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Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A Marketer's Guide to Understanding and Taking Advantage of RSS for Marketers and Publishers Rok Hrastnik, MarketingStudies.net [email protected] http://www.marketingstudies.net Version: 1.0 Last updated: 2005-01-10 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Acknowledgements Special thanks to all the people that made this e-book possible, especially … • to my better half, Simona, who stood by me and supported me during all this time; • to Crt Jakhel who stood by as my on-the-fly editor and helped me edit the first version of this e-book, as well as provided some much needed expert technical insight; • to Robin Good for all of his great ideas on what additional information should be included in the book, for his support and for his critical views of the content provided here; • to Bill French who started all of this with an interview he gave me and then waited patiently for publication, as well as provided much needed motivation to finish this work; • to Olga Farber who is always standing by with new resources from around the internet and also wrote the External Promotion chapter; • and to all the wonderful people that contributed to this e-book and made it possible, not listed in any particular order: Robin Good, Bill French, F. Andy Seidl, Tom Hespos, Bill Flitter, Alex Williams, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Raj Devasagayam, Shawn Collins, Tom Barnes, Paul Chaney, Jim Gray, Alex Barnett, Alan Webb, Crt Jakhel, Jeanne Jennings, Dwight Shih, James Robertson, Kim Bloomer, Trina Schiller, Rick Bruner, Derek Scruggs, Christopher Knight, Chad Williams, Tig Tillinghast, Alain Jourdier, Heiko Hebig, John Moore, Laura Ries, Amy Gahran, Sally Falkow, Åsk Wäppling, Eric Ward, Kevin Bidwell and last but not least Doug Hudiburg; • and to John Botscharow for all of our wonderful and highly controversial debates on RSS and for introducing me to the topic of RSS a few years ago. 2 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS … with the help of this e-book Getting started marketing with RSS is easy, as long as you follow a few basic steps. This e-book will lead you through all of them. 1. Understand internet content delivery and identify the problems you are currently facing Internet marketing is currently experiencing huge problems, related to internet content delivery, which is the key to communicating with your target audiences on the internet. The first step to using RSS is to understand the problems with current internet content delivery channels, the importance of internet content delivery and the keys to successful internet content delivery. Then you have to ask yourself how e-mail compares to your needs and get a general impression of what RSS is and how it can help you. Section I: Introduction to Internet Content Delivery and RSS 2. Discover what RSS is and how it works To better understand RSS as a content delivery channel and begin to use it to your best advantage it is crucial that you have at least a basic understanding of how it works from the user’s perspective. In this section we are going to cover the basics of how RSS works, through the eyes of the many ways of consuming RSS feeds; and also the basics of how to use RSS as an end-user, which is actually a quick tutorial that will help you get started with RSS in no time. 3 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The above will be covered in Section II: The Basics of How RSS Works. But this is not everything you need to know. To really start using RSS to your best advantage you need a deeper understanding of what RSS really is. Only after understanding the basics will you truly understand its power and what it can do for you. You will also find out that RSS is not merely “a headline, link and summary”, but actually offers much more in terms of content you can deliver to your target audiences. Section III: Understanding the Technical Aspects of RSS 3. Understand how RSS can help you improve your marketing Discover what marketing opportunities RSS provides to you, its advantages and disadvantages and especially how it compares to e-mail. You also need to understand the greater implications of RSS, especially if there is a need for you to consider upgrading your internet marketing strategy to achieve greater results in this era. Section IV: The Marketing and Publishing Basics of RSS 4. Carefully examine all of the opportunities provided to you by RSS and plan how you are going to include RSS in to your marketing strategy and plan your RSS feeds It’s now time to see RSS in action in its full glory and to carefully examine all of the marketing opportunities it provides. In this section you will discover specifically how to use RSS, and then plan your RSS feed content and your RSS feeds. This section is most crucial to helping you get the most out of RSS. Section V: Marketing with RSS 4 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. Create your RSS feeds Now that you know what you want to publish with RSS and how, it’s time you create your first feed. The first step is selecting the most appropriate RSS publishing solution. Section VI: The Basics of Creating Your RSS Feeds 7. Promote your RSS feeds When your RSS feeds are ready, you need to promote them on your web site, as well as through many external resources available to you. Section VII: RSS Promotion 8. Measure and improve your RSS content delivery RSS metrics used to be quite a grey area, but not anymore. To achieve best results you need to understand what is going on with your RSS feed, especially how it is performing, how many people are reading it and what they are doing. Then, based on your results, you need to improve your RSS content delivery. Section VIII: The Basics of RSS Metrics 9. Expand your knowledge and understanding of RSS To really get the most out of RSS expand you knowledge and understanding with the help of some of the best “RSS minds” and experts in the world today. Learn from them and then take that knowledge and put it to action. Section IX: RSS and Blogging Interviews Where appropriate, each section of this e-book will conclude with a list of steps and step-by-step instructions on how to proceed to getting the most out of RSS. 5 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Important notice “How to Get Started with RSS” is only a quick and basic guide that will work especially well for simple RSS implementations. But do remember that more complex uses of RSS will require more work ! exactly what is covered under each of the sections. 6 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Table of Contents Hot to Get Started with RSS ................................................................................................. 3 Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... 7 Section I: Introduction to Internet Content Delivery and RSS............................ 12 Is Your Content Getting Delivered?.......................................................................... 13 The Importance of Internet Content Delivery: Making or Breaking Your Internet Business ................................................................................................................... 14 Key Elements of Relevant Content Delivery............................................................. 19 The Right Content Delivery Channels? .................................................................... 24 The Question of Further Usefulness of E-mail ......................................................... 25 What is RSS? ........................................................................................................... 30 What You Can Get Out of Marketing with RSS ........................................................ 34 RSS as a Benefit for End-Users ............................................................................... 34 Why Should You Care? ............................................................................................ 36 Why RSS? ................................................................................................................ 37 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................... 38 Section II: The Basics of How RSS Works ........................................................... 40 1. The Basics of How RSS Works ............................................................................... 41 A. End-user Consumption using Client-side RSS Aggregators or Readers ............. 42 B. End-user Consumption using Native Internet Browser Features ......................... 44 C. End-user Consumption using Web Based RSS Aggregators .............................. 45 D. Media consumption: Displaying RSS Content Headlines and Summaries on Other Web Sites ................................................................................................................. 47 E. Web RSS “Aggregators” ...................................................................................... 47 F. Other Possibilities................................................................................................. 48 2. The Basics of How to Use RSS as an End-User ..................................................... 48 2.1 RSS Aggregators................................................................................................ 48 2.2 Using RSS .......................................................................................................... 52 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................... 67 Section III: Understanding the Technical Aspects of RSS ................................. 68 7 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Understanding RSS Beyond Its Usability..................................................................... 71 What is XML? ........................................................................................................... 71 What is an RSS Feed? ............................................................................................. 72 Basic RSS Feed Information .................................................................................... 72 RSS Feed Content Items.......................................................................................... 75 The Important Things to Remember......................................................................... 77 Beyond the Headline in Short ...................................................................................... 78 Publishing in Full-Text .............................................................................................. 78 Rich Media RSS? ..................................................................................................... 81 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................... 84 Section IV: The Marketing and Publishing Basics of RSS.................................. 85 1. Introduction to Marketing with RSS.......................................................................... 86 2. The Pros and the Cons of Marketing with RSS ....................................................... 89 Key Benefits of Using RSS....................................................................................... 89 Key Disadvantages of Using RSS ............................................................................ 90 3. RSS and E-mail ....................................................................................................... 93 Will RSS Replace E-mail? ........................................................................................ 93 Comparing RSS and E-mail ..................................................................................... 94 The RSS Push vs. Pull ............................................................................................. 98 4. Key RSS Business Uses of Delivering Content to End-Users ................................. 99 A. Delivering General, Segmented, Customized and/or Personalized Content Updates to a Mass Audience.................................................................................. 100 B. Targeted and Specialized Content Delivery to Segmented Target Audiences .. 101 C. Secure Direct One-to-One or One-to-Many Communications ........................... 102 D. Advanced RSS Marketing Capabilities in Conjunction with RSS Aggregators .. 103 5. The Greater Marketing Implications of RSS .......................................................... 103 RSS as a Change Agent: The Macro View ............................................................ 103 RSS as a Change Agent: The Micro View.............................................................. 106 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................. 107 Section V: Marketing with RSS............................................................................ 108 1. Delivering General, Segmented, Customized and/or Personalized Content Updates to a Mass Audience ................................................................................................... 109 8 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1 Practical Uses by Content Types [What] .......................................................... 110 1.2 Defining the Organic Possibilities [How]........................................................... 161 2. Targeted and Specialized Content Delivery to Segmented Target Audiences ...... 221 2.1 Practical Uses by Content Types [What] .......................................................... 222 2.2 Defining the Organic Possibilities [How]........................................................... 239 3. Secure Direct One-to-One or One-to-Many Communications ............................... 243 4. Advanced RSS Marketing Capabilities in Conjunction with RSS Aggregators ...... 246 4.1 Why Provide Your Own RSS Aggregator? ....................................................... 247 4.2 How This Could Actually Work? ....................................................................... 248 4.3 The Possible Pitfalls ......................................................................................... 254 5. Syndicating Web Content to Various Internet Media ............................................. 254 5.1 The Content Aspects ........................................................................................ 255 5.2 The Technology Aspects .................................................................................. 259 5.3 The Promotional Aspects ................................................................................. 269 5.4 Generic RSS Syndication ................................................................................. 271 6. Using RSS and E-mail Together............................................................................ 273 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................. 276 Section VI: The Basics of Creating Your RSS Feed .......................................... 278 1. Hand-coding Your RSS Feeds ........................................................................... 281 2. Generating Your RSS Feeds with Special Client-side Software ........................ 282 3. "Scraping"........................................................................................................... 284 4. Creating Your Own Basic RSS Publishing Application....................................... 285 5. Using a Simple Third-Party Content Management System, Tailored Especially for Blog Publishing....................................................................................................... 285 6. Using an External RSS Publishing Solution ....................................................... 286 7. Using Your Existing Advanced Content Management System........................... 286 8. Other................................................................................................................... 287 9. Summary ............................................................................................................ 288 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................. 289 Section VII: RSS Promotion ................................................................................. 290 1. "On-site" RSS Feed Promotion.............................................................................. 292 1.1 Where? ............................................................................................................. 292 9 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2 How? ................................................................................................................ 302 1.3 Launching an Education Campaign.................................................................. 314 2. “Promoting” the Feed within Aggregators .............................................................. 315 3. External RSS Feed Promotion............................................................................... 316 3.1 External RSS Feed Promotion ......................................................................... 317 3.2 RSS and Search Engine Positioning ................................................................ 323 4. Affiliate RSS Promotion ......................................................................................... 328 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................. 329 Section VIII: The Basics of RSS Metrics ............................................................. 331 What Metrics?......................................................................................................... 333 The "Methods" ........................................................................................................ 333 Basic RSS Metrics: Web Server Log Analysis ....................................................... 334 Using third-party RSS trackers ............................................................................... 337 Per-user Generated RSS Feeds ............................................................................ 338 Hot to Get Started with RSS ............................................................................................. 341 Section IX: RSS and Blogging Interviews .......................................................... 342 Robin Good, MasterNewMedia.org............................................................................ 343 Dana VanDen Heuvel, blogSavant ............................................................................ 356 Bill French and F. Andy Seidl, MyST Technology Partners ....................................... 369 Tom Hespos, Underscore Marketing ......................................................................... 387 Bill Flitter, Pheedo...................................................................................................... 396 Alex Williams, DecisionCast ...................................................................................... 403 Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting ................................................................. 408 Tom Barnes, MediaThink........................................................................................... 413 Paul Chaney, Radiant Marketing Group .................................................................... 420 Jim Gray, Quikonnex.com.......................................................................................... 427 Alex Barnett, Microsoft............................................................................................... 434 Alan Webb, ABAKUS................................................................................................. 440 Crt Jakhel, Dergan ..................................................................................................... 444 Jeanne S. Jennings, JeanneJennings.com ............................................................... 448 Dwight Shih, Ideoplex ................................................................................................ 458 10 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS James Robertson, Cincom......................................................................................... 462 Kim Bloomer, KimBloomer.com ................................................................................. 471 Trina Schiller, TLC Promotions .................................................................................. 482 Rick Bruner, Executive Summary Consulting ............................................................ 490 Derek Scruggs, FanPrints.......................................................................................... 494 Christopher Knight, EmailUniverse.com .................................................................... 500 Chad Williams, RSSads............................................................................................. 505 Tig Tillinghast, MarketingVox..................................................................................... 509 Alain Jourdier, MarketingDriven................................................................................. 518 Heiko Hebig, Six Apart............................................................................................... 522 John Moore, Brand Autopsy ...................................................................................... 526 Laura Ries, Ries & Ries............................................................................................. 533 Amy Gahran, Gahran.com ......................................................................................... 536 Åsk Wäppling, Adland................................................................................................ 541 Fergus Burns, Nooked.com ....................................................................................... 547 Views and Experience From Other Marketers ........................................................... 553 Eric Ward, EricWard.com ....................................................................................... 553 Kevin Bidwell, All-In-One-Business.com ................................................................ 554 Doug Hudiburg, The Daily Marketing Ace .............................................................. 556 11 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section I: Introduction to Internet Content Delivery and RSS 12 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Is Your Content Getting Delivered? • A large percentage of your internet content is not getting delivered to your recipients due to spam filters or changed e-mail addresses, or not being read due to uncontrollable amounts of e-mail messages in inboxes. Chances are that more than half of your e-mail subscribers aren't getting your messages or aren't reading them. • DoubleClick, a company that delivers millions of e-mail messages for its clients, reports (Q3 2004 Email Trend Report) that the average e-mail delivery rate (emails sent minus the combined hard and soft bounce-back rate, but not counting the e-mail messages blocked by various filters without bouncing the message) grew slightly to 89.3%, while the average open rate is only 34.3%. The average click-through rate is 8.3%. The good news is that the click-to-purchase conversion rate grew to 4.2%, but having only 34.3% of all internet content read is still not something to be enthusiastic about. • E-mail marketers, such as Jeanne S. Jennings, comparing her figures with other e-mail marketing practitioners and reporting on them in a ClickZ article, are seeing their open-rates for in-house e-mail lists range from “mid-20s to just over 50 percent.” • Consequently, your business is suffering because you are not maximizing the effectiveness of your content delivery efforts. If more than half of your subscribers aren't getting your content, that's more than 50% of lost sales and relationship opportunities. Do you dare to calculate how much that amounts to in losses over the course of the next few years? • Not only your prospects, but your customers as well are missing out on what you have to say to them. Imagine the negative impact this has on your follow-up sales and after-purchase relationship building activities? • People are afraid of subscribing to your e-mail newsletters; they cannot control the inflow of information as it is, increasing it only means more trouble. • The US CAN-SPAM legislation is putting all legitimate e-mail publishers at risk, enforcing rules that instead of being dangerous for the real spammers actually threaten legitimate senders. This is the internet marketing reality in 2005. 13 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And yet some companies and content publishers, such as the New York Times, BBC, MarketingVOX, Lockergnome, Yahoo! and many others are still easily delivering their content without the fear of spam accusations or blocked e-mails … The Importance of Internet Content Delivery: Making or Breaking Your Internet Business Understanding internet content delivery, its importance and the key elements of relevant internet content delivery are the keys to unlocking your internet business success. While this may seem somewhat academic, there really is no way around this basic understanding that has the power to either make or break your internet business. Only after understanding this can we move to concrete content delivery and strategize about how to deliver our content. Quick Practical Explanation: Internet Content Delivery Content delivery is the process of getting your content delivered to its intended destination or destinations, using the available and appropriate content delivery channels. For instance, traditional postal mail is an example of a content delivery channel, as well as the telephone, fax etc., while the content itself can be provided “through” multiple media and formats, such as audio (“the spoken word”), CR-Roms, paper, books etc. On the internet, the most used content delivery channels are the World Wide Web and E-mail. Internet content delivery is the process of getting your internet content (internet content includes different content formats; anything from text-based information to graphics, audio or other multimedia files, PDF files etc.) delivered to its intended destination or destinations, using the internet and its content delivery channels, where it is consumed (viewed, read or used in some other way) by the user or some application or system that further processes it (does something with it). 14 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As the E-Business of Content Delivery report explains, “content is delivered using either the pull or push model. Both models describe who initiates the transfer of content, i.e., a consumer either selects and retrieves content or subscribes to a stream of information.” The World Wide Web is an example of the “pull” content delivery model, since the consumer selects and retrieves content from a specific content source on the Web, such as a corporate web site. The user needs to “visit” the web site ie. request one of its web pages (usually through his internet browser), which is then served to him. E-mail e-zines on the other hand are a good example of the “push” content delivery model, since the consumer subscribes to a stream of information, which is then delivered to him when the content publisher decides so. The user needs to subscribe to a content source, the e-zine, and then receives its content through email. To better understand the internet content delivery process consider what, for example, entails delivering content using e-mail (for a more technical explanation of how this works see Webopedia). • The publisher needs to create the content and then send the message “through the e-mail content delivery channel” using his client-side e-mail client or some other client-side or web application. • The message then “travels” through the internet to the recipients e-mail inbox at his e-mail service provider. • The message is then made available to the user through his e-mail client, which the user needs to access his e-mail messages. The importance of content delivery for doing business on the internet cannot be disputed. To a certain extent, internet content delivery has the power to either make or break an internet business. If we cannot deliver our content, which includes our marketing messages, such as sales letters, and our educational material or news, how will we communicate with our prospects, customers and partners? How will we educate them? How will we sell to them? How will we build relationships with them? How will we do business? 15 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS There are many crucial business and marketing aspects of getting content delivered … A] Getting your information delivered The information you produce with the intent of communicating with your target audiences is of no use to you, if they don't receive it. Content delivery should ensure that they in fact do receive it. E-mail, for instance, is turning out to be less than adequate for achieving this task in many cases, especially when the recipient is either over-flown with e-mail in his inbox or when he uses a wealth of SPAM filters. B] Communicating with your target audiences Proactively reaching and communicating with your target audiences means getting certain information delivered directly in-front of them. This is content delivery. For example, proactively communicating with your customers requires educating them in your areas of expertise and helping them achieve better business results using your advice, which requires getting this information delivered to them, using marketing tools such as e-mail e-zines. C] Making the sale and building lasting customer loyalty Communication is the key to making the sale and lasting customer loyalty. Content delivery, in most cases when talking about doing business on the internet, starts the communicational process. How can you best generate business feedback and enquiries? By first building a relationship with a prospect through education and providing relevant information, getting him ready to contact you to discuss your services or purchasing your product. This is best achieved by providing a steady stream of information that educates, prepares and then converts the prospect in to a client. This information however must be delivered to its destination, the prospect, if it is to do its job. 16 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Traditionally, this type of content was being delivered using e-mail. But as we already know, e-mail is becoming increasingly inadequate to further serve us well enough in this area. D] Ease of use for the end-user Consuming large quantities of information from many different sources requires a simple, unified, controlled and structured way of receiving and managing information. Content delivery either makes this process easy or difficult for the enduser. We are living in a world with an abundance of information and different information sources. Keeping tabs on all of this information is a tedious task even for the most experienced users, especially considering all of the external noise or unwanted information that comes with the information we actually want, preventing us from managing our personal content consumption. Consequently, end-users need improved ways of managing their content consumption. • Simple ! not having to acquire much new experience to consume content; easily receive and consume content. • Unified ! not having to use much different software (content consumption tools) to receive and consume different content from different content sources. Controlled ! having the ability to precisely control what content they are receiving and from which content sources and when; easily adding new content sources and deleting others. • Structured ! having the ability to easily distinguish between different content (different content types, different content sources, ...) they are consuming through their content consumption tools. Let's take a look at some practical examples to better demonstrate the above points ... • Simple ! ease of use, just like using e-mail. We all know how to subscribe to new e-mail e-zines and we certainly all know how to send, receive and read e-mail messages. E-mail is easy to use, meaning that delivering content using e-mail is easy enough for the end-user. 17 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Unified ! there are many different ways of consuming internet content, from e-mail, the Web, Instant Messaging (instant messages are content) to various Peer-to-Peer networks and so on. But all of these require their own content consumption tools; e-mail requires an e-mail client, the Web requires an internet browser and so on. However, maximum comfort for the end-user would mean consuming the majority of the content he wishes to consume using the fewest possible consumption tools. • Controlled ! one of the greatest problems with e-mail is that it is difficult to control, since it is extremely difficult to control who you are receiving content from, which includes all the difficulties involved with unsubscribing from an email list. The end-user cannot really control his content consumption with email. • Structured ! imagine receiving 50 e-mail e-zines per day in to your inbox, along with all of the other e-mail. All of this content is usually thrown in to one inbox in a completely unstructured way, unless the user creates rules within his e-mail client that correctly distribute e-mail messages in to appropriate folders (but most users don’t know how to do that or don’t want to be bothered with it). To get a better view of the content he receives, the user must now organize all of the e-mail messages and move them to appropriate folders etc., which takes time and is also prone to human error. In addition, the content in the messages themselves is structured the way the content publisher structured it, instead of a unified structure that would be easier to comprehend for the user. Consequently, e-mail content is not highly structured and is as such more difficult to use when the user is faced with an abundance of different content. A better solution for most end-users would deliver content from each individual content source in to an individual “folder” and then further structure various content in that folder so that the user could easily scan it, read it and use it. In addition, this would also require that users only receive content they want to receive, to keep different “folders” to a minimum. 18 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Whatever way we look at it, content delivery has the task of getting our information to the right people in the most comfortable and manageable way for them. If we do not deliver this information or if we deliver it the wrong way, most of the other activities will be futile. Content delivery ensures that the people that we motivate enough to want to receive our information, actually do receive it. This applies to every type of business on the internet; from individual entrepreneurs and internet marketers to large corporations. We all need to deliver content in the best possible ways. Delivering content might not be as glamorous as generating new traffic, running Google promotions, developing advanced creative ads or developing marketing strategies, but it is equally important, perhaps even more important than mastering the art of search engine positioning. Not having a successful content delivery system in place means • not being able to convert prospects in to customers beyond first contact, • not being able to build long-term relationships with existing customers and generating more sales to them, • not being able to communicate with the media and other relevant target audiences, • not being able to provide informational and news services, • not being able to inform. Basically, content delivery is the internet bridge between a company and its audiences. Key Elements of Relevant Content Delivery But what are the most important requirements for relevant content delivery that will help you win the internet marketing game? First, we need to understand what is relevant content. 19 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A] Our target audiences’ informational demands Relevant content corresponds to informational demands of the target audiences it is intended for, in correlation with our specific area of expertise, the audiences' expectations towards us and our goals. Namely, relevant content must meet the needs and expectations of the target audiences it is intended for. But, in order to be effective, it also needs to take in to account the below elements: • Our specific area of expertise ! Becoming a thought-leading company or individual in any area requires a strong focus on our expertise, which means that ideally the content we publish should be from our area of expertise, positioning us as the best content source for this information. It also means we write only about what we understand, have something meaning to say about and what we can help our readers with. • Our audiences’ expectations towards us ! Different people have different expectations towards different companies and individuals. An internet newbie, wanting to make a quick buck on the internet, will expect quick steps, tips and instructions for his new road to riches from an internet marketing consultant. A CEO of a large corporation will expect entirely different information from perhaps the same consultant. And another internet marketing expert will again expect entirely different information. For another example, imagine a large company that serves multiple markets, for instance travel companies and finance companies. Their clients from these two different markets will expect entirely different information from the company. The content interesting to the finance sector is probably going to be just the opposite for companies in the travel sector. Another important consideration are quality expectations. Readers will expect different quality content from a “yellow” newspaper then from a professional investment newspaper. Relevant content must take these expectations in to account, and truly provide the information that our target audiences expect from us. 20 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Our goals ! Publishing content on the internet always serves specific goals, be it increasing sales, converting prospects in to customers, educating existing customers to make them buy more, helping existing customers to built their loyalty, preparing the market for our new product launch, publishing content as a paid service, building recognition and a thought-leadership position etc. Whatever our internet business goals are, relevant content will focus on achieving them, but at the same time take in to account the other two elements mentioned above. For instance, if our goal is positioning ourselves as search engine marketing experts and increasing sales of our informational products on this subject, our content should aim to achieve this end. It means that the information we provide must of such great quality that people immediately recognize us as the expert in the field; it must be so interesting that they keep coming back from more; but in addition to this it cannot give away the whole game (and leave us with no informational products to sell, since our readers already got everything for free from our web site) and it “must” include some sort of mechanism to facilitate sales, such as an ad at the end of free educational articles. Combining the above three will satisfy the needs of our audiences and provide them with a true benefit of consuming our content, and on the other hand satisfy our own needs, because it will help us reach our business goals. A win-win combination. B] Availability and On-request Delivery Relevant content is available to our target audiences exactly when they need it [timely availability] and delivered to them exactly when they want it [on-request delivery]. 21 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Timely availability ! What good is an investment advice that is read just when the investment opportunity ceases to exist? What good is breaking and businesschanging news if everyone already knows it and we cannot take advantage of it anymore? What can our readers do with a good advice that just comes too late? That is why relevant content must be available to our target audiences exactly at the time they need it. For investment advice that might mean automatically sending them an e-mail and SMS alert when a new urgent investment opportunity appears. On the other hand when a customer wants specific content from us, he must have direct and immediate access to it, without having to wait too long (or wait at all) for it. For an example, if our customer needs a quick answer on an issue with our product, that answer should be immediately available to him through our web site etc. Relevant content must always be available when it is most meaningful and … relevant. • On-request delivery ! On the other hand, people also have different requirements on when they want to receive content. They want to receive specific content at specific times. For instance, they want to receive breaking business news as soon as it becomes available. They want to receive tips on how to improve their personal lives when they are not burdened with work. They want to receive daily news recaps every day or once every week or even a few times per day. Our content will be perceived as more relevant if it is delivered when our audiences want it. C] Content access control Relevant content is accessible exactly to the target audiences that it is intended for, and is not accessible to anyone else, especially when a certain level of content security needs to be established due to the nature of the content. In practice this means that a specific client won’t have problems getting to the content intended especially for him (such as his previous purchasing history), and on the other hand that same content won’t be available to anyone else. 22 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS D] Target audiences’ content presentation demands Relevant content corresponds to content presentation demands of the target audiences it is intended for, namely in terms of content format (for instance, do they want to read their content in HTML format, PDF format, Microsoft Word format, Macromedia Flash format etc.), accessibility (for instance, can the visually impaired use our content as well; language etc.) and understandability (can our target audiences actually understand what we are trying to convey to them). • Content format ! Some people want to receive some content in PDF, some content in audio and some content in HTML. Others have different demands. We need to meet the needs of all of them, individually, to achieve maximum content relevancy. • Accessibility ! Accessibility is especially important for the visually impaired (large fonts) or otherwise handicapped people (for instance, an alternative to audio content for people with hearing problems), as well as in relation to where our target audiences are coming from. If we are, for instance, trying to communicate with clients from Germany, it is best to provide them with content in their own language to achieve best relevancy. • Understandability ! Is what we are trying to say understandable to our users? It means using appropriate language for appropriate target audiences. Academics will understand complex language, while most people will not. Professionals from a certain profession will understand specific expressions, but others will not. Who are we targeting? What is understandable to them? E] Content consumption channel Relevant content is available to our target audiences using exactly the content consumption channel that best suits their preferences and needs. Our target audiences should not be forced to use any specific content delivery channel, but should rather have the option of choosing the one they prefer. Our audiences should and must have the power to choose how our content is delivered to them, which does not even exclude traditional content delivery channels, such as postal mail or fax. 23 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS All of the five elements combined form the content that can be defined as relevant. All five must be taken in to account, and all five must work equally well together. Relevant content delivery will meet these requirements for relevant content. Consequently the content delivery channels that we use (or provide to our target audiences on the internet) should meet these same requirements as they best can. The Right Content Delivery Channels? Now that you understand the importance and aspects of internet content delivery, the question is what content delivery channels are most appropriate to deliver your content to achieve maximum business impact. 24 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Successful internet content delivery will naturally require more than just one content delivery channel; a combination of channels. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If, for instance, you want your customers to have direct access to answers on various issues they could have with your product, you want to make that information available to them through your web site (the Web). If you want them to receive urgent updates when they are most meaningful, you want to make that information available to them through e-mail, as soon as it ready. If you want to make their content consumption as comfortable as possible, you want to deliver your content directly in front of them, without them having to think about visiting your web site. Most often sending them this same content using e-mail … And this is the point where the first huge issue comes to mind: all of the problems associated with getting your e-mail delivered, as well as the reluctance of your users to receive even more e-mail content, since their inboxes are already filled with it. Most internet marketers today are using e-mail to deliver their internet content, evading most other content delivery channels. But is that really the best business decision, especially on the long-term? With e-mail as their primary and sometimes even the only “push” content delivery channel, businesses everywhere are in great peril. Somewhat dramatically speaking, with the problems e-mail is facing today, internet content delivery itself is in peril. The Question of Further Usefulness of E-mail At the heart of the internet content delivery problem lies the fact that e-mail has become the key content delivery channel that companies hugely depend on to get their internet content delivered, while consumers themselves heavily depend on e-mail to receive the internet content they want. 25 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS While we, marketers and publishers, are fighting to get our content delivered to our audiences, internet users are fighting for better control of their content consumption … and sometimes even fighting to get the content they want. The key problem we are all facing is the arguable inadequacy of e-mail to further serve us as the preferred content delivery and content consumption channel. SPAM, enabled by the "democratic" nature of e-mail, has created such content delivery and consumption barriers that the entire content delivery process is in peril. The further usefulness of e-mail to further serve us as the preferred content delivery channel is highly questionable. Figure #1, The E-mail Delivery Model, demonstrates what barriers e-mail messages need to cross in order to finally get read. A] We start by having to acquire our recipient's e-mail address and permission to communicate, which in itself is a daunting task considering the fear of adding to the e-mail jungle in the recipient's inbox. B] We then, after sending the message, need to face various barricades with the recipient's ISP. C] After getting through the ISP barricades we still have to "combat" the various filters in place with the user, such as a third-party spam filter, usually coupled with an e-mail client spam filter. D] Then, the user still quickly scans the messages, eliminating the most obvious spam, and on top of that usually also performs an in-depth scan to finally decide what messages to delete, move to the dreaded "to read" folder (which never gets read) or actually read. 26 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This model clearly shows how difficult it is indeed to get our e-mail delivered and actually read. There are just too many barriers on the way to make this a truly effective delivery system. The E-mail Delivery Model, Figure #2, is only a simplified explanation of what barriers we need to cross to get our e-mail messages delivered. The reality, as explained by Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald in a ClickZ article titled “Understand ISP-Level E-mail Filtering”, is much worse. “E-mail filtering is a necessary part of fighting spam. As ClickZ News reported earlier this year, AOL receives roughly 2 billion e-mail messages a day, of which about 75 percent are blocked and another 4 to 7 percent are sent to the bulk folder.” ISPs actually use a wealth of components to decide what e-mail messages are SPAM, such as: • Sender reputation (through blacklists, which list “known” spammers) 27 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Sender authenticity • Volume of messages sent • Volume of hard bounces • Message content (which by itself has a wealth of its own components) • Spam complaints In their article, Popov and McDonald also demonstrate a typical ISP filtering pyramid: • It all starts with the public e-mail sender blacklists and the blacklists ISPs are building in-house. If you are listed on a blacklist that the ISP you are receiving your e-mail messages to is using, your e-mail will usually be immediately blocked. • ISPs also look at how the e-mail is being sent, for instance if the sender crammed hundreds of e-mail addresses in the “to” field; check if the sender is authenticated (using SPF for instance), meaning that they check if the person sending the e-mail actually “owns” the “e-mail address” that the e-mail is being sent from; check whether the IP of the sender belongs to the domain it says it does; and so on. • Next is looking at how the message stream for the e-mail behaves as a whole. For example, they check if the e-mail was sent to a large number of invalid e-mail addresses. • Top-level filters then check for the e-mail message content and filter it out the messages they consider SPAM. • And finally, large ISPs also provide their users with individual user-level SPAM filters, which the users control individually. Source: ClickZ The above filtering pyramid itself should be enough to frighten e-mail marketers and publishers. 