This document discusses blogs, RSS feeds, and their importance. It explains that blogs are personal publishing sites that are increasingly influential. RSS feeds allow content from blogs and other sites to be syndicated and aggregated. The author notes that adding an RSS feed to their blog significantly increased traffic. RSS feeds and aggregators allow users to conveniently track mentions and discussions of particular topics, products, and companies across the internet. The document advocates that companies should utilize blogs, RSS, and comment tracking to stay connected with customers, publicize products, gain feedback, and build communities.

1. Blogs and RSS – Trawling the Internet for Meaning

2. AgendaAgenda
• What’s a Blog?
• What’s RSS?
• Why should you care?

3. What’s a Blog?What’s a Blog?

4. BlogsBlogs
• Blogs are
– Personal Publishing
– Getting to be very influential
• Infoworld (technology)
• Scoble (MS Evangelist)
• InstaPundit, Andrew Sullivan (politics)
• Etc

5. BlogsBlogs

6. What’s a Blog?What’s a Blog?
• I started to notice
blogs about 3 years
ago

7. What’s a BlogWhat’s a Blog
An Ad-hoc editorial page

8. Searching for
Readers
Searching for
Readers

9. InterestInterest
• The first few months,
readership was light
RSS Came up. What?

10. InterestInterest
• RSS
• http://backend.userland.com/rss
• It turns out that Syndication is very important

11. RSS and
Aggregation
RSS and
Aggregation

12. RSSRSS
• RSS is an XML format
– A channel
– Items in a channel
• Title
• Link
• Description

13. RSSRSS
• The format is a rich, extensible way to convey a
headline service

14. RSSRSS
• So I added an RSS Feed
• Traffic went up!
• Still had no idea what it
was good for

15. AggregatorsAggregators

16. BottomFeederBottomFeeder

17. Why Should You
Care?
Why Should You
Care?

18. Google JuiceGoogle Juice
• “Tom Nies”
– First Cincom Mention: My blog (2nd)
– Next one: 6th
• Cincom
– First Cincom Mention: Cincom Smalltalk Home
– Home page - nowhere
• BottomFeeder
– Top of the list

19. Google JuiceGoogle Juice
• Search Feeds for VisualWorks,
ObjectStudio, Cincom Smalltalk
– Regular mentions
• Same for VA Smalltalk
– Virtually invisible
• Reflected in Google searches for
Smalltalk

20. TrackingTracking
• I have 41 search feeds
– Track our products
– BottomFeeder
– Smalltalk
– The competition
• People will talk about your
product(s)
– Do you want to know what they are saying?

21. DemoDemo

22. What’s it Good For?What’s it Good For?
• An opt-in audience

23. What’s it Good For?What’s it Good For?
• We use it extensively in the CST
Group
– Feeds for our Bug reporting
– Feeds for the blogs
– Feeds for our Wikis
– Feeds for our Version control tool
• There’s support for this for CVS as well

24. MarketersMarketers
• What does your
company do?
– Connect with actual
people

25. Product ManagersProduct Managers
• Publicize your product
– Tech features
– What problem it solves
– Who should want it
– Microsoft, Sun, IBM – all in
– We do a lot for Cincom Smalltalk – there are
20+ bloggers for CST at
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs

26. Technical LeadsTechnical Leads
• What the product does
• How it does it
• Gain ‘tech cred’

27. SummarySummary
• So what’s all this being used for
– Publicity
– Project Management
– Marketing
– Community Building
– Communication

28. SummarySummary

29. Contact InfoContact Info
• James Robertson
– Jarober@gmail.com
– Jrobertson@cincom.com
• BottomFeeder
– http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder
• Silt
– http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki/
Silt