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Marketers on RSS: The Best Of

by: Rok Hrastnik

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

What do savvy marketers have to say about RSS? What are their top tips?

We set to find that out end of 2004 to collect the best possible insights on RSS marketing from top marketers and RSS developers and leaders, for Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS.

Let�s get started �

1. How can RSS be fully integrated in our marketing and communications mix
Answered by Robin Good, MasterNewMedia.org

"From what I can see RSS is an effective marketing channel in that it allows easy and extended distribution of your core news and information channels to the widest possible audience with very low costs, maximum compatibility with a great number of media devices and with the added ability for the customer to take on this information and reuse it to hir (his + her) benefit.

That allows customers to further become marketers and promoters of your own products and services. If we openly allow the content of public RSS feeds to be freely subscribed, syndicated, re-aggregated and republished we will only find that new and greater value can be extracted every time someone goes about doing this.

So it is important not to keep RSS newsfeeds under locks.

RSS is one of the purest viral marketing channels. Its virality being spelled clearly in its acronym: Really Simple Syndication.

Yes, you need to make these three words make sense to you in order to leverage the maximum out of this content format.

Allow syndication. Don't limit it.

Let others take your RSS feed and do things with it. Encourage them to do so. Have them use it to republish your news (among others) on their home page. Help them achieve that. Write and explain with short stories or simple tutorials how easy it is to search, filter and aggregate content from different RSS feeds and to create dedicated niche newsfeeds on most any topic you can think of. Explain openly that if you do create such dedicated newschannels they can be as easily republished as news Web site, which can carry contextual ads (Google AdSense) from day one. Very sustainable if not altogether profitable.

Look for example at the work being done by Waypath with their Blender experiment and see other useful and complementary uses of RSS that can be economically profitable."

And another great tip from Robin: "Create as many RSS newsfeeds for your content as are the topic/themes that you cover. Do not pack all of your content under one generic RSS channel."

2. What's really going to drive readers/customers to adopt RSS? Buyers of what products and services are most likely to adopt RSS?
Answered by Bill French, MyST Technology Partners

"I don't think anyone wants to adopt RSS; rather they want timely information in a controlled and organized way such that it helps them do their jobs better, or manage their personal information diet. This is precisely the reason we adopted (for the most part) SMTP - but none of us considered "adopting SMTP". Email applications and the benefits of a store-and-forward architecture with reasonable assurance of delivery drove us into the realm of SMTP. And the driving force that seems to be causing early adopters to use RSS feeds has more to do with the volume of information and news that we find ourselves awash in each day.

There's no question; everyone will eventually adopt RSS (or similar formats) but we'll know that has happened when no one refers to it as RSS. ;-)"

3. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools?
Answered by Tom Hespos, Underscore Marketing

"RSS is all about consumer control. How many times have you thought about subscribing to an e-mail newsletter but thought, "Nah, they'll probably sell my e-mail address to spammers" and didn't subscribe? With RSS, consumers can unsubscribe from feeds at any time, so the risk of getting unwanted content or spam is virtually nil.

I think consumers have been waiting for something like this for quite some time. The added control will make them more likely to want to aggregate content from publishers they read regularly. As a marketing guy, I think it's appropriate to mention that moving to RSS is not without its risks. Content publishers know that it's somewhat cumbersome to unsubscribe from an e-mail newsletter, so they've taken certain chances with their e-mail newsletters that they won't be able to take with RSS � they carry standalone sponsor messages, load up their HTML newsletters with animated ads, maybe take a risk with some of the stories they write.

Since the "unsubscribe" button is right there for feed subscribers, publishers might not get a second chance if they screw up. With RSS, there's no broadcasting a "Please come back" message to people who unsubscribe. If you lose someone, you lose them until they decide to come back. So I'm sure publishers will need to handle RSS with kid gloves until they get a sense of what their subscribers will like and what will make them run for the door."

About the author:
Learn how to take full marketing advantage of RSS and get all the expertise, knowledge and how-to information for implementing RSS in your marketing mix, from direct marketing, PR, e-commerce, internal communications and online publishing to SEO, traffic generation and customer relationship management. Including complete interviews with more than 40 RSS marketing experts. Click here now:

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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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