28 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS All of this a consequence of SPAM. Certain solutions that might "cure" the spam problem are already in development, among those the Sender ID (intended to verify an e-mail sender’s identity), being developed by Microsoft, but these are still quite far from being applied to everyday e-mail use. In addition, it seems that e-mail postage via the Bonded Sender Program is also under strong consideration, which means more bad news for e-mail publishers. “Here's how the program works. Instead of aggressively filtering the content of email to identify suspect missives - an anti-spam approach that might result in excess "false positives" - Bonded Sender is built around the idea that legitimate mass emailers would be willing to put money at risk to ensure the integrity of their messages. By posting a bond, these on-the-level firms get on a universal list that allows mail at the network level to get passed on. (Such lists, without the bonds, have been used in other anti-spam schemes.) Messages sent by mass e-mailers not on the list get blocked. "Could it work? Absolutely," says Peter Christy, co-founder of the NetsEdge Research Group in Los Altos, Calif. Bond fees are priced according to the amount of mail sent but can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, says IronPort CEO Scott Weiss.” Source: USA Today Yes, the Bonded Sender Program requires e-mail senders to pay a certain fee for getting their e-mail messages delivered, just like traditional mail postage. A day might soon come when legitimate mass e-mailers are going to have to pay this email postage to ensure their e-mail messages are delivered. If this happens, what will the various small businesses and internet entrepreneurs do? Especially considering their midget budgets … The future of e-mail does not look rosy. But all of this is not to say that e-mail is no longer a valid option and that email marketers should just stop using it. Quite on the contrary. 29 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS E-mail, regardless of its problems, still works and is still the primary internet consumption channel for the majority of internet users. For most internet marketers and publishers, ceasing to use it would be like shooting themselves in the foot. But we must still admit that e-mail is no longer the content delivery vehicle it once was, and that we now need to start complimenting it with other channels, such as RSS. What is RSS? RSS, already an "old" technology that has only been gaining momentum for the past year and a half, has the potential of overcoming many of the content delivery challenges we are facing today, especially with e-mail, and becoming a strong, if not preferred, content delivery vehicle. While achieving not more than marginal penetration, its usage is growing with astounding speed, powered by the activities of small-business internet publishers and key internet media players, such as reputable news media and giant web portals, as well. According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, based on two nationwide phone surveys conducted in the U.S. in November (1861 internet users), 5% (6 million) Americans online consume news and information through RSS or XLM aggregators. Source: ClickZ RSS is a content delivery channel that allows you to easily deliver internet content to your target audiences, while eliminating a large part of the external noise and shortcomings of other delivery channels. RSS content is delivered through RSS feeds, which are practically just a specific type of document or file. This file includes some basic information about the RSS feed (such as RSS feed title, logo, description etc.) and the actual content in the form of individual content items, which are basically individual stories or articles (usually just descriptions of articles actually published on the internet publisher’s web site), presented in a linear list. To better understand this, take a look at the below example, taken from MarketingSherpa’s RSS feed: 30 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Case Study::How Dirt Devil's Site Gets Unusually High Sales (Includes Check Out Process Test Results) CHALLENGE: "When I started, we spent the first several months just working on the Internet strategy, because there wasn't really one," says Michael Crowdes, Manager Interactive Marketing & eCommerce for Royal Appliance Manufacturing - mak... Last changed: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Interview::Is Your Yellow Pages Ad Working? Top 4 Most Common Advertiser Mistakes "15 billion look-ups are conducted using print yellow pages in the US annually," says Christopher Bacey, Director Business Communications at the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association. Search may be the hot marketing flavor du jour, ... Last changed: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Interview::PR Interview: How to Get Covered by Electronic Design Magazine Mark David, Editor-in-Chief Electronic Design 45 Eisenhower Drive Paramus, NJ 07652 201-845-2467 http://www.elecdesign.com [email protected] -> Reach 145,000 circulation -> David's background Mark David began his car... Last changed: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST This is what a typical RSS feed might look like if viewed with an appropriate viewer. As you can see, the example of the feed includes three individual content items, presented in a linear list, with each content item having its own title and description. If an end-user clicked on one of these titles, he would be taken to the full-text version of the content item (a lengthy article) on MarketingSherpa’s web site. Simplistically explained, RSS enables internet content publishers to easily deliver information about their specific content to end-users. In a way, this can be best compared to e-mail content alert services, which send you an e-mail message every time content you are interested in is published on a specific web site, letting you know that a new article you are interested in is available on the Web. But in order to view your RSS content, the end-user needs to either download a special program, called an RSS aggregator, or use a web-based RSS aggregator through one of the web sites already providing this service free of charge. 31 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS An RSS aggregator is a special computer application that allows us to “subscribe” to RSS feeds, periodically reads those feeds to display their latest content, and let us view those same RSS feeds. After installing an RSS aggregator or registering at a web-based RSS aggregator web service, the user needs to proactively add the link to your RSS feed in to his aggregator to view your content. Every time you update your RSS feed (add new content items to the RSS file), the user is notified by that through his RSS aggregator, making the content immediately available to him, without it having to face any SPAM filters and other barricades on the way. Screenshot: MarketingSherpa RSS feed content items, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator But that’s not all there is to RSS feeds. They can also be used to display content from different content sources (from different internet content publishers) on other web sites, for instance, and even more. 32 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Don't be afraid, while all this might sound confusing, RSS is actually very simple to use, whether you are a publisher or an end-user. What kind of content can you publish through an RSS feed? "RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way." [What is RSS, Mark Pilgrim, posted on XML.com] Putting it straight-forward: if you can break down your content in to individual and separated items or stories, you can deliver it using RSS. MarketingSherpa.com, for instance, uses RSS to deliver their latest article summaries. Other web sites, such as the majority of news web sites, use RSS to deliver their news, just as it becomes available. The key advantage of using RSS as an internet content publisher and marketer is that it actually gets your content delivered to its destination, without many of the obstacles present with other content delivery channels. • For internet marketers and publishers, RSS promises to increase our capacity to actually deliver content, evading most technological barriers, such as spam filters. RSS also increases the number of our content delivery opportunities, offering us new and more effective ways of getting different types of content infront of our target audiences (our prospects, existing customers, business partners, suppliers, employees or team members, media representatives and all other target audiences we are communicating with using the internet). • For internet end-users, RSS promises to provide them with a better level of control over the content they consume, in addition to increasing their content consumption efficiency. In a world plagued by increasing e-mail delivery problems, these advantages are surely enough to get every marketer deeply interested in RSS and all of the benefits it provides. 33 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS What You Can Get Out of Marketing with RSS • Get your content and your marketing messages through to your audiences • Increase your readership • Increase the response to your marketing messages • Build better relationships with your target audiences • Improve your search engine placement • Use other web sites to increase your own traffic • Discover and take advantage of new content delivery opportunities, not previously available with content delivery channels such as e-mail • Decrease your workload ! publishing in RSS is easy and quick RSS as a Benefit for End-Users Right now, most internet users subscribe to e-mail newsletters and special email content alert services (provided by internet publishers) to keep track of new content around the web. The primary problem with this, from the end-user perspective, is the overflow of spam in our inboxes. • It means it's becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between unwanted messages and relevant content we want to see. Consequently, we often miss content we actually want to receive, just because we didn't notice it or we simply ignored it because we couldn't consume so many different messages at the same time. • The above happens when the requested content is actually delivered to our inboxes, which is not always the case, since it often happens that our e-mail is blocked somewhere before reaching us, meaning we never even get to see it. 34 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Because of all the e-mail we are already receiving, we don’t want to add to that by subscribing to even more e-mail services. We want to receive that content, but at the same time we don’t want to receive even more e-mail. We won’t read it anyway … Using RSS eliminates this problem. RSS aggregators allow us to keep track of the content we want to keep track of content in a single place, without having to deal with spam and having to worry that the wanted content won't reach us. The second problem is our fear. Users are getting afraid of requesting information by e-mail, because we are afraid of being exploited, again increasing the number of incoming spam. RSS again eliminates this problem, because information is transferred via http and does not require giving away our e-mail addresses, and the whole system makes unsubscribing from feeds we no longer want easy; practically a matter of a few clicks. The third problem is that not all kinds of content are appropriate for regular e-mail delivery, such as daily or even hourly news etc., because the large amount of such messages would again overflow our inboxes. On the other hand, visiting hundreds of web sites daily to get the information we want again is not feasible, because time is always short. We want the content to come to us, and not the other way around. RSS, again, provides a solution, with its specific content consumption system. These are, naturally, only the basics. Using RSS we can keep track of different content sources around the web with greater ease and structure and without having to fear exploitation. Now apply this principle to your business content needs. 35 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • We are living in a world of constant change where keeping up with new information is crucial. Business intelligence has never been as important. This basically means we need a reliable, flexible, easy and structured way of consuming new information daily. We need to aggregate content from different sources and have a relatively unified view of it. We need flexibility in determining what content we need now, quickly eliminating the content that bears no importance for our business decisions. For many types of content, for the purposes of business intelligence, we need to have access to information as soon as it is published, not later, but now. We need to be sure that the information we want is actually going to reach us. • In order to make better business decisions we need quick and unified access to different kinds of information. This information includes news and content from different internet sources, updates from our team-members, reports from various departments within our company, and reports from various outside sources (such as current stock standings, etc.). Unfortunately, information from so many different sources is bound to be unstructured and delivered through various different channels and thus difficult to keep up with. RSS can provide us with such unification, flexibility and structure. The tools are here and available. The only limit is the number of content publishers offering RSS content feeds. More and more "outside" publishers are doing it, and you yourself can make it happen within your organization. Moving one step ahead, RSS can also be used for in-house delivery of business critical information, such as accounting statements, sales reports etc., even in communication with your suppliers and other business processes participants. As we can see, basic and personal content consumption is only the tip of the iceberg, there are many more RSS uses than what is evident from the first inspection. Why Should You Care? Either as an end-user or as business person, content delivery should be one of your top informational concerns. • As an end-user you cannot function properly without having relevant access to the information you need. Content delivery mechanisms affect your ability to access this information. 36 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • As a business person you must understand that your business success, among other things, depends on information, and in large on your ability to deliver it. Without the proper content delivery vehicles you cannot get content in-front of your target audiences, at least not in a relevant fashion. RSS answers the needs of both. While its penetration is not nearly high enough, it is slowly increasing. Right now RSS is being used by the trendsetters and early adopters, but that is going to change over time. On the other hand, these are exactly the people that move and shake our society, so reaching them with a channel of their choice is a sound business decision, regardless of other key benefits. From the organizational viewpoint, your organization can achieve great benefits by implementing RSS on the content consumption and content delivery side, even turn it in to a strategic asset and a competitive advantage; and this applies to small and large businesses alike. Why RSS? Since all this may sound too conceptual, let's take a quick look at the key practical reasons why you, as a content publisher, should care about implementing RSS as one of your content delivery channels: • People want to receive content in a controlled environment where they are incharge, not the publisher. • Delivering content using e-mail is becoming increasingly difficult, due to blacklists, spam filters and over excessive amounts of e-mail in your recipients' mailboxes. • RSS allows you to deliver content beyond your e-zine, giving you more content delivery opportunities. • RSS is a natural tool for content syndication, which means easily and instantly delivering your content to hundreds of other content sources, thus creating additional exposure. • When using RSS to deliver all of your web site content updates, RSS will actually increase your web site traffic, thus giving your promotional messages more exposure. 37 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • People are afraid of subscribing to e-mail lists, which makes getting new subscribers difficult; RSS is a whole different story. Hot to Get Started with RSS Understanding Internet Content Delivery Consider the following questions: • What internet content delivery channels are you using to deliver your internet content? • Are you experiencing any real problems with them? What problems and how are they effecting your business results? • Are you publishing relevant internet content? If not, how can you improve it on the short-term and how on the long-term? • Is e-mail still the best possible content delivery channel for you? • Would you as an end-user appreciate the opportunity to receive content from your favorite publishers via RSS? Are you satisfied with your answers? Do you believe that RSS can help you improve your marketing results? Try to evaluate your existing content delivery channels and see where there is room for improvement. Also, and this is very important, think about what your existing content delivery channels provide you with. Are there some ways of delivering content or certain content types you want to deliver that just don’t go well with your existing content delivery channels? 38 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Now, prepare a written list of the following: • Your target audiences • What content you are delivering to each of your target audiences (be very specific, as this is of crucial importance) • What is the purpose of this content • How exactly are you delivering this content • With what affect are you delivering this content Also think about other content you would like to deliver through the internet but don’t think it’s a good idea with your existing content delivery channels. You will need this list further down. 39 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section II: The Basics of How RSS Works 40 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS To better understand RSS as a content delivery channel and begin to use it to our best advantage it is crucial that we have at least a basic understanding of how it works from the user’s perspective. In this section we are going to cover the basics of how RSS works, through the eyes of the many ways of consuming RSS feeds; and also the basics of how to use RSS as an end-user, which is actually a quick tutorial that will help you get started with RSS in no time. 1. The Basics of How RSS Works RSS allows internet content publishers to deliver content using RSS feeds, which can then be consumed (used) in multiple ways by end-users or other web sites. • End-users can consume RSS feeds using special software that they install on their computers, called client-side RSS aggregators or readers. • Some internet browsers and e-mail clients already provide RSS functionality, which means that end-users can consume RSS feeds directly using these programs, without having to install additional software. • End-users can also consume RSS feeds through special web services (web based RSS aggregators), available (mostly for free) through specific web sites, without having to use any kind of special software. • Webmasters can use RSS to easily display content from other web sources on their web sites. • RSS feeds can also be submitted to various RSS search engines, directories and aggregators (these are special content aggregation web sites that specialize in providing content from hundreds and hundreds of different content sources); in a way they are “consumed” by them, as they display their content (syndicate it) within their own web pages and in some cases make it available to other endusers and web sites through their own RSS feeds. • There are also other RSS usage possibilities, but more on that later. 41 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A. End-user Consumption using Client-side RSS Aggregators or Readers Client-side RSS aggregators or readers are applications that allow internet users to use and view RSS feeds directly from their computers, through a desktop application. But in order to do this, users need to download, install and learn how to use new software, which is the top obstacle to mass RSS penetration. Most client-side RSS aggregators are standalone products that work on their own, while some can even be integrated in to Microsoft Outlook or internet browsers, such as the Internet Explorer. Let's take a look at a very basic explanation of how all this works … 1. The content publisher creates and publishes his content online, usually to his web site. This is not mandatory for publishing content in RSS feeds, but the majority of web sites do it this way. The alternatives are: a. Publishing the content only in the RSS feed. If the content in question is longer, not just a short summary, the RSS feed must contain full-text content items, carrying all of the content of a specific story or article. b. Publishing the content first in the RSS feed and then using special software to display that content on the web site. Basically very similar to first creating and publishing the content on a web site, just the other way around. 2. He then creates an RSS file (also called the RSS feed), in which he includes the headlines, links and summaries (or even full text) of the individual content items (stories or articles) he wishes to deliver through his RSS feed. These usually just summarize and link to the full-text content on his web site. 3. He then puts the link to the RSS file on his web site. Now, if people click on that link and open the file in their web browsers, all they are going to see is a lot of confusing code that they won't know what to do with. 42 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Users actually need to include the link to the RSS feed ("subscribe to the RSS feed" or "add the channel") in to their list of RSS feeds in their RSS aggregators. Some solutions already exist that make this even easier and turn it in to a one-click process. 5. When the user has the RSS feed included in his aggregator, the software will “fetch” the RSS file and display all the headlines and summaries the publisher included in the file. When new items are added to the file they can also be seen by the user on his aggregator. Each item is linked back to the web site to a specific piece of content, such as an article, or contains the fulltext article. We'll take a more in-depth look at this in the following chapters. Now, let's take a closer look at how this works from the user's point of view. This is only a basic RSS "subscription" process. Later on we'll take a look at many of the options to make it easier for the user, even if he doesn't use an RSS aggregator yet. Right now it's only important that you understand how the "subscription" process basically works so that you can better understand RSS. 1. The user comes to your web site and sees the link to your RSS feed. 2. If he directly clicks on that link all he sees is a lot of confusing code. 43 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. Instead of clicking on the link, he needs to copy it in to his RSS aggregator. 4. He launches the aggregator and decides to add a new content channel, and then pastes the link in to the appropriate field in the aggregator. 5. He now has access to the content items you included in your RSS feed. They can either be summaries with links to articles on your web site or full-text articles. 6. By clicking on an individual item the user is usually (depends on the aggregator) taken to the article on your web site, which happens within the RSS aggregator, which now also serves as an internet browser. 7. The RSS aggregator periodically checks the RSS files in the user's list to see whether new content has been added to them, and marks those feeds or in some other way lets the user know that new content is waiting for him. This process is of course much more difficult if your visitor doesn't know what RSS is, how to use it and doesn't have an RSS aggregator. In this case you first need to motivate him to find out what RSS is and why it's good for him, and then motivate him enough to actually decide to use RSS, find an appropriate RSS aggregator and then install it. And finally, you need to get him to include your RSS feed in his new aggregator. This process can be quite difficult, depending on how internet & computer savvy your visitors are. Either way, you will need to lead them step-by-step, and giving them enough benefits along the way to bring them to the final step. Fortunately, as more and more publishers adopt RSS, more and more users will already know how to use it and have RSS aggregators already installed on their computers. B. End-user Consumption using Native Internet Browser Features With the increasing importance of RSS some internet browser developers are already starting to implement basic RSS aggregation functionality in the actual browser itself, such as the Mozilla Firefox 1.0, through its Live Bookmarks. 44 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This basically means that the user doesn’t need to install a separate piece of software to use your RSS feed, which definitely is good news. However, since most internet users use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (but still, Firefox popularity, for instance, is growing at astounding speeds and may well threaten Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the very near future) we will have to wait until Microsoft decides to implement RSS in their browser before we can expect this to have much impact on the mass internet audience. Only this, in our opinion, along with the possible direct implementation of RSS functionality in Microsoft Outlook, will make mass RSS penetration possible. Many people might not like this statement, and it’s even true that Mozilla is gaining more and more ground, but the fact that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still rules the internet browser market cannot be disputed. No one knows what the future will actually bring us … C. End-user Consumption using Web Based RSS Aggregators End-users can also consume RSS feeds through special web based RSS aggregators, available through special web sites, that as well allow them to customize what RSS feeds they would like to “subscribe” to. This works similar to client-side RSS aggregators, but with some important differences: • Instead of having to install new software, users can use their existing web browsers and special web sites that offer web RSS aggregation services. • The user needs to find and register at a web site (create a personal account on that web site) that offers web RSS aggregation services (these are ordinarily free). • Once the user is registered he again needs to include the link to the RSS feed or file he wants to “watch”, but this time in his web list of RSS feeds that is "stored" in his web account at the web site. • The RSS feed consumption process takes place in the actual browser. This will usually be easier for less frequent internet users and/or "novice" computer users that can’t, won’t or don’t know how to install new software on their computers. 45 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Consequently, if RSS functionality does not become an integral part of internet browsers or e-mail clients soon, it's possible to predict that web based RSS aggregators will become the most popular way of end-user RSS consumption. Screenshot: Bloglines, a web based RSS aggregator Possible Bad News for Content Publishers and Marketers Depending on how such web based RSS aggregators further develop, this could actually be bad news for content publishers and marketers. All internet service providers need a source of income, and for most that source of income is paid internet advertising. What happens if web based RSS aggregation service providers decide to offer contextual advertisements to advertisers? It could for instance mean that when your content matches an advertiser's context, the system will display the ads from the advertiser right next to your content. Consequently, your one-to-one communication with your target audiences becomes invaded by your competitors who actually use your content as a vehicle to reach the most relevant prospects through the web based RSS aggregation service provider. 46 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This is actually an organic problem for publishers in relation to similar web based services, which also include webmail, with Google’s Gmail as the most prominent player in the webmail contextual ad market. It is however still much too early to accurately predict what RSS content consumption application approach is going to win the upper edge. D. Media consumption: Displaying RSS Content Headlines and Summaries on Other Web Sites Webmasters can use RSS feeds to display content headlines and/or summaries from other content sources on their own web sites (content syndication) to provide additional content to their visitors. Webmasters do this by using their own content management systems that "parse" RSS feeds to display their content on their web sites, third party parsing programs or third party parsing scripts. The advantage of using RSS for this is that when the publisher updates the RSS file all of the content headlines and/or summaries for his content on other web sites are updated as well (when these other web sites re-parse their content, which can be done dynamically for each visitor or periodically, depending on how the actual web site works and how it parses RSS content), and because RSS is becoming a standard that can be “parsed” by more and more solutions; thus making the syndication process very easy, simple and fluid. Furthermore, using RSS, a content publisher can deliver his content to thousands and thousands of web sites through only one single RSS file … even the same one he provides to his end-users. E. Web RSS “Aggregators” Many search engines, directories and portals that “deal” specifically with RSS feeds are already present on the internet market. These web sites “specialize” in consuming RSS feeds and making them available to end-users and even other web sites. Getting listed is one of the key elements of using RSS to better promote your web site, your content and your internet business. 47 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS F. Other Possibilities There are also other ways of consuming RSS feeds that do not fall in to either of the above categories. One such example is Podcasting, which makes downloading audio files from the internet a breeze. 2. The Basics of How to Use RSS as an End-User Many of the benefits of using RSS as a marketing tool become apparent only when you see how RSS is actually used by end-users, which is the topic of this chapter. If you are not already an RSS user, this chapter will also provide you with stepby-step instructions on how to get started as soon as possible and with greatest ease. 2.1 RSS Aggregators In order to use RSS feeds as an end-user you need an RSS aggregator, a piece of software or an online service that lets you "subscribe" to RSS feeds and then "read" them. RSS aggregators mostly fall in to three general categories, although there are also some other ways of consuming RSS feeds as well: • Client-side RSS aggregators • Web based RSS aggregators • Internet Browsers with Native RSS Features The first question most people would ask at this instant is "which of the three is better or the best"? There are no simple answers. Each aggregator category contains a number of products or services you can use, and it's not a simple choice. 48 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS There is no "perfect" choice, only choices that better suit your needs. So you'll have to ask yourself: • Do I prefer to download and install some software on my computer or would I rather just use an online service, but live without the additional features that can only be provided by client-side software? • Or will I rather just download a new internet browser that already includes some RSS features and use that? Do however keep in mind that no browser provides as many features, some of which are crucial, than stand-alone aggregators. After you start using RSS for a while you'll soon see what choice is the best for you, and what features you want from your aggregator. Then you'll also be able to easily decide which RSS aggregator to use. In this chapter we'll give you examples of using either a client-side or web based RSS aggregator. That might help you make a choice on what aggregator category you want to start with. Important note: When showing you how to use RSS aggregators we will need to give you examples based on specific RSS aggregators. This does not mean that we recommend these aggregators or support them above the other aggregators available on the market. To make the best choice possible inspect the various aggregators and then select the one you believe is best for you. We are in no business relationship with the vendors of these aggregators. First, let's take a short look at a list of aggregators available on the market. 2.1.1 Client-side RSS aggregators Name OS License Abilon Windows Freeware Aggie Windows Freeware akregator Unix Freeware AmphetaDesk Windows Freeware Awasu Windows Freeware 49 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS BlogExpress Windows Freeware BottomFeeder Cross-platform Freeware FeedDemon Windows Commercial Feedreader Windows Freeware Liferea Unix Freeware NewsGator [integrates in to Microsoft Outlook] Windows Commercial NewsFeed Cross-platform Freeware NewsFire Mac OS X Freeware NewsMac Mac OS X Freeware NetNewsWire Mac OS X Commercial Pluck Windows Freeware PulpFiction Mac OS X Commercial Raggle Unix Freeware RSSBandit Windows Freeware RSSOwl Cross-platform Freeware Sage Cross-platform Freeware Sauce Reader Windows Freeware Serence™ KlipFolio™ Windows Freeware SharpReader Windows Freeware Shrook Mac OS X Commercial Snownews Unix Freeware Straw Unix Freeware Vox Lite Windows Freeware Wildgrape NewsDesk Windows Freeware *List source: Wikipedia 50 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2.1.2 Web Based RSS Aggregators • SYFACiL • Bloglines • blogsnow • Kinja • NewzPile • Yahoo's RSS Client • LiveJournal • NewsIsFree • NewsGator • 2RSS.com • QuikView 2.1.3 Server Side Aggregators Server side aggregators are similar to web based RSS aggregators, with the only difference being that you install them on your own web server and administer them there. • Feed on Feeds • Python Desktop Server • Rippy The Aggregator • Simple Aggregator 2.1.4 Internet Browsers with Native RSS Features • Mozilla Firefox • Mozilla Thunderbird E-mail Client 51 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2.1.5 Other Ways of Consuming RSS Feeds There are some other ways of consuming RSS feeds as well. • RSS2Wap helps you consume RSS feeds through your WAP enabled mobile phone, by converting RSS feeds in to the WML format. • Podcasting, allows you to download music files using RSS. • Custom made software allows for different types of RSS consumption, basically anything that the company that ordered the software wants, only limited by the RSS specifications. More ways of consuming RSS feeds are bound to turn up more and more often. 2.2 Using RSS The first thing you need is an RSS aggregator. As you saw in the previous chapter you have a host of products and services to choose from. Which one is right for you? That will depend entirely on your own needs, and if you haven't used RSS yet those needs still need to form. We suggest that you start with either a free client-side RSS aggregator or a web based RSS aggregator and just start subscribing to RSS feeds. Eventually you'll get to the point where you'll know what you want and how you want it. And then you'll be able to start experimenting with different solutions and see what suits you best. For the purpose of this tutorial we will use the Vox Lite aggregator to demonstrate how client-side RSS aggregators work and the Bloglines aggregator to demonstrate how web based RSS aggregators work. 2.2.1 Introduction When browsing different web sites you surely by now noticed one of the following icons or icons looking like them: 52 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS … and so on. These icons are basically different ways of showing web site visitors that the web site offers an RSS feed and that the visitor can access it by using the web link "behind" the icon. On a web site, one of these icons might look like this: icon, you would only see a lot of Now, if you clicked on the XML code that wouldn't make any sense to most internet users. 53 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS What you are just seeing in the screenshot above is the XML code that forms the RSS feed. One of the key purposes of RSS aggregators is to take this code and present it to you in a user-friendly manner. So, if you want to "subscribe" to this feed and use it, you need an RSS aggregator. 2.2.2 Client-side RSS Aggregator Tutorial Let's now take a closer look at how "subscribing" to an RSS feed would look like if you were using a client-side RSS aggregator, such as the Vox Lite aggregator. 1] The first step is installing the RSS aggregator on your computer. You can do so by going to the RSS aggregator vendor's web site and download it from there, following their instructions. 2] Launch your new RSS aggregator to start browsing RSS feeds and to add your first RSS feed to your reading list. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; opening display As you can see the Vox Lite RSS aggregator already comes with a number of pre-defined RSS feeds, structured in various pre-defined folders. If you were to click on one of the folders and then fight your way to the first RSS feed, the aggregator would display its contents ! a list of content items, linearly placed one below the other. 54 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The frame for all content items looks the same for all feeds in this aggregator. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; showing a specific feed 3] To subscribe to an RSS feed of your choice, go to the web site with the RSS feed you want to subscribe to and find its RSS subscription icon or link. 4] Now go back to your RSS aggregator. Find the button that you can use to subscribe to a new feed. 55 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Using Vox Lite, you would first need to click on "File", then "New" and then "New Subscription". Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; adding a new feed After clicking on the "New Subscription" button a new control window should open, asking you how you want to proceed. This control window won't be the same for every aggregator, but that shouldn't be giving you any real problems. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; new subscription control window 56 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS For instance, the Vox Lite window is now asking you whether you have an RSS URL or web site URL for the subscription you would like to add, or if you would like to add a subscription that will search weblogs and news sources. The later would help you create a channel within Vox Lite that would constantly feed you with new results for your chosen keywords. But, for the purpose of this tutorial, you now want to add a new RSS feed, so you go for option #1 and click "Next". You are now prompted to enter the URL for the subscription you want to add, and if the feed is secured, you also need to enter your username and password. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; new subscription control window 5] You now need the URL (link) of the RSS feed you want to add to your aggregator. Go back to the web site you selected before. Now right-click (on PC computers) on the RSS icon and copy the shortcut, by clicking on the "Copy Shortcut" button. 57 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Paste the link in to the aggregator window and click on the "Next" button. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; new subscription control window; pasted link to the RSS feed Your feed has now been added to your aggregator and is accessible to you through the menu in the left column. You could for instance also add it in a specific folder in the tree structure. 58 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; showing a specific feed Clicking on any of the headlines of the content items in the RSS feed will take you to the publisher's web site, more precisely to the web page where this content item is published in full. Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; showing a specific feed; clicking on the marked headline would take you to the web page where this content item is published in full 59 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Vox Lite RSS aggregator; showing the web page on which the content item is published in full Most aggregators work like this. The important point to remember is that the web page you are taken to after clicking on the headline is not in any way related with the RSS feed, except that the RSS feed links to it. This web page is not a part of the RSS feed or file. The RSS aggregator, in this case, actually started to function just like a normal web browser, displaying a specific web page. RSS content and web site content are two separate issues, unless the web page itself it taking and displaying content from the RSS feed. There is of course much more to using RSS to greatest affect, but you will learn that gradually. Let's quickly recap the RSS consumption process using a client-side RSS aggregator (a quicker version with fewer steps, after you already downloaded and installed the aggregator): 1. Decide to add a specific RSS feed to your aggregator 2. Copy the link (shortcut) to the RSS feed 3. Launch the aggregator 4. Use the "New Subscription" or similar function in the RSS aggregator 60 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Paste the shortcut in to the appropriate window 6. Finish That's it. Removing a feed when you don't want it any more is even easier ! you only need to right-click on the feed name on the feed list and select "Delete" or something similar. 2.2.3 Web based RSS Aggregator Tutorial There are two key differences between consuming an RSS feed with a clientside and a web based aggregator: • You don't need to install a web based aggregator, but simply register at the web site that provides online RSS aggregation services. • You subscribe to and read RSS feeds using your browser, when you decide for an online RSS aggregation service, which consequently means less privacy, less features and probably, in the future, more advertising. Let's take a look how this works in praxis … 1] In order to use a web based RSS aggregator you need to register at one of the web sites that offer this service, such as Bloglines. We'll take a look at Bloglines as an example of this. a] Launch your internet browser and visit the Bloglines web site and click on the "Click Here to Sign Up!" link to start the registration process. b] Your are now taken to a new screen where you need to enter your e-mail address and your password, plus some other optional data. c] After completing the sign up form you are sent an e-mail with a link you have to click on to confirm the validity of your e-mail address. You're done. You just registered at the Bloglines web site and are now ready to start adding new RSS feeds to your new web based aggregator. 61 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Bloglines; "Click Here To Sign Up!" Screenshot: Bloglines; the sign up form 62 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Bloglines; the validation e-mail 2] You are already logged on to the web site after completing the registration process, so you can start using the service immediately. If you weren't logged in yet, you'd have to log in with your e-mail address and password, which as well is very easy and simple. To start adding new feeds, go to the "My Feeds" section of the web site. Screenshot: Bloglines; click on the My Feeds tab to proceed to your RSS feeds management panel 63 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3] As you can see from the "My Feeds" section, the web based RSS aggregator looks pretty much like the client-side aggregator, so it shouldn't be a problem getting used to it. Now, to add a new RSS feed to your reading list, click on the "Add" link in the "My Feeds" section. Screenshot: Bloglines; click on the "Add" link to add new feeds to your RSS feed list A new page should now open in the right frame of the browser, asking you to enter the URL or shortcut to the RSS feed you want to subscribe to. 64 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Bloglines; enter the URL of the feed you want to subscribe to 4] Copy the URL to the feed from the feed's web site, and paste it in to the Bloglines subscription window, and then click on the "Subscribe" button. You're nearly finished. Bloglines will now display a short description of the feed, taken from the actual feed, and give you some more choices to make. Screenshot: Bloglines; additional feed settings This is it. 65 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The new feed you added has been made available in the left window frame as a new link. Clicking on that link would open the feed in the right window frame, giving you access to its content. Screenshot: Bloglines; showing a specific feed Clicking on any of the headlines would launch a new browser window and take you to that content item, published on the publisher's web site. As you can see using a web based RSS aggregator is quite similar to using a client-side aggregator, with only a few a usage differences. And the RSS consumption process is more or less the same. Both of these tutorials should give you at least a basic understanding of how RSS works from the end-user's point of view. 66 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS The Basics of How RSS Works 1. Try and find examples of different ways of consuming RSS feeds. Try to think how you can apply those same examples to your own business. 