iaocblog :: Welcome to RSS Basics Week

My name is Bob Geller and I will be hosting this coming week's RSS Basics forum. I work for Fusion PR, a high tech PR agency headquartered in New York City. Most of my career has involved working with and promoting technologies that impact marketing: CRM, business intelligence, groupware, and in recent years blogging and RSS tools.

There has been much media coverage and blog buzz about RSS over the past couple of years. As is the case with any new and rapidly growing trend, it can be difficult to wade through the noise and understand what it all really means.

It is too easy to get carried away by the possibilities. Some have said that the technology gives marketers a new communications alternative in an era where standbys like email are no longer as effective.

Others say blogs and RSS will mean the death of traditional journalism and PR: when everyone has a soapbox and a frictionless way to broadcast, who needs info-mediaries?

Although it is hard to consider apart from the blogging explosion, one needs to remember that RSS - as will be explained in more detail - is a technology spec and means of communicating that has its own ins and outs, and applications outside of blogging.

Sure RSS, can provide an automated way to syndicate and subscribe to blog updates. But traditional news Web sites, as well as e-commerce Web sites are using the technology, as are armchair audio DJs/broadcasters (RSS is one of the technologies behind podcasting), entertainment sites and marketers.

In light of the above I would like use this week's session as a way to cut through the theory and hype to arrive at answers to the following questions: what is RSS, and how can marketers and online communicators leverage it? What are the pitfalls? How are people using RSS (generating feeds, harvesting and reading them) and how are they measuring results? How are people promoting their feeds, and using RSS as a way to supplement other communications channels?

Helping me answers these questions will be the hosts for topics as listed blow:

RSS Basics Week Schedule

Monday

BL Ochman, a regular contributor to the IAOC blog (she participated in IAOC's BlogFest 2004) will cover the topic:

"RSS: What it is and Why Marketers Need to Pay Attention"

RSS sounds mysterious and finding a simple explanation is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Here's what you need to know, in layman's terms, and how RSS can help you get your message to a wider audience.

B.L. Ochman, president of whatsnextonline.com, http://www.whatsnextonline.com is an Internet marketing strategist, blogger and corporate blogging coach. She publishes What's Next Online, http://whatsnextonline.com/wno/current.html What's Next Blog

http://www.whatsnextblog.com and is the author of "What Could Your Company Do With a Blog." http://whatsnextonline.com/blogbook/

Tuesday

Bob Geller will address RSS and media relations. The session will feature Q & As with blogger and InfoWorld journalist Jon Udell (who has written extensively about RSS as a tool for improving dialog between marketers and the media) and Phil Gomes, blogger, publicist, and author of a white paper on the subject.

Wednesday

Reid Conrad, CEO of Near-Time, Inc., will cover the technology side, and how marketers can use RSS and blogs for collaboration and content management.

Reid Conrad led XML database pioneer Extensibility up until its acquisition by middleware giant Tibco several years ago. Near-Time, his latest venture, offers collaborative content and knowledge management software built to RSS and blogging standards.

Thursday

Paolo Torchio, of E-site Marketing and the host of the IAOC Travel Blog will cover the following case study:

"Commercial Applications of RSS in Travel Marketing"

Friday

Philippe Borremans of IBM, who joined the Industry Blog and shared information about IBM's internal use of Blogging technology, will be back to discuss the use of RSS in crisis communications. He will focus on using RSS to streamline communications with dispersed and mobile workers.

Philippe is a founding member of the IAOC, a member of the Belgian PR Center and regularly lectures at Belgian PR schools.

Also participating will be Richard Hoy. Richard is a founder of Booklocker.com, Inc. - a company that provides a low-cost, turn-key publishing and sales environment for independent authors. In addition, the company owns WritersWeekly.com, an email newsletter and web site that reaches several thousand writers each month.

Richard has extensive experience using RSS to promote blog content, i.e., to syndicate content to other sites as well as feed the content into RSS-specific search engines.