From BlogPotomac: KD Paine's Speaking Notes and Frank Gruber's List of Bright Shiny Social Media Tools

There was no PowerPoint at BlogPotomac, the unconference held here in DC last week. But two of our speakers have posted their presentation notes.

Measurement queen KD Paine posted her outline of 6 basic steps to measure communications online. Be sure to read also her post on "a new un-standard for social media measurement." She's one of the best out there when it comes to explaining - in persuasive, business terms - how to measure social media.
 

AOL's "Somewhat Frank" Frank Gruber posted an annotated list of social media tools (aka "bright shiny objects") that he uses on a weekly basis. Frank is a product developer for AOL. As such, it's his job to play with cool stuff. Lucky guy.

What's interesting about his list is that he divides the tools or apps into a number of categories beyond "video" and "photos." These include Communications, Storage, Content Discovery & Sharing, Analytics, News & Information Management, Search & Alerts, Lifestream Aggregators, Travel, Finance and Project Management.

There are a number I was not familiar with or have heard about but never tried. Note: some are still in beta. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Travel

TripIt (also see demo)

Lifestream Aggregator

SocialThing

To Do List

Remember the Milk (I used this a while back; am going to try it again. Frank notes that you can pull the To Do lists into your gmail account or iPhone with a pro account.)

Microblogging

Tumblr (Frank's write-up about Tumblr)

Content Sharing

Shareaholic (Firefox browser extension; more details in Frank's write-up)

Search

Lijit (blog search engine with search analytics; more details from Frank)

FiltrBox (better than Google News Alerts, says Frank; still in beta. Use Frank's invite a friend code to sign up: https://www.filtrbox.com/signup.php?code=somewhatfrank)

Read Frank's complete list of "bright shiny objects" here.

The end of the U.S.-centric Internet? ICANN to experiment with domain names in native scripts

Riddle: they're a global phenomenon. But most of them are in English and in Roman characters. What are they?

Answer: You guessed it; domain names like www.debbieweil.com. 

The U.S. has long been accused - rightly so - of digital colonialism. Interestingly, the technology for creating multilingual domains was created ten years ago. But it's never been put to the test.

This week ICANN decided to start experimenting with domain names written entirely in native script or characters. So instead of reaching the Google China blog by typing in www.googlechinablog.com you would type in: [Chinese text].[Chinese text].

I'll try and post a URL typed entirely in Chinese characters when I get to China. Can't do it from here.

[via A Script for Every Surfer - The Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2007]

Useful Link

The ICANN blog on new top-level domains

If I'd been Twittering this past week...

If I had been broadcasting 140-character tweets this past week I would have announced that I was in Milwaukee to be with my husband's family and to attend a lovely graveside service for my mother-in-law, who died Sept. 24, 2007 at age 83.

I won't type out her name because she was an extremely private person. I will tell you that we shared the same first name (Deborah), that she was old-fashioned and admirable in every way and that I was privileged to know her for over 35 years.

10 Ways Blogs Are More Effective Than Message Boards

The perennial question surrounding blogs vs. message boards (aka discussion forums) is one worth revisiting. Namely:

Blogs vs. message boards

• how are blogs different?
• why are they better??

My post today is the result of a gentle prod from a fan of The Corporate Blogging Book. Ryan writes:  "Let me start by saying I loved your book..." (Note: always a good way to start an email to an author.) He asked that I not reveal his full name or his company. Suffice it to say he's a would-be corporate blogger working for an established B2B company in a scientific field.

He writes:

"... there is one criticism that I haven't been able to come up with a convincing argument against. No one is fighting me on this, but I feel I need to overcome this criticism for my own piece of mind.  How does a blog differ from a discussion board that is moderated and updated by one (or a group of) individual(s) in a company?"

Then he answers his own question:

"The reason I ask is because we have had discussion boards...and while they have had mild success, they aren't really shattering or changing our industry, marketing, sales, customer support, etc. People say, “I don’t see how it is different. These forums are conversations too….probably a better platform than a blog which is very one-sided.” I think the registration requirements and the dependence on a message board community is a key element that prevents message boards from taking off. Admittedly that is one of the major reasons I think our boards have struggled to be successful."

Here's my take on the pros & cons of blogs vs. message or discussion boards. They are specifically written with big companies in mind, where control over "the message" as well as maintaining decorum are often a concern.

