blogging 102

Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes It’s clear that RSS and e-mail in fact need to be used together, as opposed to either one replacing the other. While RSS might not be used by as many people as e-mail, you can be sure that those that do use it and subscribe to your feeds will get your content without fail. In addition, many already prefer to receive information via RSS instead of e-mail, making RSS an absolute must as a supplement to e-mail delivery. Let’s now take a detailed look at exactly how RSS and e-mail can work together. 1. ANNOUNCING YOUR E-ZINE VIA RSS What’s the use of an excellent e-mail e-zine if it’s blocked by spam filters or lost in the recipient’s mailbox? No matter how high quality content you prepare, if it’s not received it can’t be read and then acted upon to drive sales your way. Namely, you need to stop thinking of your e-zine in terms of e-mail delivery, but rather consider it as a vehicle to present relevant and related... 

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors? I’m going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I’m going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I’m not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I’m about to tell you and the results are awesome. Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external... 

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes Marketers are constantly asking if RSS marketing works and if this can be proved. It’s time to take a look at some real-life RSS metrics from real-life marketers. These will show you what kind of results you can expect to see from RSS. I first presented this data at the Syndicate Conference in New York City, the first conference entirely devoted to RSS. To make a point, well take a look at RSS metrics from 4 different viewpoints, each demonstrating one facet of RSS marketing and a different way of capturing RSS metrics. This data combined will give you the answer of whether RSS marketing is for you, as an addition to e-mail marketing, or not. 1. CLICK-THROUGH RATES FROM RSS FEED TO SITE: THE RSS AGGREGATOR SIDE RSS statistics should be most relevant when coming from actual RSS aggregators and their vendors, since these people can measure precisely how their users are actually using RSS. Customer Reader [http://www.customreader.com], who just recently... 

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes The recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel? Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it. Is this the correct question to ask? Lets take a look at the bigger picture 1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY The Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households. Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%. It is also important to understand... 

Reading time: 8 – 12 minutes You’re interested in RSS marketing, but there either seem to be so many options of how to do it or you’ve only ever come accross simple RSS feeds that just don’t seem to be the approach you’re looking for. The problem with most RSS marketing plans is that the marketer doesn’t really go beyond providing a simple RSS feed for all of his online news or his blog. But since you’ve been reading this column for a while now you know for a fact that RSS offers so much more. To get started the right way you need to correctly plan your RSS Marketing strategy, starting by deciding how you are going to deliver your RSS content. The right way to go, even if you’re only starting out with a simple RSS strategy, is to provide individual RSS feeds for: –> your individual target audiences, –> your different types of content and –> even your different content topics. Think of this as a consequtive list...