Kami Watson Huyse, APR, principal of My PR Pro, writes about public relations and communications. She has a background in crisis communication and reputation management, executing social media campaigns, conducting focus group research, and media relations. She runs the Communication Overtones blog.

Why did you start blogging?
I started in 2005 having just moved from Washington DC. It wasn’t just a change in place – I found that I’d moved from a vibrant communications culture to a much smaller market.

This was right after the first Iraq war and at this time I started to read Baghdad Burning, the blog direct from the conflict that told the truth about what was going on. All of a sudden, the world opened up again and it really changed my mind about blogging.

I could see that this wasn’t just a personal journal. I realised that blogs really are powerful communications tools. It was both fascinating and amazing to me that I could read the writings of someone in such a different situation from myself in a way which was simply not possible only a few years before.

As this relates to my profession, I’m very aware that two-way conversation just doesn’t scale. But since Baghdad Burning I’ve come to understand how potent blogging is as a scalable communications force.

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee believes there is no such thing as Web 2.0. When the man who invented the web says this, it’s probably worth listening.

Why should I care?

The phrase “Web 2.0″ means lots of different things to different people. Everyone who uses it thinks they (and -  occasionally  – only they) know what it means.

This misplaced confidence in what is – after all – nothing more than a hyped, hackneyed (and possibly meaningless) buzzword often prevents them from thinking clearly, or communicating clearly.

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RSS is brilliantly powerful. But sometimes email’s just easier. You don’t have to remember to check your feeds – it fits into your existing workflow. You can read email during downtime on your Blackberry. You can even share stories with friends.

Pretty much every self-respecting site has an RSS feed these days (at least the ones that change with any regularity.) But not all RSS feeds are the same. Using just one newsreader (whether it’s web-based like Google Reader or a desktop-based tool) limits your flexibility, and can lead to information overload.

Sometimes it’s important to hear the news as it happens. Other times, you may just want to read a digest in the morning, or at the end of the day.

Here’s one easy way to get your RSS feeds as an email.

getting a feed by email using RSS FWD

Visit RSS FWD.

1. enter the URL of the site you want to subscribe to.



2. enter your email address, and choose how you want them to send you news (do you want a digest? to be alerted as it happens?)



3. subscribe
4. remember to check your email for the confirmation message, and confirm your subscription!
5. wait for the stories to roll in.