As of now, FeedFlix is still pretty basic in terms of social networking, but it really opened my eyes to fact that Netfix actually had personal and public RSS feeds. They are buried way down in the footer navigation of Netflix.com, which is not surprising as I would imagine the majority of users have yet to adopt the use of an RSS reader.
There are a variety of personal feeds such as Recommendations and Queue in addition to public feeds (new releases, top 25). Adding these feeds to my reader has really saved a bunch of time and streamlined my Netflix usage. I can quickly check out some recommendations and new releases and only if I see something I like do I need to go to Netflix.com. Hopefully this will increase/improve my movie watching make the most of my Netflix subscription.

It is great to see Netflix using RSS and it would be cool if they would highlight this feature more prominently. Perhaps similar to the recommendation engine challenge, they can have a RSS integration challenge to incorporate and explain their RSS technology and get more people using it.

I came across another blog entry on SEO-Scoop coincidentally(?) written on same day as Jason's in which the author weighs the pros and cons of blogging daily versus blogging when one has something worthwhile to say.

I suppose my lack of consistent posting can be attributed to the latter school of thought. I haven't posted regularly, but I like to think that when I have, that it has been of interest to my readers. At the very least, they are topics which caught my attention enough to stop what I was doing and share my thoughts. Blogging daily is a hard task--after awhile it is simply inevitable that you will feel as though you have run out of things to say. As Jason points out, however, it is indeed easier to join an existing conversation than to start a new one.

With RSS, a blog's audience does not have to check back several times a day, only to be disappointed when there is no new content. Therefore, the blog might not suffer from a drop in readership when you're less than disciplined about publishing an entry. However, blogging consistently can make sure that your site stays in the forefront of your audience's minds, as they start to feel that they can reasonably expect to be alerted to new posts on a regular basis. There is of course an additional bonus to frequent posting--that of the increased search engine visibility and ranking.

Blogging, especially that of a corporate nature, can seem a bit daunting when faced with the prospect of keeping the content updated. As opposed to stopping completely, it would seem preferable to post on topics that you feel passionate about--regardless of how frequent that might be. However, if you find yourself in the position where you MUST blog, do a little research first. Find sites that discuss topics which interest you and deal with your industry. Look at what they are discussing and see if there is a way in which you can continue the conversation with a post of your own.

Blogging regularly is a discipline, and one that comes easier with time and practice. At least, that is what I will be telling myself as I attempt to become a more regular contributor to this site.

The common question for many is still, "if people don't get email updates when there is new content, how are they updated?" The first answer to this comes in the form of another question: Who is the audience? If it's the general public, for example, you might need to consider how you will assist in guiding people on learning about and using an RSS reader. On our own Room 214 website, we have an RSS feeds page that features a link to a simple video tutorial on how to use Google Reader that we produced with very little effort.

If it's an internal corporate audience (like a sales force), you may want to mandate the use of a desktop application that is installed and launches an alert on the desktop (like a widget) when new content arrives. You may also consider a strategy that ensures content is being received through an ipod or mp3-enabled phone. You could even track who is accessing data contained within the RSS through unique, authenticated channels.

The point to all of this is recognizing that there is a true rollout process to consider in terms of planning, using and providing training on the tools that enable RSS as a content delivery mechanism. Today I was reminded that even some of the innovators interested in using RSS to support new business models need to be educated. And man, have we been educating lately (note: we love this stuff, and day rates are cheaper than hourly).

This is a common dilemma, one that potentially sets a habit pattern of employees not paying much attention to company wide communications. Their solution? Targeted RSS feeds based on job description and location.

According to the article in Fast Company, Penn estimates that with this time-saving measure they will get back 30 minutes a week from each employee in the first year - saving in excess of $750,000. Thumbs up to Union Bank for being an early adopter of RSS in the work place. Certainly more fuel for the fire from our perspective.

With all this potential development talk, I always find it fascinating how people gravitate to the discussion of content management as such an important need for their websites. Not to argue completely against this, but let's be real: the focus should be more about content visibility.

I hear James saying in some of our prospecting meetings, "if a tree falls in the forest, who knows about it?" If your website is updated, who knows about that… and when? Do you think people are actively visiting your site to see if there are any updates? Hope not.

If you do think it's important for people to know when an update to your website is done, then you need RSS. Come to think of it, if you believe it's important people can find your content using a search engine, you need RSS. If you think it's important to keep your job as a marketing or public relations professional, then you need (go ahead, your turn).

