How and Why to RSS

By: Richard Keir

Copyright 2005 Richard Keir RSS feeds and blogs (and blog and
pinging) are part of the latest hyper-frenzy in internet
marketing. Tools and services are mushrooming all over. But
there seem to be some rather distorted ideas about all this.
Unless you want to get into the technical stuff, exactly what an
RSS feed is doesn''t really matter. Now I care because I use them
for a lot of things, work with code and do geeky tech stuff. But
from a marketing perspective the underlying technical structure
is only relevant because it clues us in on what to use an RSS
feed for. And that''s the thing you have to understand. An RSS
marketing feed is not about the feed''s content in most cases.
Feeds that carry large quantities of content are usually
referred to as data feeds and that''s not what people are going
to put in their RSS aggregators. A basic RSS feed consists of a
varied number of items with title, a link to the full content
source and a short extract or description from the full source.
There''s more but that''s the basics. If you subscribe (by email)
to something like the daily New York Times headlines, think
about what a typical item looks like: ++++ Big deal thing
happens somewhere ++++ By A Writer ++++ Once again an
astonishing big deal thing has happened... ++++ Read Full
Article: URL-link-to-news-story Title and author - short
description - link to full content Just like an RSS feed item.
What should be obvious from this example is that RSS feeds are
about change. New content. Updated information. They are not
about static content. The group you want to reach, people who
surf via RSS, are looking for an efficient, fast way to identify
new content that they are interested in. So if you''re going to
do an RSS feed, you need it to link to and report on new and
updated content. There are lots of tools available that will let
you create your own feeds, manually or with varying degrees of
automation. One of the most popular means is by blogging. You
really don''t need any technical knowledge at all to set up a
blog and produce a feed. You can use a blog just as a feed
generator. Basically this is what blog and ping software and
services are doing. That kind of feed is not for people, it''s
for the search engines. It''s a way to alert the SEs that a new
site with un-indexed pages exists. Blogs used that way are not
what I''m talking about here. You can create a blog about
anything. What''s important is that new content is added
regularly. There are many ways to add valuable content to a
blog. You needn''t be a brilliant writer, many don''t require much
or any writing. The best way to check this out for yourself is
to blog-surf. No matter what kind of site you have - or what
kind of product you want to promote - there''s always a way to
write about it, find new information, check and report on
similar or related products and sites, report on industry news,
provide your own opinions and ideas. As most people quickly
discover, it''s far easier than it sounds at first. Your blog
will produce at least one RSS type feed. Blogger produces just
an atom feed, WordPress and other blog software normally produce
one or 2 types of RSS feeds and an atom feed. Services like
feedburner.com can allow you to "burn" your feed and then
promote a single burned url which will provide any kind of feed
a user wants. Now that you have content and an RSS/atom feed
that links to that content, your next step is to publicize your
feed. You have two different main avenues since your blog has
real content. First you can add your feed to RSS search engines
and RSS directories. And second, because your blog has that real
content and isn''t just an RSS feed generator, you can add your
blog to blog search engines and blog directories. You could even
use blog traffic exchanges like BlogExplosion. This is a simple,
low - or basically zero - cost, yet highly effective way to get
new traffic from at least two sources. First from your RSS feed.
Feeds are an increasingly popular way to save time, search and
surf. If your content is valuable and interesting people will
subscribe to your feed and click thru to those full articles or
posts that interest them -- targeted traffic from a group that
is relatively affluent and tech savvy. Second, blogs are
extremely popular. A good blog will get linked, reported,
commented on, other blogs may pick up your feed and report items
from it. All of this exposure can bring valuable free traffic.
And finally, as an extra good thing, search engines like blogs
because of the regularly updated content - they are nuts about
fresh content - and the easily spidered structure blogs use. So
as your blog pages get indexed in the SEs, you can also get
direct search engine traffic.

Richard Keir:
Richard has become a blog/feed freak largely because of the
traffic implications and because he likes to write. For more on
RSS Marketing visit http://www.MarketingWithRSS.com/blog and for
general eCommerce check out
http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com/