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Using Your RSS Blog Feed Reader as a Business Networking Tool

May 6, 2010 by Erin Blaskie  
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Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

Your feed reader can become a great business and marketing tool for you if you take advantage of what it is has to offer. I have been thinking a lot about how I use my feed reader and I wanted to share the top five ways that I have found.

Here they are in no particular order:

(1) Build a Network – when you’re reading other people’s blogs, you’ll develop a network of like-minded individuals and people who share similar interests. You can also meet people to provide your products and services to and you’ll find people who have products and services that you need.

(2) Create Links Back to Your Site – by commenting on other people’s blogs, you’re creating a search engine ranking fiesta and all roads lead back to you! Page rank is determined by a number of things but one of those things is how many incoming links you have to your website. The more links, the higher you rank.

(3) Gain New Readers – when you comment, a hyperlink is placed to your site on that person’s blog. When their readers are reading through the blogger’s article and they get to the section where the comments are, chances are they will be interested to see who said what about that entry. Especially if it’s something that is borderline controversial! If these people like what you said, they’ll most definitely click through to learn more about you.

(4) Keep Up with the Latest Trends – good bloggers will be writing about the things that they think people need to know about. Capitalize on this by watching what people are blogging about. Most often, you can pick up a trend and this will give you some hints and ideas as to what YOU should be blogging about.

(5) Build Up Your Expert Status – when you comment on other people’s posts and you offer some of your own advice, people will begin to view you as an expert in your own industry. The one thing to remember though is that you should make your comments count. Commenting on blogs just to say “Nice post” won’t get you the same attention.

Author: Erin Blaskie
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Cutting Edge RSS Secrets That Will Help You To Explode Your Traffic

May 6, 2010 by Mark A. Abrahams  
Filed under Readership

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Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Today with the rise of web 2 RSS feeds are becoming a lot more popular. This will allow people to know that your site has changed.

To get the best out of this method of promotion you need to update your site frequently. I am sure that I do not need to tell you that the most important thing on the internet is content. You basically can build a solid business with fresh content.

A very good way that you can improve the conversion of people subscribing to your feed is to use copywriting skills. You usually will get a lot more attention if you use a power word. An example of a good power word is advanced.

Usually your feed will be very bland and not that effective if you only use the standard version. I suggest that you use a powerful service like Feedburner. It will format your feed and it also makes it a lot easier to subscribe to. An additional advantage is that it also displays the statistics of how many readers you have.

Another alternative to boost your conversion is to use audio. This will live things up and when people hear something interesting you will definitely grab their attention.

The way that the feed actually works is that they need a news reader installed. This allows them to view all the latest titles. Make sure that you have an interesting title that will get people’s attention.

You may also want to consider including advertising as this is a way that you can monetize your visits. There are several sites that allow you to incorporate their advertising in your feed.

Author: Mark A. Abrahams
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Blow The Door Off Your Competition By Utilizing RSS Feeds Effectively

May 6, 2010 by Mark A. Abrahams  
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Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

RSS feeds are really becoming popular today with the rise of web 2 technology. Basically, this technology is used to let your visitors know if your website has been updated.

In this article I would like to go over very good methods that you can use to utilize this technology effectively.

The most important is to update your website often. As the saying goes content is king on the internet. Also if the visitor knows that your website is being updated frequently they will be more likely to return and read your new content.

Use power words like secret or magic to name a few examples. This will entice your reader to subscribe to your feed. Copywriting works at all stages of internet marketing including rss feeds.

Use powerful software like Feedburner to format your feeds. This is free and it also has the added benefit of making it much easier to subscribe and also displays very useful statistics about how many readers that you have.

You can liven up your feed by including audio. This is a way to boost the conversion as people will be attracted more to it. Distinguishing yourself from the crowd is very important.

If the user has a reader installed on their computer they will be able to view the latest content by the title. This makes the title very important as you need create a catchy one to get people to actually read the new content on the feed.

Finally, make sure that you put your subscribe button above the fold where people can see it. This will increase the subscription rate.

Author: Mark A. Abrahams
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Full RSS or Summary Feed?

May 6, 2010 by Stoney DeGeyter  
Filed under Readership

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Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

I’m not the first one to chime in on this topic, mostly because I’ve gone both ways and I can make pretty valid arguments from either side. But I’ve finally settled it in my mind which is “best”.
Full RSS feeds are better than summary feeds.

Why?

I can answer that only from the perspective of a skimmer and scanner.

When I browse through my RSS feeds, I’m first looking for titles that draw my interest. If your title doesn’t make me want to read I scroll right past it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bad title, not every title is going to make everybody want to read. There are just a lot of things that I don’t care about and many feeds I read don’t always have posts that strike my particular fancy.

Once I see a title that makes me think I might want to read on, well, then I start skimming through the post. I might read a few of the first sentences and then start skipping down to link text, headings, boldings, and use those to create a judgment of whether I should take time to actually read the full post.

Summaries don’t have eye appeal

What? Your summary feed doesn’t have headings, boldings, bullets or anything else that catches my eye? Well, you better hope that your first few sentences really grab me. And I mean I really have to be convinced to click through. It’s a mental thing really. I don’t mind clicking if I know I want to read something, but not if I just think I might want to read it. The summary may be partially convincing, but not totally. I’m then forced to move away from my primary screen to another screen because I think I might be interested. You’re making me think to hard.

Countless times, after reading a summary, I’ve been on the edge. I think I’m interested, but not entirely sure. Do I click or do I keep scanning available blog posts. Sometimes I opt for the former, wishing I opted for the latter. Now, more times than not, now, I opt for the latter. If the summary isn’t entirely convincing I won’t click.

It’s a shame really because there are probably some decent insights in there somewhere. But you hid them all behind a not-so-telling summary. Or heck, maybe your summary was dead on and your information just isn’t my cup of tea… if you had a full feed I still might have gleaned a little something of value from your insight.

Are you missing anything by providing a full feed? Sure, you got the click, right? Your traffic numbers go up and maybe you can sell your ad space for a few cents more this month from last… but there is not always value in it for me, which means there is often no real value in it for you.

Do you want to be read or do you want to be visited? Do you want people to hear what you have to say or do you just want your page numbers to go up? Do your yourself a favor, provide a full feed. You’ll be less likely to lose subscribers and you’ll definitely gain more readers.

Author: Stoney DeGeyter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Easy RSS for Bloggers

May 6, 2010 by Nell Taliercio  
Filed under Readership

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Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Do you need help adding RSS feeds to your blogger? It’s really easy and here is how you can do it:

Log into your blogger account

Go to “settings”

Go to “site feed”

Copy the “site feed url”

Then go to http://www.feedburner.com

Scroll down to “try feedburner today” and paste your “site feed url” and then click next. You’ll be at “select services” There are lots of options on that page and you can look through them all, but to get to the feeds you need to go to the bottom of that page and click on “next”.

Then you can log in or sign up. It’s free to sign up. After you fill in your info then click and that page will allow you to “activate your feed”. Click on that and then click on “launch your publicity tools” and then click on “chicklet chooser”. Then you have many options. I personally always choose the “my yahoo”, “my msn”, “newsgator” and “xml”. Click on each one and you’ll see the code you need to grab. You have to do it for each one.

Then just go back to your template and put it in. You’re set.
As you can see there are other different things you can do too. So look around in there and check them all out.

But that is just the very basics of getting a feed up.
Now, when you get that feed added let me know so I can add you to my personal “my yahoo” page!

Author: Nell Taliercio
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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