2. In order to take maximum advantage of RSS you need to know how endusers are using it. Take the time to get a few RSS aggregators (different types of RSS aggregators; client-side aggregators, web-based aggregators …) and test them in praxis. Think about how they compare and how that affects your business. 3. Decide on an RSS aggregator and start using it. Find some web sites that provide RSS feeds, subscribe to them and start reading them regularly. Become a regular RSS user. 4. Find as many examples of RSS feeds as possible and compare them. 5. Subscribe to as many RSS feeds as possible and observe their subscriptions processes. Write down your observations. 6. Take special attention of how RSS feeds are promoted on various web sites and how you react to that. Is everything clear to you immediately or are you having some questions? Those same questions will be asked by your visitors on your web sites … 67 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section III: Understanding the Technical Aspects of RSS 68 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS We've already defined RSS as "a content delivery channel that allows you to easily deliver your internet content to your target audiences, while eliminating a large part of the external noise and shortcomings of other delivery channels". While this definition might suffice for most, it is important to understand RSS beyond this basic usability definition. If we do not understand the specifics of what something is and how it works, how can we understand how to best use it to our advantage and at the same time overcome its challenges? For instance, e-mail is "only" a tool that helps one person send a message to other people using the internet. This is a basic usability definition of e-mail. But is this enough for us marketers to really understand how to get the most out of it? Can we really use e-mail today, without, for example, understanding that it is having delivery problems and why? Can we just watch our e-mails not being delivered, doing nothing about it? Or is it better to research e-mail in-depth and try to do everything possible (while it still makes business sense, of course) to get our messages delivered? In reality, most savvy marketers today are trying to learn as much as possible about the mechanics of e-mail and its delivery model in order to assure their messages get delivered. And there's more … Is it important for you, as a marketer, to understand the distinction between plain text and HTML e-mail? You could simply ignore the specifics of what e-mail really is and just stick with plain text, without even knowing that something different exists. You wouldn't even know that you're perhaps losing (this depends on the target audience and on the message itself) even up to 50% or more of your possible sales because you never took the time to research various e-mail marketing aspects. 69 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS On the other hand, you could quickly decide and just jump on the HTML e-mail wagon without even considering the implications HTML e-mail has. For instance, can your target audience even receive HTML e-mail? Will it be more difficult to deliver HTML e-mail due to spam filters or other barricades (such as the default Outlook 2003 setting that doesn't allow images in e-mail messages to automatically download)? Does your audience even want to receive HTML e-mail? Yes, these questions might sound funny today, but most marketers weren't even considering them a few years ago. It's the same with RSS today. Even if we don't want to, we need to take the time to explore even its technical specifics more in-depth. That is the only way we can truly understand how to best use it. We had to go through the same process with e-mail, and with every other marketing tool as well. How many companies today would agree that SMS (Short Message Service) is an important marketing tool that yields exceptionally good results? All too few, because very few marketers took the time to research SMS and to understand it. But those that did are reaping the rewards today. While most of the world is still sleeping they are generating unbelievable results and spending “almost nothing” on them. Since SMS marketing has been proved to work well, we could expect many marketing agencies to offer SMS marketing services, right? Again, wrong. Most marketing agencies haven't even bothered to research it, so things are as they are. The winners are again those that invested in research. Luckily, RSS is not as difficult to grasp as SMS marketing. It's actually very simple, as long as you don't turn away the first minute you stumble on something that's new to you or sounds just a little technical. 70 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Understanding RSS Beyond Its Usability RSS is a specific lightweight application of XML that “carries” a list of individual content items or stories. These content items are the content that is being delivered to our target audiences. "RSS (Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is a defacto standard that emerged from the need to publish summary headlines about stories. It is an XML format that provides very simple collections of items that are easy to parse and utilize in many types of applications including Web sites and desktop tools." [Bill French, MyST Technology Partners, interview for MarketingStudies.net] What is XML? "XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language for documents containing structured information. Structured information contains both content (words, pictures, etc.) and some indication of what role that content plays (for example, content in a section heading has a different meaning from content in a footnote, which means something different than content in a figure caption or content in a database table, etc.). Almost all documents have some structure. A markup language is a mechanism to identify structures in a document. The XML specification defines a standard way to add markup to documents." [What is XML, Norman Walsh, posted on XML.com] Basically, XML provides a method of structuring information in such a way that it becomes easy to identify what role individual content elements play in the document. The real power of XML is in the fact that it has become such a widespread standard that XML documents can be easily used throughout the web and the computer world for many purposes of sharing and using information. 71 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS itself is one of the best testimonies of this power: • RSS feeds are structured documents with a precise set of rules for what role each content element plays in the document. • RSS aggregators are designed to follow these rules, thus making it possible for them to interpret what role each content element plays. • By being able to interpret different content element roles RSS aggregators are easily able to display this content to the end-user. "In other words, XML provides a facility to define tags and the structural relationships between them." [What is XML, Norman Walsh, posted on XML.com] RSS is XML with a specific set of rules, designed especially for RSS. Other XML implementations would simply use a different set of rules enabled by XML. What is an RSS Feed? RSS feeds are basically files or documents that contain structured content and abide by the set of rules designed for RSS. An RSS file, usually called a feed or file or channel contains • basic information about the feed (commonly used for basic information about the web site publishing the feed) • and a list of content items, basically individual stories presented as a list, with each of them being identified by a web link. Basic RSS Feed Information In an RSS aggregator, the basic information about your web site or the feed would look like this: 72 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: MarketingSherpa RSS feed information, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator This is how this very same information looks in the complete RSS aggregator window: Screenshot: MarketingSherpa RSS feed information, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator As you can see from the screenshots this information includes • The RSS feed title • The link to the publishers web site (hidden behind the RSS feed title in the main browser window) • The RSS feed logo • The RSS feed description • Information on when the feed was last changed 73 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In addition, this information also includes: • The name of author or owner or publisher of the feed • What language the feed is in Which of these is available actually depends on the RSS version you are publishing in. Now that you know this, consider again what XML is and what it does and how this relates to RSS. All of the information about your feed that your RSS feed contains is structured. The RSS feed title, the logo, the description and others are the already mentioned content elements (more formally called "metadata" - classification, annotation and representation of information) that, together with the other content elements we are going to cover in the next chapter, form the RSS feed. All of these are individually “marked” in the RSS file (abiding by the RSS set of rules), thus making it possible for RSS aggregators to display them correctly. For instance, the RSS feed title in the RSS file is marked in the following way: <title>Marketing: Case Studies & Know-How from MarketingSherpa</title> Because the title is within the <title> tags and placed in the appropriate context (in the appropriate section of the code of the RSS file, reserved for before mentioned basic information), RSS readers know exactly how and where to display it. The same goes, for example, for the RSS feed description: <description>The source for marketing news and knowhow.</description> As you can see from these examples, RSS is in essence very simple and straightforward. As a marketer, unless you plan to hand-code the RSS feed by yourself, you really don't need to know RSS-specific code tags, but it is beneficial to at least understand how all of this works. 74 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS Feed Content Items RSS feed content items carry the dynamic content we wish to deliver to our target audiences. Each content item is an individual "story". We'll again borrow an example from MarketingSherpa's RSS feed to demonstrate this. This is one of the individual content items from their feed: Case Study::How Dirt Devil's Site Gets Unusually High Sales (Includes Check Out Process Test Results) CHALLENGE: "When I started, we spent the first several months just working on the Internet strategy, because there wasn't really one," says Michael Crowdes, Manager Interactive Marketing & eCommerce for Royal Appliance Manufacturing - mak... Last changed: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST The content item above includes the title, the link to the article on the MarketingSherpa.com web site (linked through the title), description and the time of last change. Speaking more formally, each content item can have any amount of metadata associated with it, with the most basic for RSS being the link, title and description. Newer and more complex RSS versions (RSS version 2.0 is currently the latest most widespread version) also include the name of the author and the time of last change of the item and even allow for full-text item content and file attachements. Just like with information (content elements or metadata) about the feed, each content element for an individual content item has a specific role, according to the RSS rule-set, and as such also a specific markup that needs to be placed in the appropriate context in the RSS file code. Each RSS feed contains a list of items, usually sorted chronologically: Case Study::How Dirt Devil's Site Gets Unusually High Sales (Includes Check Out Process Test Results) CHALLENGE: "When I started, we spent the first several months just working on the Internet strategy, because there wasn't really one," says Michael Crowdes, Manager Interactive Marketing & eCommerce for Royal Appliance Manufacturing - mak... Last changed: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST 75 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Interview::Is Your Yellow Pages Ad Working? Top 4 Most Common Advertiser Mistakes "15 billion look-ups are conducted using print yellow pages in the US annually," says Christopher Bacey, Director Business Communications at the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association. Search may be the hot marketing flavor du jour, ... Last changed: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Interview::PR Interview: How to Get Covered by Electronic Design Magazine Mark David, Editor-in-Chief Electronic Design 45 Eisenhower Drive Paramus, NJ 07652 201-845-2467 http://www.elecdesign.com [email protected] -> Reach 145,000 circulation -> David's background Mark David began his car... Last changed: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST This is what all of this looks like in an RSS aggregator: Screenshot: MarketingSherpa RSS feed items, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator There are more technical details to all of this, but the important part is to understand the basic technical aspects, unless you plan to hand-code your RSS feeds by yourself or develop your own RSS publishing applications. 76 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The Important Things to Remember • RSS feeds are basically files or documents containing XML code that is structured according to a set of rules defined for RSS. • Each RSS feed includes basic information about the feed itself and a list of content items, basically individual stories, usually listed chronologically. • Each content item usually contains a link, title and description. If you would like to find our more about the different RSS versions, click here. 77 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Beyond the Headline in Short The RSS feeds we were looking at, to this point, included the most basic content elements within the content items, such as the link, the headline and the description; all of these in pure text. But RSS can go beyond just "the headline". Publishing in Full-Text The first step forward is publishing content in full-text, which means that you do not only post the title and description of the content item in the feed, but the entire text of the content item. Let's take a look at an example from Dana VanDen Heuvel's blog [http://www.danavan.net/weblog/]: Results vs. Efforts I can honestly say that I've fallen into the trap of 'hourly rate' vs. 'results able to produce' too many times. The Guerrilla Marketing guys have an interesting take on this phenomenon, and call for the end of hourly rate quoting by consultants all together. Not to make a huge case out of this whole thing, but I think of this from the client perspective (as if I were the client) and try to put a monetary value on what it is that I'm seeking (knowledge, an improved system or process, whatever...). Helping your clients come up with a business case for their project can be an integral part of your pitch, thereby supporting your involvement and the value you bring. There's another lesson at stake here. It comes down to the working smarter vs. working harder. You can put all the grunt into a project that you can muster, but it still may never be expedient and intelligent way to get the job done. Step back, "results", and plan your work better accordingly. point of effort the most think As you can see this is no longer simply a headline and a description of the content item the user would need to click-through to the web site to read in full, but includes the entire text of the content item. 78 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If the user were to click on the content item headline he would be taken to the exact same text on the web site. This is how this looks in an RSS aggregator: Screenshot: Dana's Blog RSS feed items, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator But full-text isn't the only thing Dana posts in his RSS feed. His content items often include images as well, making his feed more attractive to his readers. This makes perfect sense for those internet content publishers that want to provide full-text content through their feeds, since images enhance the reading experience and give more information. And, these images could also be graphical advertisements, such as banner ads, thus providing the content publisher with an additional revenue source (selling internet ad space) or ad slots to promote his own products or services. 79 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: Dana's Blog RSS feed items, screenshot taken from the Awasu RSS aggregator There are a few advantages of providing full-text content items: • Users don't need to click-through to your web site to read the entire article ! less work involved for getting the content they want, which translates in to better odds that they'll read your content. By providing full-text content items you are turning the RSS aggregator in to a "one-stop content consumption point". • You can include graphical elements that make content items more attractive, not forgetting the fact that "a picture tells more than a thousand words". • Full-text content items can be further formatted, for instance by bolding selected portions of the text, etc. There are also a few disadvantages: • Not all RSS aggregators can "consume" and correctly display full-text content items, which also includes the images you might include there. 80 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Full-text content items are not appropriate for headline syndication, if the web site that wants to display your syndicated content also wants to display a description of each content item. If you are actually publishing your full-text content in the <description> tag in the feed, the web site would have to display all of this content below the headline, which is often not an option. But then again, there are ways to work around this problem with some simple “parsing” rules … • Full-text content items are not as easily scanned in the RSS item list in the aggregator in comparison to content items with only short descriptions. Your readers might get lost and not read anything at all. So what should you do? • If you are not using the same RSS feed for content syndication and for end-user content delivery, you can publish in full-text, as that is more user-friendly for your end-users. • If your full-text content items, for instance your articles, aren't too long, you can publish in full-text. But if they are extremely long, it's better to only post content item descriptions in the RSS feed and lead the visitors to your web site for more comfortable reading. • If the power of your content depends much on graphical elements within the content, publishing in full-text might be a good idea. Rich Media RSS? As MediaThink suggests, the next step in the evolution of RSS "is a standardized way to syndicate rich media and broadband content. Currently, users might download a few songs and listen to them on MP3 players. A rich media RSS standard (RM RSS) would allow publishers to make such content available online in the same way news articles are today." The implications of this on the scope of how RSS might be used in the future, and even in the present, are enormous. RSS will be used to let users know when new rich media content, such as radio or TV shows, is available to them (to some extent, this is already possible), and the Rich Media RSS aggregator will allow them to download and view it. On the business front, companies will be able to deliver their video press releases, ads and their on video shows to their RSS subscribers. 81 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Eventually, this will give more control to internet users. Instead of having to watch a TV show exactly when it's aired, they'll be able to watch it at their convenience, and use RSS to find out when it becomes available. But is this really only a matter of the future? The people who do "Podcasting" [more information: http://www.ipodder.org/] might not agree … Podcasting works the same way as "traditional" RSS publishing we have been discussing, with one important exception: "Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on an iPod or iPod-like device. Think of your iPod as having a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates. Today there are a limited number of programs available this way. The format used is RSS 2.0 with enclosures." [What is podcasting, Dave Winer, posted on iPodder.org] But how does this really work? The RSS version 2.0 allows content items to have enclosures, which are very much like e-mail attachments. When the RSS feed, containing the content items with enclosures, is downloaded by the aggregator, the "attachment" is downloaded with it (or, if an RSS aggregator supported it, it could be downloaded at a later time, for instance when you are not working behind the computer). Engaged.com has a thorough explanation of how all of this works and how you can set-up your own Podcasting feeds available here. "The key premise is No More Click-Wait. Ideally, when your computer isn’t doing anything, it can be using RSS feeds to automatically download audio and video content. Anyone can do this, and there is no central authority, no spectrum to allocate, and it’s open to amateurs, just like the Internet itself. More on that here and here." [How-To: Podcasting, Phillip Torrone, posted on engaged.com] Of course Podcasting is not only reserved for songs, but can also be used to deliver radio shows, audio debates and so on. 82 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS An interesting idea might be for instance to provide a paid-subscription service of audio interviews with various experts in the field you are covering, delivered via RSS. How about video content and RSS? Video files, and practically any kind of other file as well, just as audio files, can be “attached”, using enclosures, to RSS (version 2.0) content items. The only problem is that only a few RSS aggregators, such as FeedDemon, GigaDial, RSS Bandit, Blogware, BottomFeeder and NewsGator properly support enclosures, but even these don't completely agree on how to handle them. Rich media definitly is the future of RSS and is one of the hottest RSS emerging topics at the moment, so do have an eye out for it. For instance, one of the new developments to keep an eye on is Yahoo!s Media RSS module, which supplements enclosures. Since Rich media RSS is becoming an increasingly important topic, an update covering it in full will be released for this e-book shortly. 83 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS Understanding the Technical Aspects of RSS 1. Visit some of the RSS feeds you subscribe to and take a look at the from the technical viewpoint. Try to understand how RSS works so that you can better understand how to use it. Try to find RSS feeds with different ways of presenting content, so that you can easier decide how you want to present your content. 2. Subscribe to an RSS feed that provides content in full-text. Think about how that works for you as an end-user. 3. Consider how you would like to publish your own RSS content: in full-text or just summaries? With graphics or no graphics? 4. Think about whether publishing video or audio using RSS feeds might help you improve or upgrade your business. 84 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section IV: The Marketing and Publishing Basics of RSS 85 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1. Introduction to Marketing with RSS There are three key interlocking functions that RSS provides to marketers. A] Delivering your internet content to end-users The first is delivering your internet content to end-users, the people who you want to communicate with on the internet, which includes the following generic target audiences: • prospects (segmented), • existing customers (segmented), • business partners, • suppliers, • investors, • employees, • media representatives and anlysts, • government agencies, • professional peers, • etc. Do not limit yourself only to prospects and customers, but use RSS to deliver content to every possible meaningful generic target audience that influences your business in any way. Delivering internet content to end-users is marketing, and it provides many relevant business opportunities: • communicating with your target audiences (includes direct promotions), which leads to improved relationships and increased sales, 86 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • delivering content as a service for your target audiences, either as part of your marketing strategy as an added-value service (for instance delivering investment portfolio updates to investment clients; delivering new product updates) or as a subscription service (business model; for instance delivering industry news for a subscription fee ! in this case the actual content delivery is the “product”), • delivering content for business process support, such as delivering invoice information to the accounting staff etc. All of the above are, in some way, marketing activities, which can be improved with the use of RSS. B] Delivering your internet content to other internet media (content syndication) Making your content available for re-publication on other web media, such as: • news web sites, • web sites owned by your marketing partners or affiliates, • »corporate« (any size of business) web sites that need relevant content for their visitors, • content agggregation web sites, which specialize in aggregating content from many different sources and then making it available to other content consumers, • etc. Every RSS feed you publish can also be used to publish your content headlines, summaries and links on other web sites, thus helping you increase your traffic and position yourself as a source of quality news in the area you cover. C] Promoting your web site Promotion fits in perfectly with delivering content to end-users and content syndication: 87 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • End-users: RSS feeds bring your users back to your web site. • Syndication: your content displayed on other web sites provides you with additional exposure and help you acquire new visitors from those web sites. Add to this the fact that RSS feeds also work well for search engine positioning, because content syndication helps you with getting inbound links from other web sites and the RSS feeds themselves are an effective way of letting know the search engines what new content is available on your web site to index. The »three« are meant to function together, because they are all based on using the same RSS feeds, meaning that a single RSS feed will function well for all three aspects. These three are then joined by two additional, but separate (they have nothing to do with your own RSS feeds, but rather with using the RSS feeds of other publishers to your advantage) marketing aspects of using RSS: D] Displaying content from other web sites You can display content from other web sites (using their RSS feeds) on your own web site to increase the value you provide to your visitors, which is especially important if: • you do not have enough of your own content or do not have the capacity to create more content, • you want to include relevant (educational, »newsy«) information from reputable content sources on your corporate web site as an added-value service for your visitors, • you want to increase the amount of content on your web site to better »please« the search engines, • you want to provide your visitors with cruical information that is otherwise not related to your business (such as latest virus updates). 88 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Either way, displaying content from other web sites can help you gain more visitors and provide them with more reasons to keep coming back, as well as increase your credibility if you display content from reputable publishers. E] Advertising in third-party RSS feeds Some RSS feed publishers are already starting to offer advertising in their feeds to advertisers, meaning that RSS is also an opportunity to increase the reach of your advertising activities. 2. The Pros and the Cons of Marketing with RSS Key Benefits of Using RSS • RSS provides a combination of business opportunities (content delivery to end-users, content syndication, promotion), using just a single channel. • Instantly deliver almost any kind of information and as often as you like. • Figuratively speaking, content is “delivered” directly to its final destination (one of the possible consumption points, such as a client-side RSS aggregator), without having to face any obstacles on the way, such as e-mail spam filters. Realistically speaking, content is directly retrieved from the content source. Either way, RSS enables you to actually deliver content, without fear of it being stopped along the way. • Your content does not have to compete with loads of spam and other business & personal messages, but only with other relevant RSS feeds your readers "subscribe" to. RSS aggregators are the perfect place for editorial and marketing content, since users are not distracted with their personal communications, such as is the case with e-mail (e-mail clients are used to consume almost every conceivable message type, from publications to personal and business communications). RSS content has a good chance of getting read. 89 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Because of a different delivery mechanism than with e-mail, you don't have to be bothered with list management, unsubscribes, spam accusations etc., which means you have more time for other marketing related issues and suffer less costs, including no delivery costs (for instance, some e-mail delivery vendors charge per e-mail sent). • RSS is a content delivery channel you can use to deliver almost any kind of structured content with any kind of frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, …). The nature of the channel allows for rapid and frequent content updates. • Low barriers to entry, meaning the cost of setting-up your own RSS feed is very low or almost non-existent. You can even create your own feeds by hand-coding them, which is fairly simple and does not require any kind of special software or technology. • RSS is, in its nature and concept, a "pull" channel, and is also perceived as such, as opposed to e-mail, which is perceived as "push". The "pull" in this case means that the user needs to proactively include your RSS feed in his aggregator in order to receive content from you. You cannot deliver content directly to endusers who have not individually added your feed to their aggregators. • If a prospective reader is familiar with RSS and already uses RSS feeds, converting him to a "subscriber" is relatively easy if your content matches his needs, since there is no "fear factor" that is usually involved with giving your email address to an e-mail publisher. • RSS files usually contain links to your updated content on your web site, which also helps improve your search engine positioning. Key Disadvantages of Using RSS • Users need to install special software or use special web sites to use RSS feeds. This is the greatest obstacle to using RSS, and definitely one that makes it difficult to use exclusively RSS to deliver content. • Its penetration is still marginal, although it is growing, mostly through the efforts of the "movers and the shakers". 90 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Because of its low penetration, most people don't know what it is and what do to with it, which consequently means that getting "subscribers" is difficult and requires much market education. Even with the strong "fear factor" involved with getting e-mail subscribers, it's still much easier doing that than getting people to add your RSS feed to their readers if they don't even know what RSS is. • "Unsubscribing" from your feed is quick and easy, which means that you have to invest special care to provide only very high quality and relevant content with a high perceived value for your audience. • Delivering direct marketing campaigns through your own RSS feed is, taking in to consideration the low "acceptance" margin of RSS end-users, difficult and dangerous at best. RSS is in no way a “perfect” or even outstanding direct marketing channel. • Introducing RSS in to your communicational mix requires different marketing approaches, which may, from case to case, even require a fundamental change in the way you market and prepare your content. • The lack of "push" can also become a disadvantage for your subscribers, since people at times and with specific content types in mind actually want to be pushed with content, for instance receiving financial market updates as soon as they become available. • RSS is difficult to track, as well as is personally identifying your subscribers. The greatest disadvantage is the requirement for users to download, install and adjust to new software (or register at an web-based RSS aggregation provider), which is tedious task for most people, especially when discussing mass penetration. Right now, it seems impossible imagining novice internet & computer users doing this, especially if they are relatively happy with e-mail performance. As Figure #4, The RSS Delivery Model, shows, there are fewer obstacles involved with getting content delivered using RSS than with e-mail and all of them are related to the user's actions and not third-party barriers, such as ISP spam filters. However, getting the user to download and install an RSS aggregator is a huge obstacle that has the power to break our RSS content delivery activities. A huge leap in penetration, in order to reach critical mass, requires larger scale support from marketers and publishers, converting more users to RSS; • first, we must accept the new approaches forced on us by the unique characteristics of RSS and the way it is consumed, 91 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • and second, we must give up much of the content delivery control (in terms of demanding attention when we want to, instead of when the recipient so chooses), including the "push" factor, which we enjoy so much with e-mail. It is quite impossible to predict at this time how RSS penetration and usage will grow in the future, but the fact remains; we must research the various RSS uses and at least implement RSS as a secondary content delivery channel to reap many of its benefits and gain a competitive advantage over our competitors. The choice is, as always, ultimately in our own hands. Do we proactively accept these new challenges or passively wait for the current content delivery situation to get better? Basic RSS implementation is easy and doesn't cost us anything. So even if we miss, we won't be loosing much. Right now there are no good reasons to prevent us from at least basic RSS marketing and publishing usage. The Probable RSS Overload There is one more possible pitfall for RSS, which is not really a disadvantage of using it, but more a premonition of a possibly negative future. 92 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The increasing growth of the number of RSS content publishers and available RSS content could eventually cause RSS content overload for end-users. With more content available to them every day, and with a lack of fear (which on the other hand is currently present with e-mail subscriptions), internet users will probably overload themselves with the number of RSS feeds they include in their aggregators. In a perfect world most internet users would behave rationally; in this case carefully control the number of RSS feeds they watch by carefully evaluating each RSS feed before adding it to their list. Unfortunately, most people do not behave rationally. It's quite safe to presume they actually will overload themselves with RSS feeds, as they overloaded themselves with e-mail subscriptions. The overload will bring less visibility for your own feed and might even create a situation close to what has happened with e-mail. Yet again your content will be lost among the hundreds of other choices available to the user. Early RSS adopters from the ranks of marketers publishers will have the upper hand. By starting early and offering exceptionally high-quality content you right now have the chance to position yourself among the top RSS feed providers your target audiences will not want to miss, thus gaining an important competitive advantage for the future. 3. RSS and E-mail For most internet marketers, the first question that comes to mind is how RSS compares to e-mail and then, for some the most dreaded question of all, will RSS replace e-mail. Will RSS Replace E-mail? Right now, there can be no debate of whether RSS will replace e-mail, because its individual characteristics in no way make it a viable candidate for internet communication supremacy. 93 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Actually, e-mail and RSS are so little alike that it's quite irrelevant comparing them on most fronts. E-mail, in our opinion, is here to stay, although it will need to evolve to further retain its usefulness as the top communicational channel. E-mail is a complete communicational channel and it is hard to imagine any other channel touching it on this front, especially when it comes to 1-to-1 communication, where RSS does not have a relevant chance of touching it. RSS, however, offers us unique content delivery opportunities, and this is the area where e-mail might be in “danger”. Other sources, such as Mediathink, confirm this direction as well: "We believe RSS is a disruptive technology, poised to challenge e-mail's monopolistic role as the best and preferred distribution/subscription mechanism for newsletter publishers on the Internet. RSS is potentially most disruptive to email, although it is important to understand that RSS is not at all likely to replace email. New media rarely ever replaces old." [RSS: The Next Big Thing Online, July 2004, MediaThink] In affect, we must now start thinking of how to use RSS together with existing channels, instead of hoping or fearing it replaces them. Comparing RSS and E-mail We've already taken a look at the most obvious advantages and disadvantages of marketing and publishing with RSS, and also somewhat compared RSS with email. Let us now take a look at a more in-depth comparison of RSS and e-mail from the e-mail marketers' and customers' points of view. To do this we are going to take a look at a comparison table prepared by Alex Barnett, which also links to relevant online articles relating to most of the key comparison notes. 94 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Email v RSS, Email Marketer v Customer Matrix (last updated 25 May 2004) *Source: Alex Barnett, "Email v RSS, let us move on…", Alex Barnett Blog Perspective Email Positive Email Negative RSS Positive RSS Negative General Email Marketer Email is intrusive Once opted out, contact is suppressed / not contactable RSS provision is fully and automatically opt in – zero opt in / opt out governance and compliance overhead – zero risk of legal action by customers RSS is not intrusive, customers are in control (although marketers should see this as a positive) Marketers (should) recognise, enable and honour customer preferences medium (email, web, RSS, DM, IM, etc), frequency, content relevancy Email is trackable (open rates, CTR, etc) down to individual level – ROI is easily understood, mature channel with industry standard metrics Email content can be highly targeted Email can be highly cost effective Email can be highly designed / branded / rich content (if HTML version) Viral (marketing) effects well known Email drives sales Email can be to easy to forward Widespread use and knowledge of email (products) Opt out rates are on the up (normally due to irrelevant communications) Response rates are falling Email blocking / filtering out is increasing Regulation tightening up on opt out / opt in – governance and compliance is becoming harder risk of legal action by customers Important/critical content / messages can get lost/blocked in fog of spam Spoof emails creating environment of confusion / distrust about email Total number of emails being sent is not sustainable (i.e. number of emails sent out per year as a ratio to the number of recipients and numbers of emails received) RSS content (through topic channels) has the potential to deliver highly relevant content to subscribers RSS is able to deliver designed / branded / rich content RSS does not get blocked / filtered out so that important/critical content is sure to be ‘delivered’. Not just emailtype content can be provided by RSS RSS content can be accessed through many devices RSS customer use is growing RSS awareness by software developers is increasing, more RSS integration and ease of use) RSS is trackable, but there are no industry standard metrics yet Customer does not expect to provide any data in exchange for ability to subscribe to RSS (this will change – early websites were free-toview, many are now require registration) Little evidence to show RSS feeds drive sales, but early signs are good RSS reader is one more application to download and one more user interface to learn If marketers really want data (and/or money) from customers through the provision of RSS content then marketers need to provide a proposition compelling / valuable enough for customers to do so Marketers have opportunity to innovate in provision of personalised single RSS feed Marketers should consider providing an RSS option on current emails 95 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Perspective Email Positive Email Negative Email Marketer RSS Positive RSS Negative Strong evidence of ‘viral’ (marketing) effects General RSS tracking metrics need to be defined by marketing industry (so marketers can clearly compare & contrast against standard email metrics) RSS aggregation becoming common portal feature Email as a sales driver has had dramatic success over the years...the debate should move away from RSS v Email and move to how RSS can compliment email marketing. Email is here and ain’t going away, at least in the short-tomedium term) Customer Once opted out, not bothered again (theoretically) Email content can be highly relevant Emails can be blocked to some degree Increased power to customers to report spammers though increased regulation of opt out / opt in laws Email is intrusive – that is why opt out rates (for irrelevant communications) is on the up RSS is not intrusive Email is trackable (open rates, CTR, etc) down to individual level – potential privacy concerns RSS (through topic channels) gives easy access to highly relevant content, and lots of it Email inbox content is mostly highly irrelevant RSS subscription process usually requires no provision of additional PII data (including email) Email subscription often requires the provision of additional PII data RSS subscriptions can be easily stopped RSS is trackable – potential privacy concerns RSS reader is one more application to download and one more user interface to learn Customers want choice of medium (email, web, RSS, DM, IM, etc), frequency, content relevancy Customers expect content for free, without providing data or money), but may be willing to do so if the proposition has real value 96 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Perspective Email Positive Email Negative RSS Positive Customer Increased power to customers to report spammers though increased regulation of opt out / opt in laws Important/critical can get lost/blocked in fog of spam RSS content can be designed / branded rich (although this may be seen as a negative) Email can be to easy to forward Email can be easy to add/edit/delete then forward Email can be highly designed / branded / rich content (if HTML version) Email can be filtered, sorted, and archived Spoof emails creating environment of confusion / distrust about email Number of emails is increasing – not enough time (nor inclination) to open and read all Email address obtained by marketer, and once given can never (or hard to) be retrieved RSS Negative General RSS channels can be managed, ensuring important/critical doesn’t get lost/blocked in fog of spam RSS is efficient enables much larger amounts of content to be viewed from more sources RSS content can be accessed through many devices RSS content being provided by more and more ‘providers’ RSS content can be more trusted (e.g. harder to phish) RSS can be to easy to forward via email (standard feature in most readers) RSS can be easy to add/edit/delete then forward via email RSS can be filtered, sorted, and archived RSS integration and add-ins into existing products is increasing (e.g. Outlook) 97 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The RSS Push vs. Pull "In my view it's a somewhat risky proposition to present RSS as a perfectdelivery, no-noise mechanism. My reason for saying so is a matter of demographics. I believe that if / when it becomes apparent that a great number of people are using RSS (relative to the numbers using e-mail), there will be a tendency for this medium to become more and more cluttered. Yes, it is open to clutter; it is in no way inherently clean. It is clean right now because of the situation as it exists right now; it is clean because it's just not that popular yet. It creates an overblown hope of succeeding exactly because it hasn't yet met with overwhelming success. In the computing world, the analogy would be to say that while Linux may be technologically superior to the Windows platform, it is also much less often targeted by various attacks for the simple reason that it is not as widely used and when it is, it's usually in the hands of advanced users. Result: the mistaken idea that using Linux provides instant safety." [Crt Jakhel, Dergan, comment posted on MarketingStudies.net] The "pull" factor is often used as one of the key advantages of using RSS in a world where people are tired of "push". RSS is fundamentally a "pull" channel in the sense that the user needs to proactively include your RSS feed in his aggregator in order to receive content from you. You cannot directly deliver content to people who have not individually added your feed to their aggregators. However, RSS in itself is only a content delivery channel. Internet end-users still need to use special software or web based services in order to take advantage of this channel and actually use it. Depending on how this software develops in the future, it could introduce strong "push" factors to the entire RSS consumption process. While the channel itself fundamentally is "pull", it depends on the "entire package" (the entire consumption process, which begins with the RSS feed but is used through an additional component, the RSS aggregator) how internet users will ultimately perceive it. 98 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If RSS aggregators start "pushing" their users with RSS content, for instance by displaying a large full-screen notice on the screen when new content items are available in the user's RSS feeds, the entire RSS content delivery channel will become perceived as a "push" channel. But this is not the worse of what could happen. When RSS aggregator developers start seeing a huge increase in the number of users, advertisers will soon follow, offering to "buy" RSS aggregator ad inventory. It could start with unobtrusive banner ads and text ads, continue to contextual advertising and end with multimedia ads being delivered through the RSS aggregator, causing even more clutter and a strong "push" perception of the channel. We are not in danger of this happening just yet, but it eventually should happen if mass RSS penetration is reached. While this danger will not affect us at this time, it is recommended to keep a close eye on further RSS aggregation software development to be prepared for possible future changes to the channel and the way it is perceived. With all of this in mind, let us now take a look at the key RSS business uses for delivering content to end-users, RSS’s primary marketing function. 