There has been a wave of Internet folks bemoaning the death of RSS. They’re getting it wrong. RSS is not dying exactly, but its fate is expected and appropriate.

For those of you who need a refresher on what RSS is, see my post on RSS demystified.

Why RSS sucks

There are some big reasons why RSS sucks. Most of it actually has to do with RSS readers.

On the surface, RSS seems really kind of awesome. “I can get updates from all of my favorite sites all in one spot.” Many people in fact do want to browse less so they can get on with their lives.

But many of us do not know our limits and find ourselves hoarding information through RSS readers like Google Reader. There is no cost or immediate consequences involved with subscribing to RSS feeds for everything that the Web has to offer. But then we find ourselves with an RSS reader list so long that it’s paralyzing to try and keep up.

Lastly, an RSS reader is yet another inbox. Lately, I’ve found it to be stressful to have so many inboxes to check up on: email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Netflix queue, podcasts, DVR queue, voicemail, text messages, OmniFocus, and the physical inbox on my desk. Enough is enough.

Seriously, all of these queues have turned my life’s purpose into unbolding all of the new shit.

Problem: RSS has been about the technology, not the user

RSS to this point has been about the technology, not necessarily about the users of the technology. If you have trouble understanding that statement, look at what RSS widgets used to look like:

So confusing. Sure, most sites didn’t show that many widgets, but many of the icons on their own are confusing unless you understand what RSS or XML are.

What does RSS mean? What about XML? What does it have to do with coffee cups and pills? Really, the only good buttons have said “Subscribe,” but I can imagine how confusing it would be to click that button and get a bunch of XML back. What do I do with that?

Good uses for RSS

Here are some valid uses for RSS. Notice that none of them really involve adding a little RSS icon to your interface. All of these uses are really about masking the technology behind the features. RSS enables the feature but isn’t the feature itself.

1. “Subscribe by email” option

RSS at one time was a hopeful attempt at replacing email (or at least minimizing it). Google Wave was also an attempt to replace email. But people love their email! It’s not going away anytime soon.

Services like FeedBurner allow you to send daily emails to subscribers with a digest of the latest items from your feed. You create a post on your blog, and people receive notification about it via email within a day.

The user doesn’t know or care that RSS is powering this mechanism. They just know that they’re receiving updates from your site.

2. Automatically tweet links to your new articles or blog posts on Twitter

Services like Twitterfeed and FeedBurner (again) can watch your site’s RSS feed and tweet links to your new articles automatically. People following you on Twitter see your tweets, not an RSS feed.

Again, the user doesn’t know or care that RSS is powering this. They use Twitter, not Google Reader.

3. Podcasts

When you subscribe to a podcast in iTunes, you’re technically subscribing to RSS. There’s a chance that you may not have even known that, dear reader.

Again, people call that a podcast, not RSS. Heck, podcasts even have their own icon that I bet more people recognize than RSS’s.

4. News and link streams on your site

With some programming, you can mash up any number of RSS feeds and display the latest headlines on your site. Use an interface like Yahoo! Pipes, publish that feed, and use it to power a news stream on your site.

Again, visitors will see the news stream, but they won’t know or care that it’s powered by RSS.

Again, notice a theme here?

All of my suggestions above are about using RSS for what it is: a technology. RSS as a technology is only a means to an end. It is not a feature.

The users of the Web have spoken. Highlighting this particular technology just isn’t effective with your normal everyday person. So stop it.

Technorati Tags: email, Email Marketing, emails, feed, feedburner, feeds, google, really simple syndication, rss, rss feed, rss feeds, Technology, user experience, xml

Many (lucky) entrepreneurs like myself need to work a day job while trying to start their business. A start-up doesn’t usually rake in the money immediately, so the bills need to be paid somehow.

I’ve have made a few observations lately about where I’ve gone wrong in balancing my priorities over the past few years and how I want to adjust the course. I need to get this thing going!

