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Is Blogging and RSS ALL THAT? Yes, and a bag of chips!

by: Jack Humphrey

Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey

In a very popular marketing forum recently I saw a post that blew me away. It was from someone asking if having a blog was really that big a deal in marketing their website!

Let's put it this way: simply putting a blog on your site does nothing for your traffic and links. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

But what novice marketers fail to realize is a blog that is RSS enabled is a powerful traffic generation tool in the right hands.

Webmasters who understand what to do with a blog once they install one are reaping huge rewards in targeted traffic, incoming links, and faster search engine spidering.

There are search engines on the web that deal in nothing but blogs and RSS feeds. Meaning you cannot and will not get into those engines without a blog. And you are missing some seriously easy traffic.

My blog feed is all over the web, passively linking right back to my site, my posts, and my products. People use my content feeds (RSS) without my having to ask them to do so. Other sites need content that is rich in the keywords I regularly use on my blog, so they grab my feed and benefit from content they don't have to write themselves.

Where do they find my feed? Not usually on the blog itself, but in the feed engines! Take a look at some to see what I am talking about:

http://daypop.com
http://syndic8.com
http://technorati.com

Some only take your RSS feed URL while others just want your blog index page. Submitting to the ever growing list of blog and RSS directories is the easiest way to get spidered by the regular engines and get your links into directories all over the world.

All you have to do is provide good content on your site's main topic on a regular basis. Whole sites are run on blog software nowadays because the power of RSS promotion makes promoting them so much easier than static html pages and regular search engines.

Getting into the directories is one thing. Now you need to beef up your promotion by pinging regularly. Some blogs like Wordpress will allow you to update a list of sites to "ping" every time you post.

Pinging is simply sending a quick notice through to each site on the web that tracks and updates the information they have about your blog. New post - new ping. One click and tons of sites all have the most recent posts to your blog!

I use http://pingoat.com lately with great results. I like to make sure I am pinging every blog engine out there. They have a considerable list of places to ping and I do it every time I post to my blog.

In a matter of hours I have search engines crawling my site for new pages. And since I link from my blog to the rest of my site, the people who come to the blog can get to every other part of my site with ease.

All of this is merely scratching the surface of what blogs and RSS feeds can do for your marketing efforts. Everyone is going to RSS to syndicate their content. If you aren't yet, you'd better start ASAP. Because you are getting left in the dust by your competition for your keywords.

After actively blogging, pinging, and submitting your blog feed and main URL to the blog engines for a couple months you are going to see amazing amounts of back links. And in far shorter time than it would take you with any other marketing method other than aggressive syndication of articles.

So if someone asks you if having a blog is really all that, now you can tell them what it's all about. It's not the blog, it's what you DO with it that counts.

About the author:
Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2005. Find out how you can take a bite out of the website promotion learning curve at

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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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