4. Key RSS Business Uses of Delivering Content to End-Users RSS is mostly associated with blogs, which really drove and still drive most of its penetration. But, RSS really offers us many more content delivery opportunities that either enhance existing content delivery possibilities or even provide new ones. It's important to understand that RSS is only a channel; what we do with it depends only on us. Let's take a look at a quick summary of how we can use RSS … 99 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A. Delivering General, Segmented, Customized and/or Personalized Content Updates to a Mass Audience • MarketingVOX|News offers a single RSS feed to deliver the whole spectrum of the news they cover in all of their various content categories. This is delivering general content updates to a mass audience. • The New York Times offers individual internet content (news) updates for their content categories via RSS. Each content category comes in a separate RSS feed, thus making it easy for NYTimes.com users to keep constant track of current news. This is delivering segmented content updates to a mass audience. • The business daily Finance offers its users the capability to precisely customize their own individual RSS feeds to receive only content updates that precisely match their content requirements. This is delivering customized content updates to a mass audience. These are just a few examples of how publishing companies are delivering their content today using RSS. The one thing they have in common is delivering content to a mass non-segmented audience, basically everyone that cares to use their RSS feeds. Actually, most companies today use RSS in one of these ways, unfortunately overlooking all of its other benefits. But this is only the top of the iceberg. For instance, Amazon offers Top 10 bestsellers lists for different product categories, again using RSS. And we can go even further. RSS feeds, although intended for the largest audience, can also be personalized for each user, making the experience not only more personal but also more effective for the company itself. 100 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS B. Targeted and Specialized Content Delivery to Segmented Target Audiences RSS is not appropriate only for content delivery to mass audiences, but also for precisely targeted and specialized content delivery to highly segmented target audiences. • Some affiliate managers are already communicating with their affiliates using blogs and then RSS to easily deliver blog updates to them. • The MyST Technology Partners are using RSS to easily conduct interviews with media representatives. RSS not only helps follow new questions and answers, but also allows them to quickly syndicate the interview to other web sites. • 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. • Another company uses RSS feeds as a security awareness mechanism at a Zoo, making security updates, such as missing children or handbags, immediately available to Zoo security sites and personnel with wireless devices. • You can deliver news and company updates to your employees or even your company owners using secure RSS feeds that can only be "read" by the people you give access to this content. Also think in terms of “project management RSS feeds” where different team members post either their own project updates or quickly "send messages" to the entire project team. • If you consider your customer content updates important you naturally want to make sure that all of your customers actually receive them. Again, RSS makes this easy, even or perhaps especially if your content needs to be delivered securely and you want to manage who accesses it. 101 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS C. Secure Direct One-to-One or One-to-Many Communications What can you do when you want to be 100% certain that your messages either reach the intended recipient or their messages reach you? Due to the obstacles on the e-mail delivery route, this is getting increasingly difficult. There is no way to be absolutely certain that your messages are getting through or that you are receiving the messages intended for you. On a limited scope, RSS might offer a solution in this area as well, by using RSS feeds as a one-to-one or one-to-many communicational challenge. For now, just consider the following possibilities: • Ever since spam started becoming a real problem many web site owners started replacing their on-site e-mail address with web forms that their visitors can fill-in to send them an e-mail, without actually revealing the web site owner's e-mail address. Now, imagine replacing the delivery channel behind the web form from email to RSS. Instead of receiving these messages to your e-mail address, fearing some of them won't reach you, they are instead delivered through your RSS feed directly to you or more precisely to your RSS aggregator. Since you are using a secure RSS feed only you or the people you trust can access it, which even provides more security and privacy than e-mail. • This can also work the other way around, utilizing RSS for dialog among known participants. While RSS might not be terribly practical for personal communicational purposes ie. real dialogs, it does increase the level of certainty that your messages will be delivered or that you will receive those messages intended for you, as well as add another level of security and privacy. 102 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS D. Advanced RSS Marketing Capabilities in Conjunction with RSS Aggregators RSS feeds are for the most part in direct connection with RSS aggregators that make RSS content consumption possible. If we look at both in an integrated fashion it's quite easy to detect that RSS aggregators themselves can be used as an important marketing tool, as well for brand building as for direct marketing. Advanced marketers can offer their audiences customized RSS aggregators that enforce their brand and at the same time provide an additional contact point with them. This is direct branding and experience branding at its best. Each of these five categories offers a wide spectrum of possibilities, which we are going to cover in greater detail further on, presenting practical examples and strategies for each of them. 5. The Greater Marketing Implications of RSS RSS as a Change Agent: The Macro View Before implementing RSS it's also good to at least basically understand the larger implications of RSS. Simply put, RSS is not only a content delivery channel or technology, but also something more. It's actually an agent of change that's, in a way, changing the way companies and individuals deliver and consume content. To better understand this let's first remember how content is "traditionally" delivered. People subscribe to e-mail newsletters or "update services" to get content delivered directly to their inboxes. It's (or better yet, was) convenient, easy and simple. 103 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS But, in order to get content delivered to their inboxes, they must first reveal their e-mail addresses, which are basically ID numbers that allow anyone who knows them send whatever they like to these ID numbers. In a perfect world we would only receive the content that we requested and from the people that we wanted to hear from ! the people that can provide us with relevant information, specific to our interests and current situation. Unfortunately we're not living in a perfect world. Since our "ID number" allows anyone to contact us, we have very little control over who actually does contact us and what information they send us. In a way, it's a "perfect democracy" that just doesn't work. Because, in reality, we don't want to hear from everyone that thinks they have something to say to us. In reality, we only want to hear from a very limited circle of people and receive very limited types of content categories. But, for the sake of the argument, let's presume that we are actually getting information only from people that we want to hear from. Unfortunately these people still have the power to send us whatever information they like, not just the information we want to receive from them. Basically, they have the power to push any kind of content to our e-mail inboxes. We can either unsubscribe from their e-mail service or continue to receive their content as it is. One of the problems with this is that unsubscribing can be a rather tedious process, definitely not a two-click affair, and some people even doubt that the unsubscribe feature will work. This is our reality. We are, more or less, forced to receive content we mostly don't want to receive, and for the content that we do want to receive, we also have to put up with much information we don't want to get. This is the "democratic" nature of e-mail and many marketers and publishers have been abusing it for a long time. It's not the medium's fault of course; it's just that people are who we are. And now enter RSS in to the picture, a "new" channel that users need to proactively add to their content consumption mix, including proactively "adding" content publishers they want to hear from, thus eliminating the "democracy" of e-mail (conversely, limiting our "content diet" only to the publishers we actually want to hear from). 104 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS But there's more. One of this "strange" channel's characteristics is that it's extremely easy to remove content publishers you don't want to hear from. Now, all of us have very limited time for online content consumption. It's always been this way, but with e-mail content consumption we usually don't even bother ourselves with unsubscribing from the content we don't want to receive, since we already receive hundreds of SPAM e-mails per day anyway, so why bother with unsubscribing from a few e-mail lists and the few additional e-mails we receive per week. Most people don't even know anymore what they subscribe to since they have no unified view of all of their e-mail subscriptions. However, this new channel, RSS, is quite different. Here you have an exact view of what you "subscribe" to. You see exactly which content publishers are on your "list" and you can remove any of them immediately, without even a second thought. It's quick, easy and comfortable. Compare this with the relative difficulty of unsubscribing from e-mail lists, and even with the e-mail mindset where you just don't care to be bothered anymore with unsubscribing, since you don't have a view of what you subscribe to anyway. This new channel takes the democracy right out of content delivery for publishers and brings it back for end-users. If RSS content publishers want to keep and grow their readership, they cannot afford to do the things they could have easily been doing with e-mail. Instantly, all the content needs to be highly relevant. You can no longer afford to send out blatant advertising messages or too much content that is of little interest to your target audience. If you want to "survive" you need to tailor all of your content specifically to the needs of your target audience. Side-note: it is important to understand that e-mail publishers can get away with occasional irrelevant content (if most of their content is relevant) easier because email subscribers are not as trigger happy. But it's just too easy to unsubscribe from an RSS feed that disappoints you. RSS content delivery must in nature be more relevant than content delivered by e-mail. RSS content publishers know this and most are providing exactly this, very relevant content, usually more relevant than what most e-mail publishers are doing, since they are taking in to consideration the specific characteristics of the channel. 105 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And there are more publishers like this every day. And eventually, even those that use both e-mail and RSS to deliver content change the way they are delivering content using e-mail. Their entire content production becomes more relevant to the user's needs. It's quite easy to imagine the larger-scale implications of this. Since more and more publishers are starting to offer more relevant content, that also raises the bar for other content publishers, even those not using RSS. Our expectations are increasing every day. We are no longer content with mediocre content, we actually expect and even demand more relevancy. And so the circle is completed. Early RSS publishers have started raising our expectations of what to expect from internet content and have thus affected our internet content consumption habits. Users, in effect, are starting to demand more, which in turn forces other publishers to comply with the increased demands. This process has just begun and still has a long way to go, but it has begun and will not stop. RSS as a Change Agent: The Micro View Taking full advantage of RSS might even require a shift in the way you approach marketing and publishing, as we noted before, because: • it opens a whole new area of content delivery possibilities that may not available to you if you rely only on e-mail; • it does have specific characteristics that "limit" the way you use it. Consider the macro implications of RSS we described in the previous chapter. These are actually the "limits" imposed on you by the channels characteristics, or more precisely, by the changes that these characteristics are brining in the way publishers are delivering and users consuming content. Taking full advantage of RSS will force you to abide by these "new" rules if you want to achieve your business goals. RSS itself can act as a change agent within your organization, imposing on you a more customer centric content strategy. 106 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS The Marketing and Publishing Basics of RSS 1. Think about the possibilities provided to you by RSS. Can you find more uses to it except for delivering content to end-users? What uses exactly? How can they improve your business results? 2. Compare RSS and e-mail. What conclusions can you come up with? 3. Think about your business and whether it is ready for the new era that RSS as a change agent is bringing. If it is not, what can you do about it? How can you improve your business, especially your internet content? 107 Section V: Marketing with RSS Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The key question for marketers when it comes to RSS is how we can take maximum advantage of it and how it can help us improve our marketing results. We already saw that there are 5 generic content delivery / marketing opportunities that RSS provides: • Delivering general, segmented, customized and/or personalized content updates to a mass audience • Targeted and specialized content delivery to segmented target audiences • Secure direct one-to-one or one-to-many communications • Advanced RSS marketing capabilities in conjunction with RSS aggregators • Syndicating web content to various internet media In this section we are going to take a look at all the specifics and see the practical uses of all of these generic opportunities, digging deep to discover everything that we can achieve using RSS. After reading this section you will know exactly what you can do with RSS and how, and have all the knowledge you need to prepare your RSS marketing and content strategies. 1. Delivering General, Segmented, Customized and/or Personalized Content Updates to a Mass Audience Delivering general, segmented, customized and/or personalized content updates to a mass audience is one of the most common methods of using RSS for internet content delivery purposes. 109 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS There are many simple and complex possibilities available under this umbrella, but the one thing they all have in common is that they are intended for a mass audience ! practically everyone that's interested enough to use these feeds. It means that marketers aren't limiting access to these feeds to anyone. To define these content delivery / marketing opportunities, we need to answer two questions: "what" and "how". • What What content do we deliver using general, segmented, customized and/or personalized content updates to a mass audience via RSS? • How How exactly do we deliver that content? Once you know the "what", the "how" becomes quite easy. Before we start with the "what", let's just quickly refresh what general, segmented and customized actually mean: • MarketingVOX|News offers a single RSS feed to deliver the whole spectrum of the news they cover in all of their various content categories. This is delivering general content updates to a mass audience. • The New York Times offers individual internet content (news) updates for their content categories via RSS. Each content category comes in a separate RSS feed, thus making it easy for NYTimes.com users to keep constant track of current news. This is delivering segmented content updates to a mass audience. • The business daily Finance offers its users the capability to precisely customize their own individual RSS feeds to receive only content updates that precisely match their content requirements. This is delivering customized content updates to a mass audience. These content delivery methods answer the "how" question. 1.1 Practical Uses by Content Types [What] The first question we need to ask ourselves is exactly what kind of content we are going to deliver to a mass target audience using RSS. 110 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS We are going to take a look at most of the possibilities in the following chapters. Do keep in mind that many of these interplay as it's very difficult to establish clear boundaries for such content types. The point of this chapter is to show you the scope of different content you can easily deliver to a mass audience using RSS. After reading the many possibilities listed below you will see what we meant by saying: "if you can break down your content in to individual and separated items or stories, you can deliver it using RSS." The most general answer to the question what content to deliver to your target audiences using RSS is your web site content updates. Web Site Content Updates If you maintain a dynamic web site and regularly add additional content to it (if you're not, you should) you need a way to let your visitors know when and what new content is available to them. How can they read your latest content if they don't know it's available? Expecting them to come back every day to see what's new is not to be expected, since people have so many content sources available to them. Not letting them know what's new, without them having to visit your web site first, usually means losing them. This is especially so when it comes to corporate web sites. Is there actually anyone, except for the company's employees and owners, that regularly checks a corporate web site to see what's new? If there are people like this, there are few and far between. And that's part of the reason why e-mail newsletters were invented. Now people could subscribe to corporate e-zines and be notified by e-mail when new content is available. But there are two huge problems with this: 1. The first entails all of the problems we are facing with e-mail; from spam to content overload to not receiving even the e-mail messages we want because of all of the obstacles between our mind and the sender. 111 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. People don't want to receive every web site content update by e-mail. Few of them want their e-mail inboxes burdened with corporate news, and even fewer people want to receive e-mailed daily updates on new content added to this or other web site, unless that content precisely matches their interests and is perceived as extremely high value. Delivering web site content updates via RSS solves both of these problems. Because web site content updates aren't delivered to their e-mail inboxes they don't interfere with their personal and business e-mail use, even if they are delivered daily. Because they are available through their RSS aggregators they can still access them when they want to, at their convenience. Individual Content On the other hand, you don’t actually need to use RSS to deliver content updates for your web site content. You could use RSS to deliver content that’s not actually available through your web site. For instance, your RSS feed could deliver a mix of content from other content sources, with each content item linking to content on other web sites (this is actually how RSS feeds from RSS content aggregator web sites work). One reason for doing this could be providing additional content to your customers, without actually having to publish that content on your web site. This might work if you want to provide added value through aggregating content from other content providers, providing a “one-stop-RSS-feed” for the crucial information regarding some industry, such as the internet advertising industry. Or, for instance, if you want to provide such aggregated information to your employees or team members, like constantly providing the latest sales tips from multiple web sources using your internal RSS feed. Other uses might include content you, for one or the other reason, just don’t want or can’t publish and archive on your web site. Now, without further ado, let’s dig in to what kind of content you can deliver to your target audiences. 112 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.1 News News is usually the most regularly updated web site content, which is perfect for RSS content delivery, as you can deliver each new news item as it is added to your web site. Your users don't need to wait to get them in a regular e-mail newsletter, they have instant access to them, just when they become relevant. RSS can be used to deliver any kind of news, considering your different target audiences and the content your web site provides. 1.1.1.1 Your corporate news Your corporate news is important to you, your employees and perhaps some of your customers and the press. But not to the majority of people. This makes delivering news using your general e-mail e-zine quite questionable ! do you really want to "pollute" your mass communicational medium with content most people are not that interested in? But you could provide a separate RSS feed for this type of news and let only the people interested "subscribe" to it. The others won't be bothered by them, and those that are interested will surely appreciate it. Example: Cisco http://www.cisco.com/ [RSS] Web site type: Corporate site Cisco takes a special approach to delivering their corporate news via RSS. For a corporation the size of Cisco that caters to end corporate customers as well as business partners, corporate news itself has to be chimed down in to more than one category. As such Cisco provides RSS feed customization where visitors can select whether they are interested in news for customers and/or news for business partners, the content topics they are interested in and their regions. The RSS feed is then customized for each visitor (actually, Cisco created a few different feeds that cater to these different interests and simply provides access to the right one based on the user's interests), giving him access only to the corporate news he is interested in. 113 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Cisco's corporate news focuses very much on the corporation itself and as such isn't that interesting to the general public or to Cisco customers not very deeply involved with Cisco. In addition, the corporate news is also of interest to the media. 1.1.1.2 Special announcements Do you regularly offer special discounts, open new stores, do special live promotions, host events and other "items" you want your visitors to find out about? In a way, this is corporate news, but it's actually quite different. When we say corporate news we mean news like who's the new manager, annual earnings statements, attaining a new account, etc. Corporate news is, more or less, focused on your company. The special announcements we mention here are focused on your target audiences and what you are doing for them … how you can better help them. Is it wise to mix the two? Not at all. Another RSS publishing opportunity. And this type of news should as well be mentioned in your e-mail e-zine, if you publish one. Example: FindSavings.com http://www.findsavings.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized news site "Do you want to have the latest coupons, coupon codes or promotions sent to you through your RSS or XLM program. FindSavings.com offers these feeds to you at no cost. Just link to the feed that interests you." The FindSavings.com offers easy access to countless coupons, coupon codes, discounts and promotion codes … and delivers them via RSS as well. Their visitors have a choice of 5 different RSS feeds, all of them providing them with different coupons: Coupons Added Today, Coupons Expiring Today etc. If their visitors want to keep up with all of the coupons on offer, they merely have to add the feed of their choice to their RSS aggregator. 114 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Enaa.com http://www.enaa.com Web site type: Web store Enaa.com is the largest Slovenian online retailer that offers everything from computers to home appliances to books. As part of their marketing strategy they offer weekly specials, products at especially low prices. Their users can choose to be notified about them via an e-mail newsletter, thus finding out about new weekly specials by e-mail without having to visit their web site. The company could easily offer these announcements via RSS as well, by providing a "Weekly Specials" RSS feed where each discounted product could be delivered as a separate content item in the feed. 1.1.1.3 Editorial news Editorial news should by definition be objective and written by an independent editorial news team. It's usually not quite like that, but many companies still do provide some editorial style news on their industry in the hopes of giving more content value to their visitors. In essence, this news, on corporate web sites, usually doesn't have much to do with other corporate content and as such is (and should be) kept separate for this. Just as with your corporate news, this calls for RSS delivery. On the other hand, such editorial news is also very appropriate for e-mail delivery in the form of a regular e-zine, especially if combined with educational articles and case studies. Example: Peppers & Rogers Group http://www.1to1.com [RSS] Web site type: Corporate site The Peppers & Rogers Group is one of the world's premium Customer Relationship Management consulting companies, which also provides an extremely rich content database of CRM related articles and industry news. Practically, Peppers & Rogers base much of their strategy on educating the public on CRM, which is why delivering CRM industry news makes perfect sense for them. 115 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Although e-mail is their primary content delivery channel, they also allow their users to subscribe to their RSS feed, which delivers mostly editorial industry news and some updates on their upcoming events and webinars, which as well could be considered as industry news. Example: Aspenbloom WellPet http://www.aspenbloom-wellpet.com Web site type: Corporate site Aspenbloom WellPett is a small business offering health-care and well-being products for pets. The company generates revenues from its product sales, but also builds its recognition and reach by providing relevant tips and advice for taking care of your pet, using RSS. "Aspenbloom WellPet will bring you loads of resources, tips, and advice to the pet owner to care for your pet in a natural, holistic, proactive approach to pet wellness." This niche business shows us how small businesses as well, not only larger corporations, can provide relevant educational content as a part of their marketing strategy, and deliver it at a low operating costs to its prospects and customers using RSS. Example: Fly Away Simulation http://flyawaysimulation.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized news site The Fly Away Simulation is one of the most popular flight simulation portals on the web, offering news and information on flight simulators. As such most of their content is editorial content, and they use their RSS feed to deliver editorial flight simulation news to their visitors. 116 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk [RSS] Web site type: General news site Traditional media companies are among those that can take the greatest advantage of RSS, as they need to deliver large amounts of content to their users every day. They are also the companies that publish the most really editorial content that is, at least in most cases, unbiased and objective. The BBC web site is no exception, offering its visitors a variety of RSS feeds that deliver BBC's latest news to their RSS aggregators. Example: Fiery-Foods.com http://www.fiery-foods.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized news site The Fiery-Foods.com web site is a great example that proves that RSS isn't reserved only for corporations and traditional media, but is especially of great use to small businesses. The web site found a very interesting niche, covering news, events, recipes and practically everything else you can imagine on the topic of fiery foods and barbecue. They use RSS to deliver the most interesting industry news on their topic. A great resource for everyone interested in fiery foods and barbecue. And they even publish a bi-monthly print magazine on the topic. 1.1.1.4 Third-party news Some companies just don't have the resources to offer their own editorial news, or they feel that their own editorial just doesn't cover enough ground. In both instances these people can decide to publish news from other content providers, such as specialized news web sites. It adds value for the visitors. And it's easy to do. 117 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And if you have a good enough team that searches through many relevant content sources and really selects only the best for your web site, your third-party news might even be perceived more valuable than the individual specialized content sources. You can of course also automate this process by using syndicated content. Either way, RSS is a great medium to deliver such content as well. 1.1.1.5 Other targeted news As you can see many of the above news categories are quite focused on certain target audiences. RSS makes it easy to deliver many different news categories to many different target audiences. The only challenge is presenting the feeds in the appropriate context on your web site, where the intended target audiences are actually reached, such as providing an RSS press releases feed for the media in your web site media center. So, don't think you are limited only with the news categories we already listed. For instance, you could use RSS to deliver updates and content to your web site community members, focused only and strictly on what's going on in the community. And so on. Example: Forum Nokia http://www.forum.nokia.com Web site type: Corporate community site The Forum Nokia web site, available through the Nokia.com corporate site, is aimed at various Nokia developers, offering them the resources, services, communities, business opportunities access and event updates they can take advantage of when developing new solutions, based on Nokia mobile telecommunication platforms. The web site provides its users with three different feeds, aimed especially at developers, providing them with easy access to the latest content in the Forum, the latest documents and the latest software releases. The Forum Nokia RSS feed is not available through the main corporate site or easily accessible to general visitors, but only to those that already come to the Forum web site and are as such interested in receiving such content. 118 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.2 Recently Added Articles News items are usually very short and provide summarized information that can be digested quickly. Articles on the other hand usually provide more in-depth information and solutions to specific problems. More and more companies are publishing their own articles to educate their target audiences, prove their credibility, disclose their approach to certain problems and share their case studies and results. The point of all of this, naturally, is to maximize your business results, by: • establishing your company as a thought leader in your industry or niche; • educating your prospects and preparing them for the business relationship; • providing evidence of why it's a good decision to do business with you; • adding value to the business relationship with your existing clients; • increasing loyalty. These articles usually form a "knowledge base" that the company provides for its target audiences. But, whenever you add new articles to your web site you want people to know about them and read them. To do so, simply provide an RSS feed that lists new articles from your web site. The recently added articles will appear in your RSS feed as new content items and give your visitors the chance of accessing them without first having to visit your web site. It is important to add here that high quality articles are also very appropriate for delivery through your own e-zine. Actually, such articles should form the basis for a high-quality e-zine that actually gets read. 119 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: MarketingProfs.com http://www.marketingprofs.com Web site type: Specialized information site MarketingProfs.com specializes in providing in-depth articles on various marketing topics. While they do use their e-mail newsletters as their primary channel for delivering their content, they also provide their visitors with an RSS feed. The MarketingProfs.com web site is a typical example of providing recently added articles via RSS. In contrast to providing short news via RSS, these content updates provide access to longer articles, which require quite some time to digest. 1.1.3 Recently Added Downloads Do you regularly add new documents, such as PDF files (whitepapers, free reports, product presentations etc.), to your web site? Or perhaps you even list new software of interest to your target audiences? In any case, one of the simplest ways of letting people there's a new download available is telling them so using an RSS feed, even by giving them a special RSS feed that only lists your recently added files updates. Example: Lockergnome / File of the Day http://windows.fileoftheday.com Web site type: Specialized news site The File of the Day web site, published by Lockergnome, provides its visitors with daily doses of interesting downloads, such as game demos, useful software etc. The only way for their visitors to keep up to date with the latest downloads, excluding taking the time to visit the web site every day, is through the web site's RSS feed. The feed brings them newly added downloads as they are added to the web site. Another similar service is RSS photo feeds, bringing you the latest photos from a selected number of web sites. For instance, the textamerica.com web site allows people to post pictures, videos & text from their mobile phones, which are then also available via RSS feeds. Flickr.com is a similar service that as well supports RSS feeds. 120 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.4 E-zine Publishing E-mail e-zine publishing has really flourished during the past few years, as entrepreneurs and large corporations both started increasingly adopting it. And why not? E-zines themselves embody the principles we talked about under the "Recently Added Articles" section. They are a medium that companies can use to not only constantly communicate with their audiences, but also to educate them and convert them in to new customers or more loyal customers. In fact, quality e-zines can become a company's own medium. A medium to communicate with, advertise in and announce what's going on. Direct branding with concrete marketing results and sales. E-zine publishing is one of the key areas of internet marketing, period. But e-zines are usually delivered using e-mail. That's one of the key points of their success ! you need to deliver an e-zine by e-mail if you want people to read it. Just like print newspapers delivered to their door or office desk. RSS enters this mix as a rather unwelcome intruder. If one of the reasons why e-zine publishing works so well is the fact that it excellently utilizes e-mail, won't e-zines lose some of their effectiveness if not being delivered by e-mail? In the old days of the internet the answer would be a resounding yes, but not today. What good is an e-zine if your subscribers don't really receive it or don't read it because they are overloaded with content? None. It's not all that bad, yet. There are quite good chances that your subscribers will receive your e-zine, if they really want to read it. The only thing that can stop them are the e-mail filters set-up by their ISPs, but not their own filters. So delivering an e-zine using e-mail is not down the drain, yet. Again we use the word "yet". The situation is getting worse. The content overload is getting worse. 121 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Providing your e-zine through RSS, as an additional option next to e-mail, is the way to go. You don't need to give up your e-mail list, just give your subscribers a choice of how they would like to receive your content. There's no need to fear that using RSS as an additional option will hurt the effectiveness of your e-zine. So, you can deliver your e-zine using RSS, but how? • Announce your e-zine in your RSS feed as a single RSS content item. When your subscribers click-through they can access it in full on your web site where it can be formatted just as if you sent it by e-mail. If you use full-text RSS content items you can even link to the most relevant articles in the e-zine from the actual RSS content item. You can publish an individual RSS feed for your e-zine (with the only content it delivers being your e-zine announcements) ! subscribing to the e-zine will be just as subscribing to it using e-mail. • Provide content headlines and links for every content item in the e-zine in the RSS feed itself. This means that your e-zine RSS feed (or your more general RSS feed) doesn't only announce the current e-zine issue, but carries all of its content items, which are then available in full on your web site or as full-text content items in the RSS feed. There's one more important choice to make: will you deliver content items as they are written or will you wait and publish all of them at once, just as if you were publishing your next e-zine issue? What approach you decide on depends on your e-zine content and strategy. a) If your e-zine is complex and highly segmented (includes many topics with different content types, such as longer articles, short news, spotlighted products, etc., where each of these works best if presented as a whole), it's probably best to use RSS only to announce it, unless you can offer RSS feed customization and still keep the desired format intact. Example: InsightExec http://www.insightexec.com Web site type: Specialized informational portal 122 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS "InsightExec, Europe's leading CRM service, provides a highly valuable set of tools, techniques, advice, specialist events and best practice case studies to help members make the most of customer management activities, achieve core business objectives and help improve the ROI of your CRM programmes." The InsightExec monthly e-zine is a good example of a complex and highly segmented e-zine. Each issue is comprised of the following content categories, related primarily only by the subject the web site covers (CRM), but not directly related with eachother: • An oppiniated editorial; the editorial title also serves as the subject line of the email messages. • News section, including headlines and links for app. 4 of the top monthly news items. • A monthly interview. • A feature article. • Spotlighted events with full descriptions. • A special offer, related to the general e-zine topic. • Links and descriptions to library items (PDF documents). • A presentation of one of their consultants. • Two graphical banner ads. As you can see the e-zine delivers 6 different content types (editorial, monthly interview and feature article; news; events presentation; library items; consultant presentation; advertising) and 9 different content topics. Although they are not related by a common micro-topic, they form a fully rounded editorial e-zine. Given the large number of different content types, it would be difficult delivering these content types as separate content items in an RSS feed, unless the company offered customization. But even then much of the “fullness” of the e-zine would be lost, because these content items would appear as a scattered load, instead of a fully rounded piece of editorial work. 123 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Furthermore, how many people, if provided with the RSS customization possibility, would choose to also get the advertising delivered? Probably none. One solution to this problem would be to simply include these ads within the articles themselves. But we all know that advertisers are happier to pay for an ad that is delivered directly to a living person and will definitely be seen by everyone that opens the e-mail message. Considering all of this it might not be the best choice for InsightExec to publish their e-zine as individual content items in RSS, at least not in this form. But they could decide to offer e-zine updates via RSS and then lead their RSS readers to their web version of the new e-zine issue. Or they could decide to provide just part of this information as an RSS feed, such as the news, which are especially appropriate for RSS consumption, especially because you can deliver them as they become available and are so delivered in a timely fashion. If RSS is no perfect solution in this case, then why bother with it at all? • Because many of your users will prefer RSS as they don't have to give up their email address or because they don't want to further pollute their inboxes. If this is their choice, just let them have it. It's just good business practice … and makes perfect marketing sense. • Because it's in your best interest that your subscribers actually receive and read your content ! RSS makes that possible much better than e-mail. b) If your e-zine works especially well because it's presented as a whole (individual content items work well together), just like a print magazine, it's again best only to announce it using RSS, or two offer both choices to your readers (if you however feel that presenting your content items out of the entire issue context would hurt the affect, only offer the announcement option ! in the end it will have to be your editorial choice). Example: BabyCenter.com http://www.babycenter.com Web site type: Specialized informational portal and web store The BabyCenter.com is a superlative web site from any viewpoint. It's primarily a web store, but it "hides" that fact behind an extremely rich informational portal where every parent or parent-to-be can find questions to their answers and problems regarding their child. 124 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS At the forefront of the web site is a simple e-zine subscription form that asks only for two pieces of information: • Your due date or your child's birthday or whether you are trying to get pregnant. • Your e-mail address. That's it. But what's really wonderful is what they do with this information. Right after you submit your info you start receiving their weekly e-zine that is personalized in such a way that it provides you specifically with information appropriate to the age (or pregnancy stage) of your child. If you have a 1-month old you'll be receiving articles, tips and product recommendations for that age. If you have a 1-year old you'll be receiving only the information pertaining to that age. And they do all of this simply by collecting a simple date from you and then personalizing the information they send you. This makes perfect business sense: • The e-zine content at all times adjusts to your current (and changing) needs ! every article you receive is highly relevant to your needs. • Each e-zine issue presents you with special product offers, again related only to your current needs. Just imagine the power of this ! every week you actually receive product offers that really match what you need and are looking for. Almost every product recommendation is a fit. But all of this (many different content types and topics, all tightly related to a very specific variable, your child's birthday) makes for a highly complex and tightly rounded e-zine. Yes, the InsightExec e-zine we presented earlier was a well rounded e-zine, but not anything like the BabyCenter.com e-zine, where every article is related to the "title topic" of the specific issue. 125 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This makes delivering their content via RSS even more difficult. Even if they provided you with a separate content item via an RSS feed that would form that week's issue, the effect would still not be the same. The BabyCenter.com e-zine works so well because it's a whole that offers you all of the key information in one place. So the best way to go would be to simply announce that your issue is ready via an RSS feed, which would of course still have to be personalized (you would need to receive the link to the e-zine issue that includes the content appropriate for you, considering "what week you are in" ! so you'd have to "register" on their web site by giving them "your date", after which they would provide you with your own personalized RSS feed link, which would then "feed" you the links to your individual and personalized e-zine issues on the web). But if BabyCenter wanted to provide each e-zine issue content item as a separate content item in their feed, they could still do it and still provide each article as an individual RSS content item. In the end, if they had the technical capacity, it would be best to offer both and just let their users have their choice. c) If your e-zine is not very complex (meaning that it's content is presented linearly), it might be a good idea to carry all of its content items in the RSS feed itself, especially if you want to provide your subscribers an easy way to skim through the content and select (read) only the articles that immediately appeal to them. This approach also works if your e-zine content is mostly news or mostly unrelated articles ! you can publish them through your feed as they are complete, without waiting for the other items. Example: MarketingStudies.net http://www.marketingstudies.net Web site type: Niche blog The MarketingStudies.net web site is dedicated to publishing marketing opinions, insights and news "with the difference", focusing especially on real-life experience and case studies from the web site publisher. The web site is organized as a blog, meaning it offers linearly presented content from different, mostly unrelated topics, such as RSS, project case-studies, marketing stories, etc. 126 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This content is published as it is written (a few times per week) in the MarketingStudies.net Marketing Diary blog and is also available as such through the web site's RSS feed. The company however also publishes a bi-monthly e-zine that carries most of the content published in that period. The content in the e-zine is organized in content topics that cover related content items. All of these content items also appear nonsegmented in the RSS feed (before they are published in the e-zine), except for the Editorial and the advertising, which are published only in the e-zine. In this case the e-zine is given more as an option to the people that still want to receive e-mail e-zines and not so much as the primary content delivery channel. It's an additional service that brings the content directly to its readers, instead of forcing them to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow it regularly. Since the advertising messages are not tightly related with other content topics (although they promote marketing related products) they would not be appropriate for publication as content items in the RSS feed, neither as ads within the articles on the web site. Example: Finance http://www.finance-on.net Web site type: Business news site Finance-on.net, the internet edition of the business daily Finance, the only Slovenian daily business newspaper, offers its users more than 50 articles and short news each morning, including regularly added news and press releases during the day. The articles and news are primarily delivered via a daily morning e-zine, where each content item is presented in the appropriate topic, which are all linear, as well as are the content items. Because the e-zine delivers more than 50 articles (as links) it would not be possible to deliver it in its entirety in an RSS feed, because it would become completely unmanageable. 