The need to set aside time every day

I remember reading a free report called 279 Days to Overnight Success a few years ago and being inspired by one particular story:

For the past nine months, Dave has been getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day to work on his business before heading out to an office. His “real job” is as a senior software QA Manager for a major defense contractor, but lunchtime and late evenings are also spent plugging away at the business.

I often get this false sense that anyone who starts a successful company does it with this magical time in their lives where they don’t have a job and become shabby hobos until they “make it big.” But here is a story about a guy who puts his nose to the grindstone and does what it takes to make it work.

Also to quote the report:

I can tell you from experience that unless you set aside dedicated time to produce your art, the art will not get made.

So you need to set aside time every day to work on your business.

The need to set aside the right time every day

For quite some time, I had been working on my business in the evenings, and that tended to not work so well.

1. I want to spend a little bit of time with friends and family. Evenings are when people tend to be free to socialize.
2. I want to exercise and stay in shape. Also, I’ve found that going to the gym is not a great motivation to get out of bed in the morning.
3. I have a lovely fiancée. She needs my love and attention and the occasional phone call. This usually needs to happen in the evening. (I’d hate to see what this would look like at 6:00 am.)
4. I do fairly similar work at my day job. As I crank out code during the day, I run out of gas by the evening.

That last point has been key. I cannot count how many nights I finished my day job and felt paralyzed when it was time to start working on my business in the evening. Many times, this would lead to firing up Netflix and starting it at, drooling helplessly.

As for the evening, anything that I can muster up after 8 hours of working the day job is also spent on my business. But if a social event comes up (or a haircut or exercise or a call from the fiancée), I can do that in the evening too. And I can rest assured that I’ve already invested a few hours into the business that morning. Win.

The need to prioritize

Of course, the hard part is setting priorities. (Isn’t it always?) Which is more important, my day job or my business? Which needs to suffer a little? Something needs to suffer if you’re prioritizing anything in your life effectively. You can’t say yes to everything.

I ultimately needed to make the decision that starting my business is more important to me. So now I get up early to work on the business first. So far, I get a little tired at the end of the day job, but it’s doable.

Good news: this is only temporary

The final key ingredient is knowing that this entire plan is temporary. One day, I’ll be able to use Clear Crystal Media to pay my salary. I just need to make some sacrifices now in order to make that happen.

When that day comes—if I do everything right—I won’t necessarily need to get up at an ungodly hour in the morning to continue building the business. Utopia is the dream, right? Let’s get to utopia.

Photo credit: IMG_1058 by kevint3141. Some rights reserved.

At first glance, I am intimidated by the idea of documentation of this type. Web design and development changes rapidly. It’s insanely hard to keep up. Sometimes it feels like once I’ve finally mastered a technique, a new tool or technique comes along to replace it. But then again, this very problem makes me a slave to those very things.

5 Reasons to write an operations manual

Now I’m working on getting past those worries and investing some of my limited time to write policies and procedures. Let me clarify that when I say, “policies and procedures” or “operations manual,” I mean more than just an HR handbook with sick day, vacation, and sexual harassment policies. I’m talking about a set of documents that record a business’s day-to-day operation as well.

If you haven’t read E-myth, do it. If you have read it and need some inspiration, here are 5 ways that I’ve further reasoned with myself on the need to write documentation.

1. Writing everything down forces me to make some decisions

This is probably something that most entrepreneurs like myself struggle with. Committing anything to paper forces me to put a stake in the ground and decide how things must work.

The scary part is that I very well could make some mistakes in my first iterations (and beyond). But reviewing documentation will help me to identify room for improvement and fix it.

2. I have an opportunity to focus on my vision and craft an experience

I want to be more than just “some guy” creating websites for money. I want to create a great experience for customers who want websites and technology that work for them. “Some guy” cannot do that, especially if he ever wants to take vacation, retire, and die peacefully one day. Really, the best place to start is by writing all of it down.

Many wildly successful businesses are prototyped, tested, tuned, and documented. The late Steve Jobs and his team prototyped a full-working Apple Store in a gigantic warehouse before building a real one, just to make sure that Apple got the experience right. Ray Kroc used his first McDonald’s location as a testing ground to get things right before building more locations and a killer franchise business.

