Marketing Technology Blog

With over 400 feeds that I try to follow, I spend a lot of time NOT reading posts on others’ feeds as I filter through to find the great content. PostRank is an application that breaks through the clutter and helps you follow as many blogs as you’d like – but filter the content down to the posts that are most popular. It’s a pretty impressive system, albeit a little difficult to setup and maneuver.

Per the PostRank site:

PostRank measures engagement by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content. An item’s PostRank score represents how interesting and relevant people have found it to be. The more interesting or relevant an item is, the more work they will do to share or respond to that item so interactions that require more effort are weighted higher.

PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction engagement_metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.

PostRank does this by monitoring a number of systems to see which links have generated some interest. To get started, first export your OPML file from your RSS Reader. If you’re utilizing Google Reader, this is pretty simple.

Here’s a short video on how to export your OPML from Google Reader:

PostRank then allows you to utilize their system to fine-tune the subjects that you wish to follow. There are a lot of other tools – including the new widget you see in the sidebar that provides the top posts on The Marketing Technology Blog.

You can also simply follow people on PostRank, like me, to read what I’m reading and see what I believe is important.

To make PostRank more effective and promote your blog, sign up and add your OPML file or the feeds you follow. Let me know when you join PostRank and comment with your user profile page. I’ll be sure to follow you as well!

If you don’t use an RSS Reader, you can add feeds to your favorite blogs manually as well:

1. Click Subscriptions from the menu.
2. Select the Import tab.
3. Select Direct Input from the dropdown instead of OPML.
4. Type in your RSS feed address, in my case http://www.marketingtechblog.com/rss.
5. Important: tag the feed with specific keywords. In my case – marketing, technology, social media, wordpress, twitter.
6. Click Import.

There’s much more to PostRank than I could write about in a single post. The bottom line is that you can promote your blog effectively with PostRank as well as follow other popular blogs and posts more efficiently. At minimum, be sure to sign up and add The Marketing Technology Blog and tag it marketing.