127 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It also wouldn't make sense to announce it via RSS every day, because its subscribers are already expecting it every morning. Announcing it via RSS would be almost the same as expecting them to visit their web site every morning without any "aggressive" notice. No, the point of the e-zine is to allow people to quickly scan content to see what they are interested in and then click-through to the articles that peek their interest. But the company does offer an RSS feed, which their users can customize to exactly match their interests, thus limiting the daily dose of articles to only the content they really want to receive. The articles and news in the RSS feed are published as separate content items, as they become available. Example: MarketingProfs.com http://www.marketingprofs.com Web site type: Specialized information site As already mentioned, the MarketingProfs.com e-zine delivers links to recently added articles on the MarketingProfts.com web site, which are not related to eachother, although they do belong to different marketing topics. As such the articles are linear, but there is also other content in the e-zine: the editorial, advertising, sponsored links, "Last Issue Top 5" and recent questions/answers ! mostly not the content that relates well to RSS. So, MarketingProfs.com publishes about 7 articles (the stuff that people really subscribe to the e-zine for) and quite a lot of additional content that related to different marketing topics, but could be difficult to deliver via RSS (unless MarketingProfs.com decided to offer RSS feed customization, but even then advertising for instance couldn't be as easy to deliver). Instead of trying to bundle it all in an RSS feed, they rather decided only to publish the articles via their RSS feed (the articles are published in the feed as they are on the web site ! same time-frame) and reserve all of the other content for the e-zine. This means that they are offering those that prefer RSS an easy way to receive their key editorial content, without investing much in to creating "the perfect feed" that would cater to all tastes and would deliver everything they have to offer. Which is a sound business decision, considering how few people use RSS, at least for now. 128 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS They're keeping costs down, using RSS for what it was meant to be used (delivering unstructured and linear content "on a list") and catering to the people that either don't want to receive e-mail or prefer to use RSS as well. Example: Double Agent http://www.doubleagent.com Web site type: Niche informational site The Double Agent web site offers an interesting mix of advice, reports, advertising and images for men, teaching them how to best "deal" with women, especially date them and win them over. As part of their marketing strategy they also deliver a semi-regular e-zine that carries only one single article ! an approach as linear and unstructured as they come. Publishing this content through an RSS feed would be almost ridiculously easy and simple ! they could simply post every new article as an individual content item in the feed, as it's published on the web site. Simple, but very effective. 1.1.4.1 E-zines and Relationship Management Because of their importance, it's welcome to invest some additional attention to e-zines as a whole, regardless of the delivery channel being used. The key facet of e-zine publishing is relationship management ! because better relationships always lead to more sales and more profits. Again, direct branding with concrete results. Let's take a better look at an example that nicely demonstrates why this is so important. Example: Donos http://www.donos.net Web site type: Corporate & informational site 129 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Donos Inc. (http://www.donos.net) is a Slovenian (European Union) financial consulting company primarily targeted at the middle-end consumer market, offering it financial investment and personal asset management education, consulting and products. When the company faced a shortage of clients in the year 2000, they reinvented their marketing strategy and started focusing on the Internet as their primary means of generating leads, developing a relationship with them and in the end converting them in to paying customers. Their strategy is information based, meaning they market their services through educational content, distributed mostly using Internet tools. And, its reinvention helped them increase their revenues by 300% in the first 6 months after the new strategy was implemented and almost two-fold in the first year. This was achieved with a mere financial investment of 1.500 USD, leveraged with a large investment in time resources. The Market The key to understanding their success is understanding the financial investment and personal asset management market in Slovenia. On the product end, the market is highly saturated with various vendors offering approximately similar financial products (mostly mutual funds) with approximately similar yields on investment. On the service end, the market is foremost saturated with investment product salespeople that do not give their clients' needs a time of day, but are instead more interested in forcing them with their selected products. This, consequently, brings us to an untrusting market, where the consumer hardly trusts any service provider at all. Investment decisions are not made lightly and the business goes to the provider that has over time proven to be the most trustworthy. If a company is to succeed in securing its position on this market, it needs to demonstrate their credibility over a longer period of time, constantly communicating with its prospects and helping them better their financial situation before actually spending a dime at the company. Managing Relationships Donos.net achieves this through constant education of its prospects, offering them quality, relevant and useful content that in fact help their prospects. 130 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Their primary means of content delivery and communication are their monthly Donos e-tine and the weekly Tip of the Week e-tine, delivered by e-mail and through their web site. They use these e-zines to: • Generate leads for the company, which are then (carefully segmented and chosen based on their data) handed over to the consulting team to communicate with them in person. Leads are generated through the web site registration process, which offers new users the free e-zine subscriptions, free basic e-mail consulting and full access to the web site article archives. • Develop relationships with their prospects through constant mass communication through the e-zines and through semi-regular individual and personal communication by e-mail and telephone. • Build their own brand and credibility, which is achieved using high quality educational content. • Manage relationships with their existing and new clients, constantly retaining their interest, attention and good will. The Marketing Process Perhaps most important is the fact that their entire marketing strategy is based on long-term development steps of the consumer, instead of focusing their strength on forcing the consumer to "buy" on first contact. For a new visitor that hasn't registered yet, the web site is completely focused on converting him to a free member and subscriber to the e-zines. Quite natural, since it is nearly impossible to immediately convert a prospect in to a paying client in this market. When the visitor subscribes the communication continues through the e-zines, leaving the web site to present the company's services in detail and serve as an indepth knowledge base related to financial investments and personal asset management. It usually takes approximately 6 months of being subscribed to the e-zine before the new prospect decides to request a personal meeting or consultation. 6 months! 131 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This fact alone is enough to prove that the two e-zines are two of the most essential marketing tools Donos uses, especially due to their tight integration with the entire marketing strategy, which is customer-centric and based on managing relationships. Without being in constant beneficial contact with the company, the prospects' decisions would mostly turn to the negative in the end. Relationship Management Activities It would however be wrong to think that the e-zine alone is enough to develop profitable relationships with your prospects. True, it is the essential mass communication tool, but it also requires much human attention and focusing on the individual. • Subscribers to the Donos e-zines are being taken care of on the individual level as well. • Their questions and requests for help and advice never go unnoticed. The company has a 24 hour maximum e-mail response time rule, which means that every question is answered in detail in 24 hours after being received at the most. Each answer gives quality information, but also urges the prospect to request a live consultation with one of the seasoned financial consultants. The answers are then also published in the e-zines in order to benefit other subscribers as well and at the same time demonstrate Donos' helpfulness and expertise. • Every few months the company surveys its members, asking them how they would like the content services to develop further, especially which fields interest them the most. All responses are carefully weighted and most of them shortly implemented. • The support team constantly observes all events related to the web site and immediately helps new users or visitors if they encounter a more technical problem. All of Donos' relationship management activities in fact create what we call an "action brand". An "action brand" is a brand that does not build its recognition and name on corporate advertising, but through excellent service and customer-oriented action that in real life proves how much value the company attests its clients and what it can really do for them. Relationship Management Integration 132 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS For Donos, relationship management goes far beyond the e-zine and personal email communication. Both are of course essential, but not enough in order to build a real actionable impression --- it also takes personal eye-to-eye contact. This is achieved through personal consultations and even more through inexpensive educational seminars, both of which marketed through the e-zines. The seminars and consultations are the natural next step in the relationship when the prospect has begun to trust the company and its expertise and is now ready to move in to a more personal relationship. Namely, it's important that the prospect in fact takes all these steps, since it is of highest importance to the company that all of their personal contact leads already trust them and are prepared to do business with them. Anything else just wastes valuable time. Personal eye-to-eye contact is restricted foremost to the serious prospects and is not available to those who would only waste time. The e-zines are of course that part of the mix, which first attains the prospect and then in time converts him to the higher level when he is ready for the personal contact. In the end, this means that all marketing activities must be tightly integrated so that they support each-other and increase the overall business results of the company. The Bottom-line Report: How Donos Primarily Benefits from Managing its Customer Relationships Through Their e-Zines • Quality lead generation: The e-zines are the foremost incentive for the first-time visitor to the web site to register there, give the company his e-mail address, allow the company to communicate with him and start the business relationship with it. Furthermore, only those really interested in the financial investments and personal asset management fields subscribe, weeding out those that would only waste time. • Increasing time usage effectiveness: The e-zines are a one-to-many communicational tool, meaning they give the company the power to communicate with all of their prospects at once, which means a lesser investment in time. Communicating with such a number of people on an individual level would require much more time and consequently more people and more costs. 133 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Decreasing sales costs and increasing sales effectiveness: The e-zines prepare the prospects to do more serious business with the company, develop their trust and belief in the company, educate them in order for them to become better and more knowledgeable customers and develop a relationship with them. All of this makes the consultancy teams' work much easier, since they individually communicate with an educated prospect that already trusts the company and is ready to accept it, instead of having to convince them of all that in person. This saves time and costs and increases the individual conversion rate from prospects to customers. Remember --- an educated customer is always (if your services match his expectation and level of sophistication) a better customer than one we have to educate in person. The e-zines enable the company to do all this on a mass level, decreasing the actual "field" work to a bare minimum, restricting it only to relevant prospects. • Long-term customer retention: Even after a person becomes a client she is still receiving the e-zine, still staying in constant contact with the company. In addition to personal contact with her personal consultant from the company, the e-zine remains the client's key media of communication with the company, still being educated by it. • The viral effect: Satisfied subscribers tell others about their satisfaction, thus helping the company attain additional new leads. In fact, developing a relationship with a person can also mean planting the first seeds for relationships with her immediate environment. • Direct seminar sales: If the e-zines are the first educational step, the seminar is the next logical choice for the prospect. Meaning: When the prospect is convinced (because of the free e-zine) of the value the company has to offer him, he will gladly pay some fee to continue his education on a more personal level on a seminar. The developed relationship through the e-zines enables the company to sell seminar registrations to their subscribers only through the e-zine, without having to pay for third-party lists or media reach. Furthermore, since the relationship is already established, the prospect makes his decision more easily -- the decision involves less risk. • Relationship transfer: If a company convinces you of its trustworthiness, credibility and quality it can transfer this energy to other products it recommends --- it in facts transfers the relationship in some degree to another provider. Donos does this for the mutual funds it markets --- since people already trust Donos because of their relationship they more easily trust the products that Donos recommends. 134 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The Donos case study was chosen for its ability to demonstrate the low-cost small business use of e-zines for relationship management and its benefits. The entire financial investment (not counting internal human and time resources) in the new marketing strategy for the company was only 1.500 USD. The e-zine development and publishing accounted only for a smaller portion of this, although it was one of the more essential elements of the strategy. Note that we're not saying it was the most essential element; the strategy was fully integrated, meaning all the different tools contribute their part. Without just one of them the strategy might have utterly failed. Consider this when developing or publishing your own e-zine. Its positive effect on the bottom line of your business will only be achieved when it is completely integrated with all of the other marketing tools and tactics you use. It cannot work alone and it's most powerful when used as a support media for other marketing activities, such as attaining prospects, nurturing sales leads and building a relationship with them. When it comes to marketing, an e-zine can prove most effective when being used as a relationship management tool. This aspect of using e-zines is naturally not limited to any type of companies, businesses, segments or industries. • Large corporations such as Microsoft and Hewlett Packard use e-zines to keep in touch with their various customer segments, retain them and maximize their worth to them. • Enormous numbers of Internet entrepreneurs use e-zines as their Internet business's key marketing tool and often even as the foundation of the business itself. • Small businesses, such as Donos and many others, use it as one of their essential marketing tools in order to decrease sales costs and attain new customers more easily. • Advanced and well-funded Internet based businesses, such as the BabyCenter.com web store, use it to subtly promote their products through relevant content, drive customer retention and create a unique user experience by completely personalizing the content of each issue to the specific needs of the subscriber. 135 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Marketing and other business professionals use it to position themselves as experts in their fields and attain new consulting clients through educational content, delivered using their e-zines. Just think of Randy Gage, Roger Parker, and others. • World recognized consultancy thought leaders, such as Pepper & Rogers in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) field, use their e-zines to establish their thought leadership position on the market, as well as manage relationships with their clients worldwide using this mass medium of content and communication delivery. The most common and lowest denominator of the above listed is relationship management. Quick Action Tips: Increasing the Relationship Value of Your e-Zine • Give your subscribers the opportunity to ask you questions from your field of expertise and provide answers to those questions in your e-zine. Kick-off the service by coming up with some of the opening questions by yourself. Once you start receiving similar questions transform them in to a single question and answer that. • Enlist other experts from different fields that compliment yours to offer expert answers through your e-publication. Outside sources will give you more credibility, provide your readers with a larger array of solutions from different fields and generate your outside experts' additional publicity and recognition. • Help your subscribers, customers and business partners to additional publicity by presenting one of them in each issue of the e-zine. People love to read about other people. You'll show your entire subscriber base that you care about who you do business with and the presented people will love you more because of the ego-boost you'll give them through the e-zine … and perhaps even help them attain new business. • Ask your subscribers to give suggestions and opinions about the e-zine and how they would like to have it improved and then act on that information. Surveys are a great way of doing this. • Answer the most common customer service questions and problems in the ezine itself. 136 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Hold regular prize games --- but give the winners something of real value, preferably a real “hard” product. Integrate this with your surveys to get more respondents. • Make it a company policy to give better deals on your offerings to your subscribers than to the general public. • Customize the content of your e-zine to various needs of your individual subscribers. Allow them to select which areas your e-zine covers are of most interest to them and then send them only the information relevant to the chosen areas. • Publicly congratulate your subscribers, customers and partners for their special achievements and key events. When a subscriber gives a good suggestion or comment publicly mention his name and thank him. For instance, good customer relationships are a requirement to retaining customers, maximizing their worth, decreasing sales costs through the lesser need for expensive personal contact, increasing sales to existing customers and using existing customers to attain new customers. Even such extreme levels of positioning as thought leadership first require a strong relationship with the prospect, customer or subscriber: one cannot lead without having some sort of a relationship with the ones he tries leading. 1.1.5 Blog Updates Blogs are a relative newcomer to the internet marketing arena, although they are nothing really new. Blogs are what really started generating a greater interest in RSS, as bloggers were among the first who started providing their blog updates via RSS, many even evading e-mail as a primary or even alternative content delivery channel. It's even gotten to a point where many marketers seem to equate blogs with RSS, or at least believe that RSS is good only to deliver blog content updates. As you've already seen and will continue to discover, that's very far from the truth. However, blogs are an important approach to publishing internet content, so they are not to be taken lightly. But what are blogs in the first place? 137 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS There is really no universal definition. Depending on how you look at them, blogs can actually be comprised of everything we already listed and will list in the future chapters as content suitable for RSS delivery. "A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently." [Matisse's Glossary of Internet Terms] Joe Vitale and Laura Childs, in their e-book The Stampede Secret, define blogs in the following way: "A blog (snappy slang term for ‘web log’) is either one of two things: 1) A one-sided conversation in journal format by the website owner, or 2) A discussion board or forum with postings by both visitors and owners." [The Stampede Secret, by Joe Vitale and Laura Childs] They simply define the Journal Style Blog as regular updates, containing short "personal" articles, which eventually become archives. And they also believe that web forums themselves can be used as blogs. Seth Godin takes a somewhat different approach to defining blogs: "1. News blogs. These are the original model. The idea is simple. An author (or authors--see Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things) chronicles the events of the day. This can be commentary on politics or news or dieting sites or merely pointers to interesting technology introductions. Some of the most popular blogs are just carefully edited indices of the best of today's Net. Others include a lot of pithy commentary on the part of the writer. News blogs are a fantastic solution to the noise filtering problem. 138 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. Writer's blogs. You're reading one. These are blogs that while they occasionally riff about today's news, are mostly an opportunity for the writer to engage in an extended monologue. The monologue is influenced by reader feedback and new happenings, so it's a lot more interactive than a book, but it certainly isn't a conversation. I think this is a very new form of media (it's a process, not a batch). 3. Our blogs. This is what Joi is at the forefront of. Our Blogs are blogs that are the tip of the community iceberg. A posting on an Our blog is nothing but a firestarter, a chance to start the conversation and see what happens." [Three kinds of blogs, by Seth Godin, posted on Seth's Blog] As you can see blogs are many things to many different people. The most generic definition would be that blogs are personal and business journals posted on the web that "carry" short opiniated articles or news from around the web. Blogs started with individuals posting about their daily lives and work on the web and eventually progressed to more corporate content, as now-a-days even company CEOs are publishing their own blogs (and many of their employees as well) as a medium to share their thoughts, connect with the public in a more personal way and create a more personal image of their companies. They are used to communicate and at the same time also solicit feedback, as many blogs also allow for their visitors to post their own comments to the postings, sometimes even developing in to conversations. As such blogs are the ultimate "no control" medium, where the company says something and then waits to see what others have to say back. There's really no controlling the conversation, so there is really very little control. Consequently, blogs can become a credible PR vehicle that can either help or hurt a company. RSS is usually used to deliver recent blog postings, while some even use it to provide easy access to the latest commentary to the blog posts themselves, thus making it easier for their readers to follow the various conversations. 139 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Seth's Blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ Web site type: Individual blog Seth Godin's blog is a classical example of a blog by an individual expert, sharing his thoughts and ideas on a journal style web site. Well, actually it's not really only a journal style web site, since the blog is only part of Seth's "corporate" web site (hard to call it corporate, since Seth really isn't a corporation, but it is a "company" web site or an "individual professional" web site). Seth calls this type of blog a "writer's blog": "Writer's blogs. You're reading one. These are blogs that while they occasionally riff about today's news, are mostly an opportunity for the writer to engage in an extended monologue. The monologue is influenced by reader feedback and new happenings, so it's a lot more interactive than a book, but it certainly isn't a conversation. I think this is a very new form of media (it's a process, not a batch)." As such it's very straight forward. Seth "simply" (simple is not exactly the right word, since most of his posts are very thinking pieces) posts his marketing views on the world and occasionally some reports on happenings revolving his work, such as his new projects. The RSS feed is the same ! delivering latest content updates for the blog. Who can write such a blog? Practically everyone that has a relevant opinion on a specific theme that is interesting enough for people to read. But individual blogs will mostly benefit authors, consultants and professionals building a brand of themselves. On the other hand, we are seeing increasing numbers of company CEOs publishing their own blogs, which also, if written appropriately, positively impact the entire company image. Such CEOs are using their blogs as a way of communicating personally with their public, generating a more personal and friendly image of the company and generating feedback. 140 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: MarketingVOX|News http://www.marketingvox.com Web site type: Specialized news site (news blog) MarketingVOX|News covers different internet marketing news with an emphasis on internet advertising … and it could also be defined as a "news blog", using Seth Godin's definition. They provide daily news coverage on internet marketing, which is basically the "best of today's net" on the subject. They collect this news from around the web, posts links to the original news article and provide additional commentary and opinion … or simply summarize lengthy articles. Their content is delivered using e-mail and RSS ! each content item leads to the short news article on their web site, which summarizes the news and provides a link to the full story on the originating web site. This type of blog format is especially appropriate for companies that want to provide additional value to their visitors by giving them access to relevant industry news, adding their own editorial comments and expertise (to increase their credibility and establish themselves as experts in the field) to the mix. Of course, there's nothing easy about this approach, because your editors need to keep a constant eye on what's happening in the industry every day and provide relevant commentary that will improve your position on the market, not hurt it. Example: Jupiter Research http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/ Web site type: Corporate site "JupiterResearch provides unbiased research, analysis and advice, backed by proprietary data, to help companies profit from the impact of the Internet and emerging technologies on their business." Jupiter Research took a very proactive approach to integrating blogging in to their marketing strategy. Just consider this simple fact: Jupiter Research is a company that bases its reputation on knowledge and expertise. But knowledge and expertise come from real people. The experts are at the forefront. 141 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This has two important implications: • A company's position is improved as the position of its experts improves. As the company's experts become known as thought leaders, that rubs off on the company as well ! it too becomes respected as a thought leading company, a true expert in the field. • If such experts become well respected, people want to hear more from them. They want to read their opinions and find out what they think about "hot" industry issues. They want their insights and advice. And what better place to get that than through blogs written by these experts, with the blogs naturally being published on the company's web site? The natural consequence of this is increased traffic to the corporate web site. As you can see, blogs written by your experts have an important place in your marketing strategy. And not to forget, since blogs mostly contain short news or opinion content pieces, they are much easier to write than regular in-depth articles, which makes it easier for the experts to write them and for you to convince them to do so. Jupiter Research must have recognized this fact, as they currently host 12 blogs by their experts, which all cover different analytical topics. Each blog links back to the corporate site and especially emphasizes "getting information about becoming a Jupiter Research client". And each blog provides its own RSS feed. The above examples nicely demonstrate what blogs actually are, but don't be fooled by how easy it all sounds. It's actually anything than that. Writing a daily or even semi-daily blog is a time-consuming task, especially if you're experiencing a constant lack of time or run out of things to say. But that's not the worse of your problems. If you want your blog to be read, you need to have something interesting to say, something different. Let's turn to Seth Godin again for a good definition of what it takes to write a blog: "Blogs work when they are based on: • Candor • Urgency 142 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Timeliness • Pithiness and • Controversy" "Short and sweet, folks: If you can't be at least four of the five things listed above, please don't bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there's something in it for them." [Beware the CEO blog, by Seth Godin, posted on Seth's Blog] 1.1.6 Forum Updates Don't you just hate it sometimes that you have to visit a number of forums you like daily just to see if there are any new interesting discussions going on? And don't you hate it even more when you find out that there aren't at the moment, or even worse, that you missed a discussion that really interests you? Not surprisingly this is a matter of content delivery as well. We need to regularly check forums because their content is not delivered directly to us. A content delivery issue. Some web sites do provide e-mail notifications, but for most people, considering the content overload problem, that's not terribly inviting. And even as such, forum email notifications usually only include replies to your own posts or topics. That's not enough if you want to be up to date on what's going on, but still too much to be consumed through e-mail. RSS comes as a natural choice ! you can provide RSS feeds, based on what your forum users want, that deliver forum updates directly to their desktops, such as: • Delivering latest forum topics. • Delivering latest forum posts. • Delivering replies to an individual's topics. • Delivering replies to an individual's posts. Because of the sheer amount of content that is created through forums, this calls for advanced RSS content delivery where you either create a good set of "default" RSS feeds that will meet most of your visitors' needs or give them the option of customizing their own forum feeds. 143 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Especially delivering replies to an individual's topics or posts adds even more complexity to the game. But you could still use e-mail to cover this part of the pie. The point however is that this greatly increases the forum's usability for its users. A step in the right direction. Example: Sitepoint http://www.sitepoint.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized information site Sitepoint offers articles, blogs and forums for web developers. Among other RSS feeds they also provide RSS feeds for the forums. Forum content updates are delivered through three individual RSS feeds: • Featured Forum Threads (the new forum threads or discussions that the Sitepoint editorial team chose as the most interesting); • Recent Forum Threads (all new forum threads or discussions); and • Recent Forum Posts (an RSS feed with the latest posts from all of the forum threads or discussions). 1.1.7 Promotional Content Sooner or later, most content delivery channels are used to deliver promotional content. RSS is no different. First of all, every content delivered through any channel is in its nature marketing content. Even editorial news delivered by the media ! since editorial news is their product, it's naturally part of the marketing mix and as such a type of marketing content. It's the same with press releases, articles, announcements etc. ! all of this content serves specific marketing goals. Even published opinions are in a way a marketing message, written to market its author and the idea behind the opinion. But where is the line between marketing content that is obviously promotional in nature and that which is accepted as editorial? It's perception, and that's a fine line indeed, one that cannot be set in stone but rather differs from example to example. 144 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS We will define promotional content as content that obviously promotes a certain product or service with the intent of generating a sale, and is also perceived as such by its readers. Another possible definition would be that promotional content is not content that is a product or service from a specific company. For instance, even if a corporation publishes an RSS feed with industry news, that is in a way its service and at the same time it's product. It serves a marketing goal, but is not promotional in nature. This distinctions are very important when it comes to RSS content delivery, because RSS users have an exceptionally low tolerance for advertisements in their RSS feeds, mostly because it's so easy to remove an RSS feed from your aggregator. RSS publishers must practice extreme caution when sending promotional content through their feeds, but that doesn't mean promotional content is totally out of the question. You have many methods of delivering promotional content through RSS at your disposal: • publishing digital catalogues; • providing your affiliates and marketing partners with affiliate enabled RSS feeds for content syndication; • including advertising messages in your editorial content; • publishing notes and updates on your product development; • publishing standard product updates, such as announcing new products, either through stand-alone feeds, by integrating your promotional content in to your general feeds or by publishing a mainly promotional blog; • publishing third-party advertising feeds; • publishing content driven sales letters; • publishing "editorial" product reviews; • publishing pre-sales oriented content (which is usually even perceived as editorial content and as such really blurs the line between promotional and nonpromotional); • RSS autoresponders. 145 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Some of these might seem very similar, but are, as we will see, actually quite different from one another. But, as with most other content related categorizations, it's difficult to precisely determine the line the precisely distinguishes between one and the other content form. 1.1.7.1 Publishing digital catalogues We'll start with two types of promotional content (find out about the second in the next chapter) that are especially related to RSS and are something where RSS really pushes the envelope. Imagine a huge retailer like Amazon, or practically any other online retailer offering thousands of products, even adding a few hundred every week or month. The retailer needs to make it as easy as possible for his prospective buyers to find the products they are interested in. Such retailers made an extremely good use of the web, publishing web sites that serve as digital catalogues that make it relatively easy for people to find what they are interested in. Definitely a step forward from the classical print catalogues, especially if you need to add a great deal of new products every week, perhaps even every day. Some retailers are even so "strong" with their customers that the customers actually want to hear from them about their new products, as long as they match their interests. But their web sites aren't exactly a channel that's capable of delivering new product announcements to the interested public … to their feet. That's where RSS enters the picture. What better way to notify people of new product releases than to give them an easy way to "receive" your digital catalogue whenever a new product is released, and exactly matching their product preferences at the same time? This is no playground for a general RSS content feed; you need to provide specialized RSS feeds that cater to your audiences' exact needs, even adjust to them by providing them only with the content they are interested in. Because they actually want to find out about your latest releases, as long as they only hear about what they are interested in, such RSS feeds, although intended to promote products and make a sale, can even be perceived as "editorial" and welcome content. 146 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Publishing a digital catalogue via RSS is actually a service to your users. Example: Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com [RSS] Web site type: Web store The Amazon.com RSS feeds are an excellent example of an advanced digital catalogue. Amazon.com's least complicated implementation of the digital catalogue are its segmented RSS feeds for their most popular product categories, available from Amazon.com Syndicated Content. These categories include various sub-categories from "Books", such as "Entertainment", "History" etc., the "Electronics", "DVD" and many other categories. The total number of pre-made RSS feeds actually exceeds the number hundred, meaning that most Amazon.com users can be notified by RSS of most new titles they might be interested in. Each of the separate feeds provides headlines for the top 10 bestsellers in each sub-category. Try imagining the impact of such feeds on giving customers what they want. Most people that purchase through Amazon really want these products and are quite thankful to Amazon for providing them. Consequently, readers want to know what products, as long as they match their interests, which is generically achieved by providing segmented RSS feeds, are available to them, and especially which are the most popular, since that's a good way of telling which products are the best choice. And since most people really can't handle more e-mail, using a service like this just might be the ticket. It's less obtrusive, it's "on-demand" and it gives them what they want. It brings Amazon.com closer to its customers in a way that generates loyalty and accelerates sales. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, and only a small fraction of what Amazon.com is doing with its "digital RSS catalogue". They are, through their Web Services platform, giving their associates and other developers the opportunity to develop their own services, making it easier for their visitors to access Amazon.com products, which also includes providing them with advanced RSS feeds. 147 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Some developers, such as Yaywastaken.com and Lockergnome, have already provided their visitors with customizable Amazon.com RSS feeds ! their visitors can actually customize what product contents they want to receive from Amazon, using their web service. Truly customizable digital catalogues It gets even better. These developers can even set-up these services in such a way that they receive a commission every time someone purchases a product from Amazon, if they got to it through the RSS feeds provided by their service. The point here is not only that developers can create RSS feeds to easily syndicate Amazon.com product announcements through their own site, but that they actually create RSS feeds that their visitors subscribe to through their aggregators. Amazon.com is basically giving them the power to create and distribute their own digital catalogues, tailored to their specific visitors and their demands ! helping them provide a service to their visitors and at the same time make a commission. It's a win-win-win situation for all three parties in the game. And RSS made it possible. Example: Woot! http://www.woot.com Web site type: Mini web store It's quite true that an Amazon.com example might not be the best, given the sheer size and financing that Amazon.com enjoys for its products. Fortunately there are simpler examples, with Woot! Being one of the most straight-forward. Woot! is, quite simply, a mini web store that offers only 1 (!!!) product per day in what seems to be limitless quantities and a great bargain price. And that's about it. The idea was so unique that it got a huge following in a matter of days, without any huge promotion on their part. Woot! uses RSS to deliver their daily "Woot" product announcements … that people actually want to receive, because a) the products come at great prices and b) the products themselves are often quite entertaining. 148 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It's probably the simplest digital catalogue in the world, and it works. The message: deliver daily product announcements that people actually care about and want to receive. Example: iTunes http://www.apple.com [RSS] Web site type: Web store Apple's iTunes RSS feed generator is another good example of digital catalogues / new product announcement services. Choose what music genres you're interested in and what "types" of music (just added, new releases, features etc.), and the feed generator will generate an appropriate RSS URL to help you access what you are interested in. In the actual feed you'll be getting new album titled, along with their cover art, links to a few songs from the album and, of course, a purchase link. 1.1.7.2 Providing your affiliates and marketing partners with affiliate enabled RSS feeds But online retailers, again take a look at Amazon as a good example, often depend on their marketing partners or affiliates to help them make a sale. If, based on your products and the public recognition you enjoy, you can provide your users with a valuable RSS digital catalogue that they'll actually want to receive, why not do the same for your affiliates, giving them affiliate enabled RSS digital catalogues. They could then use them to syndicate your latest product releases on their web sites, using the new product announcement headlines and even descriptions from your RSS feed. Whenever someone would click on those headlines, posted on the affiliates' web sites, and make the purchase, the affiliate would be awarded with a sales commission for the item. 149 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS One way of doing this would be to allow your affiliates to customize their own RSS feeds (practically your digital catalogue) to carry only the product updates (content items) they feel are the best match for the web site. They could either use your RSS feed to publish the headlines on their web sites or even let their visitors subscribe to the actually RSS feeds. Or they could promote your RSS feed service and allow their visitors to actually customize what product updates they want to receive. The end affect would be the same ! your affiliates would be promoting your products, offering a valuable service to their visitors and making a commission on all sales made through them at the same time. But what if you don't offer "digital catalogues", but do publish one or more content rich RSS feeds? You can actually use the same approach: generate "individual" RSS feeds for all of your affiliates. Each feed could carry exactly the same content you publish in your own general RSS feed, but the links in the feed would already be affiliate powered links. Consequently, your affiliates could promote your RSS feed and at the same time make a commission on all products sold through it. One way of generating these feeds would be to let your affiliates do it themselves: by entering their affiliate ID or name or whatever you use in a special form, which would in affect provide them with their own RSS feed. 1.1.7.3 Including third-party advertising messages in your editorial content Remember the different kinds of e-zine advertising, such as text ads, classified ads, banner ads and similar, and then also remember the banner ads and other onsite promotional messages. RSS can be used to deliver all of these in some or other way, if you want to sell advertising through your RSS feed. You can include third-party advertising messages (such as longer or shorter text ads) as separate content items in your RSS feed. Such ads will be far more visible than their e-zine counterparts, but are also much more dangerous ! your RSS subscribers expect great content from your feeds, and most of the time ads just are not it. 150 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Practice extreme caution and never publish more ads than editorial content. Come to think of it, it's best to keep your “editorial content”:”ad content” at an 80:20 ratio or higher, in favor of editorial content of course. A much less dangerous approach is publishing banner ads in your full-text RSS content items, which of course can only be done if you are publishing in full-text. Again, we advise against over-saturating your content even with banner ads. If you're not publishing in full-text, but only short descriptions, you can include banner ads in the content on your web site, after your subscribers click through from your RSS feed. The effect will be quite similar, if your visitors are clicking through of course. To increase advertising impact always publish ads that are highly relevant to the content of each content item. If you decide to publish ads as content items themselves, make sure that they too are very relevant to your readers' needs and to your content. 