Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

It’s been over a month since Google announced it would shut down Reader on July 1. Over that time, I’ve come to realize how unnecessary and outdated RSS and RSS readers are today. Like a Palm Pilot...

Nothing against RSS, it has been a good tech service for a long time. It has just outlived its usefulness. Removing RSS and getting folks going back to websites will create a better experience for readers and publishers, spurring more creative business models for publishers too.

So on the day they kill Google Reader, July 1, let’s make it “Kill RSS Day” and everyone remove RSS feed options from their site. We’ll all be better off. Do we have a deal? 

Discover how social marketing tools like Commun.it, BlogDash and Traackr can help you identify, connect with and engage industry influencers....

This month, we learned that although 65% of brands participate in influencer marketing, just 10% of total digital marketing spend goes to social, which includes influencer marketing. Some have cried, don’t people see the opportunity? Why aren’t they spending on influencers! Technorati Media’s 2013 Digital Influence Report shared the above insight, as well as the fact that a mere 6% of social spend is allotted to marketing to influencers.

This doesn’t signal a problem to me at all. In fact, it’s an indication that while influencer marketing is recognized as a valuable piece of the online marketing puzzle and many practice it, it doesn’t require a great deal of budget to accomplish. That, friends, is what we call an opportunity. That’s not to say influencer outreach is easy, but that an array of low-cost tools are available to help marketers better identify, understand and connect with industry influencers. These social tools enable us to automate much of the research, to weed through a mass of data and identify trends or common characteristics among the people who can positively impact our business with a tweet, a blog post, or a thoughtful comment. Check out these social tools for brand marketers looking to more easily and inexpensively measure and act on influence in their industry....