Laurie Petersen of MediaPost has a nice recap on her blog post - looking at WPP Group, Google and Microsoft all making huge multi-million/billion dollar acquisitions.

Microsoft's purchase of aQuantive is most interesting to us, as Avenue A comes with that package. This is in our mind is a great strategy, as Avenue A|Razorfish provides the expertise to clients seeking to use the actual medium.

What's next? Google's recent universal search announcement, I believe the next logical step is to take a look at how companies are going to implement search visibility strategies leveraging their own sites and taking control of and managing thier ow digital assets. The push is to become their own content publishers and feed the searc engines with new and relevant content. Right now, one sees companies leveraging social media (YouTub, MySpace, Flickr) to increase online search visibility.

The true breakthrough is to implement a RSS media casting strategy on their own site for their own content. So right now you have very large companies with websites that have no RSS feeds coming off them at all. With Google indexing RSS feeds, this is a tremendous waste of an opportunity. When compaines are looking at social media, word of mouth strategies it's all about leveraging other services. The focus now needs to turn internal where they can have a single system to manage and syndicate their own audio, video and text content.

So, this might answer a lot of questions we get about why Room 214 a search marketing, social media agency, also has its own CastLock (now Post Zinger) product. What we are doing is providing not only the marketing strategy, but the distribution and RSS management strategy for a client's content.

Fear likely plays a large factor in why these technologies are not being adopted as quickly as one might think, given all the hype and buzz that revolves around the technologies. Despite the fact that blogs have garnered much positive attention and are being used by many Fortune 500 companies and high-level execs, a sense of fear still pervades--a fear that the company will reveal too much or somehow garner more negative press with the use of this technology.

However, as the article points out, the adoption of new technologies is likely to increase as the age gap between executives in power and employees decreases. Right now, companies are run by individuals used to using primary communication methods such as the telephone, while the newest generation of employees are used to communicating via instant message, blogging, text message, and other forms of social media. For a generation so immersed in technology and so willing and able to embrace it in its newest forms, Web 2.0 is nothing to be afraid of, and its increased usage will only help companies evolve and become more powerful in their communication. The companies that can see the benefit and are early adopters are likely to stay a step (or two) ahead of their competition.

Possibly cooler: the video title, description, thumbnail images, comments, and number of views tracked in YouTube will automatically be pulled and displayed within a client's domain. Always keeping an SEO focus, the client maintains the ability to add keyword tagging to each entry - and of course, all RSS feed stats are available for meaningful reporting. Fun stuff.

If you have access to server logs you can view these stats. In the image below, you can see an example of what the subscriber data might look like:

Bloglines, still my preferred reader due to its support of authenticated feeds and favicons (I love seeing the little icons that people/companies took the time to make and integrate into their feeds), has shown the number of subscribers to a feed within its reading pane for as long as I've used it, so this is another way that Google Reader is closing the gap in terms of feature differences.

If you syndicate your feed through Feedburner, these stats will become available to you within their interface, so you can get all of your subscriber data in one location.

However, if for some reason Feedburner is down, you choose not to use Feedburner, or you just like staring at your server logs, then you can rejoice in the fact that you now have one more definitive indicator of how many people are subscribed to your feeds. Since Google Reader is rapidly gaining popularity, this statistic is a very welcome addition as companies strive to gain a clearer picture of their blog/RSS subscriber base.

In fact, Google Reader is perhaps the easiest link blogging tool I've found. On any feed item you wish to share, just click the "share" link and it will automatically appear on your link blog. No configuration required.

Of course, there are pros and cons about using Google Reader to create your link blogs. Before you decide to do this, you should consider these questions:

1. Is driving traffic or improving your site ranking a key goal? If so, then realize that a link blog generated by Google Reader will not be part of your site. Rather, it will appear under a Google-related domain -- and with a long, ugly URL, to boot. For instance, the URL for my Google Reader link blog is: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17484824062998564750 You could try declaring a subdomain (such as links.yourdomain.com) and map that to your Google reader blog. That way, it would superficially appear to be part of your site -- although it may not count that way in your site statistics or search engine rankings.
2. Do you want to tell people why you're sharing items? For many people, it's not enough to see which items of content you're recommending. They prefer to know why you thought each item was worth a look. If you think this is true of the people whom you wish to engage through your link blog, then Google Reader probably is not the right link blogging tool for you. At this point, it only allows you to share items -- not to make and share your comments about those items.

