David Unleashed

Today I was reviewing press releases at PRWeb and found the following release Modera Assists Estonian Number One Popstar Become Global Internet Hit.  I followed the link the the web sites provided.  Where do I purchase her music?  It is actually pretty good stuff.  Easy to listen to while I am working.  Perhaps I just do not understand how the music stuff works; but then again, I shouldn’t be required to understand the inner workings of the music industry to be able to purchase music.  Right?

Let’s go another direction.  Perhaps I just could not find the right link when I clicked through.  Landing pages should not be Easter egg hunts for the media.  Poorly thought out landing pages are a firewall between you, the media and your consumers.  (Okay, I admit it.  I am a bit guilty here because it is easy to run short on time.  In fact I just made this error in my latest press release.)

I really like Hannah and hopefully someone can point me to a place I can purchase her music.  I cannot find it on iTunes.

Modera, you are doing a great job getting the word out about Hannah, now please tell me where I can make a purchase.

– David

In the most simplest of terms, PRWeb is allowing visitors to take sound bites or entire podcast episodes and roll them into their own podcast and or CGM (Consumer Generated Content) productions.  This is actually great news for the podcast community which is constantly on the prowl for ideas and content to fill talk show formats.  Our entire archive past and present is available for their sampling.

Let us know  how you are using the podcasts.  (This is not a requirement but we do find it interesting.)

Enjoy. — David

Several weeks ago I was at lunch with a very smart person.  She asked me what I thought of Yahoo’s latest RSS adoption study.  I asked her to watch my blog for my response.  So here it is. 

I want to call an end to RSS adoption studies.  They’re just plain silly.   To start with, we cannot even determine what to call RSS within the tech-savvy community.  Is it Rich Site Summary, Real Simple Syndication or the newer Really Simple Stealing? 

But regardless of what you call it, RSS is still used in too many places where its usage is transparent to the casual Internet user.  I know this because PRWeb feeds show up on tens of thousand of sites in their rendered format.  When users visit these sites they are not exposed to raw RSS XML code, but rather, to a nicely formatted display of press release content. 

Does this make a reader any less an RSS consumer than someone reading news through an RSS reader?  I don’t think so.  Any movement to measure RSS adoption should be, at a minimum, an attempt to measure the amount of blogs and Web sites that render RSS on behalf of their visitors.  If anyone knows of such a study, do me a favor and post it below in the comments to this blog post.

The bottom line is, we all are consumers of RSS whether we know it or not.  Just because we do not always see the raw file does not mean that file wasn’t used when the page was rendered.  Attempting to measure adoption of RSS in today’s environment is akin to attempting to measure the adoption of HTML, JPEG or PNG.

I recently participated in a roundtable discussion on RSS where some of the discussion centered on the measurement and ROI of RSS.   I voiced my opinion during that discussion and feel the need to share my thoughts here as well.  First, I don’t know where the notion first started that you should be able to measure ROI on everything.  But someone should find those people and give them a big spanking.

I am reminded of a keynote speech given several years ago by Doc Searls at the very first Syndicate Conference in NYC.  At the time, he postulated that not everything needs a business model.  He gave several examples of things that we use every day in our business or personal lives that do not have business models associated with them.  For instance, our parking lot does not have a business model.  A toothbrush does not have a business model. The absence of a business model does not mean that these items are unnecessary just because you cannot tie them back to ROI.  Bravo, Doc.

I feel the same way about RSS. Trying to measure ROI on RSS is silly; it’s like trying to measure the ROI of your HTML or JPEG.  While all these things are ingredients used to build platforms that can have ROI attached to them, they do not have any ability to generate ROI in and of themselves.  I am not saying that properly implemented RSS strategies cannot improve the bottom line for your company.  They can, and we are seeing this every day.  Offering information to your users in alternative formats is always a good idea.  If in doing this you generate cost savings or build your brand, you have impacted your bottom line.

We have taken this approach at PRWeb, and are the RSS leaders in our industry.  Why, because we were convinced that we could measure ROI?  No.  We made the investment for one simple reason.  Providing your content to consumers in their preferred format is always the right thing to do.

Lee Odden interviewed me for his Online Marketing Blog. For those interested in some good background on PRWeb and future of press release industry as defined by PRWeb it is probably worth the read. Lee tried hard to get me to spill the beans on new initiatives we are working on here at PRWeb. I am not going to say too much, but it will be GREAT.

David