10 Pros for a Blog:

1. Blogs have one publisher who controls what is published on the blog
2. Comments from readers can be pre-screened and even blocked (i.e. not published) if they are deemed inappropriate
3. Good blogs have a distinctive voice and personality
4. That voice tends to make good reading and to invite a real "conversation" with readers
5. A blog gathers steam, gains traction and can get better and richer over time
6. Blog entries are easily searchable (by date and category/topic)
7. Individual blog posts are findable on Google (each has its own unique URL)
8. RSS (i.e. a Web feed) is a highly efficient way to read updates to a blog
9. Blogs don't require registration and logging in (a stumbling block - or an irritant - for some users)
10. Blogs can host other (compelling) forms of social media, including video clips and  podcasts

10 Cons for a Message Board:

1. Message boards are a free-for-all
2. No one is in charge so there is no one dominant or distinctive voice
3. Discussions tend to be in the form of Q & A rather than a conversation
4. No one talks about the "personality" of a message board
5. In general, message boards are useful but not "compelling" or "must read's"
6. Message boards work *if* enough people in your intended audience participate
7. They sometimes suffer from overzealous (i.e. annoying) participants
8. Or... just as often... from not enough participation
9. Having to log in to post to a message board can be a pain
10. Comment threads let you dig down into a particular discussion BUT you can do the same thing on an individual blog post that has multiple comments and trackbacks

(Note: can message boards be RSS-enabled - ?)

Useful Links & a Chart

DeathMatch: Bad, Bad Leroy Blog vs. Mean Mr. Message Board (Lee LeFever)

Read Dave Pollard on the pros & cons of blogs vs. wikis vs. discussion boards, etc.

Lee LeFever's excellent chart below. Also read his blog entry on message boards vs. Weblogs.

Need inspiration for your next presentation? Try SlideShare

SlideShare is still in beta but it looks cool - and very useful. Search on corporate blogging, for example, and you'll come up with dozens of recent presentations you can look through for inspiration.

As on YouTube, you can see how many times each presentation has been viewed, if anyone has left comments, what tags (keywords) have been used, pointers to related presentations, what the URL for the slide is, the code to "embed" the presentation on your site or blog and more.

There's also a Popular category (Halloween 2006, What Women Expect From Men, etc.). And of course a SlideShare blog. (Yes that's a Halloween bottom, at left. Very un-PC.)

The file formats are limited thus far to PowerPoint and OpenOffice. Darn... and just when I'm getting addicted to Keynote for the Mac. BTW, you can't really "copy" graphics or images out of the presentations. But, ahem, if you use a tool like Snapz Pro (to which I'm also now addicted), you, er, can.

Yet another example of what the "social" in social networking and social media means and how powerful it is.

Nirvana for conference organizers

Of course one of the coolest uses for SlideShare is to direct your conference attendees to one link where all your presenters have uploaded their slides. Just as with Flickr photos, you tell your presenters to tag their decks with a specific keyword. Here's an example: Dreamforce06 (a Salesforce.com conference).

The Corporate Blogging Book is TypePad's Book of the Month

Now this is cool. The Corporate Blogging Book is TypePad's book of the month for October 2006. If you're one of the first 50 new customers who signs up for TypePad you'll get a copy of my new book.

Note that TypePad offers a free trial of their blog hosting service (and yes I highly recommend it).

Skypecast interview with TypePad's Michael Sippey

TypePad's VP and General Manager Michael Sippey will be interviewing me via a live Skypecast call on Thursday Oct. 12th. Hope you'll tune in! I guess we'll talk about the book but feel free to ask me about anything related to social media. I'll try and pontificate... just kidding.

To sign up for the Skypecast call, register here (it's free). Starts 2 PM Pacific; 5 PM Eastern; 10 PM London.

Have you thought about using video clips in your blog?

I just watched the funniest video clip starring Steve Crescenzo, a corporate communications guru who also writes a very funny blog, Corporate Hallucinations. It's a Rocky take-off (the 1976 movie starring Sylvester Stallone) set to the theme music, showing Crescenzo running, stopping to drink a beer, running, etc. etc., finally running up the steps... and collapsing in an exhausted heap.

He teaches advanced writing workshops for Ragan Communications. The mini video, accessible via this link through Ragan's home page, is a promo for his workshops.

Well the guy is just... funny. And the clip is very effective as a marketing strategy.

