Blogging seminar today

I'm at corporate college today.

A Blog Click Tracking Tool

The obsessive compulsive blog stats person might be interested in a free service called MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog logs the clicking activity of your blog visitors and graphically displays which links are the most popular with your visitors by hovering over the link. This can fall under the heading of "stupid blog tricks," but the service also allows you to post a sidebar widget that lists your most popular links.

This tool does add to the richness of your content.

Take Control of Podcast Files

del.icio.us a social bookmarketing service now owned by Yahoo has a great little application for playing mp3 files. Add a bookmark from del.idio.us called a Playtagger and you can automatically play any mp3 file on a site you are visiting.

Most podcast sites have players, but many do not. This way you can sample any file without downloading it. This is a great tool to embed on your own podcast site too as it instantly craetes a player for your visitors.

I have it installed on my Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Don't know much about del.icio.us? Great resouce here

Convert RSS Feed for Mobile Readers

I'm not sure if mobilize is a word, but if not, it will become one soon. Not because I used it, because the mobile device is getting more powerful, more common and more useful as a business tool.

Blog readers are now subscribing to and reading blogs using mobile phones and PDAs. From what little research I have done there is an entire version of HTML just for mobile reading. While converting all of your web pages, blog posts and RSS feeds to mobile standards may well make sense, it looks like a pretty big undertaking.

A fairly new service called Winksite allows you to easily turn your current blog RSS feed into a version that can be consumed very nicely by mobile readers. Click on the winksite button in this feed and see an emulated view of how a mobile reader would see the Duct Tape Marketing blog feed.

Using this new technology certainly comes under the heading of coolness, but I think that it also supports one of my major marketing principles as well - deliver your marketing message in as many forms and formats as you can.

The service also allows you to create mobile content beyond your blog including journal entries, forum posts and lists of syndicated feeds.

Aggregated and Filtered Content Is King

Let's face it, no matter what your business card says, you are probably in the information business.

Want verification of this from a Pulitzer Prize winning author? Go pick up a copy of Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat. It's a big book, but by page 45 or so you will come to understand that only those who can make information more valuable will survive.

Just a few years ago the rallying cry on the web was - content is king. Not so much anymore. I can find a person with a reasonable command of the English language to crank out 50, web page length articles in a week, for about $100. And, Google's AdSense program has incentivized all the Internet marketers to create this kind of content for ad revenue sake.

The crush of content that the average person has to consume is out of control.

So, the answer? Find, create, enhance, package and distribute content - aggregate it, filter it and make it more useful. That's your job.

And for that job, RSS, and the various tools lumped into the RSS bucket provide the power.

For the self-proclaimed computer geek, the RSS tools and open APIs are an unlocked candy store. But, you know that already.

For the average small business guy or gal, the ease of implementing these once foreign applications makes using RSS beyond blog posts a simple proposition.

Here are some ways companies are using the automatic distribution features of RSS

• Keep customers informed about their company, products, services and promotions


• Update employees and associates about company matters and events


• Aggregate and publish news headlines and stories of interest to clients


• Collect and filter sales intelligence


• Send daily communication to salespersons


• Track changes to real estate and auction listings


• Publish news and news releases to various web pages


• Advertise job opening


• Recommed and update books from Amazon


• Republish FAQs and support forum headlines


• Promote random sales and special offerings


• Provide product or service updates to buyers and owners


• Create and send training programs to employees


• Publish calendars or events and company happenings


• Research competition and competitive keywords


• Send daily tips and other marketing communications

Your job is to learn about this tool and then take what your learn and find creative ways to apply it in order to make the information that your provide, the content you provide, more valuable.

Here is a list of sites to help you get started on the "uses for RSS: journey (The list below is a BlinkList - a  tool you may find useful in your information business)

• Uses for RSS
• B-Talk.com :: Go Tell The World
• Time saving uses for RSS
• RSSContact.com
• RSSCalendar.com - Features
• RSS Workshop - a Tutorial
• RSS Marketing and Real-Life Marketing Experience
• Uses of RSS
• RSS Wave: Good Examples Of Newsmaster Sites - Robin Good` Sharewood Tidings
• RSS Responder - Scheduled, reliable, personalised communication with your customer, avoiding email filters
• tonneten library :: syndication: Uses of RSS
• Basement.org: Taking RSS Beyond Headlines : Part One

Comments, Trackbacks, and Now - Chat

A new service set to launch next week called 3Bubbles allows bloggers to add a chat function to each post as a way to extend the conversation with readers. This looks like an interesting way to really make blogs conversations.

Technorati Tags: blog chat

RSS Ads Don't Follow the Contextual Logic

Interesting post from Heather Green at Business Week regarding advertising in RSS feeds. She interviews Feedburner's Dick Costello who is discovering that contextual ads in RSS feeds don't do as well as ads simply focused on the demographic of the reader.

This turns the typical ad model (blog about cameras gets ads about camera gear) on its ear a bit, but I think may make ads in RSS feeds a little more intersting.

It does make sense when you think about it. A blog viewer who comes to blog by way of search is, at the moment, focused on finding very specific information, including ads that relate to that information.

An RSS reader or subscriber may read the feed out of habit and be more open to reading and responding to an ad that hits other subjects.

Google's RSS Reader Can Only Mean One Thing

Google added an RSS reader to their growing list of blog related tools and this could be good news for your blog.

No, I don't really think that the world needs another RSS reader (unless you are really into GMail and this syncs right into that)

What it may mean, however, is that you now have a way to get your feed indexed by Google and into their Blog Search tool. Getting you feed indexed by Google isn't really that hard, but if you subscribe to your RSS feed via the new Google Reader, I assume they have to crawl your feed in order to deliver the results to you, their loyal client.

This appears to work very much like adding your feed to a MyYahoo page.

Blogging The Ultimate Marketing System

One of my Ultimate Marketing System teleclass clients approached me the other day and asked if he could blog about his experience of being a client.

My blog self immediately said, "Sure, what a great use of a blog." But then my vulnerable marketing self said, "What if?"

The convergence of those two selves concluded that what my client, Ken Yarmosh of Technosight, was offering was a very rich and rewarding gift, no matter what he writes. Marketing, effective marketing, needs to be open and honest. It's not all about having every answer. It's often about having a willingness to listen and improve.

I hope this little blogging experiment helps to spread the word about what Duct Tape Marketing really has to offer the small business marketer but, more than that, I hope it helps me get better at what I do.

Check out Ken's comments on his blog or even drag this feed http://www.technosight.com/feed/?cat=17 into your RSS reader and keep up to date automatically.

Ken is doing some great things with emerging marketing technologies at Technosight. Stop by and learn.

Free Blogging Teleclass

Next Tuesday, October 4th, 11 am Pacific (Noon M, 1pm C, 2pm E) I will be interviewed on a free teleseminar hosted by Steven Van Yoder, author of Get Slightly Famous, on the - The Basics of Business Blogging (and why every business should have a blog)

Here are some of the things we will discuss on the call:
- An easy-to-grasp explanation of blogs and blogging
- The benefits of blogs over e-mail newsletters
- How to cost-effectively start and maintain your own blog
- How to brand your blog with great writing, audio, and video
- How to use your blog as a new income generator

Blogging has become an integral part of my marketing and is responsible for generating significant revenue, leads, PR, awards and even a book deal! Maybe it's time to learn how to harness this powerful tool.

Click Here To Register