The Out-Smarts Blog and Podcast

When you subscribe to a blog or podcast or populate a portal like iGoogle the technology that brings the information to you is called RSS. Its a way of publishing information easily so as to make it available to subscribers in a central on-line repository.

Why take advantage of RSS? There are many reasons:

1. Pull rather than push - articles come to users rather than them having to hunt them down;
2. Subscribers get the latest and greatest information as its posted;
3. An RSS link encourages traffic to your site;
4. Users can have a bunch of sources of info in one place - much like a newspaper;
5. RSS can be used internally to disseminate info too.

How to set up an RSS feed?

• First get your site set up to support RSS by adding a few short lines of code.
• Place code on your site that the RSS feed readers can find your info.
• Publicise your feed by telling the world and everyone you know in it at every opportunity.
• Add the RSS feed button to your site so visitors know you the can easily subscribe. Feedburner has widgets to support this on their site.
• Submit your feed to syndicators and search engines to make it easier for your audience to find you.

Once thats done, your good to start publishing your own data feed over the web.

Thanks to the ZDNet blog for this very apt cartoon. Same could be said for many company websites too.

Our one year blog anniversary came and went recently with little fanfare (until now that is). We’ll put in down to having too much fun blogging. Here are just a few of the pleasures derived from blogging over the past twelve months:

1.The Out-Smarts blog is doubling in readership every month but it wasn’t until November when post on a Facebook hoax brought the first HUGE spike in traffic. Its great to ride a wave.

2. In January I was introduced to someone I hadn’t met before and they responded that they enjoy this blog - very flattering;

3. Its always fascinating to track where visitors come from. This site gets visits from all around the world we have visitors in the UK, US and Canada but have also met colleagues from Serbia, Korea and India by blogging here;

4. When our work was copied last week the community really rallied around giving advice on next steps, encouragement in a number of different forums - heartwarming indeed.

5. Its amazing how easily blog posts ideas and words can come one day then another its like getting blood out of a stone. I look for inspiration by reading other blogs, listening to podcasts, attending seminars and events but perhaps the most unlikely inspiration came from a tech column in Women’s Health magazine.

6. Blogging has been very therapeutic - its a great way to get things of your chest but alternatively it can be quite addictive - its important to manage blog time effectively when there’s so much out there to learn about.

7. Establishing expertise is one of my main reasons to blog and this is continuously reinforced when I meet with new prospects who have read the blog prior to our meeting - it reminds me to be careful what I say!

8. We’ve averaged about 2 or 3 blog per weeks and have noticed traffic correlates to number of posts up to a point - another incentive to blog regularly.

9. Blogging has led to podcasting. Who knows what will be next - vlogging? Watch this space.

10. The power of 10 - people like lists and 10 seems to be a popular number giving us a great excuse to stop now.

Here’s to another great blogging year….

Our blog hit 2 rather dubious milestones this week. Both occurred yesterday when someone was good enough to post our blog peice about the SMEI event with links and all. We love link love here at Out-Smarts and we are always glad to share as long as blog etiquette is followed.

In this case it wasn’t, the post, on a site that had little or no original content, even credited our article to someone else!

They referred to it as a great article - thanks but next time please GET IT RIGHT:

• If you’re not sure of the author don’t include fake or false info.
• If in doubt about the source - DON’T post it.
• Always credit the true author and include a link back to the original article.
• Be aware that the Internet by its nature is very transparent - if plagiarism is your game then chances are you’ll get caught out sooner or later.

So in fine Monica Hamburg fashion - we set to correcting the situation with a well worded comment demanding the error be corrected. Which brings us to the second milestone, our first abusive email following a post that was full of profanity and bluster.

Thankfully the post has since been removed and I won’t give them them the satisfaction of linking to the site.

I’ve already had some feedback from some of my friends on Facebook as to how to deal with this and what I can do to counter both plagiarism and abusive emails but I would be interested in your advice too. What should I do next? What have you done that has worked for you and what can bloggers do to mitigate the risks of putting their good words out there?

The blogosphere is a great way to get your message across and reach wider audiences but if you are thinking about harnessing it for PR purposes, be aware.  As with all things web 2.0 blogging for PR can be done and done well but you have to approach it in a new way.   When approaching a blogger:

1. Don’t try to sell to them or buy their good words - it won’t go over well;
2. Establish rapport up front if you can, network with them in other forums and develop a relationship that shows your sincerity;
3. Relate your offering to a blog post they may have made on an applicable subject;
4. Contact a select few bloggers via a personalized email that include links to pertinent pages or info;
5. If applicable, offer a reciprocal link;
6. Don’t use a traditional press release format - it will be perceived as too “suity”.

Social media for marketing and business development is the hot topic on the networking circuit in Vancouver these days and today’s SMEI event was no exception. With expert panelists from BCIT and Oracle bringing their unique experiences in SM to the panel, the event proved to be insightful.

It started off with a brief intro to Web 2.0 described as being “Tech, Process and People - but most of all collaboration” then went on to a 101 of web 2.0 terms such as RSS, blogs, podcasts for the real newbies in the audience.

Once the panelists got started the true value of the event became apparent. Justin Kestelyn, Director of Development Programs at Oracle discussed their web 2.0 adoption and the benefits they have gained from using a more transparent strategy and involving their customers and partners more. He made a great point in that by involving their customers and allowing them to have a voice these invariably become evangelists at little or no cost to Oracle. He points out that Web 2.0 is an attitude, a new way of doing business and not just an Internet term.