1.1.7.4 Publishing notes and updates on your product development If your products are of special interest to your target audiences you might want to consider publishing special product development notes on them, such as updating your readers: • on how far you are and on how your development is progressing; • on new functionality or features; • on new product case studies and ways of usage; • on resolved product problems; • on what you learned during your development; • on new product versions; • etc. This may in fact be quite close to editorial content, and it does get your readers much more involved with your company and your product development process. You could for instance also solicit feedback, ask for ideas, enlist beta testers etc. The point is in "reporting" on what's going on, as long as that's interesting enough for your readers. 151 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In addition to generating reader involvement this is also your chance to emphasize what's so great about your products and directly promote them, perhaps even generate a direct purchase. This approach will only work for products that are deemed important by your prospects, and are at the same time complex enough to warrant such updates. We're talking about products such as software, books, seminars etc. You can either use your "standard" RSS feed you publish editorial content through or an individual RSS feed, depending on how much you have to say and how relevant it is to the majority of your readers. Example: PalmInfocenter http://www.palminfocenter.com [RSS] Web site type: Product support site The PalmInfocenter web site is not just a product development update web site, but a complete information source for Palm handheld computer users and developers (which is interestingly enough not in any kind of business relationship with Palm, but is a fan site). The web site provides information such as: • New product announcements • Rumors on new products • Entertaining information for Palm users (such as new commercials) • Handheld industry news • New technology updates • Discussions • Etc. This is not salesy information, but concrete content that Palm users want and need. Their RSS feed includes the latest 10 headlines and summaries from their news and articles categories. Every company would do well for itself to provide such a web site to its customers. 152 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.7.5 Publishing standard product updates Publishing standard product updates is somewhere in the middle between including third-party advertising messages in your feeds and publishing product development updates. It mostly involves announcing new products or promoting your existing products, and you can do it either by integrating this content in to your existing RSS feeds or providing a new promotion-only feed. If your new product announcements are few and far between, feel free to do them through your regular RSS feed. But if you want to promote a few new products per week or even month, and can't keep up with the 80:20 ratio in favor of editorial content, don't alienate your readers by pushing them with product announcements in every other content item you publish. But where's the difference between publishing standard product updates and including advertising messages in your editorial content? Standard product updates should only be about your own flag-ship products, and should be much interconnected with what your readers expect from you. If you're a famed author your readers will appreciate hearing about your new book. The same goes for other product developers that have a loyal fan-base that's eagerly waiting for their new products. Advertising messages on the other hand can be mostly messages by your advertisers; it's where you are making direct advertising money from your feed. They do require more evaluation as your readers aren't as willing to accept promotional content from other companies in your feed. Also, from the business viewpoint, it doesn't make much sense promoting someone else through your content channel, unless selling advertising space is your primary source of revenue (like with most news publishers that depend on advertisers to make a profit). It's also quite easy for affiliate marketers to become over-tempted with using their feeds to earn affiliate commissions. The bottom line is that in most cases your readers aren't interested in promotional content, especially not in promotional content not directly related to the content they expect from you. Saturate your feeds with advertising and you will lose them. 153 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS On the other hand, if your readers actually expect to hear from you about new products on the market (if that's how you positioned yourself), you naturally should be meeting their expectations. In this case your advertising content might actually be perceived as editorial content. The key is in reader perception. How they perceive your content. Some might perceive an RSS feed full of advertising as being highly relevant and useful to their needs, while others might look down on the same feed as being full of crap they don't need. It all depends on your readers and what their expectations towards you are. Example: Intel http://www.intel.com [RSS] Web site type: Corporate site One of the RSS feeds Intel publishes is the "Updates and information on Intel products" feed, which includes exactly that: new updates and information on their products. This information is targeted especially at their IT buyers and is, as such, technical in nature. 1.1.7.6 Publishing third-party advertising feeds If however you plan to publish much promotional content from other advertisers, it might be a good idea to set-up an individual feed to only serve this purpose. On the positive side, the readers expecting only editorial content won't be burdened with advertising messages and will continue to enjoy your RSS feeds, not feeling the need to remove it due to over-excessive advertising. On the negative side, most internet users won't even think about subscribing to a third-party advertising feed, since they really don't want to accept even more advertising than they are already forced to everywhere else. Unless you can position the advertising feed as a valuable resource for them … Advertisers as well won't be too keen on paying for advertising in an ad-only feed, unless you can prove to them that it's actually being read and worth their money. And this will only happen if your readers want your advertising messages, which requires positioning the feed as something of value (such as “best deals”, “coupons”, etc.) 154 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It's really not a win-win situation either way. However, a simple fact remains: if you pollute your feeds with advertising, your readers will go away. Period. But if your readers don't want advertising in the first place, they'll keep away from your ad-only feed as well. Consequently, this option will only work if your readers are, because of their line of work, really interested in receiving some types of advertising content. If they are, you should consider providing an ad-only feed for them, and at the same time cater to your other readers with a mostly ad-free feed. But do not get this wrong. If all you plan to do is place banners next to your fulltext content (not too much of course), you should be OK without having to publish a whole advertising feed. 1.1.7.7 Publishing content driven sales letters If standard product updates are what we know as pure ads, which do not even try to hide the fact, content driven sales letters are somewhere between an ad and an article, but have the absolute goal of making the sale. These are the sales letters we've become accustomed to receiving in our e-mail inboxes and to reading on sales oriented mini-sites. They are a combination of editorial and promotion. The same rules apply here as with every other promotional content ! don't overdo it. The basic distinction of such sales letters is that they usually start with a story, carry some educational value for the reader and even try to entertain. RSS publishing principles are the same as well ! the best way of publishing content driven sales letters is through your general RSS feed, adding the sales letter as one of your other content items, as long as you keep to the 80:20 rule. Example: Mr. Fire http://www.mrfire.com [RSS] Web site type: Niche informational site The Mr. Fire web site is the home of Joe Vitale, a respected internet marketer who godfathered the concepts such as Hypnotic Writing and Hypnotic Marketing. 155 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Joe Vitale takes a rather unusual approach to publishing his RSS feed, mainly publishing content driven sales letters that aim to sell you something through a story or a longer "infomercial in print", in addition to some other content updates, such as updates on the latest issue of his "News You Can Use" e-zine. But most of the content is sales oriented. Not ordinary news, but sales oriented news. Take a look at one of the examples of his content items: "Live Webcast Causes A collapse...12,000 stand by Over 12,000 people tried to access the site on October 12 and it collapsed -recording now online to stream or download, plus free gifts from Joe." Reads inviting, doesn't it? And what it takes you to is a sales web site where you can access a free webcast audio or MP3 of an interview with Joe, which then goes on to convince you to buy his course Hypnotic Selling. What we have here is basically a sales oriented news item that takes you to a web site, where you can access an educational audio recording, which then sells you a product. Another thing to learn from Joe is his writing style, especially the way he writes his headlines and content summaries. Here are another two great examples from his feed: "Hypnotic News, Views, Tips, Secrets and More. Brought to you ad-free and for free from Mr. Fire How did John Reese make $1,000,000 in 24 hours? Where are hypnotic commands being used today? What's a new way to create the life you want? Why are these questions grouped together?" "What Ebooks Will Sell? E-books are here to stay. Not only are they continuing to sell at a phenomenal rate, but there is no end in site. Revenues were up 30% in 2003 over the same period in 2002. What does passion, pets and home-schooling have to do with it all? Read on..." As you can see, although this is mostly promotional content, the RSS content items are written just like very inviting news items that pull you to click-through and read on. 156 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.7.8 Publishing editorial product reviews Editorial product reviews are sort of a mixed deal ! they are editorial content, especially if they are credible, and at the same time they often aim to sell something, unless the reviews themselves are a "product", such as with various PC magazines that review the latest software or hardware. Many affiliate marketers will find a great use in publishing editorial product reviews through RSS, as they can provide valuable content and at the same time make a commission on the sold products. If your editorial reviews are in fact "editorial" and provide good value for your readers, feel free to promote them as such, even create a separate RSS feed for them. But if they are only advertising disguised as editorial, rather tell your readers that upfront and include them in your more general content feeds. 1.1.7.9 Publishing pre-sales oriented content As we saw from many of the previous examples, the lines between editorial and promotional are often blurred. Publishing pre-sales oriented content via your RSS feeds takes this issue even further. Imagine you're about to release your next book in the next couple of months. You want to make sure that as many of your readers as possible buy it, so you start "pre-selling" them, by posting more articles on the subject of the book. You start sending them information such as uncovering the problem, presenting a compelling case of why this actually is a problem, and providing some solutions. You publish more and more articles on the subject, and use your RSS feed to deliver them to your readers. When the release date finally arrives, you tie it all down in to a strong sales message. But you've already done your job ! the content you were publishing during the past few months already explained the problem and increased the interest of your readers, they are now ready to buy. Or you announce your new book a few weeks in advance, again giving your readers quality content that gives them a reason to buy when you do publish. Or you could report to your readers on how your new book is doing after its publication, telling them about what's new, how you're marketing it and of course supplying them with a few new content excerpts every week. 157 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The same can be done with any product that can be presented by some sort of story. Because in the end, this approach to marketing is basically story-telling. Because you're doing this to promote a specific product once in a while, you include this content in your regular RSS feed. Again you must be careful not to overdo it. Posting relevant content of great interest to your readers, even though it's final goal is to make the sale of your product once it comes out, shouldn't hurt you. Example: MarketingStudies.net http://www.marketingstudies.net Web site type: Niche blog When preparing for the publishing of this e-book, we undertook a comprehensive pre-sale oriented marketing campaign through the MarketingStudies.net blog, which included: • Posting basic information about RSS • Posting in-depth articles on RSS • Posting an extremely pro-RSS interview with John Botscharow • Posting short RSS interviews excerpts with different experts, fully published only in the e-book • Announcing the e-book a few months beforehand All of this information, delivered also through RSS, was intended to: • increase the interest of the blog's readers in RSS, • build the credibility of the author, • open some new RSS questions that would also interest those already using RSS, • building expectations using the interview excerpts, • prepare the blog readers to buy the e-book when it came out. All of the content posted was "editorial" and at least perceivably not promotional. Its intent was to educate and at the same time promote. You can be the judge of whether this approach worked or not. 158 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.1.7.10 RSS Autoresponders E-mail autoresponders have been around for a long time and are used by a great deal of internet marketers, but few realize that RSS as well can provide the same functionality. As we already explained, RSS is only a content delivery channel ! what and how you send through it depends on you and your back-end technologies. If you develop or configure your internet publishing solution so that it can distinguish between individual RSS "subscribers" and can dynamically generate RSS feeds for each of them, you could easily add an autoresponder component in to those messages. If you don't have those kind of resources, there's a $67 product, RSS Responder, you can use to create RSS autoresponders. 1.1.7.11 Specialized Content Updates [New Database Items] Many businesses around the web base their business model on offering highly specialized content to their visitors that is s based on building and then providing access to some sort of specialized database. Some generic examples of such businesses: • Dating web sites • Real-estate web sites • Tourism portals • Classifieds web sites • Job listings web sites • Etc. All of these businesses are based on providing access to very specific structured information. Some do this by finding such information on the internet and providing access to it, others simply by building a bridge between supply (people posting their related information, such as dating web sites or job listings web sites) and demand (people interested in this information). 159 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • People interested in finding their matches post their profiles on dating web sites and indicate what kinds of people they are interested in meeting. Other people browse this database and again try to find the people that match their interests. • Home owners interested in selling their homes post information about their properties on real-estate web sites, while people interested in buying or renting real-estate properties search these databases, trying to find what they are interested in. • Tourism portal providers search for relevant tourism packages, matching their visitors' interests, thus filling their large tourism package databases. Their visitors come to their web sites to search for destinations and packages that best meet their interests. • People post their classified ads on classifieds web sites. These classifieds are from a variety of categories, from personal ads to product sales ads. Again, people using such web sites are usually interested only in a few classified ad categories. • Companies post their human resources needs on job listings web sites, where people go to find appropriate job openings. The most common denominator between all of these is that the people searching for this information have very specific demands. • People trying to find their matches are interested only in very specific people and have very "strict" criteria, such as gender, age, personal interests, looks, etc. • Real-estate buyers or renters are interested only in very specific real-estate, such as "for sale", "for rent", location, price, type etc. • Tourists are looking only for destinations, such as geographical location, and packages (price, type etc.), that match their exact interests. • It's the same with all of the other content providers listed above. Remember digital catalogues via RSS? This is the same, with the only difference being that this content is even more "editorial"; it's information people would actually pay to receive. The content itself is the product. 160 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And this is exactly the kind of content that comes natural to RSS. You can allow your users to customize what content updates they are interested in, and then deliver them to them when new content (additions to your database) that matches their interests appears. Yes, RSS can be used to provide a valuable service people will actually pay for. 1.1.7.12 General Web Site Content Updates Last but not least are general web site content updates. Just remember the various messages you are getting from web site owners, informing you of maintenance work being done on the web site, adding a new content category, telling you about the new web site design etc. These can be categorized as general web site content updates. Certainly not something that most of your visitors are interested in, especially those that only want your content and are not very involved with your web site, but some still do. You can either decide to provide such content updates through your general RSS feed, or by providing a special RSS feed only for such updates. If there are only a few of these updates during the month, feel free to include them in your general feed. But if you post a few every week, don't bother all of your visitors with them. Rather give those that are interested in this the option of subscribing to a specialized RSS feed, intended only for delivering this kind of content. 1.2 Defining the Organic Possibilities [How] Now that you have an idea of what kind of content you can deliver to a mass audience using RSS (the "what"), you need to consider "how" to deliver it to them. Keep in mind that any of the content presented in the previous chapter can be delivered in multiple ways, which we are going to describe below. Delivering content to a mass audience gives you the options of delivering general content updates, segmented content updates, customized content updates, personalized content updates and a combination of them. What option you decide for should depend on the complexity of your content, your technical possibilities and also on how much you really want to develop your RSS content delivery. Let's take a look at a quick comparison table. 161 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Mass RSS Content Delivery General content updates Segmented content updates Customized content updates Personalized content updates Short description Delivering all of your content updates with a single RSS feed Providing different RSS feeds for different content topics Giving your individual users the possibility of configuring your RSS feed to their needs Personalizing your RSS feed content to individual users; can be used with other organic possibilities Content complexity Simple content structure, covering one topic or a few related topics More complex content structure, covering different content topics; or relatively large amounts of content Very complex content structure or very large amounts of content added on a very regular basis Either irrelevant; or different content topics that satisfy different content needs and/or goals Technical difficulty Extremely simple Very simple; requires somewhat more work Difficult; requires a developed database and RSS system Very difficult; requires advanced database capabilities and RSS system Key advantages Very simple to implement and maintain Simple to implement and maintain; gives your visitors the choice of what content they are most interested in Gives your visitors full control over what type of content they want to receive from a single RSS feed from your web site Gives you the opportunity to personalize your communications and to match your offers and content with your visitor's needs Key disadvantages Your visitors have no control over what content they wish to receive from you; all of the content, even if different topics, is delivered in a single list Forces your visitors to think about what they want to receive; requires multiple "subscribe" actions from your visitors; it's questionable whether your visitors want to follow more than one feed from you Expensive to implement; requires a developed database; requires some sort of "registration" process, which demands more time and knowledge from your visitors; high server load; cache mechanism Expensive to implement; requires a developed database; high server load; cache mechanism Suitability Simple web sites with a linear content structure; blogs and other web sites by individuals Web sites with a categorized content structure with different content topics; smaller content publishers Complex web sites with large amounts of different category content; newspaper publishers Every company with a more complex product portfolio or complex content 162 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.1 General Content Updates This is the absolutely most basic way of delivering content via RSS because it is so simple and inexpensive to implement. It means delivering all of your web site content updates, regardless of their subject or purpose, in a single RSS feed. There is no choice for your visitors; they can only use this one feed you prepared for them. Most web sites that provide only one RSS feed use it to deliver news or updates on new articles added to their database. This approach is most widely used for blogs and other web sites with a relatively simple content structure, covering mostly just one topic or more much related topics; most often used to deliver either news content items or to let know the visitors about new articles posted on the web site. Most content management systems will already provide you with this basic RSS functionality, and if you decide to hand-code your RSS feed this is definitely the way to go. On the other hand, if your web site provides content in more than just one topic category, or larger amounts of content, then you might want to consider segmented or customized content updates. Example: The Brand Autopsy Blog http://brandautopsy.typepad.com Web site type: Personal blog The Brand Autopsy blog is a classical example of providing general content updates via RSS. Their content is strictly linear, meaning that they are not categorizing it in any way. All of the blog posts are provided in a single content category with no hierarchical structure. The RSS feed itself provides links to every new content item on the web site. 163 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: MarketingVOX|News http://www.marketingvox.com Web site type: Specialized news site MarketingVOX|News covers different internet marketing news with an emphasis on internet advertising. While their content is highly categorized (more than 80 content categories) they publish only approximately 6 - 10 news items daily, which means that their internet marketing news would be extremely difficult to follow on a regular basis if you decided you're interested in only one of their content topics. In addition, if you were for instance interested in 30 of their 80 content categories you would need to subscribe to each of them individually, if they decided to offer a separate RSS feed for each category, and if you decided you really only want to follow just 30 of them. Going with only one RSS feed is the best possibility, because offering more than one would not be smart from a usability viewpoint. RSS & E-mail MarketingVOX|News also delivers its content using e-mail. Their e-mail newsletter includes the same content as the RSS feed, with an addition of banner ads. As they've explained themselves, they currently have no intention of selling advertising in their RSS feed, since it does not have enough readership, as opposed to the e-mail newsletter. Consequently, the e-mail newsletter and the web site are still their primary sources of income. The MarketingVOX|News example nicely demonstrates how smaller specialized news sites and/or blogs can use RSS and e-mail together to deliver the same content, providing two content delivery channels only as a means of giving more power and choice to their users. Also, in this case, RSS and e-mail do not exactly work together, but are rather more like two excluding options. Those that prefer RSS will subscribe to their RSS feed, and those that prefer e-mail will subscribe to their e-mail newsletter. They could of course also subscribe to both, but they would just be receiving the same content in the almost the same way, but through two different channels. 164 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Unisys http://www.unisys.com [RSS] Web site type: Corporate site Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company that serves the financial services sector, public sector, communications, transport and media markets. While their web site is very complex in terms of content, they only regularly update their corporate news section and as such only provide an RSS feed for their news sections. Providing an RSS feed for other web site areas would not be very sensible in this case, since most of the other content is pure corporate content, only presenting the company and its services. Put differently, only the news section provides dynamic regularly updated content with enough constant value for people to want to receive on a constant basis. 1.2.2 Segmented Content Updates Offering segmented content updates goes further than simply offering just one RSS feed for all of your content updates ! you provide different RSS feeds for different content categories or topics instead. This makes sense either for web sites with a more complex content structure, offering different content topics, or for web sites offering larger amounts of content on a very regular basis, for instance daily. Example: The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com [RSS] Web site type: General news site The New York Times web site covers a variety of different general news and articles on many different topics, ranging from international news to book reviews. These content topics are so diversified that it really wouldn't make much sense for the New York Times to offer them in a single RSS feed, since some people are only interested in book reviews, others in business news, again others only in New York related news, and so on. 165 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Consequently The New York Times web site offers RSS feeds for each of their content categories, but not also a single feed that would deliver all of their news items. This way their visitors can easily see what topics they are interested in and easily subscribe to them, and at the same time not receive content updates on any news they are not interested in. Basically, they are offering segmented RSS content delivery ! each content category offered through an individual RSS feed represents an individual content segment that a visitor might be interested in. Internet users can visit The New York Times RSS page (linked only from the bottom of each page) and there subscribe to each of the RSS feeds that match their content interests. RSS & E-mail General news traditional media online are especially interesting to study in how they use RSS and e-mail together. Because e-mail has been their primary content delivery channel for a long time, it's quite natural that their e-mail services are more developed, providing more possibilities for their visitors. But, because of the large quantities of content they offer on a daily basis, traditional media also seem to do better than most when it comes to RSS. The New York Times is no exception. While their segmented RSS feeds provide most of the content their visitors might be interested in, and are also presented in an understandable and easy to use way, their e-mail newsletters provide real customization, precisely targeting the needs of their users. Their key e-mail newsletter is the "Daily News", delivered every morning. Subscribers can select exactly which topics they want to receive in this newsletter, which includes National news, Washington news, Sports etc. While the visitor would have to subscribe to multiple RSS feeds to receive all of this information, they can subscribe to only one e-mail newsletter and receive all of their preferred content in that. In addition to the "Daily News" e-mail newsletter, visitors can also choose from a variety of mostly weekly topic e-mail newsletters, such as the Travel Dispatch (Saturday Mornings, bringing special travel deals), In Advertising (Tuesdays, an advertising column), Your Money (Monday Mornings, information for personal investors) etc. 166 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Some of the special newsletter topics are already covered with RSS feeds, but not all of them, which means that their visitors would still need to subscribe to the email newsletters to get them delivered, if they wanted them. However, providing segmented RSS feeds and different e-mail newsletters (customized and fully editorial) also provides a new set of options for their visitors. Some visitors could subscribe to their Daily News e-mail newsletter to get the top news (and only the top news they are most interested in) delivered directly to their email inboxes in the morning and be, in a way, pushed with this content. But then they could also subscribe to some of the segmented feeds which provide them with other information that is not so pressing, but that they still want to read. Since this information is not so important to them, they don’t want to receive to their inboxes, but want to read it (and even just notice it) only when they say it’s the time, hence the decision for RSS. There are countless combinations available, giving their visitors more power to receive the New York Times content exactly as they want to receive it, using exactly the channels they prefer for each content type and/or topic. The most important news by e-mail, topic news by RSS, and so on, in many different flavors. So, in this example, RSS and e-mail are not at all excluding, but are working together to provide users with more power and choice, which is always a good thing. Example: Lockergnome http://www.lockergnome.com Web site type: Specialized news site "To inform, empower, and entertain - Lockergnome is here as a resource for people who are curious about the world of technology around them. Novices and experts are welcome to explore our ever-growing list of resources. Our contributors are full of passion. We will do our best to keep you informed on a daily basis. We will share your feedback, suggestions, and stories with the rest of our community whenever and wherever possible. If you seek knowledge, if you seek professional growth, if you seek information that's presented in a personal voice... you're home with Lockergnome." 167 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Lockergnome offers a variety of news, articles and resources on many different aspects of technology, especially related to the internet. As such it covers different content categories, from topics on Windows, Linux, the Mobile Lifestyle, using search engines, RSS, connecting people, new media, hardware help and more. As with The New York Times web site it's again evident that these topics are very diversified, although under the internet technology umbrella. But still, most Windows fanatics are not that much interested in Linux, and vica verca. People that are interested in RSS might not need hardware help. People interested in games might not be interested in content for IT professionals, and so on. Again, the content they cover is so diversified that it would make absolutely no sense for them to offer all of it in a single RSS feed. Much like The New York Times they offer individual RSS feeds for all of their different content categories, with an addition of a specialized feed for newest coupons and deals that Lockergnome arranges for its visitors and even a customizable Amazon RSS product feed (more on that in the following chapters). They do however differ from the previous example in how they are offering their RSS feeds. Instead of forcing their visitors to visit a single page to subscribe to the RSS feeds they are interested in, Lockergnome rather provides them access to their feeds from their entry page, next to each content category title, and then from the home page of each content category. RSS & E-mail Lockergnome provides both RSS and e-mail content delivery, with each content delivery channel being available for each content category, and the same content being delivered through both delivery channels. Explained differently, each content category has its own e-mail newsletter and its own segmented RSS feed. The e-mail newsletter and the RSS feed deliver the same content. There are however no "joint" e-mail newsletters or RSS feeds, which would provide content from different categories through a single "subscription". This is actually quite similar to what MarketingVox|News is doing, only that Lockergnome added content segmentation to the approach. 168 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Sitepoint http://www.sitepoint.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized information site Sitepoint offers articles, blogs and forums for web developers. These three are different content types with certain specifics. • For instance, the articles published are mostly lengthy how-to or thinking pieces, covering certain subjects in-depth. • Their blogs are short pieces of news or opinions on various issues relating to web development. • The forums are a very specific content category as well, since they allow multiple people to post to the web site and communicate among themselves. Basically, they have different content types that are very different from one another, although they cover a very niche content area, web development. But you really cannot deliver these three content types using an individual content delivery feed. Expert articles really can't mix with blogs, and none of these two can at all match with forum posts. To further complicate things, each of these major content types is divided in to more sub-sections. • The articles are divided in to "ordinary" articles and expert columnist articles. • The blogs are divided based on the topics they cover, ranging from .NET to Flash and other web technologies. • The forums again are divided in to various sub-sections, each with its own discussion threads. All of this would make it virtually impossible for Sitepoint to deliver all of their content with a single RSS feed. They solved this problem by providing individual RSS feeds for separate content sub-sections: • The latest articles are delivered either through a full latest articles RSS feed or through an RSS feed provided only for expert columnist articles. 169 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Blog content updates are provided through a single RSS feed for all of their blogs (makes sense since all blogs cover a quite specialized content area, web development) and individual RSS feeds for individual blogs as well. • Forum content updates are delivered through three individual RSS feeds: Featured Forum Threads (the new forum threads or discussions that the Sitepoint editorial team chose as the most interesting); Recent Forum Threads (all new forum threads or discussions); and Recent Forum Posts (an RSS feed with the latest posts from all of the forum threads or discussions). Access to these RSS feeds is provided in the following ways: • On the entry page, each content type (articles, blogs, forums) has a link to its most general RSS feed (the latest articles feed for articles, the combined feed for all the blogs and the recent threads feed for the forums). In addition, visitors can also access their RSS page, covering all of their RSS feeds and subscription instructions, from this location. • Each RSS feed is available from the page explaining RSS. • The combined feed for all the blogs is accessible from the Blogs category on the web site, and also from each blog sub-section. RSS & E-mail SitePoint take a very mature approach to using RSS and e-mail together, especially taking advantage of each channels specific advantages. As already noted their RSS feeds are used to deliver the latest content from each content section, such as Articles or Blogs. In this instance, RSS is used mostly as a content update service, letting their users know what new content is available exactly as it becomes available. Their e-mail e-zines are somewhat different … each issue in a editorial "whole", bringing the best content published on SitePoint in different categories, in a wellrounded way, not simply by itemizing content in to item lists. • The SitePoint Tribune is a weekly e-zine covering "everything you need to know about building, managing and marketing your Web site". • The SitePoint TechTimes is a bi-weekly e-zine for developers that covers technical aspects of Web development. • The SitePoint Design View is a monthly e-zine that covers various internet design aspects, such as layout, accessibility, etc. 170 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • The SitePoint Community Crier covers news and information from the SitePoint community, built around the Web site's forums. Compare this to their RSS feeds. As you will see the e-zines are highly topic oriented, while their RSS feeds are more "content type" oriented, such as providing access to all of the recent SitePoint articles, instead of combining all of their content related to web development. The SitePoint Community Crier is another interesting example. While the RSS feeds from the community include only forum posts and/or threads, the e-mail e-zine brings community members additional editorial community content, such as the message from the Editor, community awards, member spotlights etc., as well as "hot" topics and latest blog entries. Again, we're talking about an "editorial whole". The difference between their RSS feeds and e-mail e-zines is immediately apparent: • the RSS feeds are used to deliver itemized content lists, featuring the latest added content, without an greater editorial context; • the e-mail e-zines are used to deliver top content in a highly editorial context. The best of both worlds. 1.2.2.1 Segmentation Variables The first thing to decide when implementing segmented RSS content updates is what kind of segmentation variables you are going to use. This might sound complicated, but it really is not. The easiest way to imagine an RSS segmentation variable is to think of a strong enough point of differentiation for your content that warrants separating your content in to more categories. The segmentation variables are actually the criteria that decide how you are going to split that content. Take another look at the New York Times and Lockergnome RSS examples ! they are dividing their RSS feeds based on topics. Each RSS feed they offer provides content on a different topic. 171 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Bankrate http://www.bankrate.com [RSS] Web site type: Specialized information site "Bankrate Inc. is an Internet consumer finance marketplace that owns and operates a portfolio of Internet-based personal finance channels including banking, investing, taxes and small-business finance. Our flagship site, Bankrate.com, is the Web's leading aggregator of information on more than 100 financial products including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans and online banking fees." Bankrate offers 16 different RSS feeds. 14 of those are feeds segmented by content topic, covering topics such as "Tips for saving and spending", "Strategies for squeezing your budget" etc. In addition to these topic feeds they also provide 2 feeds, which are segmented by content frequency (how often the feed is updated): • "Today's new stories" ! New stories added to the web site on the current day. • "Top story -- Best of the week" ! The best story of the current week. RSS & E-mail Bankrate has developed quite an advanced e-mail content delivery strategy that ranges from specialized e-mail alerts to e-mail e-zines. RSS is, in comparison with their e-mail content delivery, again used only to provide the latest itemized content from different content topics, while each e-zine issue is an editorial whole. An especially interesting service, which could also work very well with RSS (RSS customization) are their e-mail alerts services, which alert you when any of your chosen "financial products" have changed in rates. For instance, the Mortgage Rate Alerts notify you when certain Mortgage Rates change, and you can specify which and how. You can select what type of loans you are interested in, loan amounts, target rates, markets etc., and the service alerts you when your chosen Mortgage Rates drop below the rate you specified in your settings. You can also create your individual content update alerts, by specifying what content topics you are interested in, even specifying specific keywords and alert frequency. 172 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Another great RSS & e-mail implementation that uses the best of both worlds, although they could provide somewhat additional choices with RSS content feeds. RSS segmentation based on topics makes sense if you offer so much different topics (even if these topics are in the same field, such as marketing) that it's very questionable that most individuals might be interested in most of them or if it's clear that people interested in specific topics you offer won't be interested in the other topics you offer (if they are very opposite). On the other hand, segmentation by content frequency makes sense if your visitors want a holistic view of all of the content you published in a certain period, or if they want to read “only” your editorially selected best content items. Now take a look at the Sitepoint example. The first differentiation point they are using to divide their RSS feeds is content type: articles, blogs and forums. Only after dividing the feeds among these three content types are they using segmentation by topics. This makes perfect sense, because articles, blogs and forums are so much different types of content that they are really difficult to package together in just one single RSS feed. Use segmentation by content type when it's evident that the content types you offer are so different that you cannot deliver them in a single list. There are naturally other ways of segmenting RSS content updates as well. Example: Cape Clear http://www.capeclear.com Web site type: Corporate site Cape Clear is a software development company that specializes in integrating various enterprise software. The company offers 4 RSS feeds with segmented content: • A press releases RSS feed, providing access to product information, information about changes in their company, their customers, their partnerships, events etc. This feed's purpose is to provide up-to-date news and information on their company that's interesting primarily to the press, existing customers and business partners. Basically, the feed is relevant only to the people with a relatively high interest in the company. 173 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • The Corporate News feed that delivers content updates on new sections of their web site or other significant changes. The key purpose of this feed is to tell people what's new on their web site, making it easier for them to access new content when it is added. • The CapeScience News feed provides content updates for their developer community web site. The purpose of this feed is to provide additional content and services to their existing customers and developers. • The CapeBlog feed, providing content updates for their blog, which is in fact interesting for a wider audience, not only people directly interested in the company itself. The purpose of this feed is to educate and naturally, on the longterm, prepare possible prospects to think of buying from them. RSS & E-mail Cape Clear takes the most basic approach to using RSS and e-mail together ! providing the same content through both of the two channels. The Cape Clear example demonstrates yet other possible segmentation variables: segmentation by content purpose. Each of their feeds has a different purpose. Other possibilities down these lines include providing separate RSS feeds for new product information, product updates, industry news, press releases, market education, opinions & insights and so on. Use segmentation by content purpose when the content you publish serves different purposes that do not match well or go together well. For instance, if some of your content is intended to make the sale and the other to inform the press about your company, you should provide this content through two different feeds. Of course, Cape Clear is also segmenting their feeds based on their target audiences (The CapeScience News feed for developers, The Press Releases feed for the media etc.). However, segmentation based on different target audiences doesn't necessarily have to mean that the segmented feeds have different purposes. You could for instance offer different feeds to different target audiences, but each of these feeds would have the same purpose, such as educating prospects and gradually converting them in to customers. 