While RSS end-user adoption has been relatively slow, marketers have jumped at the chance to use this new internet channel increase their online sales.

If you’re new to the world of RSS — RSS is a simple technology that allows you to deliver your online content directly to your subscribers, other websites and the search engines. It helps you improve your content delivery, as well as increase your online traffic and reach, and even conduct business intelligence more easily.

RSS content is delivered through so-called RSS feeds, which are just simple files that carry your online content. Each of these simple files containts multiple “stories” that you may want to deliver to your audiences, called “content items”. A content item can be anything … an article, a blog post, a whole newsletter issue, a sales letter and so on.

But there is more to RSS than simply getting your content out.

One of the fields of RSS marketing is also NewsMastering, which allows you to:

[a] take multiple third-party RSS feeds,

[b] mix them together,

[c] filter your new mix using various keywords that you’re interested in,

[d] use the mix and your filters to create a new stream of content, pulling together all the content items from dozens or hundreds of other RSS feeds … but only the content items that match your filters.

You can now take this stream of content and either subscribe to it yourself, if for example you want to find out immediately what the market is saying about you, what it’s saying about your competitors, and what your competitors are doing themselves.

Or you can take this stream of content and display it on your website to:

[a] enrich the visitor experience, by giving them access to the latest and most relevant list of content from your field, such as the latest news in the field you are covering … and do so automatically;

[b] by doing so also making your website more search engine friendly, thus increasing your rankings.

But up until now doing all of this was quite complicated and really wasn’t accessible to most internet marketers.

But no longer so …

YAHOO! PIPES CHANGES THE LANDSCAPE

http://pipes.yahoo.com is the latest offering from Yahoo!, finally bringing the premise of NewsMastering to the mass market, and actually putting it on steroids.

The general idea behind Yahoo! Pipes is to allow its users to “easily” connect various internet data sources, mix them together in various ways, add additional functionality to them and create a new single output, pertaining directly to your settings.

While this may sound alot like the standard RSS aggregation & filtering we mentioned above, it actually goes much further than anything on the market in enabling you to manipulate outside sources and come up with a new content output, all of this in a visual programming environment.

The “old services” simply allowed you to combine various RSS feeds, set some basic rules on how you want to get content from them, such as limiting the output to only the content items that match your keywords and removing duplicates, and get a new single RSS feed from them. You could then subscribe to this RSS feed in your RSS Reader (for business intelligence purposes) or use it to display its contents on your website.

But Yahoo! Pipes goes much further.

[BTW - in the Yahoo! Pipes glossary, a pipe is an output you create from mixing and manipulating various content sources]

[a] Aggregate and Filter any XML Feed

Aggregate any kind of XML feed, not just RSS, which means that if your application provides an XML data output, you can now aggregate that data feed with other different feeds you might be interested in, and create a single RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your RSS Reader. Just as an example, imagine having an RSS feed that brings you various data from your organization in a single output, such as the latest sales data from your webstore, latest account of company expenses, notifications of new employees, important team communications, your website visitor counts and so on. It even lets you combine other pipes into a new single pipe.

[b] Content Manipulation

Apply various filters, such as a keyword content filter to give you only the content you’re interested in, sort, count, truncate, join or even create your own filters. It even lets you add your own input fields. For example, you could create a pipe that aggregates all the RSS feeds from top online retailers, and include an input field that allows you to enter the name of the product you want the latest deals on, and then creates an on-the-fly output with the latest deals for this product. Essentially, it allows you to add simple or advanced search functionalities to filter out only the content you’re really interested in … from hundreds or even thousands of content sources.

[c] Social Applications

Browse through pipes created by other users to either use them as an end-user, or use their pipes to create your own new pipes. It of course also allows you to make your own pipes public and even provide them as a service to end-users.

There are really almost countless opportunities of what you can do with Yahoo! Pipes, and various new applications will surface when the service gets some milage.