I was thinking today about how your personal appearance can be so much a part of your schtick if you're a speaker or presenter. Steve is a big guy and he's bald. It works perfectly - even for a corporate audience. I wish I were something... more distinctive than the woman you see at left. (Yes, that's me. My daughter says I look like a car salesman in the color version of the photo.)

I'm currently working with a tremendous speaking coach, Clarice Scriber, to take my speaking skills to the next level. It's humbling, a little painful... and fascinating (in a weird way) to watch yourself on video and realize how many ways you can improve your delivery. (Clarice insisted I tape a recent speech I made to IPRA/PRSA-NCC.)

But I don't think bald will do it...

Useful Link

Speaking of Ragan, I'm running a workshop on Corporate Blogging 2.0 [scroll down - last item on the page] at Ragan's mega 15th annual Corporate Communicators Conference in Chicago on Thursday, April 27, 2006. Give me a holler if you're in Chicago and want to meet up for a drink the evening of Wednesday April 26th. You can email me at wordbiz(at)gmail.com.

Corporate blogging platforms: 5 top contenders

If you're wondering what platform to use for your corporate blog, you might consider the following contenders.

iUpload took the top prize in Datamation's 2006 awards for corporate blogging platforms. Followed by WordPress 2.0, Marqui, Traction Software and Movable Type.

If you dig around on these sites, you'll find that pricing varies widely - from FREE for the open sourcee WordPress to an inexpensive license for Movable Type.

I don't know about the exact ranking but this is a solid list of apps to review. I'll add some names of other blogging platforms and services to this entry later. And if you want to make a suggestion, leave it in a comment below!

P.S. I noticed that McDonald's new Corporate Responsibility blog is running on iUpload.

Blogs vs. wikis vs. IM vs. email vs. discussion forums vs. in-person

As far as I can tell, Canadian blogger Dave Pollard is brilliant, eccentric and unbelievably prolific. A literary and technology geek/genius, he writes a blog for Salon called How to Save the World with essays on topics ranging from "environmental philosophy" to, well, everything you can think of. His entries are sprinkled with complex charts and beautiful photographs.

Ran across a recent entry he made on "virtual collaboration" tools. He's created a great chart that compares blogs vs. wikis vs. email vs. mindmaps vs. videoconferencing & skype vs. whiteboards, etc. It includes comments on advantages and disadvantages of real-time (synchronous) vs. asynchronous, for example, as well as what each tool is best suited for (conversations vs. projects). But when all is said and done, in-person collaboration works best, he says.

Amen.

Niall Kennedy's podcast interview with Anil Dash about TypePad's problems

Read and/or listen to Niall Kennedy's exclusive interview with SixApart's Anil Dash about TypePad's recent outage and what it means to the future of business blog hosting - and to SixApart. (I'll listen when I get a chance. Still writing... ) Niall works for Technorati, BTW, which is down the street from 6A in San Francisco.

Also, read Steve Rubel's provocative "this too shall pass" post about this latest TypePad episode, yet another in a string of frustrating experiences with the service over the past few months. Steve says The Day is Darkest Before Dawn and uses eBay's early scaling problems as a parallel.

For the record, I tend to agree. Like Steve, I remain a SixApart fan and hope they figure out how to make TypePad bullet-proof.

And yes I was one of those leading the cry for an explanation of the problems when I wrote Listen up SixApart: some of your TypePad customers may switch.

I'm not giving up on TP yet. But for heaven's sakes guys, throw a ton of that venture money you got (how much was it??) at this problem and get it fixed.

Related:

Silence of the Blogs (Forbes' Technology)

Slashdotted

[via BlogHerald]

Technorati: typepad, six+apart

Steve Rubel's Ten Blogging Hacks

What can I say? Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame is just too clever. No time to wax eloquent. Buried in the book.

Here are Steve Rubel's 10 Blogging Hacks. Learn about Writely (document writing and sharing via the Web), automatic posting of your daily del.icio.us links, Bookmarklets, blogging from your cell phone, Iconizing your blog, using Plazes to tell everyone where you are geographically, auto-inserting Technorati tags, using Cafepress to make money selling blog schwag and more... Does this guy ever ever sleep?!

Useful Links

More hacks (i.e. clever ways to use tech tools) from Steve Rubel:

Ten RSS Hacks

Ten Technorati Hacks

Ten Wikipedia Hacks

New! Five Blog Reading Hacks

Mashup of your RSS feeds: try Feeddigest

Have you heard about Feeddigest? Sounds cool. And like a great tool for the non-techie like me. Basically, it rolls up all your RSS feeds (mixes them), converts them to HTML (or PHP or whatever) and lets you re-syndicate them to your site or blog. Thanks to Daniel Nerezov of SouthernCrossVentures for the tip. Yes, it's free.