It seems to me that if your link blog is intended as part of your general search visibility and public content strategy, you'll probably need a more sophisticated tool that Google reader to generate it. I'll be covering such tools in future tutorials.

What is a Google Reader link blog good for?

If you currently don't have a blog at all, a Google Reader link blog is a very simple and fast way to get started. If you make sure to set your Google Account nickname to a term you want to be easily findable (such as your company's name), then that will show up in the title for your link blog and increase your findability somewhat. Be sure to subscribe your link blog's feed in feed aggregator services such as Technorati or Icerocket, for extra findability.

Personally, I think the best use of a Google Reader link blog is to share items with people you already know, rather than trying to engage newcomers. If someone already knows you or your company, that familiarity provides context so they can probably guess why you recommended certain links -- which partially makes up for the fact that you can't post comments about items you share via Google Reader.

Therefore, if you do create a Google Reader link blog, consider publicizing it mainly to people with whom you already have an established relationship. View it as a relationship maintenance strategy, not a general publicity tool.

Tag Blogs

As covered in my video tutorial, Google Reader also allows you to create separate link blogs where you share specific tags. These "Tag blogs" are link blogs, but they tend to be more specialized.

An excellent use for a Google Reader tag blog is to share links of interest to a smaller, defined community -- such as a project team, or users of a specific product or service.

For instance, the head of a professional association's conference committee might create a link blog that shares only conference-related links, such as potential speakers, issues to address in the program, or news about the conference venue or location. Committee members could subscribe to that tag blog's feed to keep abreast of that stream of project-related content.

...Regardless of which tool you use to create them, link blogs and tag blogs should only be part of your online content strategy. Engaging effectively with customers, colleagues, and communities generally requires original content, not just pointers to what's available elsewhere. If you're trying to engage people, they expect you to have something worthwhile to say.

1. Greater control of online marketing and distribution of (written, audio and video) content to people who are asking for it.
2. Dramatic increase in search engine visibility when content is syndicated and regularly updated
3. Spam-free alternative to effectively delivering newsletters, promotions, press releases, articles, training, company updates and more.
4. Increased sales and customer retention
5. Limitless opportunities with increasing adoption rate of RSS due to social media, new online interfaces and on-demand expectations.

I know it's been overused by a host of blogger/RSS evangelists, but as Robert Scoble has said: "If you do a marketing site and you don't have an RSS feed, you should be fired." I guess I'm wondering who doesn't do a marketing site.

Once you start to use the site, you quickly get over the fact that it isn''t the prettiest interface out there. In fact, bells and whistles would probably hinder you from quickly getting to the content--and content is king on a site like this. Something that is often difficult to present to a client seeking a new or redesigned website is that the prettiest interface won''t save you if you have nothing substantial to offer.

I have personally used Craigslist to buy a Halloween costume, find a bookclub to join, hire freelance writers at my old job, and even meet a few new friends. I also know several people for whom finding housing or a roommate was a successful venture. In terms of its usefulness and ability to suck your time if you let it (I find the Missed Connections and "Best of" are always good for some amusement!), I feel that Craigslist is right up there with Wikipedia.

Even more amazing is the fact that Craigslist is a company with only 23 employees, yet the 7th highest ranking site in pageviews according to Alexa. As stated on Michael Slater''s blog, Craigslist is something of an anomaly, but a fascinating one at that.

Craigslist is a case study of sorts in terms of what is really important to users coming to a website for information. Content, in this case entirely user-generated, is of the utmost importance, and so Craiglist presents it to you with no frills--just a simple, easy to understand interface. Its simplicity really doesn''t do it justice, considering how powerful the site can be.

You can use the site to learn about a city you might be moving to, learn more about the activities in your own, find a date, find housing, get a job, barter, and buy pretty much anything under the sun. While this in its own right is powerful, given that almost every aspect of importance in your life can be satisfied here, the real power comes from the ability to search and subscribe to feeds.

Let's say that you really want to join a hiking club or buy a used kitchen table. You could scour the individual posts in the groups and for sale sections daily, in hopes of finding what you are looking for, or you could do a search query to locate any current posts matching those keywords. If you don''t immediately find what you want, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that will inform you of any new posts matching those keywords. As advocated on the site Get Rich Slowly, the feeds can help you get exactly what you want, as long as you are willing to act quickly. Post author J.D. also lists several other useful tips for getting the most out of Craigslist.

