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How and Why to RSS

by: Richard Keir

Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

RSS feeds and blogs (and blog and pinging) are part of the latest hyper-frenzy in internet marketing. Tools and services are mushrooming all over. But there seem to be some rather distorted ideas about all this.

Unless you want to get into the technical stuff, exactly what an RSS feed is doesn't really matter. Now I care because I use them for a lot of things, work with code and do geeky tech stuff. But from a marketing perspective the underlying technical structure is only relevant because it clues us in on what to use an RSS feed for. And that's the thing you have to understand.

An RSS marketing feed is not about the feed's content in most cases. Feeds that carry large quantities of content are usually referred to as data feeds and that's not what people are going to put in their RSS aggregators. A basic RSS feed consists of a varied number of items with title, a link to the full content source and a short extract or description from the full source. There's more but that's the basics.

If you subscribe (by email) to something like the daily New York Times headlines, think about what a typical item looks like:

++++ Big deal thing happens somewhere
++++ By A Writer

++++ Once again an astonishing big deal thing has happened...

++++ Read Full Article: URL-link-to-news-story

Title and author - short description - link to full content

Just like an RSS feed item.

What should be obvious from this example is that RSS feeds are about change. New content. Updated information. They are not about static content.

The group you want to reach, people who surf via RSS, are looking for an efficient, fast way to identify new content that they are interested in. So if you're going to do an RSS feed, you need it to link to and report on new and updated content.

There are lots of tools available that will let you create your own feeds, manually or with varying degrees of automation. One of the most popular means is by blogging. You really don't need any technical knowledge at all to set up a blog and produce a feed.

You can use a blog just as a feed generator. Basically this is what blog and ping software and services are doing. That kind of feed is not for people, it's for the search engines. It's a way to alert the SEs that a new site with un-indexed pages exists. Blogs used that way are not what I'm talking about here.

You can create a blog about anything. What's important is that new content is added regularly. There are many ways to add valuable content to a blog. You needn't be a brilliant writer, many don't require much or any writing.

The best way to check this out for yourself is to blog-surf. No matter what kind of site you have - or what kind of product you want to promote - there's always a way to write about it, find new information, check and report on similar or related products and sites, report on industry news, provide your own opinions and ideas.
As most people quickly discover, it's far easier than it sounds at first.

Your blog will produce at least one RSS type feed. Blogger produces just an atom feed, WordPress and other blog software normally produce one or 2 types of RSS feeds and an atom feed. Services like feedburner.com can allow you to "burn" your feed and then promote a single burned url which will provide any kind of feed a user wants.

Now that you have content and an RSS/atom feed that links to that content, your next step is to publicize your feed. You have two different main avenues since your blog has real content.

First you can add your feed to RSS search engines and RSS directories.

And second, because your blog has that real content and isn't just an RSS feed generator, you can add your blog to blog search engines and blog directories. You could even use blog traffic exchanges like BlogExplosion.

This is a simple, low - or basically zero - cost, yet highly effective way to get new traffic from at least two sources.

First from your RSS feed. Feeds are an increasingly popular way to save time, search and surf. If your content is valuable and interesting people will subscribe to your feed and click thru to those full articles or posts that interest them -- targeted traffic from a group that is relatively affluent and tech savvy.

Second, blogs are extremely popular. A good blog will get linked, reported, commented on, other blogs may pick up your feed and report items from it. All of this exposure can bring valuable free traffic.

And finally, as an extra good thing, search engines like blogs because of the regularly updated content - they are nuts about fresh content - and the easily spidered structure blogs use. So as your blog pages get indexed in the SEs, you can also get direct search engine traffic.

About the author:

Richard has become a blog/feed freak largely because of the traffic implications and because he likes to write. For more on RSS Marketing visit and for general eCommerce check out

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Tracking and Measuring RSS Feeds
by: S. Housley

Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy.

It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.

There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.

Techniques Used to track RSS Consumption

Small businesses can view web logs to provide information on how many times a specific file (RSS feed) is requested. The logs and information is rudimentary but will give a basic sense of a feeds success. Many 3rd party tracking options have additional tracking information available.

Hosting

The most common method to track the number of feed accesses or individuals accessing a feed is to use a 3rd party feed host. Companies like FeedBurner essentially track feeds based on accesses. The downside to using a 3rd party like Feedburner, is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank or popularity associated with the url will benefit the feed host rather than the feed creator. Additionally, no distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.

FeedBurner provides a free no frills service to host RSS feeds and they have been proactive in circumventing user concerns. Recently implementing a service that eases users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner. There is a 3 step process for users interested in migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding.

Details can be found at: http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html

Some publishers, who were concerned about lock-in or wanted to retain control of the domain and feed urls often resist a hosting service. The new program FeedBurner Partner Pro is not free, but allows for users to point to their own domain, retaining complete control of their feeds without sacrificing statistical tracking.

The downside to using a service like FeedBurner is that some filtering applications used on corporate proxy servers block feeds residing on FeedBurner or other free hosts.

Redirects

Companies like SyndicateIQ have more complex tracking solutions that generate unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits to such a customized solution is obvious. Individual user habits can be monitored and any users abusing their access and inappropriately syndicating a feeds content can have their feed turned off. The downside of course is that the success of RSS is in a large part due to the anonymity. Users don't want their personal habits tracked.

Considering the venture capital interest in these 3rd party hosting services. It is important to note that their value is in the data that they collect. As with any 3rd party service, it goes without saying that publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. It goes without saying that the value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.

Uniquely Named Transparent Images

Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an RSS feed. Users can use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and determine the number of times the feed was accessed.

Companies Specializing in Tracking and RSS Metrics

Pheedo - Pheedo creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content.

http://www.pheedo.com

SyndicateIQ - SyndicateIQ's position in the content distribution chain provides clients a set of analytics.

http://www.syndicateiq.com/

FeedBurner - FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s).

http://www.feedburner.com

Each individual using RSS needs to make a decision of the extent and importance of the analytics they require. Realizing that any system they employ is not going to be perfect.

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