174 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Donos http://www.donos.net Web site type: Corporate & informational site Donos is a Slovenian asset management company that serves two general markets, the corporate market and the consumer market. As such it also divides its web site in to two main content sections, one intended for corporate financial managers and the other intended for consumers interested in better managing their assets. The purpose of these two content sections is very straightforward: to educate their prospects, demonstrate their ability to them, increase their interest in asset management, prepare them for the "purchase" and get them to request a personal meeting or more information. The corporate content section provides information that is relevant to people managing corporate assets, while the consumer section provides asset management education and news important for consumers. These two sections are clearly divided on their web site, even with different web site graphics and colors. Donos does not offer their content via RSS feeds, but none-the-less serves as a great example of segmenting content for different target audiences. They could easily use this same segmentation to provide two different RSS feeds. The next possible segmentation variable you can use is content authorship, mainly dividing content in to different RSS feeds based on who wrote specific articles. Your visitors could for instance select only RSS feeds that include articles and information by certain authors. Example: ClickZ http://www.clickz.com Web site type: Specialized information site ClickZ is one of the most comprehensive online information sources and articles databases on key internet marketing subjects. Their content includes internet marketing news, expert articles (a huge and daily updated article database), internet usage statistical information and news, and much more. 175 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS They recently also started offering some of their content through three RSS feeds: ClickZ News, ClickZ Stats and Search Engine Watch. All of these are basically news feeds, covering different topics (segmentation by content topics). This is however not the point I am trying to make with this examples. If you explore their article database (ClickZ Experts), which is not delivered by RSS, you'll notice that they have a regular panel of many content authors, most of which are experts in their individual internet marketing fields. ClickZ allows you to not only browse this web site section using their topics menu, but also by using the authors menu, giving you segmented access to articles only by individual authors. This could easily be upgraded to individual RSS feeds delivering content only from individual authors. RSS & E-mail ClickZ, much like most other informational web sites, has as well developed quite a substantial e-mail content delivery strategy, providing 8 individual e-zines and 6 content update e-mail services. While their RSS feeds provide only the "news" part, their e-mail e-zines provide access to all of their content, which also includes in-depth articles. Considering the huge scope of their content, additional RSS feeds, preferably with customization, would be most welcome. Segmentation by content authorship works when you are publishing content by very recognizable experts or authors that people want to specifically hear from. You can of course also use different segmentation methods together. 1.2.2.2 Key Advantages of Segmenting RSS Feeds The key advantage of offering segmented content updates against offering just one RSS feed for all of your content updates is the power of choice you are giving to your visitors to decide by themselves what content they want to receive. Why should they be forced to have to struggle through for example 10 new articles daily on topics they are not interested in only to find the article on one topic they actually are interested in? 176 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Providing segmented content updates also makes good business sense, because you really cannot push sales content and content for media, for instance, through the same feed. And it also makes sense from the usability point of view, because some different content types just don't go well together, for instance lengthy in-depth articles, short news and opiniated and uncensored forum postings. In theory, providing more RSS feeds also saves time for the user, because he only gets the content he is interested in, and as such also increases your relevancy, meaning the chance of getting your content read increase as well. 1.2.2.3 Key Disadvantages What happens if your visitor decides he is interested in 10 of your 30 topics and you offer all of them through individual RSS feeds? 1. He needs to subscribe to 10 different RSS feeds, which takes much time and is not very comfortable ! the visitor either won't do it and just won't include any of your feeds in his aggregator, or he will, but will feel resentment towards you for putting him through all of this work, not to mention the strain you put on him, making him decide among multiple possibilities. 2. There is only a limited number of RSS feeds each individual is willing to follow. Adding more and more feeds just creates more clutter, something he tried getting away from using RSS in the first place. No one wants additional 10 RSS feeds in his aggregator just to follow one site. On the other hand, perhaps you really don't have any other options if you for instance add more than 100 new content items daily. 3. The same content item might be published in multiple RSS feeds, for instance twice in different content topic feeds (if it's suitable for both), once in an RSS feed segmented by the content author and once in the RSS feed segmented by content purpose. This means that the user will actually get the one and the same content item in 4 different RSS feeds, creating a high level of irrelevancy, consequently "forcing" your reader to move away from you. As apparent from all of the above key disadvantages, the greatest problem is in the content overload for users, especially if you get carried away by deciding on using too many segmentation variables. 177 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.2.4 The Solution: Smart Segmentation Variables The key to solving the content overload problem is using smart segmentation variables based on your visitors' different content needs and usage patterns. This does not apply as much to segmentation variables by content purpose or by content type, but more to other segmentation variables that are especially prone to create incontrollable amounts of RSS feeds. The questions to ask yourself are: • Do we have individual user groups with specific and identifiable content interests? / Does our web site serve different target audiences? For instance, does our web site serve different target audiences, such as media representatives and prospects with different interests (such as a group of prospects interested in our corporate consulting services and a group of prospects interested in our personal consulting services). • How are our visitors using our web sites? Can we detect any prevailing patterns that prove that certain groups of visitors browse only specific content, for instance only articles by certain authors or only articles in certain categories? Using web analytics we can easily see if such patterns exist, and if they do, it makes sense to implement individual RSS feeds for individual visitor groups. If certain visitor groups only browse for articles from certain authors it makes sense to create RSS feeds for specific authors or specific author groups. If certain visitor groups only browse for articles in certain content categories or for articles on certain topics, then again it makes sense to create separate RSS feeds for individual topics or topic groups. Both of these questions are actually not related strictly to RSS, but in fact more to web site usability and content architecture. The RSS feeds should ideally simply surface from these two elements and give your visitors and additional and simple way of receiving the content they are already interested in. • If your web site serves multiple target audiences, either from the functional viewpoint (different general target audiences, such as prospects, customers, media representatives, employees, etc.) or from the interest view point (customers interested only in certain product or service lines), you should provide separate RSS feeds for them. This could mean offering a separate RSS feed for an individual target audience, delivering all of the content that audience might be interested in. 178 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • If your web site users use your web site in identifiable browsing patterns that you can apply to larger user groups (user segments), you should provide them with separate RSS feeds that meet their content needs, as predicted from web site usage analysis. This could mean offering a separate RSS feed for every identifiable browsing pattern that enough people can relate to, delivering all of the content that these visitor groups might be interested in (such as offering an individual RSS feed for every topic, author etc.). You however still have not removed the problem of content overload, but only added to it. • Most users could be interested even in up to one half of your feeds, meaning they would need to subscribe and watch all of them and • some of the content would appear in several RSS feeds that would probably be even watched by the same people, thus presenting them with the same content over and over again in different feeds they subscribe to. To evade these two problems you need to actually define the meeting points between the multiple target audiences you are serving and multiple content browsing patterns and so create "packaged" RSS feeds that will meet the needs of most users. This means that you need to offer fewer RSS feeds that meet the needs of the most prevailing visitor groups, by packaging different segmentation variables in to a smaller amount of RSS feeds. Sounds complicated? It really isn't. Let's take a look at some cookie-cutter possibilities … 1.2.2.4.1 Only different target audiences If all of your web site content can easily be divided in to a few groups, based on the different target audiences you serve, such as in the Donos case, simply provide RSS feeds that are tailored to the different target audiences, delivering to them all of the content that relates to their needs. 179 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.2.4.2 One prevailing target audience, multiple topics from a specialized field If you serve only one prevailing target audience, but offer them multiple topics from one specialized field (such as internet marketing), and you can see that certain visitor groups browse only for specific topics, simply provide them with different RSS feeds that include all of the topics that these visitor groups are interested in. The trick is not to offer them an RSS feed for every topic, but to combine topics based on prevailing browsing patterns. Let's presume that you serve corporate internet marketing managers. Your web site covers the following topics, structured in to content categories: • internet marketing management for medium-sized businesses, • internet marketing management for large corporations, • internet marketing strategies, • internet marketing models, • split-testing, • e-mail marketing strategies, • e-mail promotions, • e-zine publishing, • CRM, • internet content management, • search engine optimization, • pay-per-click advertising, • internet branding, • internet public relations, • copywriting, • internet marketing solutions, 180 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • internet marketing case studies (covering all of the topics, meaning that each case study is published in the appropriate topic content category and at the same time also in the "internet marketing case studies" content category). Now, let's presume that you did a web site usage analysis, analyzing your web server logs, to determine how people are actually using your web site. You discover that most visitors, considering what topics they mostly browse, can be divided in to three visitor groups. • Visitor group #1 o internet marketing management for large corporations o internet marketing strategies o internet marketing models o e-mail marketing strategies o CRM o internet content management o internet marketing solutions • Visitor group #2 o internet marketing management for medium-sized businesses o split-testing o copywriting o e-mail promotions o internet content management o search engine optimization o pay-per-click advertising • Visitor group #3 o e-zine publishing o internet public relations o copywriting o internet content management 181 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As you can see each group has quite specific interests. The best way to serve them with RSS content delivery is to offer each of them a single RSS feed that delivers to them the content from the content categories they are most interested in. You just "packaged" your content in to easy to absorb RSS feeds that meet the exact needs of your different visitor groups, without actually overloading them with content. The best part about this approach to offering segmented RSS feeds is that you can package different topics by exactly "listening" to what your visitors want. It works even if we make things more complicated. Let's say that in addition to the above three visitor groups we also found that one visitor group reads only the articles by one of your authors. Again, it makes sense to provide them with an RSS feed that meets their needs ! an RSS feed only carrying the articles from that one author. But there are limits to this approach as well, because you really can't expect to divide all of your visitors in to general visitor groups. There will always be people with totally unique browsing patterns and needs. But you cannot adjust yourself to every individual. You could of course still offer a separate RSS feed for every content category and for every segmentation variable, but just make sure that these highly specific feeds are in the background. Actively promote the "packaged" RSS feeds, but also let your visitors know that they can still "subscribe" to highly specific feeds if they so like. The point of "packaging" RSS feeds is not to limit your users, but rather to help them on their way and make their content consumption as simple as possible. • Create the best possible "default" settings (the packaged RSS feeds), • but still allow them to individually choose more segmented content, if they so desire. In most cases you'll discover that most people will only use your packaged RSS feeds and very few will take enough time to really tailor what you are offering to them to best suit their needs. 182 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.2.4.3 Multiple target audiences, multiple topics from a specialized field The approach is the same as with serving one target audience, but with one additional level. Instead of analyzing your web site usage patterns as a whole, you need to analyze them by taking in to account your different target audiences and recognizing different visitor groups within these audiences. 1. Identify the key target audiences your web site is serving and your goals with each of them. 2. Analyze how each target audience is using your web site and create visitor groups for each of them. 3. Identify what content topics (or other segmentation variables appropriate in your specific case) each visitor group within the larger target audience is browsing for. 4. Offer a "master" RSS feed for each target audience (unless it's not possible because the content you offer to each audience has too different purposes or is of different type), and then also as few as possible packaged RSS feeds. It's also possible that people from different target audiences are more or less browsing the same topics. In this case you the instructions from the previous chapter. 1.2.2.4.4 Highly diversified topics Web sites offering highly diversified content, such as general news web sites, are a quite different story. Since they are publishing large daily amounts of content (even more than 100 articles daily) and since their topics are usually very diversified, they actually do need to offer an individual RSS feed for each major topic (unless they decide for the more advanced possibilities presented in the following chapters). 1.2.3 Customized Content Updates Imagine having the power to deliver exactly the content that your individual users want to receive? Imagine having the power to then meet your own promotional efforts with their expressed needs? 183 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This is what customized content updates can do for you, as well as solve the content overload problem we encountered with segmented content updates, although they are much more difficult to implement. Content publishers offering customized RSS content updates actually allow their users to personally customize their RSS feed, including only the content from the publisher they want to receive and excluding all of the content they don't want to receive. While this may sound simple on paper, it does require an advanced approach to RSS implementation, especially from the technology viewpoint, as well as more work on the part of your users. Are they ready to invest it to really get customized content updates from you? This will, naturally, entirely depend on the quality and quantity of your content, as well as the level of involvement and "education" of your users. Example: Cisco http://www.cisco.com/ Web site type: Corporate site The Cisco web site, as we already mentioned before, provides its users with an advanced “RSS customization” feature. Their feeds actually aren't customized ! they rather pre-created a number of feeds that match different interests, and provided an easy-to-use search engine or configurator that lets you choose the feed that's most relevant to use. This includes the following choices you have: • Your region • The customer check-box (to be checked if you want to receive only content updates for customers) • The partner check-box (to be checked if you want to receive only content updates for partners) • Content categories (which content categories interest you the most; this includes different news categories, information for different regions, information on different technologies, etc. But you can select only all or one of the content categories, but not mix them.). 184 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The selected options will provide you with links to RSS feeds that match your interests, and you can re-do the process as many times as you want to get access to all of the single content categories you might be interested in. The subscription tool is simply a configurator that provides you with a link to a pre-made RSS feed, based on your interests. As such this is a good example of RSS content update segmentation, which can work just as well as customization. Example: Finance http://www.finance-on.net Web site type: Business news site Finance-on.net, the internet edition of the business daily Finance, the only Slovenian daily business newspaper, offers its users more than 50 articles and short news each morning, including regularly added news and press releases during the day. Because the web site is covering many different business topics, it's impossible for them to completely satisfy the needs of different users using only one "default" content delivery setting. While some users are interested only in financial markets, others are interested only in corporate news and affairs, and again others only in lifestyle topics, and so on. Because of the content diversity the entire web site was developed around the customization principle, allowing its users to adjust what content they want to watch on the web site and receive using different content delivery mechanisms. Their RSS content delivery as well matches this principle, giving their users complete control over what content they want to receive through their own individualized RSS feed. Once new users register on the web site they are given the option of customizing their RSS feed, using the following customization parameters: • Content type (articles / news, short reports, commentaries, press releases) • Content topics (General business news and affairs, Realestate, Carreers, The new economy, Marketing, Personal finances, Financial markets, Tourism, Europe etc.) 185 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Content with specific keywords: users can also select from hundreds of keywords from the web site's "glossary" (company names, authors, people, ideas, concepts etc. ) to further reduce the number of hits from the above to customization parameters, receiving extremely targeted content. These parameters cover the entire newspaper editorial and also include webonly specific content, such as press releases. The interesting part is that the customization parameters are set hierarchically, using the above demonstrated model. • The selected content types determine what content types only is the user going to receive using the RSS feed. He only receives the selected content types. • The selected content topics determine what content topics only is the user going to receive using the RSS feed, among the selected content types. The user does not receive topics from the content types he did not select. • The selected keywords further reduce the final results, again pertaining only to the selected content types and topics. The result is a really customized experience that exactly matches even the most narrow or wide user needs. After the user modifies his settings he gains access to his own individual RSS feed. While all this might look quite easy from the user's point of view, we must understand that: • the subscription process, as you will see, is quite complicated and does take some time, which means that the amount of work involved might scare away users, especially if there are other relevant content sources available to them; • users usually don't customize web sites or individual content delivery options for them to best tailor to their needs, but most of the time just go with the "default" setting. This means that you still need to invest a lot of time in preparing the best possible "default" settings or even preparing a few segmented RSS content feeds to still provide a desirable level of service for the people that won't take the trouble of customizing their own RSS feed. Let's now take a look at their registration process: 186 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • In order to view most of the published content, as well as gain access to the web site's content delivery options, users need to undergo a free registration process. When trying to access restricted content they are instantly prompted to register. • The registration process starts by the user having to enter his desired username and his e-mail address. • After entering their basic information the user is taken to the next screen where he needs to pinpoint his interests, selecting the primary topics he is most interested in. Actually these topics don't have anything to do with customization and are only here to provide the business daily with advanced e-mail targeting capabilities for their in-house e-mail campaigns. • This concludes the first part of the registration process. The user must now confirm the validity of his e-mail address by clicking on the link in the confirmation e-mail he receives directly after the above step is completed. • In order to customize and access his RSS feed the user needs to login to the web site, then click on the "Settings" link and then go to the "Advanced Content Delivery" link on the "Settings" page. Quite a difficult process that could be improved upon. As you can see the entire process of getting access to your own customized RSS feed in this example consists of 5 macro-actions, which are further broken down in to smaller actions you need to take to finally get to your destination. The greatest problem with this is that when users visit your web site getting a customized RSS feed is not exactly their destination. They might come to that eventually, but their first goal is to get the content they are interested in. The RSS "subscription" can only follow as an easy tool that gives them greater comfort accessing your content. Construct your subscription process accordingly. Regardless of the rather difficult registration process the Finance example is one of the best (and few) examples of excellent customized RSS content delivery, especially because the customization features are a natural part of the web site itself, not just something that was added for RSS content delivery. 187 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Allen.com http://www.allen.com Web site type: Specialized information site The Allen.com web site focuses on unifying marketing & sales content, which it also delivers using customized RSS feeds that require subscription to use. • The subscription process begins by having to enter your e-mail address on the first subscription screen, where you also find out why doing this will benefit you and how. • After entering your e-mail address you are taken to the next screen where you need to enter your contact information (first name, last name, zip code and e-mail address again), decide whether you want to subscribe to their e-mail newsletter and also select your interests / topics (One-to-One Marketing, CRM, Marketing Research etc.). • After confirming your choices the RSS box in the left column of the web site, which was earlier prompting you to customize (they call it personalization, which it really isn't, but more on that later) your own RSS feed, contains the link to your customized RSS feed. You also gain access to a special customized page within the web site, listing the content that matches your interests. RSS & E-mail As explained above, the Allen.com web site uses the same subscription mechanism for the e-mail subscription and the personalized RSS feed. They explain the difference between the two themselves: "Yes, even our e-mail newsletter is personalized! While the personalized RSS headline feed shows headlines only for a few days, the newsletter includes headlines and links for the entire month." This might be a good time to add that e-mail is more appropriate for delivering ezines that people will only read periodically, such as once per month, as opposed to using RSS to see what's new every day. So your decision should also take in to consideration the reading habits of your subscribers. Is your content so important to them that they want to read it every day or very regularly, or do they prefer taking an hour off to read it once per month? 188 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: TMCnet.com http://www.tmcnet.com Web site type: Specialized information site TMCnet.com specializes in CRM solutions, VoIP, Call Centers and other related technology news, providing daily content updates from these topics. Given the relatively large scope of different information they offer, they decided to go with e-mail notification and RSS content updates customization, which can both be accessed from one single subscription mechanism. • Every page of their web site provides a quite simple form in which you can enter up to three different keyword combinations and your e-mail to start the combined registration process for both e-mail and RSS customized subscriptions. Entering the e-mail address is required. • After submitting this form you get to a page, which first describes their service in full, telling you how to use it, and then provides you with additional 7 fields for additional keyword combinations. Each separate keyword combination creates a separate customized e-mail notification service and RSS feed for you. • The third step allows you to review your information before finally submitting it. • And on the fourth step you get links to your customized RSS feeds, as well as an explanation of how the e-mail notification service works: you just received a confirmation e-mail with a link you have to click on to activate your e-mail notifications; if you do not click on the link you will not start receiving their emails. RSS feeds require no confirmation. RSS & E-mail The TMCnet.com e-mail and RSS delivery work pretty much the same ! the same subscription mechanism and the same delivery frequency (daily). 189 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Lockergnome http://www.lockergnome.com Web site type: Specialized news site In addition to their segmented RSS content delivery Lockergnome also offers an interesting Amazon RSS feed generator that lets you create your own customized RSS feed for new Amazon releases. "Tired of checking multiple feeds just to see your favorite categories? Well fret no more. Select up to 20 categories from the list below and we'll do all the work. Check the top sellers in all your favorite Amazon products from a single RSS feed." The feed generator allows you to select from multiple Amazon product categories (baby products, books, DVDs etc.) and specific product topics within them (for instance Business & Investing topic from the Books product category). After selecting the topics you are interested in their system creates a custom RSS feed for you that you can easily include in your RSS aggregator. Unlike the other customization examples using Lockergnome's customized Amazon feed does not require any kind of registration, meaning they don't for instance require an e-mail address. Creating a customized feed with them is easy, simple and anonymous. http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/resources/amazon.phtml Example: Impeller.net http://impeller.net Web site type: Specialized information site The Impeller.net web site provides "the latest news from the world of pumps", serving the pump industry. Since this is an online magazine, they are another example of a web site that provides relatively large numbers of regularly updated content. 190 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS One would think that the interests of people interested in the pump industry would be quite similar, thus not making RSS customization necessary. The reality is different: the online magazine provides content from different topics such as technical news, financial news, acquisitions, conferences, case studies etc. These content topics, evidently, are segmented to tailor to the needs of different people in the pump industry. Consequently, they also offer RSS feed customization. Their customized RSS feeds are generated "on-the-fly", from a single dynamic file, based on the URL parameter. The basic file is named rss2.asp. By adding parameters to this file the user can customize his feed. This is done through a simple user interface that generates the appropriate URL parameters on the fly: • Language ! what language news do you want to receive? Choosing a language will add the following parameter to the URL ! "lgg=en" ! rss2.asp?lgg=en • Subject area ! next you have to choose the subject area you are most interested in, or just leave the setting at "All". If you do choose a subject area, such as "Technical news", the URL generator will add the following parameter to the URL ! "Group=T" ! "rss2.asp?lgg=en&Group=T" • Search for ! they also allow you to enter specific keywords that further limit your above choices only to the content that includes these keywords. If for instance you were to enter the keyword "marketing", the "SearchStr=marketing" parameter would be added to the line ! "rss2.asp?lgg=en&Group=T&SearchStr=marketing" All of this happens on-the-fly: the URL parameters are generated as you select your options. This removes the need to create a separate RSS feed for every user, but it does create a greater server load, since the server needs to generate the RSS feed for every user on-the-fly, from one single dynamic RSS file (using their content database). RSS & E-mail The Impeller.net web site does take a rather unique approach to RSS & E-mail. Contrary to what others are doing they actually developed their RSS feeds to a more advanced level than their e-mail delivery. 191 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS E-mail subscribers only have the choice of subscribing to one "mass" e-mail newsletter with no customization, and can only receive what the web site's editors decide should go in to the newsletter. Although putting so much emphasis on RSS is commendable, one can question whether doing the same for e-mail wouldn't work better, considering the currently still low RSS penetration. Example: Moreover.com http://www.moreover.com Web site type: News aggregator site Moreover is one of the world's largest news aggregator services, offering news from thousands of different online sources. It's not just a news service, but even more so a business intelligence service, providing companies and professionals easy access to the most relevant content matching their interests. "Moreover offers a range of solutions delivering real-time, business critical information from the very latest coverage about your customers and sales prospect, to competitor announcements and industry acquisitions." RSS fits in to this quite naturally and in this example must actually provide customization capabilities for professionals to get the most of this service, since Moreover offers huge amounts of regularly updated content. Your choices begin with segmented RSS feeds (http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html) that cover more than 100 different highly-specialized topics. If you need even more precision you can use their customization features. One of them is creating your own RSS feeds from Moreover using queries for their default RSS URL. The default query URL for these feeds is: http://www.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?o=rss&query=x Just replace the X with the keyword you are most interested in, such as the following for example: http://www.moreover.com/cgilocal/page?o=rss&query=marketing This will create a customized feed containing the results for the "marketing" keyword, which will be updated every 15 minutes. 192 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If you are interested in more than just one keyword just add spaces between the words (using the %20 line instead of the space), like this: http://www.moreover.com/cgilocal/page?o=rss&query=marketing%20sales Basically, using these queries in their URL performs a search through their huge database and provides the results though a customized RSS feed. These 7 examples cover different methods of giving your users customized RSS content consumption capabilities. As you can see there range from modifying the old customized e-mail subscription approach, which we already know, to integrating RSS and search to create customized feeds. The end result in all cases is simple: customized RSS feeds that precisely match the interests and needs of your users, thus greatly increasing the relevancy of your content to individuals, as well as giving you the power of better targeting the promotional offers you might want to deliver through your RSS feeds. 1.2.3.1 Who RSS Customization is Appropriate For? As the complexity of the RSS implementation increases, so does the wide circle of what is appropriate decrease. Customized RSS feeds are really appropriate for a very limited circle of web sites; those delivering large amounts of differentiated content on a daily basis. For instance, there is really no need for customized RSS feeds if you only deliver 15 new content items daily. The five basic questions you need to consider when deciding for customized RSS feeds are: • Do I publish so much content daily that it's difficult for people to consume it if being delivered through a single RSS feed? • Do I publish so much different content that the majority of my visitors are only going to be interested in a few of the topics I cover? • Are the interests of my users so specific that they need to severely limit the content they receive from me to keep content relevancy high at all times? 193 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Is my content so diverse that even segmented content feeds might produce content overload for my users and decrease my content relevancy? • Are my users interested enough and involved enough for them to actually want to take the time to customize their own RSS feed? Only if the answer to all of the five questions is "yes" should you consider implementing customized RSS feeds. As you'll find out most of the time the customization decision is not so much RSS related, but has more to do with your entire web site. If you already determined previously that you need customization to meet the needs of your visitors you probably already have at least basic customization features already present on your web site. If however you previously felt that you don't need customized web site capabilities, chance are you probably won't need customized RSS content delivery as well. In any case, this is not a decision to be taken lightly, as it does mean you will need to invest a lot more in your RSS development than you would have to if you decided only for general or segmented RSS content delivery. In practice customized RSS content delivery will prove useful to: • news oriented web sites with constantly updated and differentiated content; • search engines; • web stores with large amounts of new products from highly differentiated product categories; • large production companies that need to deliver specific product support information and advice for large quantities of different products or products that require differentiated content. Let's take a look at an example of a company that would do very well to implement customized RSS delivery as an additional content delivery channel for their already existing service. 194 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Hewlett-Packard http://www.hp.com Web site type: Corporate site Everyone knows Hewlett-Packard as one of the best reputable computer hardware producers in the world. As part of their services HP also offers e-mail newsletters to their home and home office customers and corporate customers, designed to provide additional support and information for their customers, as well as increase and accelerate their purchases from HP. For home users they offer the following: • HP Newsgram: "Customized tips & tricks and creative ideas for your HP and Compaq products." • Software and Driver notifications: "Notifications of new software patches and drivers for your products." • Support Alert notifications: "Support alerts and handy fixes for your products." • Hpshopping newsletter: "Timely offers, promotions and product information from HP Shopping." The first three can be customized by the user, delivering exactly the content appropriate for him. The most interesting of these is the HP Newsgram. HP allows you to fully customize this newsletter by noting the following preferences: • Which HP products you are currently using ! based on this information HP will send you support information, driver updates and troubleshooting tips especially for your product in complete customized issues, thus completely increasing the relevancy of the e-zine to your particular situation. • What do you use your products for most / What primary operating system you are using ! these two questions give further information about what content you specifically need, additionally increasing the relevancy of the specific product oriented information. • Which HP feature articles you would like to receive regularly in your e-zine, either PC Discovery Series (what you can accomplish using your PC) and/or the Digital Photography Series. 195 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Which of the other topics you are interested in? • How experienced you are with digital photography? • What digital photography activities you do? • Which creative projects you would like to receive in your e-zine: quilting and/or scrap-booking (if you select any of these topics they will take priority over articles on other interests)? • Which print and digital audio / video projects interest you? • Which special papers you use for printing? • Personal preferences, such as e-mail format (HTML or pure text), internet connection speed, how you contact HP support and your preferred HP retailer for HP products and supplies. Using all of this information HP can deliver to you e-zine issues that are highly relevant to your needs and interests, which increases not only the chance you'll read them, but also that your satisfaction with increase and that you'll respond to their offers. HP only offers this service through e-mail, but they could "quite easily" upgrade it to offer customized RSS functionality as well. As with the other examples, customized RSS feeds would be a natural extension to the already existing services and customization requirements for these two companies, and not a new customization service that would be implemented solely for RSS. They would add an additional content delivery option for their users, but not a whole new content delivery service. 1.2.3.2 Key Advantages The obvious advantage of customized RSS feeds is the power you are giving to your users. You just went from forcing them to accept predefined lists of content to enabling them to select only what they want to receive from you. This has many positive benefits for your business: • Customization will usually mean that your subscribers actually receive less content from you, but it's just the content that they do want to receive. 196 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Receiving less content means there's less content overload, consequently decreasing the subscribers' frustration and increasing the chances they actually read your content. And in the end, getting your content read should be one of the most important goals of your publishing activities. • Customization removes the need for multiple feeds, which again decreases the content overload for your subscribers, as well as removes the need for them to manage multiple RSS feeds from just one source. • When your subscribers' content overload reaches a critical limit where they start removing most of the feeds they subscribe to, the chances of yours staying are much better with a customized feed that exactly matches their interests. But there's much more to this than just additional benefits for your subscribers. • When your users customize their RSS feed they are actually telling you exactly where their interests lie, but are doing so with much greater reliability than with any public poll. It's in their best interest to share their interests with you, so they will be truthful. This is one of the best ways of determining what your visitors really want in terms of content and what areas they are interested in. Yes, providing customized RSS feeds will in fact give you greater market insight. • The greatest thing about this is that your newly acquired market insight can be applied to your whole subscriber base and also, which is even more important, to a specific individual or visitor groups. You now know exactly what your subscribers are interested in and can, using this information, only promote the products that match their interests to them. It's easy shooting out a promotional message using your RSS feed, but with customized feeds exactly the right people are going to receive exactly the right message. • You can also track which users are using your feeds and which are not, which can further be used to target marketing campaigns. This is of course valid only for the customization methods that allow you to identify an individual user and target content directly to him ! meaning only the feeds that create a separate RSS file for each user or feeds that dynamically generate an RSS feed for each individual user, based on his user ID. 197 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • One of the greatest disadvantages of RSS is the low advertisement tolerance of its users. This severely limits the amount of advertising you can shoot through your feed. With customized feeds that's no longer a problem, because you can precisely target your ads. The ad for your web design service will only be delivered to people interested in web design, while your copywriting ad will only be delivered to people interested in copywriting. It could of course still happen that someone is interested in both and could receive both ads --- in this case you would do well to implement a safety plug that would prevent that same user from receiving two ads two close to one another, perhaps by giving priority to individual ads. • What you can do for your own promotions you can also do for your advertisers, giving them the option of better targeting their marketing messages. 1.2.3.4 Key Disadvantages It would seem that customized RSS content delivery is the promised world for marketers that want to get their content delivered and read, achieving the best possible results from their efforts. But unfortunately these benefits do come at a cost: • Customized RSS content delivery is quite expensive to implement, as it demands a much more complex content management solution. While general and segmented feeds can even be done by hand, without having to purchase any web solutions, customized delivery will require quite an investment. 198 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Your subscribers need to invest some time and energy in to customizing their own feed, depending naturally on the kind of subscription process you decide. In either case, whether you require a complex web site registration, such as with the Finance-on.net case, or a simpler customization process, such as the one for Lockergnome's Amazon feed, it's still more difficult than adding a generic RSS feed you find on some web site to your aggregator. It requires more interaction and more activity on the visitor's part. You certainly need to motivate them much better than you would have to with general or segmented feeds ! a simple subscription process so easy that people often don't give a second thought to adding a new feed to their aggregator, becomes a thinking process that demands involvement. By forcing your prospects to invest more time and energy in to subscribing you might be turning them away, even if you are doing this with their best interests in mind. The only real solution is providing content they are not likely to easily get somewhere else. But, if your content is more or less "run-of-the-mill", customization is not for you. • Customized RSS feeds mean more load for your server, which can become a problem if your subscription lists exceeds more than a few thousand RSS users. Do the advantages out-weight the disadvantages? It totally depends on you and your business specifics. If it's not necessary for you to offer customized feeds, than don't do it. But if you found that this is something that you need to better serve your visitors or if this is required by your business specifics, than the added investment should well be worth it. It is however important to understand that most web sites that need such functionality already have it implemented with their content management system, although they might not be using it to deliver content in RSS as well. Adding customizable RSS shouldn't be a problem or a large investment for such companies. 