RSS Tips From The Experts: Making Money, Promotion, Optimization

Just added a bunch of new articles on RSS to my website. Here’s the list and a take away from each.

What is RSS - For Marketers? asks Rok Hrastnik, and quotes a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, showing that 5% (6 million) Americans online consume news and information through RSS aggregators, as proof that the market is already out there. RSS is the free way of getting your content delivered every time, he says.

Making Money with RSS Feeds explains how RSS feeds give your site an endless source of freshly updated and relevant content that acts as natural search engine spider bait. The combination of your own content and the RSS feed makes visiting you a purely unique experience that can't be found anywhere else.

RSS is Not Only for Blogs says Rok Hrastnik, and I concur. In fact I use RSS on many of my sites that do not have blogs and I now recommend that all publishers create RSS feeds to syndicate their articles and content. “RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types,” he notes. “If you can break down your content in to individual stories or individual pieces, you can deliver it via RSS.”

In Steps to Creating and Promoting RSS Feeds, Sharon Housley recommends a number of desktop and web applications available that make feed creation easy.

My personal favourite is FeedForAll.

She also offers some excellent tips on Search Engine Optimization for RSS Feeds.

1.) The title should contain important search terms.
2.) When displaying a feed be sure to use PHP, ASP or HTML so that search engines will spider the contents of the feed displayed.
3.) Always use the full path of any links
4.) Link text should emphasize keywords.
5.) Include the feed on a personal my.yahoo or my.msn home page.
6.) Feeds should be themed.
7. ) Increase link popularity by submitting the RSS feed, blog or podcast to the appropriate directories.
8.) Create RSS feed descriptions.
9.) Subscribe to feeds.
10.) Add your corporate logo or image to your RSS feed to enhance branding.
11.) If you wish to appear in the top of list of feeds that a reader has subscribed to remember that many feed readers list feeds alphabetically in the reader.
12.) Each item in your feed should contain a unique URL associated with it.

In another excellent article, Sharon shows how innovative businesses are adopting incredibly creative uses of RSS for both internal and external corporate communications.

Savvy marketers and business owners are using RSS as a way to improve corporate communication and increase their external exposure and brand appeal. The difference lies in how they use the enclosure tag â€Â“ an optional field in the RSS 2.0 specification that allows the feed publisher to include a link to a file.

While many businesses have yet to realize the potential hidden in the enclosure field, the smart ones are using it to distribute tutorials, streaming audio lectures, PDF proposals, Power Points presentations, podcasts of sales meetings, and advertising portfolios.

I personally find that quite fascinating.

Rok outlines the 7 Steps to Promoting Your RSS Feeds on Your Website which includes the tips below.

• Create an RSS presentation page and include the links to all of your RSS feeds on this page.


• Promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.


• Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always "above the fold".


• If you're publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics.


• Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages and e-zine issues.


• Help browsers find your RSS feeds by using a bit of code in your webpage.

Kent Thompson lists the Top 3 Reasons Why RSS Is Better Than Email For Delivering Your Ezine.

1) RSS is totally spam-proof 2) RSS eliminates all fear of being spammed 3) No more bogged-down email servers or duplicate messages.

I don’t necessarily share his enthusiasm (see my post "Email Marketing Is Alive And Well" to understand why), but he does make some valid points in the article.

Kent also thinks we need to Find Out How Microsoft's Plans Could Make Your Subscribers Beg You for RSS Content, and notes that its because their new browser will include a built-in RSS reader.

He believes that once visitors learn how RSS works and figure out how easy and convenient it is, RSS could quickly become the expected format for ezines and newsletters. Soon you may be forced to offer RSS content because consumers will not want to hand out their email address anymore!

Finally in Is RSS Here To Stay Or Gone Tomorrow?, he concludes that RSS is here to stay because all the major sites support it like CNN, ESPN, Yahoo and Google, and that surely is a good sign.