Matt Shobe: Doing pretty well Dale, thanks for interviewing me! My  right foot still hurts a bit from running the Chicago Marathon last  weekend, but one can only hope that doesn't slow me down on the  keyboard.

Dale King: Matt, tell my readers how and when you got started 
marketing on the Internet, including how FeedBurner came about.

Matt Shobe: I joined my first entirely Internet-facing business in 
1997 along with some former colleagues from Accenture. It was a small  knowledge management software startup in Chicago called DKA. (These  colleagues have since become my cohorts in three startups, and  counting.) My work has always been on the customer-facing end of the  business, from designing user interfaces for working with a web-based  product, to writing copy to position that product, to answering  customer support inquiries and creating user education materials.

After DKA, the four of us decided to combine our complementary talents  and natural ability to work together and turn over new ideas quickly  and see if we could make a run at our own company. That one was called  Spyonit, and it was a neat web-based alerting service that could tell  you when an eBay auction, stock price, or general web page you cared  about changed in a way that interested you (among other things). We  sold that company and eventually our industry and technical interests  evolved into the genesis of FeedBurner.

FeedBurner is a service for publishers (including blogs, podcasts and  major commercial publications like USA TODAY, Wired Magazine, and  Reuters) who want to measure, manage, and monetize the content they  create and distribute via "RSS," or feed syndication. We saw an  opportunity to create just such a centralized, managed service in late  2003 and launched in February 2004.

Since then, its evolution has been  driven by careful attention to daily publisher feedback, a nose for  online content market trends, and a spirit of restless creativity. We  have a lot of fun making this stuff work and hearing about how it  helps others, but there are always more improvements and enhancements  in demand to keep us out of trouble.

Dale King: Some Internet Marketing experts advise newbies to steer  clear of certain areas of Internet Marketing, like selling e-books on  how to make money, advertising services, SEO services, copywriting,  etc., because those niches are deemed to be too competitive. Do you agree with that assessment?

Matt Shobe: I come from a software product design and 
usability-oriented background, so my view of marketing isn't as 
broadly strategic as it probably should be. Still, I believe that 
shying away from a channel because of perceived competitiveness  telegraphs a lack of confidence in having an authentic voice. If a 
marketer has taken time to segment and really understand their core  audience, they should have a position on the best media and messaging  needed to reach that audience and no fear exploiting it.

I trust consumers to have fine-tuned B.S. detectors -- at least the ones I  most want to convert into customers/fans -- and a marketer should make  sure their voice is honest and wisely applied to winning a discerning  audience's favor.

Dale King: Well sasid. How is Internet Marketing different now, as opposed to when  you first got started online?

Matt Shobe: I've been on the web since the beginning, and the biggest  difference is that it, uh, didn't exist then. I remember how novel my  first-ever online purchase was in 1995 -- a software buy at  outpost.com -- and how woefully technical and complex all aspects of  even getting online were then.

Now that virtually all segments of the  modern world marketplace have web access, and an entire generation of  consumers expects their favorite companies, large and small, to have a  presence that satisfies so many possible goals  (purchase/research/support/job hunt/investor  relations/networking/community/hours and locations/etc), I can't  imagine a business that has no reason to consider the web as a  keystone to any marketing plan development.

I remember helping a small wholesaler of baby carriages and other 
infant furniture accessories establish a web presence around 1998. He  had a wonderful industry point of view, bore a jovial personality that  came through in all of his correspondence, and had a crystal-clear  understanding of his market and business. How I wish easy-to-use blog  platforms existed then! A business blog would have served this  wholesaler perfectly. He did well enough with simple email referrals,  but as I mentioned earlier about authentic voice and appropriate  channel, a well-designed blog with some proper search engine tuning  could have helped him reach unexpected shores and generated many more  leads. Today's web makes this "woulda coulda" scenario an instant 
no-brainer because it's so easy to establish a blog and even a simple  e-commerce site in short order with minimal resources.

Dale King: How important has goal-setting been to your overall success?

