With the explosion of this social media, web 2.0-ish Internet world we live in, RSS remains relevant, and then some.

If you are not familiar with the concept of RSS, it  is a simple structured way to describe data. Here is an example of what an entry from an RSS feed looks like:

<item>
<title>Metric Drill Bits – .18 MM</title>
<link>http://www.biscotoolsupply.com/home/bis/page_776_17/metric_drill_bits_-_.18_mm.html</link>
</item>

While there is nothing so earth shattering about that snippet of code, it is a simple and widely accepted data format that is used by many web-based services. RSS opens up the possibility that you can pass your data around in a structured way to a multitude of sites, people, and services who can then display your data and share it with others. Sharing is a good thing!

RSS has been prevalent across the Internet for several years. Common uses included product feeds, sitemaps for services like Google and Yahoo, distribution of news items. As a practical use of RSS, if I am interested in purchasing a certain type of product on Craig’s list, I can “subscribe” to an RSS feed that will alert me when such an item is posted. Perhaps your customers would like to receive similar alerts from your website.

With the rise of Social Media, there are some interesting ways to use RSS that relate to Ecommerce:

1. Flow announcements from your website into your Facebook page.

2. Automatically stream new products or sale items to your Twitter account.

3. If you have multiple websites or a website and a blog, you can cross-post articles from one to the other.

If you are working to manage all of your social media assets, RSS presents an efficient and effective way to communicate with your audience across many platforms.

How do you make the case for social media in your small business? It is hard to wrap your head around all the emerging technologies and predict what the benefit will be to your business. Here are a few key questions to ask yourself as you evaluate whether to jump in:

1. Do you have the type of audience/customer base that would be using social media? With each passing day it is harder to answer No to this question. As Twitter/Facebook usage explodes there is a good chance that your customers are using these tools to build relationships and connect with the rest of the world.

2. Do you have someone in your organization who can lead the charge? Going in half-assed is not a winning approach. Having no Facebook page is better than a bad/unattended Facebook page. If you are not the one who is going to be firing off tweets (messages posted to Twitter), do you have a energetic, tech-savvy employee or a family member who is already part of the social media arena? Social Media communication is a skill – different from writing articles or doing traditional marketing. There are many in the younger crowd who have already developed social media skills. As long as they have some other old-fashioned communication skills (good spelling, good judgment, and audience awareness) they might be a great asset.

3. Do you have something interesting or of value to share with the masses? One would hope there is something interesting or exciting or unique about your business. If not, now is the time to get thinking about how you can set yourself apart from your competition. Social Media could be a great springboard to take your business to a new level. In a certain sense, Social Media is all about starting a conversation with your audience and generating enough excitement to get that conversation to spread.

Here are a few ideas:

• Announce a time-sensitive product special on your website.
• Run a contest that encourages your followers/fans to spread the word to others.
• Stay up on the latest news in your industry and share it, along with your unique commentary.
• Solicit input on product development.
• Coerce your staff to do outlandish stuff and start doing some videoing. Some people actually enjoy doing outlandish stuff in public!
• Post photos of what is happening at your business. An iphone and a service like twitpic can make this process very fluid.

Here is an innovative twitter application pointed out by @alexpeerenboom.  Bakertweet is a device/service that allows bakeries to distribute tweets announce when their hot creations have just popped out of the oven. How cool (or hot) is that?

4. Is it important to you to form a close connection with your customers? There is a potential consequence of getting close to someone. They might want to get close back with you! If the thought of bonding online with your customer base makes you wince, then Social Media might not be for you. There are some unique qualities to online relationships; if you can master the online medium you can build strong, long-term bonds with your customers.

5. What is the ongoing cost going to be? The surface cost to social media is next to nothing. Assuming you are already connected to the Internet an account with Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter is free. You will likely want to budget an hour of somebody’s time per day to social media endeavors. Then you need to put on your creative thinking cap and consider what kind of content you are going to be sharing across your social media channels. If you have great ideas for photos or video, you will need the tools or expertise to deliver. I recommend making an outline of your social media plan including the following.

- the social media outlets where you will participate.

- frequency of participation

- a rough list of the type of content you will be posting.

Consistency is key. If you can continually post valuable, entertaining, or educational information, your customers will appreciate you.

Next stop: ROI. Stay tuned for our next post in which we will talk about measuring return on investment from your social media activities.

Early indications show that most people are having positive experiences with Bing, and Microsoft is using an almost $100 million advertising campaign to promote it’s rebranded search engine as well.  So how can you, as an ecommerce professional, take advantage of this new source of visitors and potential sales?

First, test out Bing for yourself.  And don’t just do a one-time search for some random item like shoes or your name.  Instead, make it your default search engine for a while.  Get accustomed to some of the useful features like refined categories and related topics on the left-hand navigation plain.  Bing also does a great job with integrating shopping results and local retailers in your area.  The idea is to get used to how people will use it and hopefully find your website.

Next, make sure your website is listed using their Webmaster Central tools.  If you have a physical location for your business, get your information listed on their Local Listing Center.  And if you want even more exposure, directly upload your products for free with Product Upload.  Microsoft also has a pay-per-click program called adCenter, which they have also made improvements to.

Bing’s initial rise to #2 was probably from the hype and introduction, so only time will tell if they can sustain any growth.  They may not take down the all-powerful Google, but they could certainly lower it’s market share.  With a good redesign and early positive experiences, it looks like Microsoft has finally found a worthy competitor.

#1. Search google for a phrase that is relevant to your web site. In my example, I’ll use “vintage clothing”.

