This is the first of what will become a series of articles on utilizing blogs for public relations. This initial installment will provide some basic instructions for monitoring the blogosphere.

One of the first steps any PR practitioner should take when contemplating using blogs is to monitor and observe the landscape first. Why monitor? Kryptonite has become the poster child for the results of not monitoring blogs for developing trends. (Steve Rubel probably has the best recap of the Kryptonite saga)

To get started you will need to become acquainted with RSS, utilize an RSS reader, search the blogosphere, then harness the power of custom RSS feeds.

RSS
RSS, stands for either Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary depending on whom you ask. Lee Lefever has a great post explaining RSS in plain English. The majority of blogs, and more and more newspaper sites, are providing an RSS feed of their content. Each time a web site or blog adds content, the RSS feed is updated. Heather Green or Business Week calls RSS "Your Online Paperboy."

To find an RSS feed just look for the small RSS or XML graphic on a page, or the term 'syndicate,' Usually clicking on the link will provide you the URL for the RSS feed. Now that you have the URL, what's next? We'll get to that in a second.

For purposes of this discussion you don't need to know all the details of RSS. What RSS allows you to do is quickly review content from a variety of web sites. Rather than visiting web site after web site to see if any new content has been posted, RSS brings the content to you. In order to view RSS feeds you will need an RSS reader.

RSS Readers
Now that you have found the URL of an RSS feed, you will need something to view it with. (You may have noticed that an RSS feed does not display correctly in a standard web browser).

With RSS readers you can choose a web-based service such as Bloglines (www.bloglines.com), Kinja (www.kinja.com) or My Yahoo (www.myYahoo.com). All the web-based tools are free.

There are also a number of stand-alone applications which you can install on your computer. For Windows there is NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) and SharpReader (www.sharpreader.net). NewsGator has a web-based version and a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. For the Macintosh there is NetNewsWire (www.ranchero.com/netnewswire/). Most stand-alone applications are free to try, but cost between $15 and $30.

Once you have you reader installed (or you've created an acount for a web-based tool) you can begin to subscribe to RSS feeds. All the readers offer an easy way to add/subscribe-to feeds.

Many blogs also provide a quick link to add the feed to one of the popular online tools such as Bloglines, NewsGator or My Yahoo.

Each time you open the reader all RSS feeds are checked for new content. Any feed that contains new content is highlighted. It is also common for a total number of unread items to be displayed next to the feed. Some feeds provide the entire body of the article, other provide a short synopsis. In either case you can easily click on a link and be transferred to the appropriate web page. The 'news' comes to you.

As I mentioned above, rather than visiting a number of blogs and web pages via a web browser, open the RSS reader and quickly see which sites have new content. No more wasting time visiting a site to find out nothing new has been posted.

Now that you are up and running with an RSS reader it's time to expand your horizons. The initial RSS feeds you may monitor are from known sources. By this I mean sites that you currently visit. These may be news sources, industry publications and a few blogs. It's time to learn who else may be talking about your company or client. You need to search the blogosphere.

Search Tools
While Google has become the leader in web content searches, it does not offer the ability to search RSS feeds. Technorati and Feedster are specialized search tools that index RSS feeds. These tools work like any other search engine. Enter your search term(s) and review the results. The default view for both search tools is to display results by date.

Play around; do some searches for your company/client name. Searching for hot news items will usually display links for items that are only a few hours old.

One item that Technorati provides is the number of links the items has generated. This gives an indication of the impact a story is having. In this case the post above has been linked 1430 times. Quite a popular item.

Feedster and Technorati allow you to search for terms you may not always need to monitor. The results can turn you on to other blogs. You may discover a blog that always has the latest information within your industry, and now you'll add that blog's RSS feed to your reader.

These services are great, but now you are back to visiting a web to find information. You've been spoiled by your RSS reader; you want to be told when something new is published.

PubSub and other RSS Creation Tools
Two new services begin to show the potential of RSS. PubSub allows you to create a RSS feed to monitor a set of search term(s). For example, let's say you want to monitor the blogosphere for any time Lance Armstrong is mentioned. Create a free account on PubSub, enter your search terms, "Lance Armstrong" and PubSub creates a custom RSS feed.

Subscribe to this feed in your RSS reader. Each time a blogger writes about Lance it will be shown in your RSS reader. PubSub currently monitors 6,747,019 sources. Be careful that your terms are not too broad, otherwise you can quickly become overloaded with results.

One drawback to PubSub is that it only monitors RSS feeds and major press release services. News outlets that do not provide RSS feeds are not indexed. Luckily an enterprising individual has created a solution..

Justin Pfister created a Google News RSS Generator. The system is very similar to PubSub. Enter your search term(s) and a custom RSS feed is generated. Copy and paste the RSS URL into your reader. Each time Google News picks up a story containing your search terms your RSS reader will show it.

There has been some discussion that since the Google RSS Generator is not a Google product they may force it to be shut down. If it is closed down, a replacement will quickly surface.

You're Off
Now you are set. You have your RSS reader, you're monitoring a number of blogs and news sources, and you've created some custom RSS feeds to monitor trends for your company/clients. In my RSS reader I currently monitor 75 feeds. Eight of the feeds are custom feeds from PubSub and Google News.

A quick check of your RSS reader a few times a day will keep you and your clients ahead of any issues, and perhaps allow you to sieze opportunities before your competition. You will also find yourself tweaking your search terms in PubSub to either narrow or broaden your results.

On average I find that news and issues discussed in the blogosphere is at least 1-2 days ahead of the major media. In public relations, that one or two days can make a big difference.

Need More Information?
Do you want to learn more about utilizing blogs for your organization or clients? Feel free to e-mail me.