Is this product of the online self-publishing phenomenon really a cutting-edge marketing tool, or just a rudimentary broadcast tactic dressed up in Internet technology?

Ever since the 2004 U.S. elections catapulted the online personal journals known as blogs into the limelight, innovative companies have been actively seeking ways to incorporate Really Simple Syndication, or RSS — the technology behind this self-publishing phenomenon — into their own business plans.

For some, the answer has been to start a blog of their own. Used thoughtfully, a corporate blog can be great for giving a company a personality.

In fact, some businesses have successfully made the leap into this newest form of online evangelism. Those with great personalities at the helm attract huge audiences of customers, competitors, employees, analysts and members of the media. They arguably can influence public opinion, drive the direction of their respective industries, steer legislation and even sell products.

But other companies equally eager to implement RSS, and with equally great personalities at the top, have decided against a blog, deeming as unacceptable the legal and public-relations risks of corporate public journaling. What if someone should defame a competitor, disclose confidential information, or make "forward looking" statements? Or, what, if in an effort to be inoffensive, he or she is just plain boring?

But forgetting for a moment corporate journaling's potential for glory or shame — the simple truth is, using RSS to publish a blog is like using a laser-guided scalpel to cut a peanut butter sandwich.

Although blogs represent an intriguing and powerful sociological phenomenon, in the hands of marketers they are little more than a fancy new way to deliver mass-market advertising. And while that may suit some marketers just fine — and they may indeed leverage it to great advantage — others see it as not only counterintuitive, but also as a step backward in their marketing and overall business plan.

For those who have spent the last decade moving away from traditional broadcast media toward the more closely targeted methods made possible by the new digital media, truly innovative applications for RSS have remained elusive — until now.

RSS is evolving, and fast. New techniques are being unveiled that will allow marketers to leverage the appeal and growing adoption of RSS without sacrificing their hard work of the last decade to achieve measurability, targetability and flexibility.

Say Goodbye to Traditional RSS
While traditional RSS feeds deliver posts quickly, they don't actually deliver individualized content. Traditional RSS feeds really only are "personalized" to the extent that recipients have elected to receive them by adding them to their feed lists.

Because it is unable to be individualized, traditional RSS is actually little more than a digital broadcast channel. Because everybody taps into the same RSS feed, it's impossible for marketers to segment audiences in order to increase message relevance. Moreover, the metrics involved are limited to aggregate counts at best, severely curtailing any effort to analyze recipient behavior at the group or individual level. In fact, most RSS feeds today offer less measurability than even the most basic Web analytics packages provide out-of-the-box. 

Did You Know?

RSS is already built into Apple Macintosh OSX, open-source Web browser Firefox and the Web portals AOL, Yahoo!, Google and MSN.

But the future of RSS was assured in June 2005 when Microsoft announced it was building the online syndication technology into its Internet Explorer browser and integrating it into the next generation of its Windows operating system.

The presence of RSS on every computer desktop doubtless will spur huge investment in content creation and in applications that work with this soon-to-be universal standard.

The New Evolution of RSS: Individualized Solutions
The newest generation of RSS technology eliminates these drawbacks. With these next-generation solutions, each recipient gets his or her own unique feed, enabling marketers to understand exactly how many and which recipients are picking up their messages. And because each feed is unique to the individual recipient, marketers can track and measure subscriber actions all the way down to an individual, facilitating the same behavioral targeting and testing possible in other personalized media. Moreover, marketers can actually create a unique message for each user based upon demographic or behavioral data.

But best of all, these individualized RSS (IRSS) solutions do not require any changes on the part of recipients — they use the same reader they use today to get their blogs or news feeds. Marketers use front-end technology that works seamlessly alongside existing Internet marketing and email programs and technologies to provide secure, measurable, and 100-percent deliverable communications to their recipients.

The widespread appeal and adoption of RSS are impossible to ignore. Now, with IRSS, new-era marketers can leave old-school mass marketing in the past where it belongs, and look to a future where RSS communications are limited only by the imagination. 

Email RSS RSSDirect Personalization Each recipient gets personalized text, images and offers. Measurability Each recipient's actions can be tracked and analyzed. Targetability Recipients get communications based on demographics or past behavior. True permission Recipients have true opt-in control over which senders are allowed to send them messages. Authentication Recipients are protected from illegal spam and "phishing" for sensitive personal and financial information such as passwords, Social Security and bank account numbers. Assured deliverability Every message reaches the recipient. Security Communications can be encrypted and password-protected on demand.

What Sparked the Boom in Blogs?

In 2002, about 100,000 American bloggers toiled away at their craft, reporting on everything from what they had for dinner to their pursuits, politics and the meaning of life.

Corporate interest in the marketing potential of blogs — and RSS, the technology that drives them — soared after these interactive Web journals ignited a wildfire of political discourse and debate that raged across the Internet during the 2004 U.S. elections.

In fact, the Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that by the end of 2004 about eight million of the 120 million adult American Internet users had created blogs, and 32 million — a whopping 58 percent increase over the previous year — were reading them.

Fast-forward to mid-2005. Bloggers are pounding away in record numbers. While blog readership has held steady, according to Pew, more than 11 million U.S. Internet users now say they've taken a shot at writing one of these online personal journals.

An August 2005 report by real-time blog search engine Technorati found that the worldwide blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months. A new blog is created about every second, and more than 80,000 blogs are created daily. About 55 percent of all blogs are active, and about 13 percent of all blogs are updated at least weekly.