DISQUS

Howard Yermish · 1 year ago

RSS is a very tricky topic. On one hand, I find myself using Google Reader to stay on top of certain news. It allows me to "fly" through the content and pick out the best bits to read. So from a user perspective, I definitely encourage other users to embrace RSS rather than manual checking. And if I get a few days behind, I just mark everything as read and move forward. Which brings me to the other hand, that is the engagement. I clearly am more engaged with some blogs than with others and I think that this would hold true with most RSS fans. Some sites get my attention more than others.

So yes, the numbers will be suspicious as you suggest. Maybe the old adage that "50% of my marketing isn't working, I just don't know which 50%" still applies to the Internet, even though we have such great metrics from email marketing and Google analytics available to us.

Brian Clark · 1 year ago

Velocity... I like that. We all need momentum to reach our marketing objectives, and that's an excellent way to characterize when you've finally hit the slipstream of influence (and sales).

John Jantsch · 1 year ago

@Brian - thanks for stopping by - I sort of remember in Physics class it having to do with both speed and direction - something we all need to keep in mind. Been a fun topic so far!

LindaBusiness · 1 year ago

Well, this post was philosophic and gave me much to think about. I did look at that AideRSS list and was shocked to discover that on my own I had found about six of those sites! And I'm a newbie at this. I will put a wrinkle in things though, as far as counting things like trackbacks and comments and such...I just wonder how many blog readers are like me who don't know what a trackback is and so I might read a post with great interest but not comment. Also I don't "do" RSS feeds yet because I don't really know what they are or how they work. So I've just admitted to my kindergarten level expertise! And yet I'm pursuing a marketing strategy online...go figure!

Scott Fox, Author of Internet · 1 year ago

All of this discussion (both here and on Brian's Copyblogger.com blog earlier today) point toward the need for a next generation of metrics to measure marketing success.

In the modern, online world, it's on-going customer/reader relationships that count more than simple uniques, RSS subscribers, or sales based on coaxing a customer into a one-off transaction.

So, how do you measure the success of a relationship?

As you're suggesting, that requires a more complex set of metrics than we have today because the beauty of interacting with real people directly is you never are 100% certain what outcome (positive or negative) may result.

There have always been lots of ways to casually evaluate relationships in our personal lives but now marketers are confronted with the challenge of measuring them on a vast scale to determine ROI.

John Gillett · 1 year ago

The RSS and storytelling ROI numbers can be misleading, but engagement and sales are real measures of successful marketing.

Hendry Lee · 1 year ago

Big numbers are useless without engagement and "velocity." I agree wholeheartedly. There is no way big numbers can hurt, as in this case. It may even help and seem more impressive (social proof).

If I'm given the choice, I'd choose both numbers and engagement.

This really is not an either/or question. There is nothing that will will take engagement away just because you have high RSS subscriber numbers.

Nascar · 1 year ago

This is an interesting point. I do believe sales is the ultimate goal of any marketing plan, however there are many metrics that measure success.

Jodi Kaplan · 1 year ago

Great post, John. Thought I'd share this article on engagement which someone just forwarded to me.

http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articlei...

Melanie Baker · 1 year ago

"The problem I wrestle with in this argument is that it must start with the supposition that's every blogger and social media player has the very same goal."

That totally nails the results of a lot of conversations I had with the bloggers covered in the list we analyzed. Some thought it was really engaging; some thought it was pretty cool and had a lot of questions (which were a great education for me); and some reflected your statement above -- that it wasn't necessarily what they track (or at least not the most important thing).

Adjacent to that is the fact that some really valuable stuff -- interpersonal interactions -- take place off the grid, as it were, in formats like email, or evolve from online venues to offline ones, where we can't track systematically at all.

It's definitely part of the opportunity of the metrics "space", I think, given that things are so embryonic yet. Ilya, our CTO, has said he thinks the solution to RSS, filtering, engagement measuring, metrics, etc. will be a variety of applications that can work in combinations, and given how many different sets of priorities I've seen, I'm certainly inclined to agree.

John Jantsch · 1 year ago

@melanie - thanks - you know I'm a big fan of AideRSS and I do think your tools answers some of this already as it shows another layer of engagement well beyond subscribers only.