Nooked conducted a survey that found the "influencer" segment of the market to be highly into RSS. The survey looked at the influencer set, those journalists, analysts and bloggers followed by masses of people. The survey found the majority of them were using RSS as a way to gather their information and keep track of the market.

With Big Media – the likes of ABC, CNN, the BBC – publishing content via RSS, and the blogging explosion of the last few years, it should come as no surprise that 92% of participants are aware of RSS.

87% of Nooked survey respondents use an RSS reader, or news aggregator to keep up to date on content...

These people are important in marketing. They are the mediators of the message now. The consumers whose reviews affect others. They don't just recommend anything. They do their own research. They stay on top of news to break the latest and greatest thing on the market. And they need a way to stay connected. RSS is the way for them to do that. And it will also be the same way their word of mouth gets amplified.

Here is a good example of why influencers are important:

- Two-thirds of sales of U.S. consumer goods are influenced by word of mouth, a McKinsey & Company report indicates.
- Ten percent of Americans hold the power to influence the habits of the other 90 percent, finds a Roper ASW study.
- The value of word of mouth has grown by 1.5 times, on average, since 1977, and, as a result, it is now valued about twice as much as advertising or editorial, suggests a Roper Reports Public Pulse.

Businesses need to reach influencers. It's all about viral marketing. You seed the powerful and they do your marketing for you. Viral marketing is all about leveraging the power of these influential individuals and also leveraging the power of technologies that broadcast this word of mouth: email, RSS and more.

Blogs are like amplified email, in the marketing sense. If you can get an influencers your product or service, and they like it, perhaps they'll email 5 friends and tell another 5 later down the line. Now, not only can you get that email trail going, you also have blogs. That same product review goes online and it has the potential to reach hundreds or thousands - it's not just a stagnant webpage that nobody ever sees. It goes directly to readers who trust the advice of the author, and to hundreds more from searches online.

RSS has the power to propel a marketing message to influencers, who then will use RSS to spread word of mouth in many directions, instantly.

Via Alex Barnett

1. Journalists use blogs as tickler files when researching stories.
2. Journalists use blogs as sounding boards
3. Journalists use blogs as digests of the day's news.
4. Journalists don't "flog the blog" - they see blogs as useful websites.

Given that 51% of journalists are looking to blogs for info and scoops, these four tactics make sense to me.  Aren't journalists such another breed of the info-gluttons that bloggers are?  Granted they publish on dead trees and other places, but I use blogs in the same way.  Hmm, does that make a journalist a blogger?  Or a blogger a journalist? ;-).

But there's a bit of a dark cloud hanging over true public relations too, because it's built upon the assumption that the message can be controlled or crafted in the first place. One of the more interesting effects of the rise of bloggers and citizen journalists (and, for that matter, "citizen industry analysts"), is that the message is taking on a life of its own and that it's more and more frequently getting into the public eye before the company is ready.

In a world where messages are born, evolve and disseminate without controls, it does beg the question of what's left for a public relations professional. But that's a question for another article, one that would most usefully begin with a few PR professionals explaining what PR is all about to them and their clients, I think.

You will always need to relate to the public.  I do it all the time when I leave comments on posts and blog about people's reviews and answer e-mails.  PR pros now have to work within the new culture of transparency and openness.  Frankly this can't be a bad thing.

Update Aug 24:  I decided to repost this with today's date to reflect two things.  First, Arieanna did a great job of putting the Qumana vs Word features in a table.  Second, since this week we released our latest version of Qumana that fixes the nagging Blogger titles problem and allows Blogger users to edit previous posts (just like the other blogging platforms), I think this puts this review in a new light.  When this was written the Blogger titles fix was in the queue.  We couldn't discuss when it might become available—doing so is the classic blunder to curse any release date—and it was a major gap and flaw.  It was then at the top of the queue, but still.  Now it's fixed.  So, I suggest try both apps.  See which one you like better.  And please if you have any more feedback, send it along, I love to hear it.

From Aug 16: Imitation is a sincere form of flattery, isn't it?

Today Biz Stone of Blogger announced a new add-on for MS Word that lets you post directly to Blogger. Bravo!

We've downloaded the add-on and tried it on a few posts on a little test blog I have on Blogger. The install was simple and straight forward; I didn't even need to reboot! Very nice touch.

Launch Word, and there are a few new buttons on the Toolbar (I'm using Word 2003, btw). A Blogger settings button, Open post ... , Save as draft, and Publish ... Simple, clean, straightforward. The Open post and Publish dialogs give you a pull-down menu of your Blogger blogs. Nice.Using this to cross-post to another Blogger blog looks easy. Blogger is certainly trying to make posting easier, but .. .
… it's only for Blogger. And, let's face it, while the HTML sent to Blogger isn't bad, you probably don't want to get too fancy with it. Also, the image I dropped into Word wasn't included in the post and there doesn't seem to be an option to upload one.

Congratulations to Blogger and Google on the effort. But we don't see this as a work-horse for most bloggers.. Word isn't really a simple, light application, and so might represent a degree of overkill when it comes to blogging. Blogger users, even new ones, may grow tired of using Word, whereas something that uses the best features of Word as they pertain to blogging .. and that’s all .. would be more blogger-friendly, if you will.