While this post has now become something of a glowing review for Craigslist, it is also a reminder that while good design is nice, it's what's contained in the design that really matters. Good content is often the hardest aspect of a website to come up with and organize, and the ability to easily navigate and search is key if you don''t want users to quickly click away from your site and onto a competitor''s. You need to give your users a reason to return, and Craigslist excels in this regard.

I will admit, when I first came across this post, I was a bit skeptical. The first items listed were ones that I've seen ad nauseum on many other sites such as "write well" and "be an expert". While those are indeed important things to have in order to create and maintain a successful site, I wonder how many people out there think "I'll just write really poorly about things on which I have little interest and even less expert knowledge"? But then, in a stroke of refreshing originality when it comes to such lists, author Tony Hung goes above and beyond the other lists I've seen. He starts with the obvious, which are indeed important and a good foundation for success, and builds upon it with many, many (40 total!) other suggestions--a good number of which I haven't seen on other such lists.

Among his many suggestions, some of them require a bit of work on your part--such as doing research to be the first to break those big news stories. The payoff for accomplishing this task is huge, however; if you are the first, you have a good chance of being linked to by those coveted A-list bloggers. I also like his suggestions to interview other bloggers, invite guest bloggers, participate in contests, create your own giveaways, and make social networking work for you.

Mr. Hung goes into greater depth than I will here, so if the above sounds interesting (and it should--there is ALWAYS something more you can do to increase blog quality and traffic), I urge you to check out his post and take advantage of as many of his suggestions as are applicable/feasible. I think the biggest thing to take away from how-to articles of this sort is that persistence pays off. If you take the time and make the effort to better your blog, it will show. It's easy to say and not as simple to do, but success must be earned, and your readers will know if you take pride in maintaining a great site.

This list will undoubtedly prove useful for anyone looking to start tracking the latest online marketing buzz or simply to augment their own lists with a few hidden gems. I'm not telling you to download the OPML simply because our Capture the Conversation blog made the list (although it did), but because by providing this list, Lee has made a great contribution to the online community.

If you find the list to be overwhelming in terms of information overload, you can take Lee's suggestion and import the file and then weed out blogs that aren't as relevant for you. It's a whole lot easier to filter out what you don't want than it is to search for some of the lesser-known blogs on these topics.

During their never-ending pursuit to index the world, Google began experimenting with sitemaps in June of 2005. For those of you that don't know, a sitemap is an XML documents that contains a list of all pages hosted on a website. In addition, the sitemap also details when pages were last updated, and how important a particular page is in relation to other pages on your site. This, if you haven't figured it out already, is huge when it comes to getting your web site indexed.

Typically search engines discover web pages by sending out spiders that follow links, this is also known as crawling the web. The spider then reports back to the search engine all the pages that it has found, which are then indexed. This method, while it works, is inefficient. Who is to say that every page on the Internet has an inbound link with which the spider can discover them by? Google understood this pitfall, and began working on a better way to index the web. Thus the sitemap was born. The thought is this, why go out and actively find pages to index when you can have those pages come to you? Although this requires a little more effort by the webmaster, it also allows the webmaster to indicate exactly what pages he or she wants indexed, and how often those pages should be re-crawled for updated content.

For a webmaster, the benefits of building a sitemap are tremendous. But how exactly does one create a sitemap? There are two ways this can be accomplished. The first, and often most complete way, is to run a script in the root of your web directory that reads every file therein. While this method allows for a complete listing of pages, providing you have a website with static content, it requires the ability to run a script on the hosting server, which isn't a possibility for everyone. The second method, which is more commonly used, is to have a third party website crawl your site and create a sitemap for you. If all the pages on your site are linked well to one another (use caution with DHTML or javascript links), then this method will work just as well. If the inter-linking of the website is not set up well, then having a third party website crawl your site will be subject to the same pitfalls that a search engine would experience, as previously discussed. Below are three resources that will help you to create your sitemap.

Script based solution: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html
Website based solution: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Other solutions: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

Alright, so now you've created a sitemap, or at least know how to. The next step is to submit your sitemap to the search engines. Up until about two weeks ago Google was the only search engine that worked with sitemaps. Fortunately both Yahoo and MSN have recently followed suit, and now you can submit that same sitemap to all the major search engines. This, again, is great news for you as a webmaster. Before the end-user is able to find your website, the search engine must know that you exist, and building/submitting your sitemap is by far the quickest way accomplish that. Once you are indexed, the next step is to get your site decently ranked in the search engines, but lets save that for another post.

