RSS for Beginners
Author: Rob Emmerson
RSS links are appearing all over the inernet. Have your seen them? More importantly, have you discovered how they can improve your online marketing? RSS is Really Simple Syndication, sometimes called Rich Site Summary. this can send your website to many people you would normally miss.
An RSS feed is a way to publicize updates to your website. It could be the entire update including photos, or just a summary of the latest update. A RSS with a summary would allow users to skim through the update, and visit the website for full details. Usually a RSS feed includes the title of your update with a link to the original source.
Why to you need to know the RSS basics? Because, RSS has benefits to both the readers and the publishers.
An RSS feed keeps your readers informed. Whatever your update is, a blog post, a new sale price on an item, new music, whatever it is subscribers are immediately updated. Many internet users look for the RSS feed to save time.
Because a RSS feed can provide a summary of the update, it saves valuable time which will develop a loyal following from busy web surfers. By reading your RSS summary, the user can determine if the update is important to them without having to search your site to find the update.
If you are marketing online, you will reach a wider audience because people are more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed than they are to an email list. Users who utilize a RSS aggregator will be able to read your updates without their inbox overflowing.
While it may seem that the benefit of RSS is all on the user, your RSS feed can be used as a marketing tool. Subscribers to your RSS feed get the latest updates on your site delivered to them. This will focus your marketing to those who want to receive your message, and actually want your product. It also totally eliminates the possibility of your being accused of spamming.
Because RSS is still relatively new, there may be some drawbacks to trying to use it exclusively. Some customers may still prefer to receive email updates, or may not yet understand RSS. Also, some graphics and photos may not appear, but if this is how your customer wants to hear from you it is a good idea you make the option available to them.
Even taking the perceived drawbacks into account, a RSS feed will create more traffic. Many of your RSS subscribers will want the entire story and will click to visit your site.
How to use RSS for Internet Marketing.
The original intent for RSS was to allow users to customize their homepage to have links to their favorite sites, similar to the way bookmarking sites work. Applying internet marketing to the feed was an afterthought. With the advent of services like Feed Burner, your RSS feed can be spiced up and rebroadcast to a much wider audience than you could have originally found.
Every day more people are using RSS. This innovation to the worldwide web and online marketing is becoming more widely used every day. If you are promoting a website, Blog, Forum, etc. incorporating an RSS feed is crucial to the success of your efforts. Once you get the basics down you will be able to benefit from publicizing your site through RSS.
