RSS Feed - A Primer Plus - Subscribe to This Feed
by David O’Brien
A quick survey of acquaintances in the marketing field revealed that very few had heard of RSS. Of those that did, most had not given much thought to how it could be used as a marketing or integration tool. But considering that RSS can have a dramatic impact on core marketing functions, such as competitive intelligence and brand monitoring, I think it’s a term likely to be on everyone’s “buzz list” within a few months.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication—although not everyone agrees, some say it stands for Rich Site Summary. From a general consumer standpoint, RSS is a tool that keeps you updated on news and fresh content from your favorite websites. For example, many people have a list of sites, such as The New York Times, Yahoo! News or even local blogs, which they visit frequently to keep updated on current news and issues.
An RSS reader eliminates the need to do all that browsing and will automatically scan the content of your favorite sites for updates and, if it finds any, broadcast them directly to your computer, cell phone or PDA. You can specify the type of information you want to see, and if there is nothing new on the site, you won’t receive any updates, and you don’t have to bother checking the site to see if there’s new content.
Think of RSS as the TiVo of online information. You could spend time checking in on your favorite news sites to see if there’s anything interesting or new. Or, you can set up an RSS aggregator, subscribe to the sites you like, specify topics and keywords of interest, and then let the news come to you. Not only is the old way much less efficient, it limits your sources by the number of sites you can visit in a set amount of time and by the sites you already know to visit. On any given day, an RSS aggregator may only pull in 10 articles, but it may have gathered those out of millions of sites—and all of them should be new and relevant to you.
Uses In Marketing
So it’s probably already evident how RSS can begin to have a big impact on businesses and marketing. The most basic use is to set up an RSS aggregator to automatically pull in articles, blog entries and general website content that mention your company or your products. The same can be done for competitors and prospects.
Already, companies are learning that RSS aggregators can be exceptionally valuable. One very publicized example comes from The New York Times. Last year, it ran a story headlined “The Pen is Mightier than the Lock,” about how an online forum detailed how Kryptonite bike locks can be opened using just a standard Bic pen. But the Times story ran well after hundreds of thousands of people had already learned about the defect, mostly through RSS channels. If Kryptonite had an aggregator set up to monitor references to its name or products, it wouldn’t have been caught off guard by the Times article, and might have been able to limit the damage, including several now-pending lawsuits.
Clients love the notion of being able to automatically monitor thousands of websites for any mention of their company or its products. Competitor aggregators, especially, are capturing clients’ attention. Set up properly, clients can have an exceptionally effective tool, which continually assesses what is being said about their competitors and their products.
Beyond News Aggregators
Earlier, RSS was compared to TiVo. Just as TiVo is forcing drastic changes in how we reach consumers through network advertising, RSS has the potential to impact how people get information from the web. While no one is predicting the demise of searching or browsing, RSS will create a new population of individuals that prefer to have news and information brought to them versus having to search for it. In other words, if your content isn’t being published by RSS feeds and ranked high in the RSS search engines, you’ll be missing a large portion of potential customers and readers.
The big opportunity that RSS presents to marketers is the ability to publish content directly to potential customers and other shareholders. And, when you communicate directly via RSS, you avoid spam filters and database management issues.
The first step is to serve your existing database—inviting them to subscribe to new content published on your website. They’ll automatically receive postings about new products, press releases and other announcements. For example, an RSS feed would be a great idea for an agri-chemical company looking for a way to keep farmers up-to-date on the spread of a new crop disease. Farmers who subscribed to the feed could rest assured that they’d be automatically sent any updates about the disease posted by the company on its website.
Expanding the popularity and reach of your RSS syndicated content, beyond your current database, is the second goal. The most basic step is to make sure content on your website is RSS-enabled and that new visitors to the site have the opportunity to subscribe. There is plenty of information online on how to do this process, but ultimately, the goal is to have the standard orange XML button, which is becoming the recognized symbol for RSS, next to any RSS-enabled content.
But beyond capturing random visitors to your site, there are a number of things you can do to let people know about your RSS feeds and become regular subscribers.
RSS Feeds And RSS Search Engines
Content published in an RSS feed can automatically be set up to send out notifications to feed readers and RSS search engines when new content is posted. This differs from ordinary website content, which is passive and not available to users until a search spider crawls the page and discovers new content. RSS content, on the other hand, is actively pushed out to RSS feeds and RSS search engines.
Although the major search engines—Google, Yahoo!, MSN—have not yet introduced an independent RSS search service, they do include RSS file types within their standard search results.
And just like other web content, in order for search engines to pick up and rank your RSS content, it needs to contain meaningful content, with high keyword frequency.
Search Engine Optimization
Which brings us to one final benefit of RSS—its ability to assist with search engine optimization. Subscribing to RSS feeds and offering RSS content on your website will give your site new, targeted content for your visitors every day. It will also give the search engine spiders new content to index regularly. For instance, to a search spider, a page that has RSS feed content incorporated into it is as good as a page that is being updated daily, and is a page worth visiting daily. This helps increase your search rankings because your site is being indexed more frequently. In addition, any new content added to your site will be picked up much more quickly. Also, since your site uses RSS feeds and is indexed more frequently, the chances of getting your page into the top results in Google will be much higher.
on August 17th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
[…] RSS Feed - A Primer Plus “A quick survey of acquaintances in the marketing field revealed that very few had heard of RSS. Of those that did, most had not given much thought to how it could be used as a marketing or integration tool. But considering that RSS can have a dramatic impact on core marketing functions, such as competitive intelligence and brand monitoring, I think it’s a term likely to be on everyone’s “buzz list” within a few months.” […]