If you haven’t decided whether the buzz over developing new media promotion tools, like blogs, RSS, and Podcasts is hype or reality; it’s time to come out of denial. It’s a brand new business world out there and as Warren Buffet might say, “It’s time to get some skin in the game!”

It’ not bad news though! The Internet has finally evolved to a place where unambiguous success can be achieved by those who recognize the opportunity and make a die-hard commitment to develop a radically different outlook on business, and really, on life in general.

I hate to state the obvious, but just in case we’ve got some readers who have missed what the Internet has already done to the business landscape, here are some quick facts from a Google query:

>>Forrester Research, Inc. estimates that 47.3 million North American households have online access and 43.9 percent have browsed online. Of the 43.9 percent, 65 percent have made purchases.

>>Time-starved consumers are regularly going to the Internet first to determine which local service company to patronize.

>>Consumers are rapidly becoming more comfortable using credit and bank cards to make purchases from security-backed virtual retailers.

>>Large corporations and governments have already mandated the use of online transactions to their downstream vendors.

But remember, that’s history now

These early years of the 21st century are radically different than the “old” Internet described above. The one where people became comfortable with the stability, security, and general trustworthiness of receiving information making purchases. We have just entered a brand new era, one that is especially historic for business. Why?  Because for the
first time in the industrialized world technology has aligned in a “perfect storm” with the marketing concept—the concept that businesses should make all decisions based on the needs of their customers. It’s always been great
concept, from when Adam Smith first wrote about it in 1776, but never realized in a macro market. Today we
have the tools to make the marketing concept a achievable reality on a broad scale.

Businesses driven by real-time communication with customers (i.e. the Marketing Concept) create an almost Utopian scenario—the customer’s needs are best met, the business is optimized for profitability and growth, and society benefits from a net gain in opportunity from the customer and investment profit from the business.

It’s the realization of a true free market economy in which the consumer has the most direct influence over the management of businesses, institutions, and organizations. It’s a radical new order within society where a business’ best customers can become its best salespeople. Adam Smith would be proud.

Customer Evangelism meets New Media

We here at RisingLine believe that the best strategy to achieve the Marketing Concept is customer evangelism. Developing a customer evangelist marketing strategy insures that your business is truly focused on meeting the needs of your customers and maintaining interactive communication with them. Ultimately, customers are so pleased with the
quality of your solution, that they organically become your passionate advocates.

We group the technology used to launch customer evangelism under the term “New Media.” It encompasses ulta-modern Internet technology like blogs, RSS, Podcasts, and content management systems—allowing the Web to become a conduit of real time communication, collaboration, and community—creating the perfect storm of marketing strategy and technology tools.

How do I start?

Funny you should ask, we just happen to be in the business of New Media Marketing…helping clients to gain strategic insight and catch the passion of customer evangelism, then providing them optimized web tools.  So, a great place to start is our website…to to our front page and work you way through:  http://risingline.com. For a great introduction to Customer Evangelism, we’ve posted the Customer Evangelism Manifesto by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. To see some of the New Media technology applications, (Web Edit Content Management, Custom Blogger Blogs, etc) you might like to visit our live demo site and try them out for yourself. To get a feel for the power of RSS we invite you to visit a non-profit site we sponsor, http://freeRSSdisplay.org.

We of course are ready to provide some more personalized insight through a phone call, WebEx, or visit…just let us know how we can help.

What is RSS?

SS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way for you to keep up with news and information that’s important to you, and helps you avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for information on websites. Now the content you want can be delivered directly to you without cluttering your inbox withe-mail messages. This content is called a “feed.” RSS feeds are commonly syndicated from special web pages called blogs.

RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is why you see RSS buttons commonly labeled with and XML icon: . Other common icons that indicate an RSS feed include: &

What is Podcasting?

Podcasting is an RSS Feed that includes MP3 audio files, usually published through blogs. Listening to a podcast simply means downloading an MP3 audio from a link in a blog you’ve subscribed to. Once you download the file, you can either listen to it on your computer or transfer it to an MP3 player like an iPod to listen on the go.
more podcasting information

What is an RSS Reader?

An RSS reader is a small software program that collects and displays RSS feeds. It allows you to scan headlines from a number of news sources and display them in a central location.

RisingLine also builds web sites that can be auto updated through RSS feeds from your own blogs or external sources to provide valuable automatically updated content for your visitors. For the more technically oriented, we also sponsor the site

Where Can I Get an RSS Reader?

Some browsers, such as the current versions of Firefox, have built in RSS readers. If you’re using a browser that doesn’t support RSS, there are avariety of RSS readers available on the web; for some there is no charge to download and others are available for purchase.

RisingLine makes it easy for your visitors to subscribe to your RSS news updates by including options for your feed to be automatically added to individual’s popular home pages just by clicking on a graphic link. If you have a homepage at one of these sites try clicking on the graphic to add our news to your page:

We utilize the great resources of FeedBurner to provide a smart feed that allows people to choose the RSS syndication tool that works best for them.

How Do I Add RSS Feeds Manually?

If you’re using a RSS news aggregator instead of one of the options listed above, each reader has a slightly different way of adding a new feed, also called a “channel.” Follow the directions for your reader but, in most cases, here’s how it works:

• Click on the link or small XML button near the feed you want. For example, on http://RisingLine.com/blog/ click on
• From your web browser’s address bar, copy the URL (web address). For example, the URL you would copy for
  our blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewMediaMarketing
• Paste that URL into the “Add New Channel” section of the reader. The RSS feed will start to display and regularly update the headlines for you.

Subscribe to RisingLine’s RSS Feed

• Subscribe to our New Media Marketing Blog – Stay on top of important web technology and marketing information.