Instead of spending all day focusing on the drudgery of tasks at hand, writing documentation gives me some time to craft and tune my vision. And it’s an investment, not a waste of time.

3. I will be well on my way to being able to hire help

If I want to change the world in a significant way, I’m not going to be able to do it by myself.

Creating policies and procedures means that tasks can be delegated to others. If the policies and procedures are written well, then employees can be trained in a way that empowers them to deliver a particular experience to customers.

4. The operations manual gives employees ownership of the company’s operations

You would think that it would be the opposite, and I suppose it could be the opposite if I ended up running my company in an oppressive, draconian way.

I am excited about having employees that take ownership of the operations manuals for their own roles. Areas identified for improvement can be prototyped, tested, and refined in an objective manner.

Those who “get it” the most can be promoted to a position where they take ownership over a team’s operations.

5. Tacit knowledge needs to be squashed

Oh, tacit knowledge. Often, I’ve heard technicians joke about their knowledge being job security. In the end, this attitude hurts a business and its customers. What happens when that guys leaves?

As long as the documentation is taken seriously, everything important to know to keep the business running will be recorded. If someone moves on to another position at another company, they should leave behind some of the knowledge in the form of policies and procedures.

I’m not saying that documentation should turn employees into cogs that can be easily replaced. But the business must survive and be bigger than any individual person’s talent. Ultimately, this is in the customers’ best interests.

Now the rubber hits the road

I’m sure that I will learn some stuff along the way, and I plan on sharing some tips. Does anyone out there have any tips to share? Leave them in the comments!

Photo credit: Checklist by peretzpup. Some rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: business, documentation, policies, policies and procedures, policy writing, procedure writing, procedures, Writing

The lizard brain wants for you to fail, but ironically enough, it’s supposedly for your own survival. Over the years, we’ve evolved to seek safety. But conversely, over the past few decades, the economy has evolved to value the risk-takers the most.

Now we have a situation where we have evolved in the exact opposite direction as the opportunity. The next time you obsess over details, tell yourself that you’re too dumb, procrastinate, or make up any other excuse for not pursuing your dreams, know that you’re making it up. You can do what you want, and you can make a difference.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, internet marketing, linchpin, seth godin

I love this, and I love what this does for blogging.

A ton of bloggers used to just use their blog to share shallow one-liners and pointer links to other meaningful posts, but now they’ve all pretty much migrated to the social networking sites. I’m glad that they’ve moved on to a medium that’s more fitting.

Now is a time of tremendous opportunity for blogging and article writing. While the thrill of sharing a link on Twitter is certainly instantly gratifying (which can feel really good), I’ve noticed that the people doing the real work have been dwindling.

This is where you come in.

Now is the time for you to be creating thoughts larger than 140 characters and putting yourself out there. Sure, it’s OK to point to other sources when it’s appropriate and to lean on others’ ideas occasionally. But now is the time to have something worth saying and to cut through the noise. Believe me, there is plenty of noise out there.

Give your fellow tweeters something worth talking about. They need you, and they need to have some of your ideas to spread.

Technorati Tags: blog, Blogging, blogs, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, facebook, glass case, internet marketing, marketing, opportunity, twitter, Writing

Because the new code takes advantage of more advanced JavaScript features in browsers, you get some benefits from switching:

• You can now place your tracking code in the <head> section of your HTML documents, which is a more proper way of doing it.
• The reason why the recommended placement used to be at the end of your document was because the Google Analytics tracking code would slow down your website load time. With the new code, the browser does not stop all other processing in order to load the Google Analytics code.

Google also added more tracking options that you should look into if you find yourself in one of the following situations:

• Need to track activity across multiple domains (i.e., example.com and something.com)
• Need to track activity across multiple subdomains (i.e., www.example.com and store.example.com)

So if your tracking code doesn’t look something like this, it’s time to update your templates!

