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RSS : Not for geeks, it’s for your law firm target audience

February 19, 2005

I speak to groups and new customers about RSS and why it’s the essence of blogging. They glaze over and say RSS is too techie for them and their target audience. Bunk!

The Scobelizer posted this morning that if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired and that saying that RSS is only for geeks today is like saying in 1998 that the Web was only for geeks. I agree.

Here’s excerpts from Scoble’s story about a naive marketer at Microsoft trying to market their site without using RSS. You should find it amusing unless you’re like a few of the Internet marketing folks I worked with at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell who never were able to grasp what was taking place on the Internet and felt secure in your job nonetheless.

Yesterday I ripped the head off of a coworker. He works in marketing on a major Microsoft product. I’m not going to identify it or him.He called me yesterday and said: ‘Hey, Scoble, we’ve done a fun site but no one is linking to it.’

My first question? ‘Do you have an RSS feed?’

‘No, this site is for non geeks.’

At that point I just lost it. I think I swore a bit. I am so mad 20 hours later that I can’t even remember what I said.

That demonstrates an utter cluelessness about how hype gets generated. If you don’t have RSS, how will anyone who is a connector build a relationship with your site?…..

Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired. I’ll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.

Saying that RSS is only for geeks today is like saying in 1998 that the Web was only for geeks.

Scoble went to say maybe he ought to bring Donald Trump into Microsoft to meet some of these folks. I agree, if you are law marketing professional and do not see the need for RSS because you believe you know how your audience uses the Internet, maybe you ought to hear “You’re fired.”

By the way, Scoble is teaching some of the leading law firms in the world how to market on the Internet – if not directly, then through me.

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