SixApart's Mena and Ben Trott explain current problems with TypePad

Update (2 days later): SixApart's CEO Barak Berkowitz provides more details. He posted his Message from the CEO to the TypePad blog and also sent it in an HTML email to customers:

Dear Debbie,  

As you might know, some of our users have been experiencing slow performance with the TypePad service over the past few weeks...

Pretty nice. To back up a minute... we (meaning a bunch of Business Blog Consulting contributors) are taking partial responsibility for these blogged responses from SixApart. We started complaining vociferously on Wednesday Oct. 26, 2005 (first me and then Tris Hussey, Rich Brooks, Toby Bloomberg and Paul Chaney) about the recent slowness and outages with TypePad, SixApart's popular hosted blogging service.

The result? Last night, SixApart co-founders Mena and Ben Trott posted a reponse, the first real explanation we've gotten from the company after several weeks of problems with TypePad. The number of TypePad blogs and the activity on them (the good news) has outstripped their server capacity (the bad news), they tell us. They're working to move TypePad to a new data center (which hasn't been going smoothly).

Moral of the story? The blogosphere works. You kvetch enough. You get everybody's attention. (Addendum: we're quite pleased with the effect of our buzz campaign.) Now let's  hope they can fix the problems.

Backstory
I sent Anil Dash (a SixApart VP) several emails yesterday begging him to "listen up" and to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. Anil is a friend and colleague. I suggested he get the top dogs at 6A to acknowledge the recent problems and address them more transparently than the cryptic messages we get on 6A's Status Weblog about "temporary service degradation."

He listened.

Another takeaway... there are many channels of communication. You need to use a combination of public and private ones. The blogosphere is a very very public place. It's not right for everything.

How do you know when you're playing too rough in the blogosphere?

I dunno. It's a feeling. It's an invisible line. I came awfully close a few minutes ago... when I posted about recent problems with TypePad, SixApart's hosted blogging service. I count several of 6A's executives as friends and colleagues. I'm a huge supporter of the company. I want them to succeed. I recommend their products all the time. I hope the problem is temporary and that they'll fix it.

At the same time, I want 6A to listen to their customers. That's what it's all about in this new bloggy age, isn't it?

Update: SixApart's Anil Dash responds.

Technorati: sixapart + typepad

Listen up SixApart: some of your TypePad customers may switch

As I wrote here and here a few weeks ago, I'm one of thousands running a business blog on TypePad. The service has been excruciatingly slow of late. (Just now I thought I'd tear my hair out while waiting for this post to Save.) Sometimes it's down altogether.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "trash 6A" blog entry. It's a please please please listen to your customers before it's too late message. The buzz is building. There's talk of moving some high-profile blogs (including BusinessBlogConsulting to which I'm a contributor) to WordPress or another platform.

My advice? Post fast. Post fresh. Be transparent. The blogosphere is gonna bite if you don't. And get something up on your Status Blog (which, BTW, doesn't have an archive so it's conspicuously not quite a blog) or on Mena's Corner that acknowledges the problem.

C'mon guys. We love you! Don't disappoint.

(Apologies if this is "inside baseball" to those who don't follow discussions about blogging platforms.)

Technorati: sixapart + typepad

Should you have to dirty your hands with the intricacies of blogging software?

I gotta say that I'd run screaming the other way if I were a manager reading Andy Wibbels' recent blog entry titled Blogging Cheatsheets. Andy offers four PDF downloads, each a mindmap illustrating in (terrifying) detail how to use the various features of the popular Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and Movable Type blogging platforms.

The fact that he needs to do this makes a crucial point for where we are right now with blogging as a business tool: it's still too techie. Even TypePad, which I use and am a huge fan of, is too confusing for some execs to jump into quickly. (Andy's done a great job, BTW, if you want this kind of info.)

By contrast, usability guru Jakob Nielsen scored big in the blogosphere when he published his latest column:  Weblog Usability: the Top Ten Design Mistakes. These are easy to follow and make a lot of sense. (For ex., include a photo and a brief bio of the blog publisher. Amazing how many blogs don't do this.)

