blogging 102

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes RSS or Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary is the latest information management tool that is gradually earning popularity among web users and website owners. With RSS technology, it is possible to get the latest postings from your favorite websites. But clicking on the RSS or XML button in a homepage is not enough to give you the service you need. An RSS feed or code displayed in the pop-up screen if not on the main page is composed of symbols and words that would only make sense to advanced RSS users and computer programmers and software enthusiasts. Another software tool called an RSS aggregator or reader is needed. An aggregator works by scanning the worldwide web with latest postings based on the RSS code (containing the websites URL) provided or added by the user. When it finds a new posting, news, or update, it will publish the RSS feed on your home page containing the title of the posting, which also serves as a clickable link to the website... 

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 – 7 minutes Nothing and a whole lot! That’s if Microsoft gets it right. First impressions appear to be very promising and all indications show a much more powerful RSS system, neatly integrated into the next version of Windows. Could this finally mean the ‘coming of age’ for RSS? But what does RSS mean to the average computer user at this moment in time? Will people get RSS? Does Microsoft have an education project on their hands with RSS? Not Really! Does DOS mean anything to you? If you’re like 95% of computer users — probably not much. But that doesn’t stop us from enjoying our computers and fully benefiting from DOS. Sometimes complete ignorance is bless. Unless you’re a techie and such technical stuff makes your heart skip a beat, knowledge of such material is not really required by the end-user. Fortunately, people don’t have to understand ‘HTML’ to enjoy the Internet. Likewise, knowledge of RSS... 

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 One of the very first articles I ever wrote on Internet Marketing had to do with RSS and it was entitled “10 Reasons To Put RSS On Your Site.” That was in 2004 and RSS was somewhat new and many webmasters were just beginning to place blogs and RSS feeds on their sites. If you do a search in Google, you can still find that article on around 2,000 sites. Most people now refer to RSS as “Really Simple Syndication” — although it originally stood for “Rich Site Summary” and was a very simple way of summarizing and syndicating your content in real-time to all interested parties. RSS had its early beginnings with Netscape in 1991 which introduced the first version of RSS (RDF Site Summary). Later versions would be introduced and made popular by Dave Winer of ScriptingNews and Userland fame who is considered by many to be one of the major founding fathers of RSS. Most people today associate RSS with blogs and blogging....