The best part is, you can either create your own application that you use when the need arises from the Web, or an RSS feed that you subscribe to in your RSS Reader, to constantly deliver to you the content that you want. Or you can use the RSS feed to display that content on your website.

All of this is done through a visual interface, which might be daunting for the average user, but shouldn’t present a problem to marketers that either have the time to learn the ropes or pay a little something to a person that already has.

HOW MARKETERS WILL PROFIT

If you’re thinking of how you can profit from Yahoo! Pipes as a marketer, there really are countless opportunities.

[a] Provide highly relevant streams of content on your website to enrich the visitor experience.

[b] Become a preferred access point to relevant and latest content in your industry.

[c] Build applications that allow your visitors to easily access the content they’re interested in.

[d] Take your business intelligence activities to the next level.

And much much more …

With all the capabilities available through Yahoo! Pipes, countless new opportunities will certainly arise quickly.

The best part is, you can now more easily take advantage of them.

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Home Solar

The importance of RSS for marketing can no longer be disputed, but do we really understand all the benefits RSS brings to us as marketers, or really understand why we need to use it to get closer to our customers?

WHAT RSS WILL DO FOR YOU AS A MARKETER?

a] Get your content delivered without fail to all of your subscribers.

E-mail delivery rates are dropping, spam is everywhere and it’s getting increasingly difficult to get our marketing content read by our subscribers, prospects and customers. RSS is the way out.

b] Increase your web traffic and your online visibility.

With more and more sites competing for business every day, you need to do everything in your power to increase your online traffic, and RSS will help you get an upper edge.

c] RSS enables you to easily get your content published on dozens and dozens of other sites.

d] It will serve as a platform for ad sales,

e] It will provide advertising opportunities to promote your own business

f] It will help you get more content for your site without you having to write a single word.

WHY YOU NEED RSS, FROM THE END-USER POINT OF VIEW?

a] People want to receive content in a controlled environment where they are in-charge, not the publisher.

b] Delivering content using e-mail is becoming increasingly difficult, due to blacklists, spam filters and over excessive amounts of e-mail in your recipients’ mailboxes.

c] RSS allows you to deliver content beyond your e-zine, giving you more content delivery opportunities.

d] RSS is a natural tool for content syndication, which means easily and instantly delivering your content to hundreds of other content sources, thus creating additional exposure.

e] When using RSS to deliver all of your web site content updates, RSS will actually increase your web site traffic, thus giving your promotional messages more exposure.

f] People are afraid of subscribing to e-mail lists, which makes getting new subscribers difficult; RSS is a whole different story.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Either as an end-user or as business person, content delivery should be one of your top informational concerns.

a] As an end-user you cannot function properly without having relevant access to the information you need. Content delivery mechanisms affect your ability to access this information.

b] As a business person you must understand that your business success, among other things, depends on information, and in large on your ability to deliver it. Without the proper content delivery vehicles you cannot get content in-front of your target audiences, at least not in a relevant fashion.

RSS answers the needs of both.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

Even after all that’s been written and explained, even reputable online marketing publications such as ClickZ still don’t get RSS metrics.

In an otherwise good RSS marketing article, Add RSS to Your Marketing Mix, Heidi Cohen has this to say about RSS metrics:

“From a marketing perspective, RSS’s measurability is still evolving and therefore limited. You can’t tell who has received your feeds as you can with e-mail.”

Yes, RSS’s measurability is still evolving and probably will evolve beyond e-mail metrics. In some ways it already has …

And it’s also true that you can’t tell who has received your feeds … if you’re using the most established RSS approaches and just the basic technologies.

However, once you connect your feeds with your existing user databases, you can in fact go beyond what e-mail metrics offer.

