|
Do I Need an RSS Feed?
By S. Housley
RSS has been around for more than
10 years but has only recently become popular. RSS provides headlines and
summaries of information in a concise and standardized way.
Benefits
for Publishers
1.) Avoid Spam Filters
Statisticians estimate that 70%
of the email transferred each day is spam (unsolicited email). With that
statistic, even opt-in users risk losing valuable messages in the cesspool of
spam. RSS feeds effectively nullify spam as an issue. Requesting feeds allow
users to maintain complete control over the content they view. Users can
easily opt-in and out of feeds that provide content of interest
or importance.
2.) Expanded Reach
RSS allows publishers to reach a
number of new and different markets that typically are less crowded with
competition. Many small businesses are often slow to adopt or learn new
technologies, giving businesses that lead the way a competitive
advantage.
3.) Content Syndication
Syndication of feeds increases
exposure.
4.) Repeat Visitors
RSS is all about repeat visitors.
Users who have previously visited a site often have a stronger connection to
the site and are more likely to purchase or trust the information on the
site.
5.) Free web traffic
As the internet has evolved, many
webmasters have found that what was once free traffic must now be paid for in
order to sustain decent visitor statistics. RSS is in a unique position to
bring free traffic because they are content-driven, and if they include
interesting or valuable information, will pique the curiosity of web-surfers
and entice them to visit a particular site.
6.) Less
Effort
Newsletters and E-zines undeniably bring visitors, but the
effort
involved in creating, distributing and maintaining a newsletter can be
a burden. Maintaining the list, ensuring the list is clean, growing
the subscriber base, updating and removing bad e-mail addresses, all
take time. RSS feeds are not burdened with those issues. There are
easy-to-use RSS feed creation tools that require little effort, allowing
publishers to recycle content, often simply cutting and pasting into RSS feed
creation software.
FeedForAll RSS feed creation - http://www.feedforall.com
Consider
supplementing existing communication venues with RSS. Place the contents of
newsletters into feeds and measure the results. You might be surprised at the
added traffic.
Examples of various feeds with different intended purposes
-
RSS feed - http://www.rss-specifications.com/blog-feed.xml
Establishing
expertise in a specific field.
Business Feed - http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml
Contains
product and industry information.
Marketing Feed - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml
Builds
relationships, endorses products in industry sector. RSS has potential to
help companies develop strong relationships with consumers and creating brand
loyalty with customers. While the world will not end tomorrow, nor will
business come to a screeching halt if you don't use an RSS feed, there are a
number of reasons online businesses should consider using RSS
feeds.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for
NotePage, Inc.
http://www.notepage.net
and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
.
|