However, it does have it's place if you have a long Word doc you'd like to publish to Blogger.

Qumana does much of what Word does in terms of the text of a blog post, but has been designed to interact between the Web and the individual blogger’s style of writing and composing in ways that add to and support the individual’s blogging. It may be a better choice for many bloggers, and almost certainly gives you most or all of the functionality Blogger has offered with this new feature ... but for most other blogging platforms as well as Blogger.

Here are some additional things that Qumana does that add value to or support your blogging.

And don’t forget … we have a number of other easy-to-use and versatile new features coming along that add value specifically to the process of writing and composing blog posts.

Stay tuned.

Update: Tris has posted an update to this post, talking about some more of the conversation going on in the blogosphere surrounding this release. The conversation is turning more critical about the choice to use Word, since it is not overly good at HTML.

Like we state - it's a move in the right direction... but it's only a baby step towards simplification in self publishing. Hopefully our step is a little bit larger.

Technorati Tags: Blogger, Word, Qumana, Blogging

A new player is Blogbeat. Rubel says it "offers a simple way to get your hands on data such as your most popular posts, links/refers, RSS clicks and more." For the moment (and I do mean for the moment) it's free, but the offer is limited to a specific number of users and that number is dwindling fast. (There's a counter on the site showing how many spots are left.) It's also free of ads too!

Via:Business Blog Consulting- Blogbeat, New Analytics

I'm all about simple interfaces.  I like to know at a glance what's up.  This is pretty darn good.  Frankly, though, I am going to get tired of going to three or four different places to check out my blogs' traffic.  For now, though, I'm enjoying the rich detail I'm getting.  When I registered there were 137 spots, now there are 37.  Act fast.

Technorati has just announced multiple tag search, which enables people to use the boolean "or" to combine tags for one search.

So, it's obvious what this means for search - it is just a little bit more powerful and easy to get the results you want. Instead of subscribing to feeds of 10 related keywords, you can pack them all into one. Granted, an "and" boolean would be more powerful for narrowing search results.

Ok, so for the reader, we can see the power of the new tag search. But what does it mean for the publisher?

Well, the way I see it is this: we have the opportunity to present our information to more readers. Why? Because the new tag search has made it easier for people to subscribe to like keywords - and we just may be using those keywords.

Just like the "and" boolean would potentially add more value to searching, it will also add more value to the publisher. How is this? Ok, well, imagine that you've written an article about blogging and tags, like this one. Well, you would add the tags "blogging" and "tags" along with any others.

So, when someone is really looking for that article on tags and the blogosphere, they might start with "tags" tack on or drill down to "blogging" and there you are. Specificity allows writers and readers to connect. If we can provide this, lists won't mean a damn. Content that you want will be at your fingertips.

So, the next step for Technorati: expand the boolean search to where the power is. Use the "and" qualifier. Volume of content, lists, and all else is irrelevant in the face of value. Let's bring value to content by giving publishers and readers the power to define what content they are writing and reading.

Technorati Tags: bloggong, tags, technorati, search, content, lists

Developing your blogging voice.  Man this is a great session (I'll update this post with the slides).  Okay this is one of the "fun" topics.  It's also the hardest one to both blog and, I expect, to talk about.  Not that it's hard to talk about general rules, but sometimes the advice just comes down to "just start blogging".  Sound lame?  Maybe, but think about it this way—how do you get good at something hard?  Practice, right?

• Be authentic
• Be natural
• Your company isn't blogging, people are blogging.
• Don't let Marketing or PR/Communications blog.  Ouch!  But it is true.  Yes, I'm the product manager for Qumana and Lektora.  Yes, I need to make product plugs sometimes, but I was a blogger first.  And a blogger I will stay.  You want is straight?  I'll tell you as much as I can.
• Tune you writing to your audience
• Press releases: gist in your own words and link to the full release. I really like this one!

There are some great questions and comments from the audience.  Man, can't get them all!  Testing with an internal "dark blog" and letting other people within your company preview the writing before you start the public blog.  You know, though, it does come down to practice and just relaxing and writing.

Oh controversy ... my favourite.  Yes, controversy drives traffic.  I like writing controversial posts.  I like the feeling of "okay this should get some dialog going".  Do I court it?  Sometimes, yes.  Yep, sometimes I run into a topic that I hold a controversial opinion on.  No, I won't just make something up.  I might play Devil's advocate to keep or get conversation going.  Hey, just like real life.  Challenging the norms can really spawn great ideas and new concepts.

"Blogging, if you do it right, is risky/uncomfortable" — Molly.

Molly and Byron are on stage now at BBS05 talking about blogging platforms.  Targeted clearly at the entry level business blogger.  They've got this down.  Now they are missing Blogware and Bryght as hosted services and Drupal as self-install.

Some key considerations: Do you have tech people to help you?  Do you have your own servers?  Do you need "real" tech support?

All important questions. Read on ...

Technorati Tags : bbs05, blogbusinessummit, DL+Byron, Molly+Holzschlag, blogging+platforms