Here are some possibilities …

a] Use the “unique feed URL” approach, where each subscriber receives a feed with a unique identifier, based on which you can track precisely what feeds are being requested … namely what annonymous user is requesting what feed.

b] If you’d like to integrate annonymous feed subscriber data with named (registered) user data, you can easily provide feeds only upon registration or only to logged-in users, and actually connect each unique feed URL with a named user. Especially if you provide feed customization this won’t be a problem at all. Once you’ve integrated this data you can measure every and any iteraction your user has with your feed.

c] If you don’t want to force your visitors to register in order to subscribe to your feed, you can still use the unique feed URL approach, which you connect with a user session, cookie or other identifiable information. Once your RSS feed subscriber registers you can integrate the data you already collected based on existing feed interaction and website interaction with his new user account.

d] The other approach you can use is user authentication, where you limit access to your feeds with a username/password combination. If each unique users receives a unique combination, you can track everything based on this information.

There are other possibilities as well, and the actual implementation of those above is somewhat more complicated than it seems at first sight. It does for example also require a more complex internet marketing strategy. It does require using more complex tools than the simplest RSS publishing solutions available on the market. It does require integration with your user database and internet platform.

But the point is that it’s not only theoretically possible, but also in praxis. And in fact simple for companies with their own advanced internet platforms.

Just a quick disclaimer …

a] If your feed gets widely syndicated you can in fact lose view of who’s receiving your feed, even if you’re using unique feed URLs (you can of course measure this as well, by analyzing user agent data). Using the user authentication model solves this problem as well.

b] Even if your feed does get widely syndicated, that’s still comparable to your e-mail messages being passed around by users. And if we take in to account that measuring open-rates is getting increasingly difficult due to users blocking images, e-mail metrics don’t look that shiny anymore.

If you’d like to find out more about RSS metrics, simply start by reading our collection of RSS metrics articles, reports, interviews and news at http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/cat_rss_metrics.php

I’m also hoping that there’ll soon come a time when responses like this will no longer be needed, because marketers will finally understand the power of RSS metrics.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

Contrary to general opinion, RSS meets the needs of even the most demanding direct marketer, actually providing most of what e-mail marketing does, except for the strong push factor.

Most direct marketing reasons against RSS are in fact the result of inadequate understanding of RSS by most marketers.

a] Scheduled and autoresponder messages

There are already a few services and software packages on the market that allow for scheduled and autoresponder messages via RSS feeds. Once your visitor subscribes to your special RSS feed, he can receive a pre-determined set of messages in a specific time frame, determined by you. Use these messages to welcome your new reader to your RSS feed; thank your new customer after the purchase, send him additional information about the ordered product and give him the opportunity to buy an additional product at a lower price tag a couple of days later, and so on.

b] RSS metrics

RSS can in fact be tracked: track anything from the number of your subscribers, their reading habits, their reading frequency to your click-through rates and activities after clicking-through from your feed. This includes tracking which of your RSS feeds are performing better, are more interesting to your readers and drive more sales … and the same for individual content items.

c] Message targeting

Since RSS feeds can be dynamically generated on a per-user basis, you can easily track the interests of your individual subscribers and then target marketing messages directly to them, making each message relevant to their needs and interests in order to increase your sales success.

d] Message personalization

If you generate your RSS feeds for each individual user, you can also personalize these feeds. Basic personalization includes elements such as the reader’s first name, while more advanced personalization might include personalized content and product recommendations and so on.

e] Data capture

E-mail marketers have already become experts at using opt-in forms to get as much information from the prospect as possible; the prospect’s name, his interests, the current products he is using, his current position in the purchase cycle and so on. RSS can be used in the same way, giving your visitors access to the RSS feed only after they’ve filled in a simple or complex opt-in form. This can work with e-zine subscriptions, as well as forms you require your visitors to fill in to either register on your website or download your free report or whitepaper.

