Tag: RSS

  • From RSS to Today

    Is RSS dying? Quick answer: No

    But RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has a lot more to compete with in 2010 than it did in 2005 when it took off.

    In 2005, the advent of aggregators like Bloglines, Google reader, and even the über popularity of my.yahoo.com made RSS the best way to grow your reach as a blogger. If you could just get them to click that orange button– they’d get your blog post every time you published automatically!

    RSS was king.

    For a few years RSS was one of the easy measurement tools of blog power. As people visited a site for the first time they were more likely to subscribe to a blog if they knew say… 1034 other people already did. (And yes, tons of the names in the Christian blogosphere you know today got known simply because they figured out how to manipulate the Feedburner subscriber chicklet. They made it seems like they had tens of thousands when they really had about a hundred. Tricky, tricky. It was dirty but you bought their books. Sorry.)

    In 2006, the apple cart began to get upset with the popularity of sites which sifted through thousands of relevant RSS feeds within a niche` and curated the niche` into a website. Power wasn’t just measured in your ability to have thousands of RSS subscribers… it became measured in your ability to get your conent brought to the front page. Sites like Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and Mashable exploded simply by curating their respective niche`. (Imagine editors looking through tens of thousands of RSS feeds and choosing 10-12 things a day to link bait.) Interestingly, since that’s essentially what newspapers and television news folks do, these curators became recognized as legitimate news outlets within their sector. All because they subscribed to thousands of RSS feeds and started to bring the best stuff to the top. Along the way they earned more than your RSS subscription– they earned your trust.

    In 2008 and gaining strength through today RSS has become less important. Why? We don’t need to have tons of content automatically sent to us via an aggregator. Nor do we need the big niche` sites to curate the conversation generally. Instead of subscribing to Mashable or Boing Boing or the New York Times, I monitor my friends feed on Facebook or Twitter. I allow them to go through their aggregators and allow them to be my curator. In other words… I read what my friends tell me to read because they thought enough of it to retweet it or recommend it to me on Facebook.

    Here’s the new reality bloggers, news agencies, and marketers are wrestling with every day: We’ve gone from RSS to FFS.

    What is FFS? I just made it up.

    Friends and Fans Syndication: Delivering your content through relationship-based platforms.

    Learn how to manipulate FFS and you will be king in 2011.

  • A few blog updates

    Most people read my blog via RSS or Facebook these days. (Roughly 50%) So if you are one of those people you won’t notice a few of these changes to my blog. Here’s a few updates, nothing death defying.

    1. Added an FAQ and Free Downloads page under the “About me” tab. I love that people are using my contact page more and more. But I thought I’d just put the most obvious stuff there.
    2. Swapped out the Feedburner email form for a better looking daily email from Mailchimp. Here’s a look at the archive. If you want to switch, simply opt out of the Feedburner email next time it comes and fill out the form in the right sidebar.
    3. Also new to the sidebar, I’m feeding my Delicious account. So if you want to see what I’m bookmarking in the adolescent research and youth ministry categories, that’s right there.
    4. It seems like people have figured out all of the Twitter and Facebook sharing, liking, and retweeting stuff at the bottom of every post. Thanks for that.
    5. A few people have emailed that they missed the monster. I’ve taken note of that, so you’ve been seeing him appear in some more content lately.

    I’m always adding and playing with stuff on my blog. This is kind of my test site for all the other sites I manage. So if something looks funky from time-to-time, now you know why.

  • RSS Fixed

    Thanks to Andrea and a few others who mentioned to me that my RSS was messed up on my blog.

    It took a little messing around but I found the problem. Yes, it was tied to the hack that occurred earlier in May.

    Literally, three characters in a line of code. Story of my life!

    If you’d like to subscribe to my blog via RSS please click here.

    I also heard that some users may have problems leaving a comment. (Something about creating an account at Yahoo! Trust me, I’m a Google guy, I’d never make you do that.)

