What is RSS - For Marketers
by Rok Hrastnik
Published on this site: April 30th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
RSS is a technology that has the potential of overcoming many of
the internet marketing challenges we are facing today and becoming
a preferred tool to get 100% of your content delivered to your subscribers,
as well as a tool to help you achieve top position search engine
rankings.
The simple RSS explanation from the marketing point of view is
that RSS is a simple to use publishing tool for marketers and publisher.
It allows you to get your content delivered to end-users, without
the fear of spam filters stoping your messages, and to other “content
consumers” (other websites, search engines and so on).
RSS gets your content delivered, period. And it helps you increase
your search engine rankings and drives new traffic to your sites.
But some marketers are still afraid that not enough internet users
are using RSS feeds. Think again …
While achieving not more than marginal penetration, its usage is
growing with astounding speed.
Actually, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American
Life Project, 5% (6 million) Americans online consume news and information
through RSS aggregators. So the market is already out there!
BUT WHAT ARE RSS FEEDS?
RSS content is delivered through RSS feeds --- simple files structured
in a specific way.
These files include some basic information about the RSS feed (such
as RSS feed title, logo, description, URL etc.) and the actual content
you want to deliver to your readers.
These content items are individual stories or articles (usually
just descriptions of articles actually published on the internet
publisher’s web site), presented in a linear list.
But RSS is not only about text. You can easily use it to deliver
audio content, video content and even PowerPoint presentations and
PDF files.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO SUBSCRIBE TO RSS FEEDS?
The point of RSS feeds is to get people to subscribe to them, so
that they can constantly receive fresh information from you.
It’s just like subscribing to e-mail newsletters, only that
there’s no e-mail involved … and consequently no spam
or spam filters.
But to subscribe to your RSS feeds, your visitors need a special
tool, called an RSS aggregator.
RSS aggregators are special tools that can take an RSS feed and
display it to the end-user. They come in many different forms and
flavors, but the most popular are desktop applications and web readers.
In the case of desktop RSS aggregators (example: http://www.awasu.com),
end-users need to download them to their computers and install
them there. Web-based RSS aggregators (example: http://www.bloglines.com)
on the other hand are websites where users can create their
own accounts and then use those websites to view RSS content
directly from their Web browsers.
After installing an RSS aggregator or registering at a web-based
RSS aggregator web service, the user needs to proactively add the
link to your RSS feed in to the aggregator to view your content.
Every time you update your RSS feed by adding new content items
to the RSS file, the user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator,
making the content immediately available to him, without it having
to face any SPAM filters and other barricades on the way.
And, for the best part, most RSS aggregators are free to use, so
there’s really no excuse to not get started today. And by the
way – so are quite a few RSS publishing solutions!
Yes, RSS is the free way of getting your content delivered every
time.
Rok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing
& Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and
most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts.
Discover the true marketing power of RSS:
http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa5
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