Matt Shobe: For personal development, I've kept general one- to 
two-year goals in mind for professional achievement. My daily/weekly  efforts should generally support this goal but remain flexible enough  to permit inevitable sidetracks and even creative exploration. You  need a A Plan, but it probably shouldn't be scripted to the last 15  minutes.

Dale King: How important has reading been to your overall success?

Matt Shobe: Hugely important. Breadth of knowledge is critical, and a  good liberal education helps you understand all sides of the issues  (but sometimes leads to "analysis paralysis" -- spending too much time  weighing alternatives without fixing on a point of view and taking any  action). Reading a broad variety of works, both fiction and  nonfiction, has the added benefit of considerably expanding your  vocabulary; don't ever discount the value of that.

I try to read  magazines like The Economist to get around the world in an hour or so,  and of course I read a ton of feeds of bloggers, news sources, and  websites that I need to keep track of daily. (I wouldn't be much of a  FeedBurner founder if I didn't believe in the power of having updates  delivered directly to you by feeds.)

Dale King: If you could recommend one book that all Internet marketers  should read, what would it be?

Matt Shobe: You'd think after my previous answer, I'd turn on this  like a pony league fastball. Whiff! I'm really weak in the marketing 
strategy and general read-books-often department lately, so let me  offer up some complementary reading: The World is Flat, by Thomas  Friedman.

Even if you have read Friedman's column in the New York  Times and believe he's overly reliant on pat answers for messy,  complex problems, you have to admire his early grasp of the new global  reality: anyone can compete with everyone, from virtually anywhere, in  today's internetworked marketplaces. It reinforces a belief of mine  that real innovation can never be outsourced, just refined by making  and learning from mistakes as quickly as possible. Risk-takers are the  ones in Friedman's world likeliest to get by in good standing.

Dale King: In your opinion, what technology has changed Internet 
Marketing the most over the last 5 years?

Matt Shobe: Again, I'd pretty much blow it if I didn't point out 
feeds. They help connect bloggers, podcasters, and commercial 
publishers with a regular audience that finds their voice a necessary  signal chosen from the noise of wider Internet. Feed subscribers are  your base, your core constituency, a group who may both violently  agree and disagree with your opinion. If you are marketing to them,  it's in your best interest to understand them and treat them  differently than other channels.

Dale King: What new technology do you see changing Internet Marketing  over the next 5 years?

Matt Shobe: The ability for previously disconnected web services to  hook together in new and interesting ways. People are using Google  Maps to bring geographic data into business problem solving; others  use del.icio.us, Digg, and other social media services to make sure  their content spreads far and wide, beyond just their established  subscribers. Other "widget" makers, FeedBurner included, make it  possible to put your own content directly on other people's sites, and  even have the widgets auto-update over time. (And of course, feeds  help make this all possible.)

The more that individuals can take bits and pieces of content and 
technology, and reuse them to serve their own purposes with a minimum  of technical fuss, the more everyone benefits.

Dale King: What person has influenced you the most in your lifetime, and how?

Matt Shobe: My parents get a lifetime nod in this category because  they raised me to think critically, to deal honestly, and to act  decisively. I must owe my curiosity and admiration for creativity in  all things to them more than anyone. However, a high school teacher,  Mr. Reilly, is probably my biggest outside influence. He challenged  those of us in his English and Drama classes to take every worthwhile  risk we could, and I can't say I'd be an entrepreneur today (or have  played an Indian royal in our 1988 production of The Mystery of Edwin  Drood) without his leadership during those formative teen years.

Dale King: If you could give my readers one piece of advice, what would it be?

Matt Shobe: Find and surround yourself with smart people you like and  who complement your strengths, and good things will follow. I think  this holds true whether you're just starting out in an internship or  summer job, an entrepreneur with a few partners, or a senior executive  of a major corporation.

Dale King: Excellent advice. Thank you very much, Matt . I appreciate you taking the  time to do this interview.

Matt Shobe: You're very welcome, Dale! It was my pleasure.

Visit FeedBurner at: http://feedburner.com