Making RSS Work for Your Micro-Isv
I just love RSS. I can't remember what life was like before it. I get all my news that way, via Google Reader on my iGoogle home page.
I thought I'd share how I use it to keep my finger on the pulse with "all things Balsamiq" on the web.
Here's what I follow under the "balsamiq" tag (the links below go to the pages where the feeds come from, not the feeds themselves):
- two del.icio.us feeds, one for my own page and one for the balsamiq tag, in case someone uses it.
- a feed to my own blog, to see what it looks like to other subscribers in a feed reader.
- a feed for my blog's comments, so that I am alerted whenever anyone leaves a comment.
- a feed for a google blog search for the word balsamiq, so that I know when anyone writes about me in their blog
- a feed for a google blog search for link:www.balsamiq.com, so that I know when anyone links to my site on their blog.
- a feed for a google news search for the word balsamiq, so that I know when any news organization writes about me
- a feed from Campaign Monitor that alerts me whenever anyone subscribes to my newsletter
- two feeds from GetSatisfaction, one for "all topics" and one for "recent replies"
- a feed from Tweetscan that alerts me whenever anyone uses the word "balsamiq" in Twitter, and a similar feed from Summize
- a feed from my own twitter account, to see what it looks like to my followers in a reader
- a feed from Facebook about my notifications there.
- a feed from my public bugbase which alerts me if anyone files a new bug
So whenever someone writes about balsamiq or contacts one of balsamiq's online persona's pages, it shows up on my iGoogle home page within minutes.
This allows me to know how my brand/product is perceived and most importantly provide customer service within seconds, no matter how people decide to publish their opinion about my company (web sites, blogs, news articles, twitter or Facebook).
Anything else you can think of that I should be tracking via RSS?
Comments (2)
Pingback: Balsamiq Company Blog
Peldi,
Thanks for writing this up. I just launched my startup and am using these tips to track the pulse of the market I’m in. The only suggestion I’d make is to look at Yahoo Pipes. I’m using it to combine several Twitter search feeds, remove duplicates, and then remove comments, keywords, and authors I want to ignore (such as myself). I find it’s a subtle but nice improvement.
Patrick