Google's Blog Search validates the importance of RSS

Wow... it's fast. It's simple. It works. Google Blog Search, which launched yesterday in beta, is the hottest new blogging tool to be released for us non-techie* types. Why? Two reasons: it's simple and quick. It instantly returns lots of results when you type in keywords related to blogs you're looking for. More results than I've found on similar searches on Technorati or Blogpulse.

And second, because it searches on RSS feeds. If your blog or site has a feed, Google will, er, google it. If you don't have a feed... you're outta luck. You won't be found.

This is significant. RSS** is key to Web 2.0. The next generation of the Web is all about user-generated content (what blogs are), sharing, collaboration and the ability to organize and manage the overflow of information. RSS will be seamlessly integrated into Internet Explorer 7.0 (now in beta). And, I predict, even better integrated with new releases of Firefox and Safari. The term RSS may fade away to be replaced by "Web feed." So don't worry if the acronym leaves you cold.

* The techies are quibbling with the technology behind Google Blog Search. Because a lot of RSS feeds only contain the "summary" of a recent blog entry, Google's blog search algorithm is missing stuff that's deeper down in the full version of a blog post. Also, it's not based on number of incoming links. Finally, the Google blog search tool omits a lot of the (admittedly cool) bells and whistles offered by Technorati and Blogpulse. (Like the top 100 and trend graphs.)

** RSS is a way to get news updates from a site or blog without using email. Most blogs offer an RSS feed. You subscribe to the feeds you're interested in. And receive the updates - often just the headline and a summary - through a news reader. This can be Web-based or a little application you download to your desktop.  RSS readers are also incorporated into some Web browsers. (See above.)

Useful Links

Advanced Google Blog Search

Ask Dave Taylor's Q & A on How to Use Google Blog Search

Anil Dash on Google's Blog Search Launch

Forrester's Charlene Li on Google vs. Technorati, etc.

RSS 101: "Really Simple" 5-Step Guide to Get Started

RSS a Pillar of Microsoft Strategy

On a side note

Colleague and friend Aimee Kessler Evans is Blogger of the Day. Cool... go Aimee!

Corporate Blogging's in the Trough of Disillusionment According to Gartner's Hype Cycle

Sorry if that title is a bit of a tongue twister. Gartner today released its 2005 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. The research firm has pegged Corporate Blogging and RSS as being two years away from mainstream adoption. For now, both are tumbling into Gartner's Trough of Disillusionment as a result of too much media buzz (along with wikis and desktop search). If you believe Gartner, Corporate Blogging is already sooo... last year (2004).

 

They've got a point. The media rumble about Corporate Blogging is almost deafening by now. It's not a "new" story anymore. Which is not to say that blogging isn't still a "new" thing to many companies.

Gartner's hype cycle goes something like this: new technologies get overhyped in the beginning; then they go out of favor; eventually they're adopted by the mainstream but by that time they're no longer news.

The five stages have great names: Technology Trigger, Peak of Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment (think John Bunyan's Slough of Despond in Pilgrim's Progress), Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Oh, and podcasting is on the upswing, according to Gartner. It's sliding up the Peak of Expectations. That sounds about right, doesn't it?

Here's a nifty PDF I found on Gartner's site which illustrates the 2005 hype cycle. Be sure to look at page 7 (the slide pictured above). It's a graph of the hype cycle plotted with every emerging technology (i.e. from corporate blogging to carbon nanotubes). Blogging, RSS, wikis, podcasting and desktop search are part of a larger trend that Gartner calls "key collaboration technologies designed to improve productivity and ultimately transform business practices."

Gartner writes:

"Corporate Blogging.  This involves the use of online personal journals by corporate employees, either individually or in a group, to further company goals.  It reached the peak of hype in 2004 although mainstream firms have not yet got involved.  Its impact will be on projecting corporate marketing messages primarily and secondarily in competitive intelligence, customer support and recruiting."

To clarify, the Trough of Disillusionment is not a bad place for a tech phenomenon to be.

As Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn put it (I found the quote in this press release):

"Don't invest in a technology just because it is being hyped or ignore a technology just because it is not living up to early over expectations," she said.  "If a technology fits with your overall business strategy you should be evaluating it from the outset, if you are unsure, wait until more research is available."

As I understand it, the hype cycle is measuring the buzz as well as the adoption rate. It doesn't necessarily correspond to the long-term utility - or success - of a phenomenon like Corporate Blogging. Only time will tell.

If you're a corporate blogging consultant the Trough of Disillusionment may sound like a downer. But hang in there... it takes lots of time and trial and error to slog up the Slope of Enlightenment. We can help point the way.

