 27, 2006

The audio file is available here (MP3, 32MB), or subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically have future shows downloaded to your MP3 player.

00:00 : Intro

01:10 : Recap of the AMA's Ahead of the Curve session: High Tech Trends in Marketing

02:40 : What is RSS?

Metaphors:
Google search for RSS metaphors (n.b. and yes, actually these are "similes" and not "metaphors," we know, we know...)

"RSS is like an API for content"
"RSS is like selling dogfood over the internet"
"RSS is like Tivo for the web"
"Explaining RSS is like explaining sex. You just don't get it until you do it." (also here)
Dave Winer

11:45 : Salesforce.com to Siebel employees: "No Future"

19:30 : Healing Space health, wellness and environment blog launched

25:15 : Supremes won't intervene in RIM BlackBerry / NTP dispute

33:50 : Wrapup

Links:

Bill Flitter, Stowe Boyd, Randy Moss, Michael Sevilla, TheCradle, Salesforce.com, Siebel, Paul Greenberg, Todd Pesek, EarthHealers, Naturaleza Foundation, eco-tourism, Craig Williams, Howard Bashman, Research in Motion, BlackBerry, Ross Mayfield, Davos, BlackBerries a matter of national security

Business Blogging At IBM

Julie Alterio at The Journal News has a decent article up on the scope of blogging initiatives within Big Blue and other organizations. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's VP of technical strategy and innovation is quoted as saying:

"We absolutely recognize that blogging, just like the Internet, World Wide Web, Linux and open source, is a major initiative in the marketplace that we should be part of. This best way to be part of it is not to observe it passively but to do it actively."

Sound advice.

And, although the article is primarily about the view on business blogging from within IBM and other large companies, Dave Sifry gets into the act as well. And NAILS his line. Way to go, Dave...

"In the world of the Internet, you don't own your brand. Your customers and your users own your brand. You're lucky if you get to shepherd it."

Thoughts For The Beginning Blogger

One of our clients is starting to charge full-force down the blogging path and asked for some feedback on the posts they were working on. Not going to get into the details of what they're working on quite yet, but had some thoughts that I was sending over based on reading the initial bits that were being put together. About halfway through, realized that these items were fairly relevant across-the-board, so here they are. What would you add to this as far as suggestions for someone just starting down the blogging path?

"G-

First off ... Every successful blog eventually has a voice and a corresponding "positioning" (sorry for the marketingspeak) that is applied to it by its readers. The voice of the blog will evolve and, just like positioning in the pure marketing sense, a "tone" of the blog will be applied to you by your subscribers. This will take some time, but if you have a feeling as to how you would *like* to be positioned, you can certainly help it along via the choice of name, categories, commonly-used phrases, etc. Think about what you want the blog's mojo to be: is it an inside look at the tales of a startup? Is it a viewpoint and *the* reference on long-tail software, or perhaps SaaS? Something else?

Think about your blog's tagline. (The tagline WILL be reproduced elsewhere, so try to make it capture the core of whatever theme you want to tie everything together.) If the theme is still evolving, it may take a couple of months for the right tagline to present itself...and it will probably uncerimoniously assault you in the shower in the pre-caffeinated hours one morning. But it will show up. Write it down and integrate it when it does.

The positioning and general mojo are ultimately critical...but short-term irrelevant. Just write. Then write some more. It'll evolve, and don't force it. It took about four months after inception for the Social Customer blog to find its voice.

Additionally, a well-conceived and executed "About" page is a must, as is a picture. A well-written post will trigger a click to the About page which will, if also well-executed, trigger a click back to the mothership. Make the About page personal. It's you!