For more information on building your sitemap and the various protocols you will need to follow, check out www.sitemaps.org. This site is co-run by Google, MSN, and Yahoo (I know, its mind boggling). There you can find up to date information on the sitemap protocol and the answers to many frequently asked question regarding sitemaps.

In addition to having great content, a directory site called Aviva has created a list of 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch. You may not feel that all of the tips are relevant for your site, but using them as a guide can provide a great starting point for making sure your blog has some visibility.

One great tip is to make sure you don't launch before you have at least 5 blog posts. This may mean that the launch is delayed a bit while you find enough content, but the result will be worth it. One initial post isn't enough to give readers a sense of what your blog is about--having more posts will also increase the chances that you will get linked, as your voice will already be more established.

Making it easy for people to read your great content is another way to help ensure success. You should provide several ways to syndicate your content, including easy to find links to RSS feeds, an opportunity to receive posts via email, and even those trendy social bookmarking icons to make it easy to submit great posts to those sites.

You shouldn't rely on your readers to submit your best posts. If you feel you've provided something that is helpful and informative, you should submit to all the major sites, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.

The article also mentions a topic we've delved into in the past: strategic commenting. The motto here is that you get what you give. If you participate in other conversations and leave a link to your site, the chances are that people interested in that other site might pay you a visit to see what you have to say. Getting traffic that is already like-minded can help boost your readership. However, you should still include a link in places such as your email signature or your Myspace profile--every little bit helps.

I encourage everyone thinking about creating a new blog to check out the article. For those of you with existing blogs, the list provides an opportunity to see if you are taking full advantage of all social and syndicating tools available. If you're not making it easy for people to find you, link to you, or subscribe to you, then you are most likely losing out on reaching a larger audience and your blog is not reaching its full potential.

Almost a month ago we posted "Syndicating Press Room - The 9th Free Thing Every Site Should Do" in response to Seth Godin's post about 8 things every site should do.

It continues to be our strong belief that if you are responsible for visibility, public relations or expert positioning one of the first items that should be addressed is getting your press room syndicating RSS feeds for the masses.

The residual benefits are tremendous and the impact can be immediate.

Others in the conversation:
Steve Rubel
Marshall Kirkpatick

First as referenced by Stan Gibson, of CIO Insight in his article Podcasting: An Enterprise Hit: "The issue: Podcasting presents a conundrum for technology executives, many of whom told eWeek they don't have a podcasting strategy or much to do with the practice. For now, business units--say, the marketing department or sales--are leading podcasting efforts. These units may create their own systems or acquire them without consulting the technology department."

Very true to our own experiences. The sales and marketing departments see tremendous value in the currency of being able to quickly and efficiently communicate within the organization and with customers through podcasting.

Imagine a regional sales VP being able to easily upload a podcast on pricing strategy and having all the traveling sales rep instantly get the update on their mobile phone.

The natural advantages of podcasting has many sales and marketing groups end-running the IT department, because as Stan mentioned, IT has no strategy and little to do with the practice.

The danger in not including the IT department in this process is from a content privacy standpoint. Sales and marketing understands the benefits of podcasting, but often overlook the basic technology behind it.

By definition a podcast is audio delivered through an RSS feed, and if a competitor gets a hold of your sales team RSS feed, they'll also happily listen to you're selling strategy. This is huge double take for enterprise podcasting and often shuts down the effort all together.

A true RSS feed authentication platform is where IT departments need to start crafting its corporate podcasting strategy. Sure for a podcast like FitPod.com the more listeners the better, so protecting the feed is of no concern. But from an enterprise perspective, where corporate strategy and inside discussions take place, the highest level of RSS feed authentication and security is required.

Room 214 has a RSS feed authentication podcast platform that we've been using for such programs, one in particular is for the Alltel Audibles podcasts featuring NFL star receivers Steve Smith, Joe Horn, Larry Fitzgerald and Joe Jurevicius. The podcast feed is exclusive for Alltel customers for two days, prior to the public release on Fridays.

In our experience working with companies trying to improve their web site experience, we find that only about 10 percent of their website gets updated on a frequent basis, and a majority of the time those updates are made in the press room area.

So one of the first recommendations we make is to get that press room working for them. Crank up the RSS feed and start syndicating. You can't expect people to remember to periodically come to your website and scan through the pages to see if there's any new information. And it would be naive if you think your press contacts are habitually combing your press room for new info.

