Social Mediarology

It was great to see so many partners from the Indiana Tourism industry at this year’s Hoosier Hospitality Conference (@HoosierHospConf on Twitter) at the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis this week. In addition to some great panelists (@Doug Karr of Compendium Blogware, @Kyle Lacy of Brandswag, @Paula Werne of Holiday World, @John Palmer of MediaSauce, Santhana Naidu of Williams Randall Marketing and Jeff Robinson of the ICVA, just to name a few), there were some great topics discussed. Among those topics, RSS was only briefly touched. I had a few people make comments to me about being interested in RSS, but not quite understanding it. If you’re interested in reading my first post about RSS, please check it out.

The people at CommonCraft have created a wonderful video series called “…in plain english” (check out their channel on YouTube) where they give you a quick and easy to understand description of lots of different types of technology, from Twitter to blogs, from social media to wikis, even from web search strategies to electing a US President. Below, I’ve included their “RSS in plain English” video. It gives a great, simple description of what RSS is and how to use it.

So now you understand what RSS is, and how it can help you to stay up-to-date on websites and blogs that you want to follow, but who should you follow first? The Tourism Tech Corner, of course! Use this RSS link to subscribe to the Tourism Tech Corner in your new RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader). While you’re at it, you should probably subscribe to the new Visit Indiana Blog too (RSS link here).

Now that you’ve set up your RSS reader and you have started following some blogs, it’s time to begin subscribing to your favorite websites or blogs. If you’re using Firefox as your web browser (which I recommend), they make subscribing to RSS feeds REALLY easy. Look at the image on the right. I’ve boxed the RSS feed icons in yellow. Firefox actually scans the websites to see if there is a feed to subscribe to and if there is, Firefox will place the feed icon in the address bar. Simply click on the RSS icon and you’ll be able to subscribe to the site.

In a later post, I’ll talk about how to set up your website so others can subscribe to your RSS feed, but the basics of RSS are here and it can save a tremendous amount of time as you let the information  come to you, rather than spending the time to go find the information you want.

Groundswell

My brother gave me a great gift for my birthday this year. He gave me Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Forrester Researchers Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I first heard about the book back in April at TIA’s TravelCom 2008 conference in Chicago. Charlene Li was one of the speakers and her session was titled: Welcome to 2013: The Changes in Technology and Consumers that Will Affect Your Business.

Her session was one of the most enlightening at the conference and it really lit a fire in me to begin working on more social media initiatives or the “groundswell” as she calls it.

This is a book that is a must-read for anyone thinking about getting into social media, and that should be every single one of you.

Not only does the book do a great job of explaining what the groundswell is, but it also gives you a breakdown of several different “groundswell technologies” – many of which I talk about here on the Tourism Tech Corner – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS, blogs, wikis and more.

One other benefit of the book is that, as Forrester Research employees, Li and Bernoff include solid numbers in the book that you can bring to your board of directors when you’re intersted in diving into some of these groundswell technologies. It might seem a bit silly to read a book about social media seeing as how it changes so quicky, but Groundswell was published this year, so it’s surprisingly up-to-date. That being said, you can be sure that the groundswell technology penetration percentages have climbed even since the printing of the book. I just read in the book last night that 8% of US online conusmers use RSS, and I just read that Forrester’s newest research puts that number at 11% now.

If you’re not quite ready to put down the money for the book, you can check out a PDF excerpt at the Groundswell website or read (and subscribe to via RSS) the Groundswell Blog. This is a book that won’t disappoint you.

What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication and Wikipedia can give you more technical details, but what you really need to know is that RSS lets you “subscribe” to frequently changing website (like blogs) and read them at your leisure without having to actually visit the website. This can be very helpful with parts of your website that you update frequently like a blog, Press Release page or an events calendar.

It’s extremely easy to set up an RSS feed on your website, and there are several ways to do so. We use FeedBurner here on the Tourism Tech Corner. FeedBurner is great, not just because they’ve recently been acquired by Google, but because it gives you tons of options about how you want your feed displayed. It is also very simple to put a feed up and will certainly work without having to go through too many of the details. FeedBurner also allows you to set up email alerts for your page in addition to RSS feeds. You’ll notice that on the left hand side of the Social Mediarology, you can click on RSS or on Email. One great feature that FeedBurner offers is the ability to track RSS readers and email subscribers. You can see who has signed up to subscribe to your feed and keep tabs on them.

Updated (10/22): There is one other great feature about using FeedBurner for your RSS rather than a standard domain-provided RSS feed. If, for some reason, your blog ever moves from it’s current place, everyone who is subscribed through the FeedBurner RSS won’t have to re-subscribe. So, if I moved the Tourism Tech Corner blog from WordPress to Blogger, the RSS transition would be seemless. All I would have to do is log into my FeedBurner account and change the blog address. Most of you won’t change your blog address once it’s set up, but this is a good safeguard, just in case! Updated (10/22)

Now that you’ve got RSS feeds set up on your website or blog, your next question is probably, how do I read RSS feeds?

Well, there are a number of great, free RSS readers out there. Typically, whenever you click on an RSS feed link (look for the icon at the top of the post), you’ll be brought to a page where you can decide which reader you want to view the RSS feed through. If you’re interested in a web-based RSS Reader, Google Reader is a great option. It’s free with a Google Account and you can organize your different feeds into folders (tourism feeds in one folder, hotel feeds in another folder, etc.)

If you’re looking for a desktop-based reader, FeedDemon is one of the most popular ones out there for PCs (NetNewsWire is the Mac equivalent). One bonus of a desktop-based RSS reader is that your feeds can be downloaded to your computer and read even if you’re not connected to the internet.

The best thing about RSS Feeds is that they enable you to keep up with websites that talk about things you are interested in without having to visit the sites multiple times a day. Once you’ve subscribed to an RSS Feed, it will automatically update in your reader when the site gets updated.

Do any of you use RSS readers or feeds for your organizations?