Next up was Robert Duncan from BCIT whose presentation centred on LinkedIn as a means of developing relationships (a topic close to my heart). He focuses on LinkedIn in particular of the social networks available and has over 800 contacts that he uses extensively to spread awareness of what he is doing at BCIT and in his work with innovators. He pointed out that by joining groups in LinkedIn you have access to all other members of that group - a great way to extend your network further. Its easier to do business with people you already know something about.
The last panelist to get up was James Wells also from BCIT and a founder of Lendary Social Financing a company that uses web 2.0 technology to build trust online and to put investors in touch with entrepreneurs looking for money. “Word of mouth is vital to growing any business these days”, he pointed out - “go out and do it - if you fail you learn”.

The conclusion - if companies don’t embrace web 2.0 then they face failure or a steep catch up. It costs very little to adopt these technologies and the benefits in terms of buzz are profound.

Interesting to see Vancouver mega blogger Miss 604 there. I am looking forward to her take on proceedings too.

A client of mine recently came upon the Real Finder Link tool and asked me my opinion. As will most of these things that pop up on the Internet advertising free and easy results I was sceptical. However I decided to take a closer look and actually installed this one to test it.

What it is is a utility that crawls blog sites for keyword terms of your choice then lists them and autofills the website, name and email address forms saving you time. Say you wanted to find posts on business development, you would enter “business development” and it would bring up all the blog posts it could find on that subject (you can segment this by number of comments on the post if you like). It then auto fills your details and you can add appropriate comments.

Its actually quite a quick way to identify posts that you may want to comment on and I will probably end up using it to save me some time.

Here are the downsides:

• took about an hour to download the software and get it going and bogged down my machine while doing so
• heres no time limit as to the blogs it finds so it often comes up with ancient blog posts or dead blogs that there’s no point in commenting on (other than for the link - but maybe thats the point?)
• it doesn’t catch all blogs (I entered Internet marketing and nothing came up)
• and once they have your email address they start emailing you daily (and more) - but I have to say that when I complained about this I got a very personable email from Neal Shearing the founder explaining his over enthusiasm.

With Real Finder Link you have to take time to read the post and make a valid comment - its not an engine so it doesn’t completely automate the process which is a good thing - to me the whole point of using a commenting link strategy is to establish your expertise at the same time as growing your links. It really does save you time in that it autofills your forms and also in the search process. I suppose you could ask it to find a post that has 100 comments and add something irrelevent in the hope that no one will read - giving you the link but risking your credibility but I don’t think thats a good idea. Question is, is it about links at all costs or valid commentary (I err on the later off course).

Regarding your link strategy - commenting on blogs is a great way to do it and I always encourage you to comment more and add links back to your site that way but its a 2 way street. Companies should always add a blog roll or links section to their web sites where they can add links to both blogs they read that would add value to your clients and web sites that would be useful resources for clients to use.

Lately I’ve been adding more images to my blog to brighten it up.  I’ve even been taking photographs when I am out and about.   This cartoon from Being Five explains why you haven’t seen any of them yet!

Seems like 10 is the number of the week here at Out-Smarts. We’re off to Northern Voice today and we’re so excited we’re practically rippling. Here are our ten (tongue in cheek) reasons to attend.

1. For the free lunch - didn’t you see that photo (drool).

2. To snag a T shirt - hopefully with a big Moose on the front. How Canadian eh?

3. We would do anything to get a day out of the office.

4. To get much needed and aforementioned podcasting advice.

5. Its much cheaper than the social media telesummit(although much shorter) that is also taking place this week. Granted that could be the Scottish in me coming out there.

6. To meet some rockstar bloggers. I met the Engadget guy earlier this year. I’m on a roll….

7. To find out if blogging really is dead or if its just that the early adopters have moved on to the next new thang.

8. To check out the beautiful UBC campus. Terror alert or no terror alert, we will be there.

9. To live blog on my XO. It is charging its little green and white battery as I type.

10. To make some new friends to add to my Facebook profile.

By this I mean Google juice and not pictures of hunky models. Here are 10 great ways you can easily improve your search engine positioning without putting your hands in your pocket and without having to be a SEO technodweeb.

1. Update your site regularly - this may seem obvious but many corporate sites rarely change.

2. Post a video - it can be short and sweet but has the added benefit of enhancing your image.

3. Add a podcast - we did it this week and you can too. Our traffic has gone up by about 50% since. Coincidence? I think not.

4. Label your images - most sites don’t bother but this is viable real estate on your site, use it. Image titles should relate back to your keywords and offering for maximum impact.

5. Use Google’s webmaster tools - make sure your site is crawled regularly, submit your sitemap (okay I concede you might need a technodweeb for that) and identify any problems so that you (or your technodweeb) can fix them.

6. Get bookmarks - book marks are like links the more you have the better. Hit on employees, partners and colleagues to bookmark your site.

7. Comment regularly on relevant blogs and always remember to insert your url correctly.

8. Spend some time developing a keyword map for your products and services so as to identify the most effective words to use and those to avoid.

9. Use bold and headings to identify key terms in your text.

10. This one should be first on the list but it seems so obvious I almost left it out. In case you haven’t done so, remember to submit your site to Google and other search engines otherwise there’s no hope whatsoever.