Traffic is not what matters in business — RSS and Conversational Marketing are the way.
Someone, who isn't a Microsoft employee, just wrote me and said “my boss and his webmaster only care about traffic and with RSS you're trying to show a way that will reduce traffic to our web site.”
Whoa, that's getting to the point. But, you should get out of that company as soon as possible if traffic is all they care about. Why? Cause if that's really how they run their business they are focusing on the wrong thing and that is a sign of impending business troubles.
What's the only things that really matter in business? Hint: it's not traffic.
It's sales and happy customers.
How do you build sales? You build systems that make it possible for potential customers to learn about your products. Yesterday that looked like a web site. Today that's RSS AND a Web site.
How do you make happy customers? You build systems that make it possible to have a relationship with your customers. Today that's conversational marketing (read weblogs and RSS feeds and programs to link individual employees to individual customers). Look at the Adopt an ISV post I made yesterday. That was no accident. Employees here noticed that their friends who worked at ISVs were constantly asking for help in building their businesses. I've noticed it myself on my weblog. (Aside to Microsoft employees: you too can adopt an ISV by visiting the http://AdoptAnISV site (only works if you're a Microsoft employee). Today I have nine ISV “buddies.” I'm gonna help them get the information they need to build great businesses (and they get some cool swag too).
Plus, you're missing the point about the RSS revolution. If I'm watching the SPOT watch team in my RSS aggregator, I will be much more likely to visit their site in the future when they have something to say. Heck, they could just put in their feed something like “new watches shipping today…click here for more info.” I'd then click there and visit the site again. That means more traffic. A better relationship with the customer. Plus, a higher chance you'll actually make a sale. Plus, a guy like me will email that RSS item around and tell everyone in the world about it on my weblog.
Is this really that difficult to figure out? This just seems like marketing 101. Give the customers what they want when they want it damnit.
And get out of the mindset that all that matters is traffic to your Web server. Geesh. [The Scobleizer Weblog]