SIMPLIFYING RSS: How to feed powerful conversations

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SIMPLIFYING RSS How to feed powerful
conversations

• Ashley Roach
• Director of Product Management
• NewsGator Technologies
• November 14, 2007

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Agenda

• Questions for you!
• What is RSS?
• How RSS relates to
• Corporate communications
• PR
• External communications widgets
• Tips Advice

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Questions

• How many of you know what RSS is?
• How many of you use RSS today?
• How much time do you spend monitoring your
  customers situation per day?

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Communications Challenges

• Raise your hand
• How do I get people to pay attention to
  top-down comms?
• How do I increase access options to dept. comms
  (field, newsletter)?
• How do I drive portal/intranet usage?
• How do I keep abreast of old and new media?
• How do I get my brand in front of customers?
• Others?

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About NewsGator

• RSS Offerings for Businesses and Individuals
• More than 2 million individual users of our
  products
• 100 business customers
• Business Solutions
• RSS NewsGator Enterprise Server, Enterprise
  On-Demand
• SharePoint NewsGator Social Sites
• Widgets NewsGator Widget Framework
• Individual Products
• Web NewsGator Online
• Desktop FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac)
• Outlook NewsGator Inbox
• Mobile NewsGator Go! (Blackberry/WinMobile),
  iPhone reader

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RSS Publish and Subscribe Model

• Publish New article, post, update alert or site
  change
• Deliver RSS Feed
• Subscribe Use Reader/Widget to consume and
  organize feeds

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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Sources of RSS
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Enterprise RSS
The Core
External Content
Content Services
Share
Internal Content
Users / Groups
Feedback
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Why Enterprise RSS? (Forrester)
?
?
Makes content more efficient to consume.
Provides an e-mail alternative.
E-mail to do RSS to know
?
Requires a low time commitment from users.
?
Delivers content anywhere.
?
Users control what they subscribe to.
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The C-Suite Wants to Be Heard!

• One of many e-mails employees get
• No one goes to the portal, hard copy/mail is
  expensive
• Not accessible by key segments of company
• Employees feel left out and morale suffers

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Make It So (with RSS)

• Many alternatives to e-mail
• Accessible by all employees
• Notifies instantly when news breaks
• Improves employee morale

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Field Communications is an Oxymoron

• Your e-mail is likely deleted or ignored
• It cant be read on a BlackBerry
• No one goes to the portal
• You cant respond quickly to competition

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Not Anymore (with RSS)

• Many alternatives to e-mail
• Accessible from plane, train and car
• Notifies them instantly when news breaks
• Saves you time, saves them time

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Portals (You Built It, No One Came)

• News is from the Carter administration
• Nothing is personalized
• Items are like cockroaches..they never die
• Users have to check the portal for updates

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Now They Will (with RSS)

• Content is always fresh
• Items can be marked as read by individuals
• Feeds notify users of updates
• People are connected with content

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Benefits of RSS PR

• Improved productivity
• Less time spent searching for information
• Faster reaction times
• Easier to avert crises
• Better collaboration
• Share content among teams/groups
• More value provided to clients

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External Communications Widgets

• Put your content where the eyeballs are going
• Highly interactive content
• Associate your brand with 3rd party content
• Media Monetize through advertizing

Shark Week
Everest
Daily Cuddle
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Widget Distribution
Measurable uptake Weve seen 10
Easy sharing makes for viral distribution
Blogger
MySpace
Freewebs
Yahoo!
Live.com
Google IG
Netvibes
Microsoft Vista Desktop
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Measure Analyze

• Subscriber reporting
• Article reporting
• Activity reporting
• Trend reporting

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Enterprise RSS Works

• Fortune 100 Media/Entertainment Company
• Turned six internal newsletters into RSS feeds
• Reduced e-mail volume, increased readership
• Fortune 100 Manufacturer (Sales Team)
• I only want about 5 of the data on the
  portalwith RSS I can subscribe to it and get
  it.
• It used to take a week to do an account
  reviewnow it takes a little over an hour
• Global 500 Software/Services Company
• Users save 45-90 minutes per day with RSS

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Even IT Likes It

• Easy to manage
• F100 Insurer
• F100 Media Company 0 support calls for 10,000
  users
• Delivers value

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Tips Advice

• Try a reader
• Use smart feeds / persistent search
• Look for the orange icon
• Try out blogging, twitter, facebook, friendfeed,
  widgets
• Consider best practices to foster transition from
  email

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Wrap-up

• Thank You for attending todays event
• Next Steps
• Watch the videos http//www.youtube.com/user/News
  GatorTV
• Learn more about RSS (documents and tools)
• Assess your readiness (tools and discussions)
• Jump right in (Try it yourself)
• Get a reader at www.newsgator.com
• Get a widget at www.newsgatorwidgets.com
• Contact Ashley Roach ashleyr_at_newsgator.com