#2. Identify one the sites with a top listing, and search google again like this:

link:www.rustyzipper.com “vintage clothing”

That search will show you sites linking to www.rustyzipper.com that include the phrase “vintage clothing”.

#3. Scan the listings and identify good possibilities. I’ve shown a few promising listings below that were in my results:

#4. Visit the web sites that may link to you and find out how to request a link to your site.

A few more tips:

- View several pages of search results, not just the first page

- Try different keyword phrases

- Set a goal to request one, or two or ten incomings links per week and then do it!

With the explosion of Twitter, which has a 140 character limit to each post, the use of URL shorteners has also exploded, since every character in a 140 character post is precious.

Here are your options of using url shorteners, in conjunction with Twitter:

Plan A. Twitter has url shortening built in. Up until May ‘09, Twitter was using the TinyURL service, and since May, they have been using bit.ly. If you enter a url that is longer than 30 characters, Twitter will shorten it for you. However, if you paste in a url that pushing you over your 140 character limit, you need to go to Plan B.

Plan B. This plan involves using one of the myriad of url shortening services that will shorten your url for you. I use bit.ly. It works well and has a range of “features” that I like. You’d be amazed at how many features a url shortener can have, like automated posting to Twitter, a Firefox widget for easy integration, customizable short urls, and historical tracking.

Search Engine Land has a nice feature grid, which I won’t repeat here. I am linking to it, using a shorten-url, of course! http://bit.ly/XyOej

Here are the steps for using bit.ly.

1. Go to bit.ly and add an account with your Twitter info.

2. Drag the Bookmarklet to your browser.

3. Go to a web page you want to reference in your Twitter post.

4. Click the “Shorten with bit.ly” bookmarklet.

You will be directed to the bit.ly site with your shorten url displayed as well as a text entry area for you to post directly to Twitter.

5. Either copy the short url and go back to Twitter to do your posting or create your post directly at bit.ly’s site and click the Post button. Your post will show up in your Twitter account.

It is really that easy.

URL shorteners are a way of life if you are a die-hard twitterer. Some people are wary of them because if the service breaks or goes out of business you could have a trail of broken urls in all your posts. We might cover that topic on another day.

For now, we are shortening to our heart’s content. Because 140 characters does not give you a lot to work with.

Ok. Ok. I didn’t make it to the conference. I was down here in little ‘ol Springfield, Oregon working away. But due to the wonders of social media I was able to at least get a pretty immediate glimpse of the action.

This blog post, from the folks over at AimClear: “Is Everything you know about SEO Wrong?“  intrigued me. The post covers a session that included several of the top-guns in the SEO biz giving their takes on the current state of SEO.

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz led off by looking at the traditional list of SEO ranking factors and how the mix is evolving. You can see the SEO Factor List we are currently tracking. According to the SMX Advanced session it looks like the ingredients might not really be changing too much but the recipe has been tweaked quite a bit.

Some interesting highlights:

(Note: Rand was making his statements based on a survey SEOMOZ recently sent out to 100 top SEOs.)

1. Seems SEOs are saying H1 tags are not nearly as important as they used to be. Maybe the Engines have perceived them as the next fertile ground for abuse, after meta keywords, which are now summarily ignored.

2. Significance of keywords in the domain/sub-domain appears to be on the rise. I agree.

3. As many other news reports have been indicating lately, Google Toolbar page rank is a poor indicator of just about anything. It looks pretty. Not worth much.

4. There is quite a bit of  importance to the somewhat nebulous non-link factors, such as freshness and uniqueness of content. Create great content, folks, and you will be rewarded. There is nothing surprising about the need for good content. But over time, the importance of fresh, relevant content seems to be growing.

5. With incoming links, Domain Trust is a biggy. No surprise there. The up-and-coming factors – particularly in regard to social media exposure and the authority that you derive from that, in SEO terms, is still sketchy.

The session went on with presentations by AimClear’s Marty Weintraub and Yahoo’s (yes, they still exist) Laura Lippay. I recommend checking out the entire post over at AimClear’s blog. It is a good read.

How are you doing in these areas:

1. Providing relevant third-party certifications.

2. Developing on-site and off-site reviews of your products and services.

3. Keeping your website up-to-date and filled with relevant information.

4. Building your personal identity and credibility.

5. Creating a professional-looking web presence.

We have just posted a detailed article on our HERO-web.com website discussing a range of areas you want to consider to build your credibility.

View the full article:  Establishing Your Credibility

Yesterday, they made waves again by first expanding their Google  Search Options.  Now visitors will see a panel at the top called “Show Options”.  This will allow them to really customize what they are looking for and narrow down their search.  There are many different options that can be used together or in combination.

Google also announced two other new tools – Rich Snippets and Google Squared.  To learn more about these changes and other Google updates, visit the official Google Blog.

Before, the use of sitelinks was only given to the top website in the search result.  Now your site can show these sitelinks, up to four links, right above the URL on the results page.  Webmasters can use this tool to generate more visibility for other pages within your site and more traffic.

To learn more about the benefits of this new feature head over to the Google Webmaster blog and read about the sitelinks.

My most recent article at Practical Ecommerce is on using Google Analytics for traffic segmentation and keyword analysis.

Practical Ecommerce: Using Google Analytics for Keyword Segmentation and Analysis

If you are serious about having a successful website business you really need to wrap your head around this topic. The more specifically you can dig into your users’ behavior and what is happening on your site; the more effectively you can make changes to your site and marketing strategy to produce more sales.

I love Practical Ecommerce and the wealth of info they provide.