Summer 2005—Marketing Dimensions from Felber & Felber Marketing

	Summer 2005

This Issue • Other Issues • Subscribe • Felber & Felber Marketing

RSS—A New Marketing Tool

by Anita Campbell, CEO and Editor of Small Business Trends

An exciting new technology called RSS can help you achieve higher visibility for your marketing messages than ever before. It's inexpensive and something any business can do.

Several times a week, marketing consultant and public relations professional Kirsten O. logs on to a Website called Bloglines. She opens up a screen that shows "My Feeds."

She quickly scans RSS feeds from over 50 Web pages. The RSS feeds are simply Web content—news releases, announcements, articles and other information.

Because everything is displayed in one place, aggregated on a single site, often she is done in 15 minutes— much less time than it would take to visit each individual site and navigate her way to the Press Release or Corporate News sections.

She also quickly performs a few keyword searches in the Bloglines RSS search engine. The keyword searches help her monitor industry news and mentions of her clients occurring across the Web.

Kirsten notes, "Without RSS feeds it would be take me a lot more time to stay up to date on all these sources. And Bloglines covers mentions of my clients and their key competition that don't make it into Google or Yahoo News."

The Coming Wave

RSS is the coming wave.

RSS is increasingly a way that journalists, analysts and business people will find your important marketing messages online. Consumers are also picking up on this new method.

That's why you need to be aware of RSS as a way to disseminate your Web site content. And start preparing now for that soon-to-come day when you will use it.

RSS is not just for the big guys. Nearly 70% of people report they go online to search for local products and services, according to a survey released last month by the Kelsey Group. This suggests that online visibility through techniques like RSS will become important even for smaller, local businesses.

Why Haven't I Heard of RSS Before?

RSS is new and cutting edge.

If you are like most people, you probably haven't heard of RSS. Or, if you have, your understanding of it is pretty hazy. Maybe you've heard of RSS in connection with those trendy, chronologically-arranged sites called "blogs."

Today 6 million Americans get news and information from reading RSS feeds, according to a Pew Internet study released in January. That's still only 5% of the 120 million online users. But that number is growing rapidly.

Stick with me for a few minutes. I will de-mystify RSS—and show you how it can give some oomph to your public relations and marketing strategy.

And trust me, once you have the right knowledge, RSS feeds are not hard to set up. It won't cost you an arm and a leg to do it, either.

RSS: What is it?

It's…

Cutting edge…one of the hottest new ways to get information via the Internet

An outstanding online marketing and PR tool for businesses

A tool for Web surfers, to make their lives more convenient

The usual definitions of RSS are Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. But that doesn't help you understand what RSS is, does it?

Here's a better definition: RSS is a new way of delivering and retrieving Web content. It's a way of displaying content from a Web page somewhere else, either on an RSS search engine such as Bloglines or on a special RSS feedreader program that resides on your desktop computer. Or even on third party Web sites.

RSS lets your content be seen outside the confines of your own Web site—expanding its visibility. And it lets readers get access to your content in a way that is most convenient for them.

To understand RSS, you have to look at it from two different sides of the same coin, as a (1) content publisher and (2) content consumer.

RSS for Content Publishers

If you are a content publisher (you create Websites, press releases, product announcements, newsletters, blog posts, or any kind of online content), RSS lets you:

Distribute that content to people's desktops without email (bypassing spam filters and crowded inboxes). More and more people prefer to receive announcements and new information this way. By providing RSS feeds you can reach this growing group.

Easily distribute your content for display on other websites as a headlines block or content block … a fabulous marketing tool. With RSS you can syndicate your content to other websites—it's like advertising on those sites, only it's free.

Increase the number of incoming links to your website, and be found in more places more easily on the Web. A whole new category of search engines has popped up that index RSS feeds. Bloglines is one of them, but there are now over 50 of these. With an RSS feed your company's news and announcements will be indexed in more search engines.

And the beauty is that once you have an RSS feed set up, as you add new content to your Web page the updates are automatically distributed out, too.

Most Web publishers post little "chiclets" on their Web pages to designate that an RSS feed is available. You may have seen them: small rectangular orange buttons labeled "RSS" or sometimes "XML." Keep an eye out for these. Soon you will see them everywhere—even on your own Web pages!

RSS for Content Consumers

If you are a content consumer (someone who visits websites, subscribes to newsletters, gets press releases, reads company announcements), RSS lets you:

Read content conveniently from a single location, without having to visit each website that the content was published on. RSS feeds make it fast and easier to read multiple sources of information.

Bypass crowded email boxes. With spam making email an increasing annoyance, you can choose exactly what you want to access without the spam hassles.

Use RSS search engines to stay current on topics of interest to you. The specialty RSS search engines let you search by keyword set up alerts and does other things to locate information. This is especially useful for those who monitor industry news or what others are saying about their companies or their clients' companies—enabling proactive public relations and fast crisis communication responses, if necessary.

How is RSS possible? Magic?

Nope. It uses a technical format for the content called XML (extensible markup language). Without getting too technical in our description, XML simply formats the content so that it can be transferred and delivered to software programs and other websites.

Where Can I Learn More?

RSS today takes a little special knowledge, but the good news is that it is getting easier with each passing month. That's because new tools are being developed literally every month that enable any Web publisher to create RSS feeds and disseminate information.

As a Web publisher, with a little investment to learn this area, you too can create RSS feeds for your Press Room or News page of your Web site. You will be issuing newsletters in RSS format and product announcements, just like Microsoft, Ford and NASA.

If RSS seems confusing at first, stick with it. And find some help to guide you to get quickly up to speed.

If you would like to learn how to create RSS feeds for your important business announcements and releases, contact Rob Felber at 330.963.3664 or RobFelber@felberandfelber.com.

Sign up for Felber & Felber Marketing's RSS feed here: http://www.felberandfelber.com/pressroom.shtml

Note from Robert M. Felber, MAS, President, Felber & Felber Marketing:
I was recently introduced to RSS/XML. I had seen the little orange 'chiclets' on the bottom of some major website, but my fear of computer downloads kept me from investigating further. That was until I read about this fast-building trend on my colleague Anita Campbell's website. RSS like instant messaging, satellite radio and pod-casting appears to be a trend that will go mainstream.

Anita and I are preparing a workshop on RSS. If you are interested in attending, an email to me will place you on the list to receive the announcement. RobFelber@felberandfelber.com. In the meantime, continue to read more about this fascinating new trend and how simple it is to implement. When you're done reading, click here to subscribe to our RSS feed. You'll start receiving our newsletter and announcements in a new, hip and most importantly clear way.

Interested in our upcoming seminar? Call Rob Felber 330.963.3664 or drop us an email to RobFelber@felberandfelber.com to be included on the announcement.

Anita Campbell is the CEO and Editor of Small Business Trends, a popular online resource for the small business market. She currently issues 14 different RSS feeds for various Web sites. Anita can be reached at anita@anitacampbell.com.

This Issue • Other Issues • Subscribe • Felber & Felber Marketing