Since a syndicating press room is built on a blog platform, every time new information is posted into the press room, it syndicates through an RSS feed which pings the search engines and notifying feed subscribers of new content. So it serves a dual purpose of driving search visibility and notifying your followers of new content.

There have been instances of "pure bliss response" when our clients have let their press contacts know that they now have an RSS feed and will take them off the email distribution list. Making your press contacts happy and keeping them current goes a long way.

Now, to say that this is free, is assuming that you have the skill sets internally to design and develop the syndicating press room on a blog platform. If you're seeking a do-it-yourself approach we recommend MovableType and WordPress as blog platforms.

What does a syndicating press room look like? Here are some samples of news rooms we have customized on blog platforms:
http://www.quistfinancial.com/press-room/
http://www.organicnewsroom.com/
http://www.tensorcomm.com/press-room/
http://www.smartsearchmarketing.com/news/

See, part of what I do is journalism, so consequently a lot of PR folks unthinkingly add me to their press release e-mail lists. I really, really don't like that. In fact, I routinely flag any unsolicited press release as spam. I strongly prefer to get news by feed, and I subscribe to lots of feeds on the beats I cover.

It's not that I'm closed to new sources. In fact, PR reps for prospective sources can always e-mail me to request permission to send me releases. If I think they're relevant enough, I'll first ask for their feed URL. If they don't offer a feed, then I'll let them send me e-mail only if I think their content truly is on-topic for me.

Not surprisingly, several PR pros were alarmed that I'd flag their precious releases as spam. Tough! It's my inbox, and have no trouble finding good leads from diverse sources.

On Saturday, PR blogger Barbara Iverson picked up on my theme and encouraged PR pros to offer feeds. I appreciate her support in that community.

In the comments to her post, I asked Iverson whether she thinks most PR folks know how to set up a feed, or know enough to ask their tech people to set it up for them. From her reply, I gather that most PR pros probably don't even know what feeds are, let alone how to set them up.

Then she responded with a good question of her own: "Do you think most reporters know about feeds or how to ask for them?"

Here's what I told her, plus more reasons why organizations should publish their news via feed...

The result? I rarely checked my feeds. What was meant to save me time ended up creating drastic information overload.

The nasty side effect of this was that I wasn't keeping up with online conversations as well as I like. To me, online conversations are very important. They're the lifeblood of my networking, R&D, and marketing. They're also important to my personal life.

So I took the drastic step of reorganizing my feeds by task, switching to a new feed reader, and dumping about 80% of my feed subscriptions.

And I'm so much happier! Especially because I once again am comfortably in the flow of conversations that intrigue and inspire me. Also, it's now so much easier to follow and participate in conversations on behalf of my clients.

So here's the quick version of how I did it...

What I want to discuss are two techniques on how you can be the online BUZZ STARTER that everyone else is commenting and creating trackbacks on.

Having completely transitioned to online communications and social media, I brought along some tried and true PR tactics that can be applied to capturing the online conversations. As a matter of fact a few basic block and tackle PR tactics are some of the most powerful ways to be the BUZZ STARTER.

#1. Editorial Calendar Tracking
As much as those of us in the social media world want to lay claim to starting and generating the conversational trends, the fact of the matter is that traditional main stream media (MSM) continues to have a huge influence on conversational topics. The beauty of the MSM is that they are an advertising driven revenue model, so they must publish editorial calendars about subject topics in upcoming issues in order to secure ad sponsorship. Often times editorial calendars are published a year in advance. These calendars are your ticket to being a Buzz Starter. Go get the editorial calendars from your industry trade publications and find out what they are planning to publish in print and start blogging and writing articles for online syndication a month or two in advance of the publication issue. This gives the search engines the time to index your content giving you high visibility for the topic once the publication hits the street.

#2. Industry Conferences
The survival of great industry conferences depends on the quality of the speakers and the relevance of the topics to the attendees. Just like editorial calendars, conferences are planned well in advance, and conference organizers will put out a call for speakers based on subject matter they have identified as being timely and relevant to the audience. By looking at the speaking tracks you can identify subject trends that people will be seeking additional information and knowledge on. If you are subject expert on one of those trends, then start creating and syndicating content a month or two prior to the event. Find out who's speaking and engage in a conversation with them either via personal email, or posting comments and trackbacks on their respective blogs.

Okay, so the obvious strategy here is to also be in the stories presented in the editorial calendars and be the speaker at the industry conference. I'll go over that strategy in an upcoming post.