Month: August 2005

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RSS Used By Not Readers But Influencers

Yesterday I mentioned adding FeedBlitz to my blog to enable people to subscribe to blog updates via email. Was motivated to do this based on a hat tip from Fred Wilson. Bill Burnham weighs in on the whole "email is king" theme and also provides a case for using services like FeedBlitz and RSSFWD. The basic finding by most people is that RSS readership is low. Bill points to a post that indicates 11% of blog readers use RSS and 2/3rds of them don’t even know what RSS is.

I completely agree with this, which is why I added FeedBlitz in the first place.

That said, people should not forget that there may be some less developed research about the behavioral profile of those that use RSS (beyond traditional demographics of age, technological sophistication, etc.). An example study is here (hat tip: Robert Scoble) which says that 87% of "influencers" use RSS. In the study I point to here, influencers are defined as journalists, analysts, and bloggers. These are people that are in some sense promiscuous about spreading ideas … presumably to other readers. I speculate that the consequence of such a finding for personal versus corporate bloggers might vary.

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The Craft Of Adding People To A Team

Chad has a post that got me thinking about adding people to entrepreneurial endeavors. Of course, since I spend a portion of my time as a hired gun for start-ups, I naturally tend to agree that people should to be added to a team to get a venture moving forward. Adding people to a team can create friction though, e.g., with founders, other managers & employees. How to balance things out? No quick answers here. That said, there was one soft principle that an angel investor once mentioned to me. It is a litmus test of sorts. You can try to analyze things all you want, but regardless of what it may cost to add a specific person to a team (and setting financial and management control structures aside for a moment), the real question is whether the person you are going to add to the team will measureably help move the company forward. As risk of diminishing the importance of hiring stellar people for a venture, one should also consider the marginal benefit of adding people, spending more dollars to move faster, etc. What does your subconscious tell you about hiring a particular person for a venture?

Of course, this type of thinking has to balanced against hiring only A-players, matching the team to the financial trajectory and aspirations of the venture, and making sure that chemistry is right with the rest of the team. Wrong fit can kill a venture. But sometimes the answers are quite grey. Not all ventures have the luxury of centuries to wait for the Perfect fit.

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The Blog Herald On Blogging Pay Rates

Someone recently sent me an email asking me if I make a lot of money. Well although I am a compensated blogger (which is not my primary profession since I do a mix of management consulting and hired gun start-up work as my day job), I am surely not making tons of money from contracted blogging. The Blog Herald sheds some good light on market rates for compensated bloggers.

Blogging is primarily a networking and learning experience for me. But there’s another aspect. I have had a fortunate life both personally and professionally, I view blogging as a way for me to give something back to the world in small doses. I keep looking for ways to build even bigger social marks on the world. Not quite where I want to be in helping the social good, but part of the fun is in the hunt.

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Testing Out FeedBlitz

I’m testing out FeedBlitz as an email subscription method for people to get blog updates of the Feedburner feed of this blog. I know that there are still some renegade RSS feeds out there, but I haven’t got the bandwidth to consolidate. See the righthand side of the blog for the new FeedBlitz form window. Hat tip to Fred Wilson.

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On Monday Will Run Q&A With A CIO Blogger

This coming Monday, I will run a Q&A with Will Weider, CIO of Affinity Health Systems, who blogs at The Candid CIO. Affinty Health System is network of 17 clinics, three hospitals, a long-term care facility and a health plan, so it’s quite of mix of clinic, ambulatory, etc. environments which not all healthcare providers have. The first Q&A at The CIO Weblog will provide some insight as to why he blogs, what blogs he follows, and his perspective on employee blogging. If you are interested in healthcare and/or a case of CIO blogging, be sure to tune in next week. Thanks in advance to Will for making himself available!

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