Read on if you want to see the 2005 hype cycle in table form.

Useful Links

ZDNet UK: Technology hype comes under scrutiny

SiliconRepublic.com: Gartner Cuts Through the IT Hype Cycle

Technorati tags: corporate blogging, BBS05, blogbusinesssummit

Blogosphere doubling every 5 months

Technorati CEO Dave Sifry has just posted the results of the latest "State of the Blogosphere - August 2005" with cool charts and stats. Key numbers:

- total number of blogs (i.e. the blogosphere) is doubling every 5.5 months

- there are now over 14 million blogs

- 80,000 new blogs are being created everyday

- of those, about 55% are considered active (i.e. have a new post within the past 3 months)

- a new Weblog is created every second

- lots of blog growth in Japan, Korea, China, France and Brazil

This is Part 1 of his commentary on the latest Technorati stats so more to come. Dave, be sure to give us some specific numbers on business or corporate blogs. There's just not enough data on that and I get asked all the time. Latest figure I've seen is that only 4% of major corporations have public or outward-facing blogs.

... I should point out that the blog numbers game may look a bit silly a year or two from now. Remember when we used to count the number of Web sites?? It was only 10 years ago...

 

Yes Virginia, you can measure word-of-mouth marketing

The WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) folks released yesterday what they're calling a new set of standards to measure the impact - and ROI - of word-of-mouth marketing. Download WOMMA's 12-page PDF here. It explains measurement terms and methodology - including the WOMUnit, the "single unit" of information that is passed from one consumer to another.

Tomorrow is WOMMA's first Measuring Word of Mouth Conference in Chicago chaired by the irrepressible Andy Sernovitz.

I'm intrigued by the efforts to put a structure and labels around what is a free flowing phenomenon. It should help corporate marketers get their arms around the impact of blogs; namely, to act as enablers for word of mouth marketing. WOMMA's new guidelines call blogs "a venue" for WOMM. Other venues are the water cooler at work, an email, a rock concert, a trade show, a civic meeting, etc.

RSS 101: "Really Simple" 5-step Guide to Get Started

For those who have yet to hop on to the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) bandwagon, the effort can seem more like a confusing leap than a few easy mouse clicks.

Easy-to-grasp definition of RSS
Here is an easy-to-grasp definition of RSS, courtesy of Anil Dash, a VP of SixApart which makes MovableType and TypePad (popular blogging software). He calls RSS:

"The technology built into blogs to notify you of updates. You can get these updates on a Web page, in your email inbox or on your PDA."

Another non-techie definition of RSS is that it's a new online channel to both publish and receive news updates - without using email. Both content  publishers and information seekers are excited about the fact that RSS sidesteps spam.

Again, RSS is not email. So no worries about spam filters - whether you're sending or receiving information via RSS.

You need an RSS newsreader
The first step to get on the RSS bandwagon is to download - or sign up for - an RSS newsreader. This is a simple piece of software that is as easy to use as a Web-based email program like Yahoo or Google's Gmail.

Which RSS reader should you choose?
There are at least a dozen different RSS newsreaders. Some are mini applets that you download to your desktop. NewsGator is a popular desktop choice; it integrates seamlessly with Outlook. So yes, you get the RSS feed in your inbox. But it's not delivered through email.

Other RSS readers are Web-based. All seem to work slightly differently.

Try Web-based Bloglines
I want to make this RSS tutorial platform-neutral (Windows or Mac compatible) and as easy as possible. So here is a, er, "really simple" 5-step guide to get you started with RSS through Bloglines, my favorite Web-based RSS reader. Yes, it's free.

RSS 101: 5-step tutorial

Step1. Browse to www.Bloglines.com

Step 2.  In the middle of the page, click on "Click here to sign up."
You'll be taken to a page where you enter your email address and a password. Choose your time zone. Click "register." Then check your email and click the link inside the "Bloglines Validation Email."

Step 3. Key tip: the URL of a blog is NOT the same as the URL of its RSS feed
You're ready to roll. You can now add RSS feeds to your Bloglines account. But first... a key tip: the URL for the RSS feed of a blog is NOT the same as the URL you type into your browser.

For example, to read this blog you type the following URL into your browser window: www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com.

