If you’d like to learn more about “RSS” and how you can use the technology as a marketing tool, be sure to check RSS Marketing 101 by Phil Gomes.

His top 3 reasons for RSS:

- RSS is incorruptibly opt-in
- It saves users time
- RSS is measurable

Derek Featherstone shares 10 ideas to help improve your businesses. His number 1 piece of advice - start a blog!

“I can attribute at least six figures of income to my blog (that doesn’t include the two decimal places!). Can you afford not to try it for yourself?”

In the past, I’ve made dozens of blog hosting recommendations. My apologies go out to those who ended up with Blogomania.

I’ve recently waited 2 weeks for an answer to a technical problem. Worse, I’ve been waiting over 3 months for an answer in regards to the excessive overbilling on my credit card.

Some things take time Blogomania, I know that. But I’ve been plenty patient!

If you’re hosting with Blogomania, I strongly encourage you to cancel your service before you have a problem and its too late. Take your business somewhere where they value it, not where they ignore and insult you with utter disregard.

Update: After 4 months of silence I’ve finally gotten a response from Blogomania. Amazingly they issued a partial refund. More amazing, they made no apologies.

The Kansas City Star has put out an article about blogging and gives a number of examples of company’s using blogs to their advantage. Included is a list of things to consider if your company is thinking of starting a blog:

- What do you want to accomplish? Don’t start a blog just because it’s trendy. Are you looking to get reactions from customers? Vespa, the scooter company, found a couple of active Vespa bloggers and gave them space on the company Web site. Is it a marketing blog, designed to build your brand? A small plumbing company might drive business with a blog that includes plumbing tips.

- A decision to begin blogging should come from the top, with commitment from the CEO on down.

- Find a champion inside, an evangelist to talk up the blog inside the company and to make sure the blog doesn’t fall by the wayside.

- Develop policies for company bloggers. These may be similar to the company’s existing ethics policy, with some additions for the new medium.

- Integrate your blog into everything the company does. Include information about your blog on your printed materials, your Web site, customer bills.

- Make your blog interactive. Those who make comments on the blog will be more engaged in the process if they know you’re reading and responding.

- Network. Visit other blogs that talk about your business or industry. Comment. Link to those blogs, and to prominent customer blogs.

You can catch the entire article here. It’s a great overview.

Probably. Consider this:

Charlene Li’s blog triggered $1 million in new business for Forrester Research last year. All this with a $14.95 per month TypePad account.

[via Debbie Weil]

Heard about this “RSS” thingamajig but not quite sure what it’s all about?

Here’s a nice introduction to RSS from the BBC.

RSS is one of those things that once you start using it you wonder how you ever got along without.

[via Steve Rubel]

Steve Rubel says something important about measuring the success of your website / blog with traffic as a ruler:

Traffic is not the primary way to measure a blog’s impact. Like PR, the return on investment is more soft, not hard. This needs to be taken into account. For example, if your goal is to promote thought leadership, I would track mentions on Google, media references to the blog, PubSub counts and more.

I think this is a very important point. Who’s reading is more important then how many.

“Many businesses find that tracking blogs and online discussion groups yields candid–and crucial–information about their products, services and competitors.”

Read the article at C|Net

MediaPost has an article this morning looking at why some marketers might resist advertising on blogs:

“By their very nature, blogs deprive marketers of the control they’ve come to expect: a company’s ad could conceivably sit next to a post ripping its product or brand. Media firms have also expressed concerns about scale, worrying that only a handful of blogs will ever achieve anything resembling critical mass.”

Resistance is futile. Control no longer exists. Might as well get use to that fact and get a head start.

Listen to your customers!

Admit it when you’ve blown it.
Fix it.
These days you have to.