a) offering subscribers the chance to get comments might be of interest to users

b) if you offer a person that comments to get subsequent comments to this post via e-mail, do I want to get 10 or 100 e-mails in case were a post gets many comments such as 2008-12-03 Seth Godin – sale – post that might get plenty of comments thereby giving one e-mail for each comment

c) we do not have the answer either but based on Anita Campbell’s comments above I decided to create a page on my blog. The page explains how my readers can get comments separate from postings. This link is available on the blog (1st right hand-column – heading called Meta):

Entries RSS
Comments RSS

Thanks to WordPress, you can get comments for certain categories only by setting up an RSS feed for yourself – it is soo easy – takes 2 seconds as explained here on this page on our blog – applies to your blog as well, of course:

RSS – forget about user engagement – just focus on retention!

Again, if you use my explanation as given above you should be able to create such a possibility for your blog as well. I have no clue how this works on TypePad.

I will bring more in an upcoming post. This Saturday so stay tuned.

Smallbiztrends @ComMetrics Hi, you raised a great point about corporate blogs – how do you appeal to a broad customer base, but give people what they want?

Commetrics @Smallbiztrends Do you offer RSS feed for comments only

Smallbiztrends @ComMetrics OPEN Forum doesn’t have RSS comments — not enough demand. Offers email subscription to comments – gives readers more control

Guy thanks for this input, I agree it is unfortunate that the site does not offer its content via e-mail to subscribers.

Anita thanks so much for pointing this out. Of course I knew but I felt a non-geeks might not know about this trick.

Based on your important comment I have two additional remarks to make if I may:

a) Getting an RSS feed for an author or a category can work in different ways.

For instance, in our case you need to know the category number (go to category – bottom of post or right side on our blog – click on category you want and you get the number).

This post is http://commetrics.com/?p=351

One category this post is assigned to is FT ComMetrics Blog Index which gives you the following link:

http://commetrics.com/?cat=284

Important is the category number 284. Hence, the RSS feed delivering me posts that fall under this category only is:

http://commetrics.com/?feed=rss2&cat=425

2) Your site is using custom permalinks. Hence, one needs the complete path to the category folder or the author. The format for my blog would be something like this:

http://commetrics.com/category/FT_ComMetrics_Blog_Index

Anita, I needed a wake-up call from somebody like you.

I am making a special page that will help my readers figuring this out right here:

http://commetrics.com/?page_id=675

Maybe you want to get a page up with this information on your site as well?

Why did I not think of this earlier …. ts ts

THANK YOU so much.

You raise some excellent points. Let me share a couple of thoughts:

(1) Yes, the content is broad but I think that helps it appeal to a very very wide range of interests. That reflects the range of interests of American Express OPEN customers. They are not all in the same industries. They are not all in the same stage (startup versus established). They do not all have the same interests.

So I thought long and hard about: “how does one appeal to the widest range of interests possible?”

In the Small Business Trends Network, for instance, I do that by selecting the Experts based on particular areas of expertise and their writing styles. Dawn Rivers Baker writes about microbusiness issues and in particular follows regulatory issues. Deborah Chaddock Brown writes from the home-based business perspective, often with humor that those in similar situations can relate to. Steve King has written about artists and online artisans. I write about practical operational issues of interest to mainstream small businesses. And so on. Not every reader will be interested in everything (I’m not interested in everything in the Financial Times, for instance, but I do read parts of it). Yet I think the blog tries to be all-inclusive by design, because OPEN’s customers cover such a wide range.

(2) The blog is built on WordPress software, and it’s a little-known fact that you can very easily create your own feed for particular authors or topics — in about 5 seconds. Here’s how to subscribe to different authors: just add “/feed” at the end of the URL for the author’s contributions page.

To subscribe just to Guy Kawasaki, use this feed URL:

http://blogs.openforum.com/author/guykawasaki/feed

To subscribe to Anita Campbell on the OPEN Forum, use this feed URL:

http://blogs.openforum.com/author/anitacampbell/feed

You can even subscribe just to certain topics, such as “Management”:

http://blogs.openforum.com/category/management/feed

And so on. Maybe in the future the OPEN Forum will consider making these special-interest feed URLs into the orange RSS button to make it easier for people to subscribe to just certain channels, authors or interests.

I think that is one way OPEN could appeal to as wide a range of customers as possible, but still allow those customers to self-select content based upon their own interests.

Best,
Anita

By the way, why does AMEX not offer one to subscribe via e-mail. I don’t use RSS and why should I have to?

no e-mail subscriptions on the Open Forum blog