Good news for direct marketers is that these capabilities are already available in many RSS publishing/marketing solutions, available at very acceptable prices, accessible even to the smallest companies.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

The RSS promise for end-users is simple:

–> a unified one-stop-shop to consume online content, without having to visit dozens of sites every day to see what’s new and without having their online subscriptions interfere with their personal and business e-mail communications;

–> complete control over their content consumption, including a quick, easy and reliable mechanism to unsubscribe from content they do not wish to receive;

–> the ability to receive breaking news as it becomes available, without having to wait for a monthly, weekly or daily recap sent to their e-mail addresses;

–> the certainty of actually receiving the content they want, without the fear of it being stopped by spam filters on the way;

–> the ability to receive rich-media content directly to their desktops, including audio and video content;

–> the promise of providing the tools to make their lives easier, including receiving critical content updates as soon as they become available.

These points are not simple enhancements, but important advancements that can fundamentally change how internet content is consumed. Furthermore, these points themselves prove why marketers need to start implementing RSS now!

To bring the point home, let us inspect some of the content services already powered by RSS.

LIBRARY ELF: MAKING THE LIBRARY EXPERIENCE EASIER (http://libraryelf.com/)

Library Elf helps you keep track of your library accounts in one place and received reminders, such as what library material is due, overdue and ready for pickup. Library Elf uses the power of RSS to help you forget about your library accounts and instead be directly notified of the changes you’re waiting for, directly to your desktop.

INDEED: HELPING YOUR FIND THE RIGHT JOB (http://www.indeed.com/)

Indeed.com provides its visitors with job seeking results from hundreds of sites and then makes the search results accessible via RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to individual search results, pertaining directly to their search keywords to be notified immediately new jobs are available.

FLICKR: SHARING YOUR LIFE IN PICTURE (http://www.flickr.com/)

Flickr is the most popular photography management and sharing service on the web, enabling end-users to upload their photos and then make them available to their friends, associates and family through a wide assortment of content delivery channels, including RSS. By subscribing to individual Flickr feeds from their users, everyone can have direct access to the latest life experiences from their friends.

RSSCALENDAR: SHARING YOUR EVENTS (http://www.rsscalendar.com/)

rssCalendar.com allows individuals and companies to share their personal or group calendars with the rest of the world, letting everyone that matters know of where and what they are doing next, delivering this information via individual RSS feeds.

COUPONS.COM: SAVINGS TO YOUR DESKTOP (http://www.coupons.com/)

Coupons.com brings the best deals and coupons to internet end-users, helping them save money by discounted shopping. As of late, they also started delivering coupons through RSS feeds, giving their subscribers direct access to their latest offerings.

PUBSUB.COM: TRACKING THE WORLD (http://www.pubsub.com)

PubSub.com is an amazing service that allows you to track practically everything going on around the world by matching your keywords with tens of thousands of online content sources, and enabling you to subscribe to your customized search results through customized RSS feeds.

RSSAUCTION.COM: TRACKING YOUR PURCHASE INTERESTS (http://rssauction.com/)

If you’re a regular eBay user, you certainly want to keep track of new products available, which precisely match your interests. rssAuction.com helps users keep better track of eBay by giving them a tool to first create a comprehensive list of product requirements and then delivering the search result through an RSS feed. As soon as new products matching individual interests appear, the user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator, giving him the ability to start bidding immediately and without having to visit eBay every day to find the right products.

UPCOMING.ORG: KEEPING TRACK OF LOCAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS (http://upcoming.org/)

From the Upcoming.org website: “Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you’re attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog. As Upcoming.org learns more about the events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never would have heard about.”

FEEDBEEP: THE ULTIMATE “TIME-TO-INFORMATION” TOOL (http://www.feedbeep.com/)

Depending on who you are and your current life situation, many content alerts are critical for you. If you’re looking for a job, you want to know immediately when a new one matching your precise interests is available, and so on. While RSS brings this information to your desktop, that might not be fast enough. Feedbeep.com takes internet content delivery one step further, by empowering users to have their critical content updates delivered from an RSS feed directly to their mobile phones via SMS.

