As you may know, the Feed Library software that we use to run our own BlogBridge Expert Topic Guides is also available to you if you are interested in running a special purpose Feed/Podcast/etc Library for your users or constituents. The Feed Library product is available in various forms, some free, some not.

A free trial is available and can be set up with a minimum of effort and time. So please send in an email requesting a trial and we’ll take care of you.

One way to learn more is to take a look at the Feed Library Trial - Getting Started Screen Cast. 

[By the way, did you know that we have a large collection of BlogBridge Screen Casts about all of our products and services? Check them out, they are pretty popular!]

I’ve had several in-depth discussions with Public Relations executives at firms in our area as part of diligence that we’ve been conducting for a possible new product offering aimed squarely at the PR industry.

It’s been quite interesting to hear how the ‘blogosphere’ is posing new challenges to Public Relations and Corporate Communications executives. Many of the tried and true ways of delivering a valuable service to clients don’t seem to be working anymore. In fact there are those out there that say that ‘traditional PR is dying”.

I thought it would be interesting to share some of the preliminary learnings.

Big questions that PR people are losing sleep over

From my interviews, here are some of the big questions that PR people are losing sleep over:

1. What are the top blogs that are most relevant for client X? Unlike mainstream media, there are no good databases to assemble a ‘press list’ of bloggers for a particular client. And yet, what is said about the client by an influential blogger might actually be seen by more relevant people than if it was published for example in the Boston Globe. Assembling a good list is time consuming and very uncertain work.
2. Finding the coverage that matters and ignoring the noise. There is positive, negative and neutral coverage in blogs just like in any media — the big customer crisis versus the individual crank blogger. When something either positive, but especially negative is said, it needs to be spotted quickly and a decision needs to be made what to do about it. While one can’t afford to overwhelm clients with noise, the biggest nightmare is that call from the boss because she was the first to see the article in the Wall Street Journal.
3. What about metrics? What is the influence of this blogger, or the circulation of that one? What will the impact be of this bit of coverage on the client? Again, traditional ways of looking at metrics totally fall apart in the world of new media, and yet there is a requirement to quantify the results and impact.

Do these challenges ring true to you?

Technorati Tags: PR Blogosphere

In our continuing search for experts and top bloggers in any and all domains of knowledge and human endeavor (yes, we are indeed omnivorous I’d like to tell you about four new additions to our always growing collection:

• In the Creativity/The Arts collection, our newest Topic Expert, Joseph Pisano is now curating two new Expert Guides. First, the Music Bloggers Guide lists some of the most current, active, and best music & music industry bloggers.
• Also in the Creativity/The Arts collection, Dr. Pisano is also curating the Music Education Expert Guide, which brings you the most active and current music education bloggers. These are the bloggers in the fore-front of of the music education field, utilizing the latest technologies to have “global conversations” about their fields.

Prof. Pisano is an active conductor, adjudicator, jazz trumpeter, and technology expert holding degrees and post graduate credits from multiple institutions of higher learning including: Grove City College, State University of New York and Binghamton, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Kent State University of Ohio. We are happy and grateful for his participation. Read more about Dr Pisano on his web site.

• Within the Life and Recreation area, we have a new Expert Guide on Sustainable Living, an ongoing compilation of personal Blog favorites devoted to sustainable living, as it relates broadly to food. Good, clean food is what we would like to celebrate here. This guide is curated by Fred Gerendasy, the co-founder of Cooking Up A Story, a show on the web about people, food, and sustainable living. We are proud to have Fred participate.
• Finally we have a new guide on Philanthropy and Non-profits in our Ideas section.

Remember: if you are an expert or know an expert, please write us to propose an expert guide that YOU would like to curate. It’s reaaaaaally easy!

Question: “I have to filter and consolidate RSS feeds with some keywords or related to particular topic from multiple sites and display them on my personal blog.Does blogbridge help me in achieving the same?”

Response: We have found that automatically using a filter to republish feeds to a personal blog almost never produces the desired results, because invariably you find some incorrect (false positive) item on your personal blog.

So instead we have a more powerful feature which is to allow you to publish any item you see in any blog onto your personal blog, completely, or edited, or with additional editorial comments. This can be done with one or multiple items and blogs.

Here is a high level overview of BlogBridge’s “Publish To Blog” feature.