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

Technorati Tags: Analytics, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, google, google analytics, internet marketing, javascript, js, tracking code, web analytics

Nintendo’s long-running Mario series has afforded them quite a bit of time to get Mario “right.” Early on, they didn’t have the technology to do anything fancy in games like Donkey Kong, but they worked with what they had. But you can see that as the years passed, Nintendo took their previous work and iterated on it.

Nintendo was wise to ship something and not worry about exactly what Mario’s nose would look like in the end. As you can see, his nose got rounder as time passed. But it got to be that way in small, calculated steps, with a ton of trial and error.

How this applies to web design

The typical lifecycle of a website goes like this:

1. Invest up-front for a design. You love it at this point. Everyone involved feels great.
2. Build out the site and its content. Almost done!
3. Take a break from this website business for more pressing issues. It is done after all, right?
4. 12-18 months later, get tired of the design, so start over at step one. Here we go again. But this one will be so much better!

I call BS. Think about this: wiping the slate clean often does not prove that you’ve learned anything from the process. And if you’re a new manager stepping in to manage an existing website, think twice before throwing everything out the window for a massive redesign project.

A successful website should be maintained continuously in an iterative fashion, just like the Mario design. The Web isn’t like a print brochure where once you send it to the printer, you’re done and stuck with it. You can make changes on the fly and try things out. And you should be doing that.

Scrappiness: work with what you have

I’m not calling for a complete redesign every few weeks. That would be costly and disadvantageous for your business. I’m talking more about Mario’s nose: an evolution if you will.

• Examine what you have: analytics data, advertising data, usability testing data.
• Talk to your customers.
• Pick the weakest part of your site and improve that.

New techniques and design trends will also surface. Evaluate them one at a time, figure out if you need them and where best used, and add them in one at a time. The technology in the 8-bit NES afforded fewer advantages than today’s Wii.

You’ll save time, money, and a costly redesign project in the future if you keep up with it all continuously. If you can’t commit to this, then don’t invest in a website to begin with!

Having a “master plan” is no excuse for a massive redesign project

Let’s make one final point clear. Some of this sounds short-sighted, and it can be if you don’t have a plan.

If you feel like you have a “master plan,” a “vision,” or whatever, I have a challenge for you. Plan out how you can get to your vision iteratively rather than in one giant uber project. Which elements can you change one at a time in bite-sized chunks?

Your team of implementers will thank you for not overwhelming them, and your business will thank you for consistently showing visual progress. Don’t hide away for six months to a year to redesign the site. Business must go on, the website must be maintained, so any redesign efforts should be lumped in with that.

Technorati Tags: agile, agile development, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, design, glass case, internet marketing, mario, nintendo, web development

A few months ago, I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and it was just what I needed. This book truly is a gift and is one of Godin’s best to date. If you’re doing important work (or want to), pick it up and dedicate some time over the next week to read it. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.

The book addresses why we need to be doing important work and what kinds of challenges that we’ll face along the way. As it turns out, evolution, society, and your mind want you to fail. It’s kind of humorous once you’re aware of what your mind does to you when you’re taking risks and really challenging yourself.

Onward with your emotional labor. Let’s change the world together!

Technorati Tags: book, book review, book reviews, books, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, linchpin, review, reviews, seth godin

Life is all about showing up.

This statement is true, but it’s only half-true in some situations.

“Showing up” every day is important. Persistence and consistency in pursuing your goals will undoubtedly cause you to accomplish what you set out to do. Being present and intentional no matter where you are makes a difference.

But then I entered real life as I got a little older. Over the past couple years, showing up hasn’t been enough. I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t remember everything that I want and need to do. I can’t accomplish everything that I set out to do if I set my goals in an ad hoc fashion.

You can call this revelation maturity or common sense (how humbling for me to admit). I’m assuming that a lot of people either get this or don’t. I’ve refused to believe that I can’t do everything. I’ve suffered a lot of grief as a result. I’ve been guilty of missing deadlines, dropping promises, and neglecting relationships.

