RSS is yet another channel you can use to distribute your content to your target audiences. Its foremost advantages over e-mail are that it is 100% opt-in, doesn’t carry the risk of spam accusations and actually gets the message delivered to the people that “subscribe” to it.
Let’s not reinvent hot water and take a look at a definition of RSS by Dana VanDen Heuvel (http://www.danavan.net):
“RSS is a “techie” acronym for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you talk to, the time of day and the day of the week. Also referred to as an RSS feed or XML feed, this protocol is an application of XML that provides an open method of syndicating (or distributing) and aggregating Web content.”
In other words, RSS allows you to deliver and distribute your content summaries and links in such a manner that they can be read on special easy-to-use software, news aggregators, or implemented on other web sites to deliver links to your latest content in the most accessible format today, XML.
It works like this:
1. You create an RSS file, in which you include the headlines, links and summaries of the content you wish to distribute through your RSS feed. Usually these are your latest news, content or e-zine updates and blog updates. You can also publish an entire e-zine using RSS.
You can either hand-code the RSS file or use a content management solution that does it for you. For instance, most of the popular blog solutions already do that for you.
2. You then put the link to the RSS file on your web site and include it in various RSS “directories”. Now, if people click on that link and open the file in their web browsers, all they are going to see is alot of confusing XML.
3. Users actually need to include the link (“subscribe to your RSS feed” or “add your channel”) to their list in their news aggregators, or use the file to show your headlines on their web sites.
There are a variety of news aggregators available free of charge. I use Awasu (http://www.awasu.com). It might not be the best, but it’s the one I first started using and got accustomed to it.
4. When the user has your RSS feed included in his aggregator, the software will display all the headlines and summaries you included in your RSS file. When new items are added to the file they can also be seen by the user on his aggregator. Each item is linked back to your web site to a specific piece of content, such as an article.
Creating an RSS file is actually quite easy. It might prove more difficult educating your visitors about what RSS actually is and how they can view your feed and subscribe to it. Although you might have some problems with this, the advantages are worthy of your consideration.
RSS can, for instance, be used to deliver all of your latest web site content updates – something you really can’t do with e-mail, unless you want hundreds of angry subscribers accusing you of spamming their inboxes every day.
But, is RSS really the solution we are all hoping for?
The key benefit for the publisher is the fact that using RSS your content will be delivered to all who “subscribe” to your RSS content feed, without the fear of being stopped by e-mail filters and without having to worry about spam accusations. There’s also much greater chance your content updates actually get read, since you don’t have to compete with hundreds of e-mails, which most of are destined for an immediate trip to the trash can.
RSS is the ultimate “pull” medium, meaning that subscribers are in total control over what they receive.
On the other hand, this total control can become a problem for marketers that sometimes still need to rely on the “push” approach, especially when it comes to marketing campaigns.
That, however is not the worst of problems …
1. RSS does not make personalization easily possible, since you have no way of identifying any individual subscriber.
Customization also is more difficult than with e-mail. Creating a customized e-publication requires creating an individual RSS feed for an individual user.
2. Inadequate metrics. Forget about reliable subscription metrics and open-rates. With RSS you have no way of reliably knowing how many people subscribed to your publication, how many unsubscribe and what percentage actually opens it. You can get page views and clickthrough rates (since the actual content is being served through your web site), but not any data related to your subscribers – unless your publishing system creates an individual RSS feed per user.
3. Anyone can “subscribe” to an RSS feed. You cannot limit the access to your feed to any individual user group, thus making RSS inappropriate for targeted communication with, for example, your business partners. The publisher is no longer in control over who gets to read the publication, unless you use RSS only as a means of notifying subscribers that new content is added to the web site and then restricting content access on the web site level.
4. Since anyone can “subscribe”, this severely damages your chances of attaining information from your prospects during the subscription process.
5. RSS adoption, although the technology has been around for years, is still only marginal, which is the greatest problem RSS faces today. Most of your subscribers won’t even know what you’re talking about. No technology can, naturally, work if its not adopted by a large enough audience … or at least by your audience.
Some of the problems highlighted above can be solved by combining RSS with your web site and an advanced Web Content Management System — for instance by asking your subscribers to register through the web site to attain their data, tailor your publication to their individual needs and then deliver content notifications using RSS and delivering the actual content through your web site.
This however still leaves much to be desired. In view of the current developments on the content delivery market, implementing RSS as an option should be on every publisher’s “to do” list, but only as an addition to e-mail, not its replacement. Even if we can resolve most of the issues surrounding RSS implementation, we still need to deal with the low RSS adoption.
In the next column we’ll focus on concrete RSS uses for marketers and publishers and also touch the customization issues. We’ll continue by taking a closer look at the challenges e-mail publishers face and what they should start doing right now to avoid disaster.
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Rok Hrastnik is acknowledged as one of the top worldwide experts on RSS marketing. Get the easy way to mastering RSS marketing today. Click here now to get all the details on how to make RSS marketing work for you and help you increase your online profits: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/?src=sa31
