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What You Can Publish via RSS

by: Rok Hrastnik

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Contrary to popular opinion, RSS is not only good for delivering content from your blog, but has much more marketing and publishing potential.

In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types. If you can break down your content in to individual stories or individual pieces, you can deliver it via RSS.

Just to give you an impression of the power of RSS, here are some examples of content you can publish using it �

--> MarketingVOX is using RSS to deliver internet marketing news to their readers as it becomes available. Instead of having to wait to receive all the news in a single e-mail newsletter, RSS users get them as soon as they are ready.

--> Amazon.com is using RSS to announce their bestsellers and to help their users keep track of releases they are most interested in.

--> Some affiliate managers already communicate with their affiliates using RSS. You can of course use it to communicate with any other target audience as well, such as your employees or team-members, and even your company owners.

--> FindSavings.com uses RSS to deliver savings coupons and related information.

--> Lockergnome uses RSS to provide visitors with the latest downloads and relevant software. Yet again other companies are using RSS to deliver product updates and patches directly to their customers, just as they become available.

--> A few hundred content publishers are using RSS to deliver audio content, such as .mp3 interviews and even �radio� shows.

--> Textamerica.com allows people to post pictures, videos & text from their mobile phones and then make this content available via RSS feeds.

--> Other companies are using RSS to deliver whitepapers and other educational content, even PowerPoint presentations.

--> One company uses RSS as a consulting billing awareness tool. The consultants create activity reports and the RSS feeds from the activity channels carry the billable information to the accounting staff for invoice preparation.

--> Many internet publishers are using RSS to deliver their newsletters, as a supplement to their e-mail delivery. Since many people no longer want to give their e-mail address away to publishers, this is a great way to keep your e-zine readership growing.

--> Publish living digital catalogues of your products and provide your customers with your latest product releases, broken down by the categories they're interested in, and make it easy for them to order.

--> Provide your affiliates and marketing partners with RSS feeds they can promote to their visitors to better promote your products and still make a commission. Amazon.com is already doing it. When are you starting?

--> Create RSS autoresponders with scheduled messages, to keep in constant �marketing� contact with your prospects and slowly get them to the point of purchase.

--> Provide limited-access content to your customers, employees, team members and even investors, without fearing other unwanted eyes. Use RSS for internal communications, teamworking and other needs.

--> Provide your customers with easy access to software updates, delivered to them exactly as they become available, without the fuss of having to visit your web site or deal with huge e-mail attachments, which would get blocked by spam filters anyway.

--> Newsreporters are constantly bombarded with e-mail, so why not instead deliver your press releases via RSS? Or even better yet, why not deliver some of your releases as video comments, interviews or statements from your company managers or owners?

--> Help your visitors keep up with what�s going on in your web forum, by publishing your latest forum posts or whole threads via RSS.

Hopefully these ideas are enough to get you started with RSS in your own business.

About the author:
Find out all you need to know about RSS and how to use it to get your content delivered, win back your customers, make more sales and increase search engine rankings. �Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS�, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide on marketing with RSS by top RSS industry leaders, experts, developers and top marketers.

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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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