RSS EMPOWERS CONSUMERS

The one thing all of these RSS-based or RSS-empowered services have in common is that they empower consumers.

They empower them by getting the content that matters to them delivered directly to their desktops or online content aggregators, but still giving them the power to unsubscribe within moments of not being satisfied with the content they are receiving.

Even more so, these services empower consumers to create social networks and easily share their information with their friends, family and associates on a large scale.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Humorous photo captions

If you’re looking to start using RSS in your marketing or want to expand on your knowledge and get some additional ideas, here are our top RSS Marketing articles and tips of 2005.

1. THE 7-STEP RSS MARKETING PLAN

If you’re wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here’s a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you’re on the right track.

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/the_7step_rss_marketing_plan.php

2. MARKETING OPTIMIZATION 101 FOR BLOGS

Truth be told, most blogs aren’t really optimized for marketing effectiveness. Even more so, some blogs are absolute marketing machines, but they at the same time fail to fully capitalize on that fact by not being really optimized marketing-wise. Read this article to discover the 13 essential points to optimizing your blog …

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/marketing_optimization_101_for_blogs.php

3. PODCASTING MONETIZATION STRATEGIES #1: MARKETERS

With the growing popularity of podcasting, publishers and marketers around the world are asking themselves how to monetize this content channel. In this article, we’re taking a look at the various indirect monetization opportunities made possible by podcasting for marketers, especially through improved and more personal marketing communications.

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/podcasting_monetization_strategies_1_marketers.php

4. 11 REASONS FOR USING RSS MARKETING

After many posts on different strategic and tactical issues of RSS, it’s time again to re-visit what RSS will do for you as a marketer and why you need it.

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/11_reasons_for_using_rss_marketing.php

5. WHAT CAN SETH GODIN DO TO INCREASE HIS RSS READERSHIP

How are most blogs generating regular readership? The way most blogs have RSS implemented, it’s highly probably trailing behind other readership sources.

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/what_can_seth_godin_do_to_increase_his_rss_readership.php

6. RSS MEETS THE NEEDS OF DIRECT MARKETERS

Contrary to general opinion, RSS meets the needs of even the most demanding direct marketer, actually providing most of what e-mail marketing does, except for the strong push factor. Most direct marketing reasons against RSS are in fact the result of inadequate understanding of RSS by most marketers. Let’s take a closer look …

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/rss_meets_the_needs_of_direct_marketers.php

7. RSS AND E-MAIL #1: HOW THEY CAN WORK TOGETHER?

For most marketers online e-mail is still the key marketing and communicational tool, but getting your messages through is getting increasingly difficult. Since it’s clear that even though RSS has 100% delivery ratios, it’s really not a replacement for e-mail, the question remains how can RSS and e-mail be used together to generate the best possible results for your marketing?

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/rss_and_email_1_how_they_can_work_together.php

Copyright 2006 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable pressure cooker

For most marketers RSS metrics are still a gray area, although in fact RSS is completely measurable, even more so than e-mail.

As complexity grows with added capabilities, we’re only taking a look at the absolute basics of measuring your RSS feeds today. These are the basics you can implement immediately to see how you’re doing, and then gradually move on to more complex analyses.

As always, the key point is just to get started and then move on from there.

1. THE REASONS FOR MEASURING RSS

The most basic reasons for measurement are quite simple:

A] How many people are subscribing to my RSS feed? Is the number increasing or decreasing?

If the number of readers is decreasing, it’s a sign that your content is not meeting the needs of the target audiences your site attracts, consequently meaning that you need to consider improving your content strategy.

Optimization possibilities include: –> More practical how-to articles –> Different content topics –> More “personal voice” –> Greater publishing frequency (more frequent posts) –> Less frequent posts –> Longer or shorter posts –> More news coverage within your industry –> Etc.

Also, based on your readership you’ll be able to calculate your “readership –> purchases” conversion rate, if you’re using your site to sell products online. The simple formula to calcuate this is “the number of orders / number of readers * 100”.