    If you are on a Windows computer or a Mac Firefox user, please press F5 to clear the cache on your computer/browser for this site. If that doesn’t clear it up, please send me an email at mclanea@gmail.com so I can help.

  • Facebook Morphs Blogging Again

    adam-head-09-100px-squareBlogging, by very nature, is a fluid art. Just a few years ago I thought I was pretty slick because I could journal on my computer using Microsoft Word. Flash forward a few years, to around 2000, and I learned that I could take those Word documents and convert them to webpages. It was cumbersome and I didn’t do it very often… but it was awesome. Then Blogger.com took “the web log” out of the hands of the HTML king and made blogging accessible to just about anyone willing to give it a shot. I was fasinated that I could link to friends blogs and that we could leave comments for one anothers posts. A few years later, 2005-2006 and Typepad and WordPress suddenly made it possible for blogs to live on their own domain easily.

    In 2007-2008, blogging became all about search and syndication. I started seeing my stats level off while I could tell my reach greatly extended. RSS (really simple syndication) made my content portable and SEO (search engine optimization) got my blog noticed high in Google search results.

    facebook2009 has seen blogging morph again. Facebook’s power in the adult demographic has brought blog syndication to a whole new level. Now my posts appear on my Facebook friend’s timeline, so a whole new audience of people has been added to the pool of people who read my blog. When they comment that ends up on their friends timeline, which greatly expands the pool of people reading and commenting on my stuff. (Though there isn’t yet a matrix for this so that’s a bit frustrating.) In the past few months I’ve run into tons of people who read my blog and I have no idea who they are or how they got here… but it’s awesome!

    More noticeably, in the past few months I’ve noticed a steep uptick in folks who read my blog posts exclusively on Facebook and comment there as well. Often times, I’m left with a post which generates two separate conversations. Which is really cool! On top of that, Twitter has further expanded my blogs discussion and reach. While there is some overlap, Twitter is mostly a different audience for my content.

    Wagon_WheelGoing forward, adammclane.com is now and will continue to be the hub of my online presence. It feeds RSS, search results, Facebook, and Twitter. I think of the personal blog as the engine that powers everything else. That said, my recommendation for beginners has begun to morph. You can certainly do the same thing with a WordPress.com blog (free) or even a Facebook account.

    And since I know about 75% of the people who are reading this post will never make it to adammclane.com, here are some ways we can connect. We can be Facebook friends. You can follow me on Twitter. We can pool links on delicious. You can be a contact on Flickr. You can subscribe to my blog via RSS. But you can’t be my Myspace friend. That’s so 2005.

  • A Few Ways to Connect with Me

    Maybe you’re ready to take this relationship to the next level? Let’s say you come to Adam McLane’s site every day. And you’re thinking to yourself… “Adam, I dig what you have to say. What are some ways you can check out what else I do online?” Here are a few ways I suggest you do that.

    #1 Subscribe to my RSS feed. This will make sure you get every post delivered to your RSS reader, iGoogle homepage, or even by email.

    #2 Subscribe to the YS Podcast. You’ll see my pretty face each week on the weekly show that I host. Sure, it isn’t much… but it’s just enough Adam McLane to not feel like a total stalker. Don’t use iTunes? Subscribe via YouTube.

    #3 Join my delicious network. Now we’re getting serious. (Rounding 2nd base!) Each day I bookmark all sorts of things. Blog posts, news stories, adolescent research studies, new websites, and all manner of web goodness. Like the links in the YS newsletters? This is like the full monty of that.

    #4 Check out my shared items on Google Reader. These are blogs that I read on a daily basis and posts that I think are worth sharing. In other words, let me filter through the lame stuff for you.

    #5 Follow me on Twitter. If you’re curious what I’m up to 10-20 times per day, I post to this micro-blogging site in 140 characters or less.

    #6 Be my friend on Facebook. You won’t find me on Myspace anymore. I haven’t deleted my account, but I never ever go there. You will find me a lot on Facebook. Me likey Facebook.

