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Robin Stanton is owner of WebServices4All.com Ad Agency and sits as VP of Sales and New Business for Synervation.net affiliate network and Media company. Robin has been in the online industry since 1998 working with advertisers, agencies and small businesses, and is always on the lookout for the next big thing in Online Advertising.

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Why RSS Feeds Rock My Marketing

Written on
July 6th 2006
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by Robin Stanton  |
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Wow, I just did a search on Google for “RSS Feed Statistics” and man oh man, everyone has an RSS feed. ESPN has one, The Government has one, Ask.com, even Microsoft has implemented an RSS feed for their new Vista operating system, and the list just goes on for days, well at least 10 pages worth on Google.

Did we tune out too quickly on the RSS feed craze? Well, a year ago, we did…According to a Pew Internet survey done between May and June 2005:

- Only 9% of Americans are relatively aware of what RSS Feed means.

- 65% are not really sure

- 26% never even heard of an RSS Feed

- 12% of Men knew what RSS meant compared to 6% of Women

- 12% of People ages 18-29 knew what an RSS Feed is compared to 5% age 65 and over

And while we were looking for the next big thing, did the small publishers outdo us with RSS feeds? Yes, I believe they have. From looking at the statistics above and seeing some of the sites that were listed on Google, a lot of the sites were geared toward the teen/young adult audience and male audiences.

In 2006, it seems that the RSS Feed playing field is starting to increase, according to the stats below:

RSS User Demographics
• 71% Male
• 50% 18-34 yrs old
• 36% College graduates
• $74,116 Average Household Income

Again, what are we needed for if we are not beating our clients to the punch with this stuff?

What does my RSS Feed stand for? I like to call it Rockin Syndication Simple Feed. I call it Rockin Syndication because of all the cool things you can do from one piece of free XML code. As you’ll see below you can do press releases, promos, calendars and publish your articles all from one link, no worries of bounced emails, fees for PR pieces or trying to get your articles submitted over and over again. To me, that Rocks! It rocks because it is simple and quick…and did I mention free?!

Now, comes the part we are missing out on, use RSS feeds to market your clients sites. Every client you have has a website and if they do not, they are looking into getting one. As in my last article I mentioned all sites should have a blog and along with this blog they should use RSS feeds. Why?

Who should have an RSS Feed:
- Male/Female oriented sites
- Teen Sites
- Any site for any of their promos and campaigns

Uses for RSS Feeds:
• Keeps fresh updated content on your site.
• Instead of a mailing list, let users subscribe to your RSS feed.
• Blog a promotion and it’ll be picked up by all your RSS Feed subscribers
• Press Releases
• For more uses visit RSS-Specifications.com and About.com (remember them?) you will be amazed at how simple you can drive traffic to your clients site.

What the RSS feed implementation can do for your client:
• RSS feeds keep your customer coming back for fresh content and news.
• More people will subscribe to an RSS Feed than sign up for a mailing list anymore
• Just imagine how wide-spread your online promotion can be through a feed
• Easy and inexpensive(free) way to let people know about new Press Releases



Reader Comments.

Yeah. I get it. IT’S SO EXTREME!!!!!!

:p

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a fantastic tool which cuts on bandwidth usage–many news sites deploy it in order to replace e-newsletters, so to speak.

As far as readers go, certain browsers like Firefox and Opera have them built-in; I believe Safari does as well.

Posted by Marq | 12:58 pm on July 6, 2006.

Robin,

you may be interested in how search engines are using RSS. We have some examples on our page for ebay, google, Yahoo among others. There is also video in RSS. Have a look at the 30 second flash clips at www.inclue.com

regards,

Nick

Posted by nick gogerty | 2:10 pm on July 6, 2006.

RSS might not be a heavily used tool now but wait for IE7 (free update for all XP users) to be released and it will explode. It features an RSS button right in the middle of the toolbar which lights up if a site has a feed. Then its as easy to sign up as add a bookmark.

Businesses will be rushing to get feeds put together so that they can build relationships with potential customers long after they have left the site.

The phrase ‘content is king’ is growing in relevancy all the time.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | 2:57 pm on August 15, 2006.

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