B] Are my subscribers actually clicking on the content items in the RSS feed?

If you find that your subscribers are actually opening the feed, but not clicking on individual content items it’s a clear sign that either your content item headlines need to be improved, made more attractive, or that the actual content is not strong enough to entice readers to clickthrough.

Knowing your feed-to-website clickthrough rates will also enable you to introduce gradual changes in your content strategy and actually see how they improve or hurt your key success metrics.

These two questions are of course only the most basic, but will enable you to build on them in the future and start developing more advanced measurement & optimization procedures.

2. THE TOOLS

Now that you know what you’ll start tracking you’ll need appropriate tools to actually help you measure your RSS feeds.

If you’re using any of the more advanced RSS marketing & publishing solutions (http://www.simplefeed.com, http://www.nooked.com, http://myst-technology.com, [http://www.rssautopublisher.com], http://www.press-feed.com/, http://www.market-soft.com/bypass/, http://www.silverpop.com), the key metrics will already be provided to you out-of-the-box.

If not, you’ll need to use a specific service just to conduct your measurements. For small-business marketers, the best choices are http://www.feedburner.com or http://www.pheedo.com, which come at no charge for the basic toolset.

Using them is quick and simple: just go to their site, register for a free account, enter your existing RSS feed URL, start promoting the new RSS feed URL (given to you by the service) on your site, instead of the one you are using right now, and start measuring.

But be careful! These two RSS measurement solutions actually create a new RSS feed URL for you, which is hosted on their own server, meaning that you only want to use it to generate “real” subscribers, and not actually submit the feed to any RSS search engines and directories. If you do so, some of the SEO benefits of RSS will unfortunatelly be wasted.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty tariff

RSS is a many-in-one marketing & publishing tool, although unfortunatelly most marketers still fail to understand this powerful concept.

While RSS does provide a number of benefits when used for each individual marketing function, best results are achieved when it is fully integrated in your internet marketing strategy. In more simpler terms — when you use it to power most of your marketing online.

The key point is that RSS makes various marketing functions work together, in order to generate the best possible end result.

It’s now the time to tie it all together and see the whole picture …

1]
RSS as a content delivery channel for communicating with subscribers, customers, prospects and partners gets your content delivered and provides you with multiple new content delivery & business development opportunities. Yes, RSS gets your content to your subscribers without fail, enabling you to communicate with them and sell to them.

2]
RSS as a promotional/visibility tool increases your traffic by improving your search engine rankings, generating traffic from new RSS specific sites and getting your content published on other sites. Each of these activities brings new visitors to your site, which are now ready to be converted in to new subscribers with which you can communicate (via RSS and/or e-mail) on the long-term. In addition, the improved visibility enforces your brand and generates more credibility for your company.

3]
Content delivery to end-users and content syndication together form the basis of RSS conversations, which further spread your reach throughout the internet and serve as a strong PR platform.

4]
Once you have access to more prospective subscribers, to which you want to deliver content via RSS, you can provide them with your own branded RSS aggregator to make the switch to RSS easier for them, as well as to establish a constant connection with them, enforce your brand and develop brand experience. Your branded aggregator also serves as a sales platform for your own products and an advertising platform to generate advertising income.

5]
As a publisher, your goal is to better satisfy the needs of your visitors, establish yourself as a key content source in your industry and make your visitors come back more often. Providing access to additional information is one of the elements to make this possible. Use RSS to syndicate content from other websites and, as an upgrade to target their most focused content needs, create RSS radars for your key phrases.

6]
RSS radars will in turn also generate additional visibility, especially through improved search engine rankings, and generate new subscribers for your RSS feeds.

7]
All of the above will create advertising venue and create a new source of income.

8]
In addition, using RSS advertising as an advertiser yourself you can increase the reach of all of the above activities.