A couple of other general thoughts:

- More links to other blogs inlined in the text! As a result of the current state of measurement and search tools, bloggers are narcissistic link whores (it's all about the Googlejuice, baby). The more links you throw out to others, (a) the more likely someone will come to your blog (since they saw your blog show up in their vanity feed in Technorati) and (b) they may even put a reciprocal link in one of their posts in the next week, pointing to "hey....here's a cool article on *x*" that shows how you can use whatever they are pimping in doing *x*. If you can't link to a blog, link to a news article. If you can't link to a news article, link to a product site. But link! As Anthony Kiedis so eloquently put it...give it away, give it away, give it away now. (However, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, please refrain from experimenting with RHCP tube sock attire. ::shudder::)

Last, but certainly not least, make sure you have an RSS feed that can be subscribed to on Day 1. Get readers on the drip. First one's free...

best,
c"

Google Blog Search Hack: Finding Inbound Links

Want to find inbound links to a blog via Google Blog Search? Preface the URL of your (or anyone's) blog with link: -- like this:

---

---

Try it yourself. It looks like you can also get the inbound link results as an RSS feed as well.

(Yes, I know links are only a surrogate for quality and that solutions are under development... )

UPDATE: Alert reader Nick W. points out that there are a number of other operators that are available in addition to link: . These operators are:

• cache:
• link:
• related:
• info:
• define:
• stocks:
• site:
• allintitle:
• intitle:
• allinurl:
• inurl:

In addition, there are a number of new blog-specific operators:

• inblogtitle:
• inposttitle:
• inpostauthor:
• blogurl:

Many of these are not available from the advanced search page, but must be entered directly.

Waiting For RSS To Disappear

When will RSS really be successful? Like all fundamental technologies, RSS will be a success when it becomes invisible.

Chris Selland writes:

"RSS is still very much the realm of early adopters (which is why only early-adopter-focused companies like Audible, Woot and HDNet are using it). But as RSS readers become more powerful and more ubiquitous - and particularly as they become more closely entwined with e-mail applications - expect the use of RSS to dramatically accelerate."

Agreed, but here's the kicker. In the comments here, Adam Shapiro writes:

"As far as RSS - isn't that an old Soviet secret service group? That would be the response of 95% of America. Like Web services, fuel injection and the spring inside my pen, it will be most useful and used when nobody needs to consider that it's there."

Spot-on, my friend.

Corporate Blogging, Wikis, RSS All On The Fast Track, Says Gartner

Gartner has published their most recent "Hype Cycle" report, this one covering emerging technologies. The report covers 44 technologies, and prognosticates when they will reach the "plateau of productivity"...that is, mainstream business use and acceptance. Corporate blogging and RSS are flagged as technologies that will take "less than two years" to reach the plateau, with wikis on their tail in the 2-5 year window.

The interesting thing about Gartner's analysis of all three of these technologies is that all are still positioned as being before the "trough of disillusionment" -- that is, the inevitable backlash to their initial hype is yet to come. (n.b. Podcasting's hype is still on the upswing, according to this, if you can believe it...)

Opinion (mine, not Gartner's): Of these technologies, RSS is going to be the one that is going to have the greatest challenge slogging through the trough to true mass-market (i.e. not early-adopter) usage. Until there is a truly "zero-training" method of publishing, finding, and subscribing to RSS feeds (which might not even be called RSS feeds in a couple of years), RSS will have a challenge crossing the chasm, to use Geoffrey Moore's terminology.

(hat tip: Steve Rubel for the initial link. Of course we went out, did some research, and dug a bit deeper to find the details ::poke:: But that's what we do.)

Finding The Conversations

Johnnie Moore's blog rocks, and it's one of 100+ that I have read through my aggregator in the past. But I rarely read it anymore. Why? Because there's something better.

What's better than his blog? Finding the conversations that he's hosting.

This is because, although his blog is here, he publishes the feed for just his comments. This is where the good stuff is happening. This is where the conversations are happening. (n.b. have shamelessley stolen this idea, and if'n you're interested the comments feed for The Social Customer Manifesto is here).

Subscribing to just the comments is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there may be insights that are missed in the "regular" blog posts. But as long as there are a good number of readers/lurkers to a regular blog, and some small number of those folks choose to start a conversation in the comments, there is an almost built-in filtering mechanism that is put in place...the posts that generate the most comments are the "high value" ones that pop up, and are the ones that get read. (By the way, Wilco is amazing. Buy all their records. Now. And Lane's too, while you're at it.)

Here's a link to how to do this yourself in Moveable Type or Typepad (thanks, Johnnie for pointing this out). It's pretty straightforward, but you need to be comfortable mucking with the templates. Drop me a note...or a comment...if you're not able to get it to work.