Fuzzy Content

One thing I think that lots of bloggers may be missing out on is readers who don’t use a feed reader. I think you need to access who your audience is. For example if you have a tech blog you might go with the assumption that most of your readers probably have a feed reader. However, if you do a student blog there are decent chances that your audience might consist of parents, administrators, friends, etc. These people might not all have readers. So they are missing out on the benefits of RSS.

How do we help them?
Here is what I suggest. Use a service that will turn your feed into an email. So they will get the full benefits of RSS without having to have a feed reader(something that I think is definitely not mainstream). Here are a few options

• Feedblitz
  Sign up, add your feed to account, then get the code and add to your site.
• Feedburner
  Burn your feed then on your account page, go to the publicize tab, then to email subscriptions. Then copy the code and add to your blog

There are also wordpress plugins for this. I am having trouble hunting them down in my del.icio.us, if I hunt it down I will add to comments.

So I think the benefit of this is that you can turn a casual non-techie browser into a regular reader like people who use feed readers with very little effort.

So as the title suggests, Feed me, but don’t forget my email.

-Matt Herzberger 

I ran across this article today on the Wired blog and just had to discuss.

As much as the next guy, I hate the term “Web 2.0″. It seems like everything these days is Web 2.0. When did it get here? Is it already here? If it were in a lineup, how would I pick it out? Did I invent it?

But that’s not enough…everyone is looking at the next big thing. Web 3.0 converges technologies. Web 4.0 is extensible markups great equalizer. Web 5.0 allows my dog to finally use the computer by barking signals and getting treats.

I rarely rant, but I just want people to use the Web the way they want to. For instance, I recently switched my personal site over to WordPress. And lo and behold, I’m on the road and need to update a page. With the trusty Blazer Web browser on my phone, I login, edit the page, and publish…just like that. I expected that I could do it…I did it…and I sat back and was marveled by it. That, my friends, is the Web.

I don’t claim that this is an original thought, but I wanted to put it out there for discussion. I just read an e-newsletter that talked about demographics of the U.S. population and, in a separate section, how colleges and universities can use Facebook for marketing.

It made me think about what we’ll be doing to attract the class of 2011. Here’s the prediction:

• Social networking *sites* will be irrelevant as each reader (user) will carry with them the context that they are now creating on sites like Facebook.

To the contrary of some experts, devices like XFN will make sites less important while increasing the importance of specialized or vertical search engines and even personal portals as those tools continue to develop.

SEO and SEM are going to get real interesting real soon. I can’t wait!

I made an aggreagated feed for all the higher ed web development sites I could think of

http://feed.kickrss.com/uwebfeed

Or you can view as a page

http://www.kickrss.com/uwebfeed

Please let me know if there are any that need to be added or that you feel shouldn’t be there.

Here are the sites in the feed currently:

Bob Johnson’s Blog on Internet Marketing
CogDogBlog
collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed
EducationPR
erelevant: electronic marketing for higher education
Fuzzy Content
Higher Ed Webs
Institutional Knowledge
Interllectual.com - coffee
Intermedia
mStoner Blog
Syndication for Higher Ed
templatedata
The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog
U B r a n d e r
U Marketing Guru
University web marketing and usability
Weblogg-ed

Real quick: A bit has been written about the move away from managed directories like Mozilla’s OPD toward algorithms like Google’s PageRank.

But now we have a convergence, of sorts, with Google Co-op.

Marketers of all stripes and industries should be able to see the value in this. Now any savvy individual with enough time on their hands can create their own Trulia or Zappos (or their own Petersons or College Board) and pull in a few bucks from ads. Sounds cool.

Obviously there’s a downside. Shady SEM’ers will quickly build their own tunnels to their sites with the hope of pulling in dollars from on-site ads. I guess the question would be, can they target their own spammish Adword campaigns effectively enough to avoid landing in their own tunnels. Probably.

But enough of the dark side. Spammish ads for “Find ‘bobrobboy’ on eBay” haven’t deteriorated PPC to the extent expected (yet?) so we shouldn’t condemn personal search so quickly.

Gotta run. Need to set up my own search engine for home roasting!

Update
Done! Use my coffee roasting search engine! Next up “The Best College Search Engine.”

Second Update
So here’s my second attempt:

So? How’s it work for you? Comment here and let’s work on this together!