The system comes full-circle, establishing RSS as the tool that powers an important share of all of your internet marketing and publishing activities.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty tariff

When it comes to new internet marketing opportunities for your business, RSS just might be the answer you were looking for. Here are just some of the new opportunities it can provide you with …

1. PODCASTING AND VIDEOCASTING

Podcasting (delivering internet audio content) and Videocasting (delivering internet video content) allow you to communicate via rich media messages, not only making your content more attractive and powerful, but also enabling a more personal »conversation« with your audiences.

Up until know, the internet was predominantly a textual channel. Adding audio and video to the mix, delivering both via RSS, goes beyond the basic capabilities provided by »traditional« internet content delivery channels.
Rich media personalizes the internet experience and gives your company a distinguishable face, while at the same time providing you with a media platform to convey your message so that it is easier to understand, see and feel.

Think about …

–> Delivering press releases in audio or video

–> Sending your customers a personal video message from the CEO

–> Doing audio interviews to expand your reach and provide more content to your visitors

–> Delivering video demonstrations of your products

–> Using video and audio to demonstrate how your customers and readers can easily resolve various issues that you are helping them with

–> Delivering important messages to your readers, customers and business partners via a more personal audio experience, instead of using impersonal e-mail communications

–> And so on …

In addition, Podcasting and Videocasting form the basis of new business models, giving you the opportunity to expand your product base to include these formats with higher perceived value.

Customer education & support are improved as well, since you can now demonstrate key product usage points via online video  providing customer support content in a format, which can easily demonstrate everything you need to convey to your customers.

2. HIGH FREQUENCY CONTENT UPDATES

High frequency content updates, even on a daily or hourly basis, are now finally possible with RSS. No more need to hold on your important messages, news and other content for a week or even a month to include it in your e-zine — with RSS you can update your content as often as you want/need, and your subscribers won’t mind.

3. APPCASTING

Appcasting goes one step further, giving you the ability to deliver critical software updates and patches to your existing clients, without them having to visit your web site every week to see if the much needed update is already available or not.

4. PRODUCT NEWS, RELEASES AND UPDATES

Product news, releases and updates are now finally possible in an easy-to-consume way. Using RSS, you can provide your customers or prospects with simple tools to create their own »product feeds«, through which they’ll be immediately notified when new products that precisely match their interests are available.

As soon as your product portfolio changes, so does the content in the RSS feeds that your customers are subscribed to.

Just think of the following possibilities …

–> The search tool is one of the most often used in larger web stores, giving your visitors an easy way to find the products they are interested. But the same search results can be delivered via RSS as well. Imagine your customer doing a search for one of your product categories, and then also receiving a link to the RSS feed for those very same search results, to find out immediately when a new product matching his terms is released or available for order.

–> This works for complex searches as well. If your customers are in the habit of searching for specific product categories, but only in a specific price range, you can deliver those very same results to them via RSS, but with a small twist  as soon as a new product matching their terms, including the desired price, is launched, they are notified about it via RSS instantly. No need to visit your site again to do the time-consuming search; the release comes directly to them.

–> Of course, the same approach that many are already using for e-mail alerts can be used for RSS. Give your visitors a simple form using which they enter their criteria, and then give them access to an RSS feed bringing them product updates based exactly on their criteria. Why not just use e-mail? Because no one really wants more e-mail messages in their inboxes and no one wants to give away their personal information, while RSS is anonymous, doesn’t require an e-mail address and is read when the customer decides he has the time.

5. PERSONALIZED CONTENT SERVICES

Personalized/customized database listings are quite similar to product updates, but relate to any kind of complex information you provide to your visitors, such as …

–> Job listings

–> Dating

–> Real estate

–> Etc.

Using RSS, your visitors can decide exactly what kind of »content« (in this case, an individual content item could be a new job listing) they are looking for and then have that content delivered directly to them, via their own personalized RSS feed.

And yet, all of these are just some examples of what you can do with RSS. The possibilities for new content delivery & business development models are quite endless.