    #7 Of course you can get to know Kristen too. It’s like getting to know our family 360 degrees. Kristen blogs a lot about family life, recipes, contests, and kids books.

    #8 Check out some of our new projects. Kristen and I have started some projects under the umbrella of McLane Creative. Our first project is a collaborative site giving real-world reviews of things to do in San Diego, called Beyond the Zoo.

    #9 Meet me in person. I know, that’s not a Web 2.0 way to get to know me. (What is wrong with me?) But it’s completely practical. If you’re ever in the San Diego area I’d love to get together for a cup of coffee and meet face-to-face. Drop me an email.

  • 7 ways you can connect with me

    connect with meOne of the reasons I blog is to stayed plugged in with the people in my life. So I thought it would be good to point you to the right sidebar and walk you through 7 ways you can connect with me.

    1. About me. Head over to this link to learn what I do, why I do it, and some other fun stuff.
    2. E-mail. My email address is mclanea@gmail.com. That comes to my phone, is on my desktop, and otherwise follows me around everywhere.
    3. Facebook page. If you are under 30 you probably have one too. It’s a great way to send me messages, see who I’m friends with, check out the causes I care about, and a bunch of other stuff.
    4. Google shared items. For serious. Wanna know what I’m reading and I think is interesting? Check out this page… it’s changing all the time as I keep up with about 100-200 sites per day. When I think something is worth looking at, I click “share.”
    5. Linkedin. For people under 30, it’s a Facebook for professional-types to connect with one another. Check out my profile, add me as a connection.
    6. Subscribe to my blog’s feed. Join millions of others and follow my blog. (OK, just my wife and my mom.) You can subscribe using your favorite feed reader or via email.
    7. Follow me on Twitter. Twitter is the latest dance craze sweeping the nation. Well, not so much. I use it as a back channel of letting my friends know what I’m up to in an informal, fun kind of way. Why? Because Facebook, Linkedin, RSS, reading my shared items, e-mailing me, and reading all about me may not be enough Adam McLane in your life.

  • Bloggers: Turn off post excerpt

    blog tipWith the tremendous increase in feed reader users and mobile blog reading… I really have to insist on this. You must make sure your feed is sending out the full post and not an except. (Called summary in WordPress)

    Why? The reality is that, as a blogger, you want your readers to actually read what you write and not just see that you have written. Right? Well, having the except feature turned on eliminates a large portion of your readership.

    What’s changed? And why do I need to change? Let’s say your average reader is like me and subscribes to 50-100 feeds. And each day 125-200 things pop up on my reader to read. Let’s say I spend 15-30 minutes per day doing just that, reading blogs. While it is true that I am quickly scanning your posts so an excerpt may be all the more I’ll read anyway… but when I see it’s an excerpt I immediately skip over it. I just don’t have the time or interest to go to your blog.

    Why do people have excerpt anyway? I think it has something to do with stats. Such as, you really want to see that pageview number go up.Just keep this in mind… every day you can take the number of RSS readers you have and add it to your unique visitors! Why? Because people who are subscribed to your RSS are highly likely to read your stuff or else they’d simply unsubscribe to your feed. Other than that, I can’t think of a single good reason to keep excerpts turned on. It certainly doesn’t effect my comment rate as I think some may think it does.

    Let’s say I did want to read the rest of your post? (Which I won’t because excepts are annoying) I am forced to click on it and load another tab. And if I’m mobile (where I do about 25% of my blog reading) I couldn’t look at the rest of your post even if I did want to as most blogs won’t load on a mobile browser very well. And they definitely aren’t worth the time it would take to load the page and then go back to what I was doing. When I’m mobile, an excerpt is just a waste of my time.

    So if you want to increase your blog’s potential to grow do yourself a major favor and turn off the feed excerpt right away. Otherwise I’m killing your feed because I’m sick of scrolling past it.

    Did you do it yet? Really. I’m serious. Do it now so you don’t forget.