Now I’ve changed my mantra because my life is much more complex than it was at 25 (and I suspect that it will only get more complex as I move forward with some of my goals):

Life is about choosing your priorities and then showing up.

Oh how the subtle details make a difference. With clarity in what I need to show up for, everything becomes quite a bit easier to manage.

I hope that I can detect the difference when I enter the next stage of my life, whatever that may be.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, goals, internet marketing, life, life lessons, priorities, prioritization

1. Use plain-speak to describe it.

This extreme probably has the lowest amount of friction. You have a chance to describe the product in the customer’s language. People tend to like hearing things in language that they can understand.

The downside is that you may come across as bland or unoriginal.

2. Make up a mystical brand name that may have little to do with the product itself.

As Seth Godin puts it, you get to own a term that describes your product. Google, Yahoo!, and countless others did this just fine.

The downside is that no one’s going to be typing your brand name into Google if they don’t know who you are. That part will depend even more on your promotional skills if you take this route.

Looking at this through an SEO lens

If you’re brand new and want to reach out to people with less effort, then option #1 is probably the way to go.

Consider this scenario for portal software that I’m working on building. Right now, the project is code-named Administrivia. Kind of catchy in a way but perhaps too much of a mouth full. And the name doesn’t really describe what the software does.

What happens if I keep that name when I release it into the wild?

1. People will tweet about it, calling it Administrivia.
2. People will blog about it, calling it Administrivia.
3. People will link to it, calling it Administrivia.
4. My product will start ranking very well for the term “administrivia” in Google.
5. The buzz will wear down when people move on to the next fad (as they do in the tech world).
6. My product will be stuck with a great ranking for “administrivia.” This could be good or bad depending on how well I can get the word out, but I get no second chances.

Consider step 4. The word “administrivia” has an actual meaning:

administrivia (plural administrivia)

1. Administrative details that must be dealt with in order to do more interesting work.

   Administrivia take up two hours of every day.

   Administrivia takes up two hours of every day.

So people will be typing that word into Google looking for the meaning of the word as well. Wasted traffic from people who aren’t even looking for my product.

A SEO-friendly approach

If I look up a few search words in the AdWords Keyword Tool, I end up finding this interesting set of words:

What I’m building is described by some of these words, like enterprise portal, portal software, and portal system.

So what if I name my product Enterprise Portal?

1. People will tweet about it, calling it Enterprise Portal.
2. People will blog about it, calling it Enterprise Portal.
3. People will link to it, calling it Enterprise Portal.
4. My product’s page will start ranking very well for the term “enterprise portal” in Google.
5. The buzz will wear down when people move on to the next fad (as they do especially in the tech world).
6. My product will be stuck with a great ranking for “enterprise portal.” People will continue to search for this generic phrase, whether they know about my product or not.

The important part here is that the product name assists natural linking behavior. Bloggers and industry analysts are more likely to link to your product with the name of the product as the link text. If your product has a weird name, that’s what you’re going to rank for in Google.

You can fight this by trying to get links with link text that’s different than your product name. But this is an uphill battle. It’s a lot of work getting other sites to link to yours with text that you want. Many SEOs fight this battle day after day, and the smart ones secretly wish this were an easier task.

A compromise: mixing the two

Another way of looking at this: what if I name it Administrivia Enterprise Portal? This is a compromise. I’d venture to guess that linkers will sometimes call it “Administrivia Enterprise Portal,” but I’m guessing that some or most will still refer to it as “Administrivia” alone. Tweets only allow 140 characters, and people tend to be lazy when writing, so they will find shortcuts.

It’s still your choice

Of course, this is all still your choice. Nobody is twisting your arm to brand your product one way or the other.

Sometimes worrying about search rankings and SEO can be quite maddening. But it is another tool in your toolkit. Being found by your customers is important, and many of them turn to Google first. So you may as well squeeze every little bit of value out of your product name that you can.

Technorati Tags: business, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, internet marketing, product development, search engine optimization, Search Marketing, seo