For example, some companies are already giving their visitors the opportunity to track their FedEx, UPS and other packages via RSS feeds. Yet others are creating new services that allow you to receive critical information from an RSS feed to your mobile phone via SMS (such as getting an SMS notifying you that a new job matching your criteria is available). Yet again other sites enable you to keep track of when you need to return your library material, and even when your holds are ready and when they are about to expire, all this using RSS.

All of these are new business opportunities made possible with RSS, and each of them in a way improves lives of end-users, without placing a larger burden (more e-mail messages) on them.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Latest trends in mobile phone

What is the top advice savvy marketers can give you on RSS? We continue with the best of on RSS marketing from US marketing leaders.

1. WHY SHOULD MARKETERS AND PUBLISHERS START CONSIDERING USING RSS ANYWAY? Answered by Bill Flitter, Pheedo

I’ll give you 7 reasons:

1. Sender ID 2. CAN SPAM ACT 3. Blacklists 4. Known Sender 5. Email Filters 6. Bonded Sender Program 7. Cost of Sending Email

These seven items are a result of SPAM. The items represent an effort being put forth to stop SPAM but it is still a huge problem. I do believe RSS will be around no matter if SPAM was eradicated. RSS has some distinct advantages over email marketing, which include:

1. 100% opt-in no worries of legal threats by consumers.

2. One-click unsubscribe RSS raises the bar. Marketers will need to think about what their sending before they hit the enter button. I think this is a good thing. There is no free ride with RSS. Consumers are demanding control (do-not-call list, CAN SPAM Act, Privacy Bills etc.) and RSS delivers that control.

3. 100% deliver rate If I publish a feed or advertise in a feed, it reaches the intended recipient. This is minus any technological hiccups. Point being I don’t have to worry about SPAM filters, Blacklists, Sender ID, etc. My biggest worry now is whether or not I am publishing relevant content when my customers want it.

2. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ARE THE BEST WAYS COMPANIES CAN USE RSS TODAY? Answered by Bill Flitter, Pheedo

1. External Communication: Create an RSS feed on your site. If you publish a newsletter already, creating a feed from that information is easy. It takes little effort. I strongly encourage this practice if you are in the tech sector.

2. Internal Communication: Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more efficient then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed.

3. Advertising: If the problem of SPAM doesn’t get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to reach new customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that. RSS puts the control in the hands of the publisher and consumer. It will become a more effective marketing channel because the market will demand that publishers be more conscience of the amount and relevance of the ads in feeds. Consumers will act as the filter. If the noise-to-value ration is out of whack, the consumer will simply vote with their mice.

3. HOW CAN RSS BE USED BY MARKETERS PROVIDING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS? Answered by Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting

My vision for the usefulness of RSS is to be a one-way form of communication sharing updates, news, and tools with affiliates in an uncensored environment, since email has become too difficult with all of the Spam and other assorted hassles.

4. ONE OF THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD START ASKING OURSELVES IS HOW TO FULLY INTEGRATE RSS IN TO OUR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONAL MIX. HOW DO YOU SEE RSS IN RELATION TO OTHER COMMUNICATIONAL TOOLS AND APPROACHES? Answered by Jim Gray, Quikonnex

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this question. It is ALL about integrating new technologies into the marketing mix.

RSS/Blogs/Email/Instant Messaging are all just tools to those businesses can use to communicate with their customer base. People on the Internet jump on new technologies abandoning older system … this is wrong.

If you’ve noticed, you may have recently receive postcards and information packages from some well know online marketers such as Armand Morin and Corey Rudl. They look at traditional ’snail mail’ as a part of their marketing mix. RSS should be viewed the same.

Right now, blogs and RSS feeds are hot with the search engines, so a website owner should have one… period. However, to use it exclusively would be a mistake. The perfect mix is to use an RSS feed for the one to many communications and to use email for one on one customer correspondence.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty on LCD/Plasma TV