To add the RSS feed for this blog to your Bloglines account (or to any RSS newsreader), you use the following URL: http://blogwrite.blogs.com/blogwrite/index.rdf

Click on the link above. You may get a page of gobbledy-gook? Not to worry. That's what the RSS feed looks like. It's XML code (just like Web pages have HTML code behind them).

Step 4. So... how in heck do I find the URL of an RSS feed I want to subscribe to?
Most RSS newsreaders can "sniff out" the URL of the feed automatically. Bloglines is no exception. Here's what you do: go back into your Bloglines account with your new username (email address) and password.

Browse to the Easy Subscription Bookmarklet page.  Follow instructions according to which browser you use (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.). Install the "bookmarklet" in your Favorites browser bar or Bookmarks Toolbar.

Now... browse to a blog you'd like to subscribe to via RSS.

Here's a suggestion: Business Week's new Blogspotting.net blog.

Once you're on this page: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/ click on your "Add to Bloglines" bookmarklet in your browser bar or drop-down menu of Favorites.

Up will come a page (click image above) that may seem confusing. It will offer you multiple options for subscribing to the RSS feed for Business Week's new blog. My advice, choose the option that ends in "rdf" or "rss" and click the box that says "Subscribe to This Feed." In this case: blogs.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/index.rdf

THEN... scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Subscribe button. (Don't forget to do this or you won't have completed the subscription process for this blog feed.)

Forget about the other "options." RSS is still so new that it comes in different flavors (atom is one) as well as versions. Don't worry about that.

Step 5. Read your feed by clicking on the My Feeds tab in your Bloglines interface. Here's what you'll see after signing up for Blogspotting.net:

When you click the links on the right-hand side of this page they will take you to the actual blog Web site where you can read the whole entry.

That's it. You're done! You're on the RSS bandwagon. Now browse to dozens of other blogs you'd like to keep tabs on. With a couple of clicks, you can subscribe via RSS using your new Bloglines account.

Want suggestions for blogs to read? See the blogs listed on the right-hand side of this page.

Useful Links

• "Getting" RSS and why good writing still matters
• MarketingSherpa's Special Report on RSS ("Not a replacement for email")
• Microsoft's Alex Barnett offers an audio & visual tour (a screencast) of RSS 101
• May 2005 issue of IABC's Online Newsletter for Communication Management
  A treasure trove of articles about RSS, wikis, podcasting, writing a blog, etc. Note: you must be a member of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) to read the full text of the articles.

Snowblogging: the perfect metaphor

Saw this term on Business Blog Summit. It's the perfect way to explain why blogs are so powerful as a means of communicating ideas. And why a blog can establish an intelligent writer as a "thought leader." (Also, why blogs are much more powerful than discussion boards or regular old Web sites. A blog, by definition, is a form of viral marketing.) Byron, writing for Biz Blog Summit, puts it this way: "think of blogs as 'topics, ideas, conversations, that grow like snowballs with each link.'"

To illustrate the snowball, here's the reference back to Doc Searls' (highly cogent, as always) definition of snowblogging.

Sun Microsystem's Jonathan Schwartz on corporate blogging

"Blogs are more searchable. Technorati and PubSub are more useful to me than Google."

Above quote from a fascinating interview with Jonathan Schwartz on The Red Couch. Sun's President blogs here. He's prolific and voluminous; often writes essay-length entries. Trying to snag an interview with him so I can find out what makes him tick as a top corporate blogger. How and why does he write such long entries. Are his topics strategically selected? Must be a closet writer. Or maybe he's just smart. I'll find out.

ADDENDUM: What Schwartz means by his quote, above, is that he can find more useful information through blog search engines than he can by just doing a quick Google search. In his case, he's looking for conversations, positive or negative, about issues related to open source, etc. Stuff he cares about and that he blogs about.

Differences between message boards and blogs

Here's a great post on Common Craft that explains the multiple differences between message boards and blogs. Scroll down to see Lee LeFever's nifty side-by-side comparison chart.

Key differences:

1) Message boards are decentralized and group run; blogs are centralized and often published by one person.

2) Responses or "comments" are required on a message board in order to create a discussion; "comments" on a blog post are optional.

3) Chronology:  blogs are always in reverse chronological order; topics and discussions on message boards can be organized and presented in different ways. Thanks to Shel Holtz for the pointer.

Top 7 ways to encourage interaction with your blog

From About.com. These range from the obvious (enable your Comments and Trackback functions and offer an email link) to the intriguing: include a link to a discussion board and to IM (instant messaging). Also check out Top 10 tips to promote your blog.