Now that you've covered the basics of RSS feeds in RSS 101 - An Intro to RSS Feeds, it's time to move on to the more important stuff. RSS Feeds can help you on many different levels as a reader, writer, or marketer. It even adds an SEO benefit to your site!
How can RSS feeds be used to your advantage? After having learned in RSS 101 - An Intro to RSS Feeds that RSS feeds are great for bringing you organized information in real-time, it's also important to know of all the other feats you can accomplish with the help of RSS feeds.
RSS for the Web Surfer: Sure, keeping up to date on desired content is easier than ever with the internet, but now RSS feeds make it even more convenient. RSS feeds not only allow you to hand-pick the information you are fed, but it aggregates it all for you, creating a one-stop-reading experience. No longer do you have to check websites and search for the information you want; it is brought to you.
RSS for Writers: The last thing you want to do is make it a hassle for people to access your work. Don't lose potential readership because other sites in your niche offered RSS feeds while you didn't. Whether you are in charge of a forum, write web articles, blog to promote a product, or want to share your life story, having RSS feeds available allows others to gain easier access to your insights. Once accessing your content becomes an annoyance, good content will only get you so far.
Using RSS to Market your Website: As a marketer, RSS feeds make it easier to interact and build relationships between authors (business) and readers (consumers) while providing an accurate tool in measuring their response to the content. "Just as newsgroups satisfy a need for interactivity among users with similar needs or interests, RSS satisfies a need for content producers and consumers to exchange information of common interest"(1) through newsletters, promotions and press releases.
Using RSS allows you to automatically update these channels of information exchange, using several different mediums to do it, such as photos, audio, video and even executable applications. But unlike email, RSS is only delivered to those who are actually interested in receiving the content, making your marketing efforts direct, focused, and easy.
It is through these subscriptions that marketers can track just how many people are truly interested in what your company has to say. By putting a tracking code in the RSS source code, you can record just how many people are accessing your web content via RSS. Overtime, you learn a great deal about which content are valuable to your audience, and which are not. Attentiveness towards such developing trends like RSS is guaranteed to make you more effective on the job.
RSS' Added Bonus: Search Engine Optimization All SEO engineers know that in order to perform effective web searches, search engines use meta-data from sites to assist them in finding the most relevant results for a search. By updating your item tag in your meta data, you can categorize yourself in a niche of your choosing and direct your feed towards a target audience via search.
Also, by having an RSS feed available, you can submit your site to many RSS feed directories, and make your feed available on partner sites in order to improve your search engine ranking. Not only that, but "the traditional Web search engines tend to favor fresh content - so, this also ensures your RSS content is pushed to the search engine rather than having to wait for the search engine crawler to visit your site."(2) It is a sure method to bring more traffic to your site while achieving higher search engine rankings, and it's absolutely free!
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End Notes:
1. Bridgeman, Galan. Microsoft. "Find the right RSS reader for you," December 5, 2005.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/web/expert/bridgman_05november21.mspx2. Li, Charlene. Forrester Research, Inc. "Using RSS as a Marketing Tool." July 26, 2005.
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About the Author
Veronica Mun graduated from the University of Washington where she majored in Communication and Psychology. She is currently a member of the marketing team at Essential Security Software, an emerging email anti-theft software company based in Bellevue, WA.