1.2.3.5 Customization Parameters If you do decide to offer customized RSS, you will need to choose what customization parameters you are going to offer to your visitors to customize their feeds. These can be one or a few or all of the following: • Content type 199 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Content topics • Keywords • Content source • Content purpose As you can see these are more or less the same as segmentation variables for segmented RSS feeds. Again, the choice will depend on the specifics of the content you offer, just as we covered in the previous chapters. The greatest challenge will be deciding how the parameters that you do choose interact. Remember the Finance case: • The selected content types determine what content types only is the user going to receive using the RSS feed. He only receives the selected content types. • The selected content topics determine what content topics only is the user going to receive using the RSS feed, among the selected content types. The user does not receive topics from the content types he did not select. • The selected keywords further reduce the final results, again pertaining only to the selected content types and topics. They use a hierarchical parameter structure where each selected parameter influences the next one. This however might not work for every web site. • What happens if your visitor wants to receive short news (content type) from the national news topic (content topic), articles (content type) from the marketing topic (content topic) and press releases (content type) from the topic covering his industry (content topic)? The Finance approach doesn't allow for this, but it's just something that your users might want. If that's the case you need to allow them to select what content type they wish to receive from each content topic, for example. Unfortunately doing this will further complicate the subscription process, although your users will get even more accurate results for their interests. The next possibility would be using the same approach Finance are for "light" users, but still giving the "heavy" and more picky users the option of doing "the full Monty". 200 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • The next realistic problem is using the keyword parameter and content source together with the other parameters. The question is whether selecting keywords in addition to your other choices (such as content topics) adds to the results or takes from them. Said more simply, if your subscribers select a few keywords, will you use this information to further filter the content topics they previously selected and provide even more precise content; or are you going to add more content to their feed, adding even content that is not covered by the content topics they chose. It's the same with content source. The easy choice would be letting your visitors choose how they want it, but that would add even more work for them. So in the end it's really up to you and what you believe will work best in your specific case. This will mostly depend on how your visitors are using your web site. • If you feel that all of this is too complicated and takes too much time and energy from your visitors there's a simpler option as well. Remember all of the segmented RSS feeds examples. A simple way of letting your visitors customize their feed would be offering them a number of predefined segmented RSS feeds that they can include or exclude in their feeds. We're basically talking about an "include/exclude principle". As already noted before, Cape Clear offers 4 RSS feeds with segmented content: • A press releases RSS feed • The Corporate News feed • The CapeScience News feed • The CapeBlog feed If Cape Clear wanted to offer customized RSS feeds they could simply allow their users to include or exclude each of the 4 feeds in a single customized feed. On the other hand, Cape Clear is a great example of when customization actually might not work. We earlier defined their segmentation variables as segmentation by content purpose. Because each of their segmented feeds serves a different purpose it is questionable if their users would actually want to integrate the four of them in to a single customized feed. 201 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It completely depends on what their users want and what their interests are. But that's their homework, as it is yours when determining if and how to offer customization. Cape Clear could for instance analyze their log files and try to see if their individual subscribers actually subscribe to more than one of their feeds or not. If they do, customization might do well, if they don't, it won't do any good. Next, they should also check with their users if they actually want to receive multiple-purpose content in a single feed. And third, if they find out that their users do want to receive multiple-purpose content in a single feed, do they want content items from each individual feed (integrated in to their customized feed) to be easily recognizable by their "purpose", for instance by adding a prefix to each content item headline, such as this: [Press Release] Content item title • However, allowing people only to select from a small number of predefined RSS feeds isn't really taking advantage of the RSS customization capabilities, which you do need if you are publishing loads of differentiated content that really can't mix, such as large amounts of news from different industries, forums and your own corporate news. Naturally, as explained once before, forum postings and editorial news just don't go well together. To solve this problem you could provide three different feeds by content type and purpose (industry news, forum, corporate news) and then allow your visitors to separately customize each of them or at least the industry news and forums, leaving them with one segmented feed (corporate news) that they can take "as is". As you can see there really aren't any strict rules or recipes that we can abide by or look to for safety and foolproof decisions. That is why it is crucial you understand RSS and its implications in full before starting to use some of its more advanced capabilities (such as customization). 1.2.3.6 The Subscription Processes All of what we just covered is especially important when you come to the subscription process: finally the part where you need to win your prospects over and get them to customize their feed. There are four generic approaches you can use: • Instant access to the customized feed 202 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Integrated registration and feed customization • Separate registration and follow-up customization • Search results customization Let's take a better look at each of them. 1.2.3.6.1 Instant access to the customized feed The instant access to the customized feed approach is exactly that: you allow your visitors to easily customize their own RSS feed, without having to register on your web site or give you any personal information, including no e-mail. Take another look at the Lockergnome Amazon feed example to see how this is done, or better yet check out their solution in person. The process is simple: 1. Select your interests 2. Click on the "create RSS feed" button or something similar 3. Copy and paste the URL to your new RSS feed in to your aggregator It's as easy as 1-2-3. It can get more complicated on the implementation side. Now this will be somewhat technical, so don't become afraid after reading the first few lines. Lockergnome, for instance, is actually using customization through "search results" ! the customization interface allows users to easily select their interests, and the system running in the background just uses these interests to create an URL that functions similar to what we saw with the Moreover example. For instance, if you select the Activity and Feeding topics in the Baby category and then click on the "Create my feed!" button. This will generate the following RSS feed URL for you: http://www.lockergnome.com/amazon/rss.custom.php?id1=1&id2=3 If you go back and select other topics, the URL to the feed will change accordingly. For instance, if you select the Action & Adventure topic from the VHS category, the GameCube topic from the Video Games category and the Phones topic in the Wireless category you will get the following URL: 203 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS http://www.lockergnome.com/amazon/rss.custom.php?id1=1&id2= 3&id3=279&id4=304&id5=316 As you can see, the basic URL stays the same, only the parameters behind the ? mark change. These parameters basically tell their system what content topics to provide for you from their repository (what content topics to fetch from their repository when you "request" the file). The actual RSS file (rss.custom.php) always stays the same, only its parameters change, which means that they do not create a separate and individual feed for their users. This kind of implementation could also be used for more complex customized feeds, such as with the Finance example. The other was of doing this would be to "create" an individual RSS feed for each and every user, either by providing one dynamic RSS feed or by actually creating a new RSS file for every user. • Dynamic RSS feed: this would mean that the feed is generated "on-the-fly", when you request it through your individual URL. This URL basically points to the one and the same RSS file for all users, but uses special parameters (much like the Lockergnome example) to tell the system which user this is and what content to serve. So instead of sending the system an URL with parameters that tell it what content topics to fetch for you, you are sending it your unique ID number. Using this ID number the system can see what topics you selected (those are stored in the database) and then serve them to you. • A new RSS file for every user: this would mean creating a separate RSS file for every user. Your RSS publishing system would then have to re-create each of these files when new content, that matches the topic requirements of each file, is added to the web site. You're now probably wondering what's best for you? This will depend on the technical solution you will be using, so it's best to leave the decision to your techies. But it is still important understanding how all this works! OK, let's move on … The key advantages of providing instant access to customized feeds are: 204 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • quick and easy customization, without forcing your visitor to go through multiple steps and putting him to a lot of trouble; • it's anonymous, your visitors don't have to give you any kind of personal data to access customized feeds. Both of these advantages are great when it comes to bringing together customization and ease of use for your visitors, as well as allowing them to remain anonymous, keeping them from getting afraid for their privacy. But, even if your customized feeds are private, it doesn't mean that you cannot use them for targeted promotions to your users based on their interests. On the contrary, it works just the same as with other subscription processes. The negatives on the other hand are: • Because the customized feeds aren't actually attributed to individual users, since getting them this way is completely anonymous, they can't go back and just change some of their customization parameters and keep the others. If they want to change anything with their feed they need to go through the settings cycle once again from the beginning. It does mean more work for them. • If your web site is already built around some sort of Content Management System that requires users to register to customize their experience or get access to additional content, chances are it would be more difficult setting up an instant feed generator in comparison to simply adding RSS customization functionality to your existing system by totally integrating it in your existing technology. • It's the same when it comes to your internet strategy. If your internet strategy is built around the goal of getting users to register and give you their personal information, this as well will not work for you. And there's certainly no sense in doing it this way if it goes against your internet strategy. • You can't get personal information about your users and you cannot track their interests (by tracking their actions on your web site) for even more precise targeting. Also, no user profiling. Basically, instant customization only works if you don't already have a developed content and user database running behind your web site. If you do, just integrate this functionality in your existing system. 205 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.3.6.2 Integrated registration and feed customization The integrated registration and feed customization subscription process combines web site registration and feed customization in one single sitting, making it RSS feed customization fast … as long as you already decide to register at the web site. Let's take another look at the Allen.com web site that nicely demonstrates this registration process: Step #1: Enter your e-mail address in either the "Free Newsletter" box on the front page or by first clicking through the "Personalized RSS Feed" link and giving up your e-mail address there. Step #2: You are now taken to the "Subscription & Interest Profile" page where you can enter additional information. • Your contact information [First Name, Last Name, Zip/Postal Code, E-mail] • Newsletter subscription [a checkbox letting you subscribe or unsubscribe from the e-mail newsletter] • Your interests [One-to-One Marketing, CRM, Marketing Research, E-Commerce etc.] Once you complete the above information and by doing so the registration, you are given access to a customized RSS feed as well. This approach will work wonders if: • the benefits you offer for web site registration to your users are enough for them to start the registration process; • your customization parameters are relatively simple and don't require your users to dig dip and ponder with difficulty on what to select. Even better, if you integrate feed customization with the registration process you can even educate your users about RSS and might convince them to use your RSS feed. The logic here is quite simple: • When most people see orange RSS buttons they don't know what to do with them and simply ignore them. 206 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Most people still don't care about RSS and really have no interest in doing some extra work to get it. • Hey, most people don't even know how RSS can help them. But what if you approach them from the other end: • First get them to register (that's easy, especially if your blocking access to your content to unregistered users), and while doing that also to tell you their topics interests. • Now that the registration is complete you can tell them that they can also receive your content updates using RSS and how that will benefit them. You even already prepared a customized feed for them that exactly matches their interests. • Your new registered user just customized his own RSS feed without even knowing it or giving it a second thought (no strain for him). • You now only need to get him to use it. This approach however will not work if you offer complex RSS customization parameters, such as in the Finance case. You just can't force new users to undergo that process during their registration process, because it's too much. Doing it will simply scare them away, not even completing the first part of the registration process. You won't only be losing an RSS user, but an individual as well. But, again, you can still do this in a simpler manner. How about if you use the integrated process, but only user limited RSS customization parameters during the process. Those power users that want more control can just do it later. And then there's the third option: not requesting your visitors to give you their email address, but rather use RSS as the channel you would use for your transactional e-mail (such as the registration confirmation etc.). This would replace the need for users to give up their e-mail address and still enable them to register. 1.2.3.6.3 Separate registration and follow-up customization Separate registration and follow-up customization means that you first require your users to register on your web site and only then give them the option of customizing their own RSS feed, just as in the Finance example. If you are offering complex customization parameters, this is the best way to go. 207 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.3.6.4 Customization through Search Results Remember the Moreover example. A simple way for letting your advanced users customize their own RSS feeds is a way similar to how search engines work. You allow them to "send" their content interests by using the actual URL to your RSS feed and by adding selected keywords to the URL string. This is especially appropriate for web sites with huge amounts of content, such as Amazon for example. This approach shouldn't be used as a stand-alone option, but rather something that compliments your primary RSS delivery method. 1.2.3.6.5 What's right for you? First remember that your visitors do not care about RSS, they only care about getting their content delivered in the most comfortable way. Keep this in mind at all times. People won't jump on your RSS customization wagon just because you are offering them customization. They'll only do it if they see a strong benefit in it for themselves. You should consequently base your decision on your target audiences' characteristics. User the following table to help you make a better decision (we excluded the Customization by Search Results approach because it really is a different category when implemented as a search engine, and if not, it falls under the instant RSS customization access approach). Question Solutions What approach better supports you internet strategy? If one of the cornerstones of your internet strategy is registered user acquisition, your RSS customization should also require registration, unless you want to offer RSS as an additional content service for those that wish to remain anonymous. If your internet strategy is extremely "open access", meaning that your content is accessible to everyone and you do not require registration, instant RSS generation might be the best pick. 208 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS What approach better supports your overall marketing strategy? Do you need identifiable user profiling? If your marketing strategy is based on profiling users to better target your marketing to them or to better meet their expectations, you should use one of the approaches with required registration. This is also valid if you analyze your internet marketing activities in-depth, and if you want to precisely track how many and which of your individual users is actually using his customized feeds. If you do not do any data analysis or do not need to precisely profile your users or track their actions on your web site, instant RSS customization might just as well work. What approach is better supported by your Content Management System? What kind of RSS publishing solution are you using? Does it at all allow for customized RSS feeds? If it does, which approach is best suited for it? If you can easily implement one of the approaches using your existing Content Management System functionality, than you have to ask yourself whether doing it differently is worth the additional investment, or if one or the other approach comes naturally to your content management principles. It is best if you can easily integrate RSS functionality in to your CMS. What approach is better supported by your Content Management System? If you do not already use a Content Management System, chances are you also don't need customized RSS feeds at all, or that implementing only this would be far too expensive. Because, basically, RSS is just one of the ways you can deliver your content. Focusing your CMS purely on RSS makes no commercial sense. How complex are your customization variables? If your customization variables are very complex, it's questionable whether you can implement RSS customization without user registration or during the registration process itself. If on the other hand they are relatively simple, you can easily use instant RSS customization access or integration with the registration process. How complex is your web site registration process? If your web site registration process is too complex adding more complexity to it, such as integrating RSS customization in it, might scare away your users, unless you let your users note their preferences and then present them with a ready made customized RSS feed. However, if your customization variables and web site registration process both are very complex, it would be dangerous integrating them in to a single process. If your web site registration process is very complex, you might want to consider making it simpler. 209 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS How valuable is your content, as perceived by your target audience, especially in comparison to other similar content sources? If your target audiences perceive your content as of extremely high value and also difficult to find, they will be more ready to invest more time in getting it, which also means investing more time in the RSS customization process. This makes RSS customization after registration and an integrated process quite possible. If however your content is not perceived as unique or as extremely high value, you will find it difficult getting people even to register. In this case instant RSS customization access is the best option. But be fair when evaluating your content, and better yet, ask your visitors what they think. How privacy sensitive are your visitors? How privacy sensitive are your visitors? If your visitors are very sensitive to privacy issues and are afraid of spam or against giving away their e-mail address, instant RSS customization is the way to go, since it doesn't require them to give you any personal information. If on the other hand they are not very sensitive to these issues this is not as important, although we do have to realize that most users are at least somewhat sensitive when it comes to privacy and spam. How internet savvy are your visitors? If your visitors or target audiences know their way around the internet and are experienced users, having to register on a web site won't give them much trouble. If however they are not, the registration process itself might be too much for them. In this case either use instant RSS customization access or even just give them a general RSS feed to keep their confusion to a minimum. Do your visitors already know RSS? If your visitors already know what RSS is and are already using it, offering them RSS customization after the web site registration process will work. If they do not know RSS it might be best to integrate the two, having your users note their interests during registration and then presenting them with a customized RSS feed. You can also offer them instant access RSS customization. Simply answer these questions and then see our suggestions in the "Solution" column. However, how important each piece of the puzzle is, is entirely up to you and your company specifics. Chances are you will need to trade off some of the advantages you would get from one of the approaches, based on your answers, to meet the requirements of those questions that you will deem more important. 210 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Let's make all of this even easier. Take a look at the table below. You will see the same questions as above, but without the solutions. Instead you will see 3 additional columns that list all of the customization approaches. Answer each question and mark what approach best suits your answer in the appropriate column. We already filled in the table as a demonstration of how you can do this. Question Instant access to the customized feed Integrated registration and feed customization What approach better supports you internet strategy? x What approach better supports your overall marketing strategy? Do you need identifiable user profiling? x Separate registration and follow-up customization What approach is better supported by your Content Management System? x How complex are your customization variables? x How complex is your web site registration process? x How valuable is your content, as perceived by your target audience, especially in comparison to other similar content sources? x How privacy sensitive are your visitors? x How internet savvy are your visitors? x Do your visitors already know RSS? x As you can see from this imaginary example it seems that using integrated registration and feed customization is the best choice. Even though the other two better suit us in some instances, it's evident that integration will be best for us. Can you now do the same for your own business and see what will work best for you? 211 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2.3.7 What You Need? Before you decide that one of the forms of customization is right for you, hold on. While customization is fairly simple if you ask an experienced programmer, it might not be as simple if you are not one or if you don't have the money to pay one or buy a ready-made Content Management System that supports RSS customization. Let's first take a look at just some of the options you have at your disposal when it comes to RSS publishing technology and how this relates to customized RSS feeds. RSS publishing technology RSS customization Hand-coding your RSS feeds Not possible Using a simple third-party content management system, tailored especially for blog publishing This usually means blog publishing software that was especially designed to power blogs or other fairly simple and straightforward web sites. These usually do not allow for RSS customization. You can however develop add-on modules for most of these, especially if they are open source, or have someone develop them for you. This might actually be cheaper than having a whole system developed especially for you, but you can forget about integrating it with user registration, especially because most of these content management systems don't allow for that anyway. The other solutions would be doing what Cisco is: generating segmented RSS feeds and then helping users select what’s best for them through a simple configurator. Using an external RSS publishing solution that you use only for RSS publishing and not for other elements of your internet content management If you are using an external RSS publishing solution that doesn't have RSS customization already available (they usually don't), you can more or less forget about RSS customization as well. Using an advanced content management system, which your either bought as "out-of-the-box" or are using as an ASP (Application Service Provider ! "renting" a solution) service Same as above, if you bought a CMS "out-of-thebox" or are using it as an ASP service, chances are it doesn't have RSS customization available. One of the things you can do is pressure your provider to implement this for you, although that might prove expensive. The second option is using a third-party RSS publishing system that you use only for RSS, but then again, you would need a solution that makes customization possible, as well as can be integrated with your existing CMS in such a way that you don't need to enter the same content more than once. 212 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The third option is to develop this functionality itself, but naturally only if it can be integrated with your existing solution. Using an advanced content management system that you had developed especially for your company or you even developed in-house This is practically the only really feasible possibility when it comes to RSS customization (unless the CMS you bought already includes this, of course). If you developed your CMS in-house or had it developed especially for you adding this functionality shouldn't be at all difficult. Does this actually mean that RSS customization is reserved only for those large enough to be able to afford their own Content Management System development? Not necessarily, since some of the options highlighted above can also be used with a little creativity. Whether you decide to follow them is entirely up to you: if you calculate it's worth your time and investment, this is definitely a good way to go. Also, you might want to take a look at the solutions offered by SimpleFeed, who already offer RSS customization features “out-of-the-box”. But we also need to understand that in most cases RSS customization only makes sense and works well if it's a natural consequence of how your web site content is structured and of how you already deliver your internet content, using your existing solution. The point of smart RSS customization is not providing it just because it "sounds good", but because it makes perfect sense for your target audiences. And if it does make perfect sense, you probably already offer them some sort of content customization, either directly through your web site or through various e-mail delivery options. Adding RSS customization to the mix shouldn't be a problem in this case. So, what do you really need? Contrary to popular belief, customized RSS content delivery is nothing really technologically advanced. Actually, it doesn't even have much to do with RSS itself. RSS is only content delivery channel through which you deliver your content. RSS itself has nothing to do with how you package this content, and customization is basically just packaging your content based on what your individual users want. 213 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • The user "tells you" what content, based on certain criteria, he wants to receive. • You then "create" an RSS file that matches his interests and regularly update it. • In this RSS file you include exactly the content items that match the relevant criteria. Of course, the ways your users "tell you" what content they want and the way you "create" the RSS file differ from approach to approach, but the one thing all of them have in common is that none of this has anything to do with RSS. You could customize your web site or your e-mail content delivery in the exactly the same way. • You need an interface through which the user tells you what content he wants to receive from you ! this interface can be a simple web form that relates only to RSS feeds, a web form that related to all of the users' content delivery interests and is then simply applied to his customized RSS feed or even the URL string used for customization through search results. • You need a mechanism to either store this information in a database, to be later used to customize his feeds, or generate a feed on-request (URL string). • You need a mechanism that takes your web site content and "creates" appropriate RSS feeds for your users ! by "create" we simply mean that it adds the appropriate content items, using the selected criteria, to the customized RSS feed that is then consumed by the user. And none of any of this has anything to do with RSS. Granted, this explanation is very simplified, but it should be enough to grasp the concept. We can simplify it even further and break it in to even easier to understand steps: • Acquire the user's preferences • Process the user's preferences and "store" them • Use the user's preferences to create his customized RSS feed Yes, this has nothing to do with RSS and everything to do with content management technology. And if your web site already uses such technology, adding customized RSS to the mix will be very simple and easy. 214 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Technical Concept If you are interested in developing RSS customization by yourself or by hiring a programmer, the following technical concept from the business daily Finance example might help you on your way, as a demonstration of one of the possible RSS customization solutions. This technical concept has been developed by Crt Jakhel in Slovenia, who was at the time serving the business daily as its Internet Editor and developer. This concept is based on user registration and static feed generation for each user. 1. The user is given a web interface, accessed via his username and password (which he gets after he registers on the web site and then logs in to his user account on the web site), in which he selects the attributes of the articles (content items) that should appear in his customized RSS feed (such as topic, type etc.). 2. On his first use of the interface the user is given a unique identifier, which is then applied to his RSS feed, such as username-23200AE3244355233.rss, which is basically the name of this user’s RSS file. Each user is given access to his own RSS file. 3. A special module (written especially for this) within the web site’s Content Management System then takes a selected number of various content items that match an individual user’s selected content item attributes and creates an RSS output based on this. 4. A special scheduler is running on the server’s operating system that periodically goes through all of the RSS users’ RSS customization settings and applies the previous point for each individual user and writes the results in the user’s RSS file. In this example the RSS customization module is directly integrated in to the web site’s content management system and was actually developed at the same time. If on the other hand you were developing an add-on module, which you wanted to plug-in to your existing content management system, you would need: 215 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Integration with the existing web site user database for the web interface, because you naturally do not want to give your existing registered users new usernames and passwords just for RSS customization. • A new table in your existing database, with RSS parameters, in which each user’s RSS settings should be stored. • A new module, which would: 1. Inspect the RSS parameters table in the database. 2. Inspect the existing content item database (your existing web site content) 3. Select a group of content items and their content elements (such as title, description and a link to the article on the web site, including an URL parameter to help the system track click-throughs per user), based on each user’s individual settings, stored in the RSS parameter table. 4. “Pass” this selection (on a “per user” basis) to one of his functions (or functions in another module), which can take the previously noted content elements and correctly write an RSS file (output) for each individual user. 5. Store the output (the RSS file) on the web server’s hard drive, based on the user’s unique file name (or it could, if you wanted to use dynamically generated RSS customization, store the output in a table in a database and provide it to the user exactly when he requests it). 6. If you decided to use dynamically generated RSS files you also need a script, which the user has to access so that it serves him the correct RSS feed, based on his individual ID. Consequently, this approach means that the software needed to provide RSS customization can be partially independent from the existing content management system the web site is using, but still needs to work with the existing user and content databases and the existing user authentication scheme. 216 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This approach could also be used if you would rather not require users to register on your web site and still provide them with customization; by generating an RSS feed “on-demand” (by an individual user), but not for any identifiable user (meaning that you would have no record of which user requested that specific RSS feed to be generated, and also no mechanism to allow the user to again modify the customization parameters if he later decides to change them). The system would simply generate an RSS feed (and keep generating it for content item updates), which the user could then access, but not modify. 1.2.3.8 Beyond editorial content There is one more important thing to add. The content you deliver through your customized RSS feeds can be implemented much wider than simply for editorial content updates. Imagine a web site providing you with real-estate listings. Using RSS customizations you could "tell the web site" exactly what kind of real-estate you are interested in. Once new properties that match your interests are added to their database, you are notified through your RSS feed. Very simple and very useful. Just expand this concept to various other content delivery opportunities that actually do require customization as a must, such as dating web sites or any other web sites providing specific "items". 1.2.4 Personalized Content Updates Let's first try to understand the difference between customization and personalization. Customization means that the user customizes his feeds himself, wherein personalization means you do it for him, based on certain criteria. Amazon does it all the time on its web site when they present you with new product recommendations based on your previous purchases, your previous product browsing and many other criteria. And it can be done with RSS as well. Basically the approach is very similar to customized content updates, with the key difference being that you automatically personalize the feed for your users, based on certain criteria. 217 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Personalization can mean one or a combination of the following: • Personalizing your RSS feed with the individual user's personal information, such as adding his name in your RSS content item titled [this will require dynamic RSS feeds]. This is just like personalizing the subject line of the e-mail messages you send out, or personalizing some information on your web site when you can identify a unique user and "connect" him with the information you have about him in your database. • You can go even further than RSS content item title personalization and even personalize content descriptions, or if you are publishing in full-text you can personalize even the rest of the content, such as adding some of the user's other personal information. Imagine, for example, the affect your promotional content, delivered using RSS, could have if you use your user's personal information as part of your sales message. One potential use for this could be reminding your user about his grandchild's birthday, naturally using the child's name, and also adding a recommended product to get him (this would of course only work if you have this information in your database). • Even one step further would be integrating your RSS personalization with your web site personalization, which simply means that the content your visitor accesses after clicking-through your RSS feed is personalized as well. • But using the user's personal information of course is not everything. If you can follow your visitor's actions on your web site, store that data and analyze it, you could target whole content items to his interests. Just like with feed customization, only that you do it automatically, instead of the user. Example: Findory http://www.findory.com Web site type: News aggregator site Findory is a similar web service as Moreover; it aggregates and offers news from various internet sources. While it doesn't cover nearly as many topics, it has a distinct and unique position on the market: it's one of the few web sites that offer personalized RSS feeds. As you browse the web site, it remembers what kind of articles you clicked on and are hence most interested in. 218 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In the upper left corner the web site displays the number of articles you clickedthrough and also provides you with a link to your browsing history, where the headlines and links to these articles are stored. The web site also personalizes its front page. Category placements change according to what content you recently viewed (it seems that content topics that you viewed more recently are given more relevance and are as such presented closer to the top of the page). The articles you already read disappear from the front page and are replaced with new articles from those topics, and are at the same time added to your recently viewed articles list. But it doesn't end here. If you register on the web site (it's really simple, you only need to enter your preferred username and password ! yes, you read it correctly, no e-mail address required). You are then given access to your own personalized feed that again takes in to account the content you viewed previously and serves you up with the content the web site "believes" matches your interests the most. In addition to this they also offer a feed with their top 10 most popular headlines, which is not personalized and does not require registration to become accessible. While their personalization still might not be working very well, it's a good start and a great indication of what we can expect in the future from other web sites as well. This is how Findory itself explains their personalization: "Findory helps you find what you want faster and more reliably. The important headline news is featured right at the top of the page. Findory News does its work without you having to do anything! Findory News processes thousands of articles that have appeared within the last two weeks using hundreds of news sources. Just by reading articles using Findory News, the list of articles you see will immediately change, showing you more news articles of interest to you and deemphasizing other news articles that don't appear to be of interest. Findory News helps you find articles you might otherwise miss while still providing broad coverage of recent major news. Findory uses a patent-pending method to order news articles gathered from a wide variety of sources. The algorithm combines statistical analysis of the article text and of users who viewed the articles with information about articles you previously viewed." It also might be good to add that Findory would also do well to integrate personalization with customization to provide for even better content matches. 219 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS These are the basic possibilities, but let's take a look at some concrete opportunities to really see the huge power RSS personalization has to offer. • You find a web store that offers a wide range of products you are interested in. You start visiting it regularly and eventually buy something. But, when you buy a product, you also become a registered web site user. The web site now (provided you use cookies and don't delete them regularly) knows who you are and what interests you. Now imagine the web site offering you an RSS feed with new product updates and special discounts directly after your first purchase. You like the idea (who doesn't want to receive discounted offers from web stores he likes) and subscribe to the RSS feed they're offering. Since the web site is tracking you, especially your purchases and previously browsed products, it can now provide you with product updates that more or less match your interests. Instead of receiving discounted offers for tens of products you are not interested in, you receive discounted offers only for the products you are probably interested in. The more you use the web site the more relevant product updates you get. Just like what Amazon is doing, but using RSS. • Let's upgrade the idea. Imagine this web store is a part of a larger direct marketing service that also uses television advertising and telemarketing to sell its products. Some of its customers order by phone, others using the internet and again others using both. But all of this information is stored in the same database. So the company can actually provide you with a personalized product update feed that includes all of this information and makes for even more relevant results. The same can be done in any industry, as long as you have purchase history of your customers on file. • Web sites rich with regularly updated content, such as news, are always in danger of overloading their users with too much content, especially too much content they actually aren't interested in. We already covered customization as a possible solution to this problem, but customization does add additional work for your visitors. Personalization cannot remove the need for users to register on your web site (your system needs a way to identify individual users and track their actions on your web site), but it can remove (or enhance) the actual customization process. The web site simply follows what content you are viewing and then serves you with the most relevant RSS content updates, based on your browsing history. This reduces the content load for the user, increases content relevancy and at the same time requires less work from him. 220 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Moving on to even more advanced stuff, imagine delivering a birthday card to your users through RSS. This again is something that can be done using personalization. An even more advanced opportunity would be to further personalize the birthday card with a special promotional offer, personalized for the user's preferences, based on his previous purchases and browsing history. This is technologically the most advanced method of delivering content using RSS and in addition to what we covered for RSS customization also requires advanced data analysis and manipulation capabilities. And again, this is something that will work really well only for web sites that already use some sort of on-site personalization or have that capability readily available. 2. Targeted and Specialized Content Delivery to Segmented Target Audiences RSS is not appropriate only for content delivery to mass audiences, but also for precisely targeted and specialized content delivery to very segmented target audiences. The difference between targeted and specialized content delivery to segmented target audiences and delivering content updates to mass audiences is quite simply in the distinction between "mass" and "segmented". When you are delivering your content to a mass audience you want to reach as many people as possible. You want practically everyone that's a potential prospect (any kind of prospect) to subscribe to your feed. You make it available to everyone, even if it’s interesting only to a certain portion of people, which it usually is. RSS feeds that deliver content to segmented target audiences are, on the other hand, quite different. Your content must be delivered only to select and highly segmented target audiences with very specific content needs, based on their relationship with you. 221 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Often this even requires an added level of security ! if you are publishing sensitive content that not every should be able to see, you need to protect your RSS feed from being available to just about anyone that stumbles upon it. To avoid sounding academic, let's just take a look at the practical uses of targeted and specialized RSS content delivery to segmented target audiences. 2.1 Practical Uses by Content Types [What] Targeted and specialized content delivery to segmented target audiences mostly encompasses, but is not limited to, the following: • Communicating with special target audiences, such as your customers, the media, your employees and your affiliates. • Collaborating with other people, such as managing projects using RSS. • Providing special content services, such as personalized stock market updates. • Other specialized content delivery possibilities. One of the choices you'll have to make early on when deciding for such content delivery is whether to make it secure or not. • If your targeted content is not only targeted, but also of a sensitive nature, secure RSS feeds are the way to go. Because they can be accessed only by people that have their own username and password, you don't have to worry about unauthorized people accessing your feed. You can do this on two levels: o Securing the actual feed itself, meaning that your subscribers will need to provide a username and password, received from you, to access the feed. If a person does not have this information, they cannot access the feed. 222 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS o Securing the content that the feed leads to (on your web site; if you're not publishing your RSS feeds in full-text, but are rather pointing your users to your web site using the feeds) by requiring users to be logged-on on your web site before accessing your content. This can either be used in a combination with a secure RSS feed (a person first needs access data for the feed itself, and then also needs to log on to your web site to access the content) or standing on its own (anyone can access the RSS feed, but cannot follow-through to the full-text content on your web site; an option only if the content items in the feed do not give out any sensitive information, which is published only on the secure web site). • If your content is not so sensitive and wouldn't hurt you if others, nonauthorized people would access it through your RSS feed, you don't need to use a secure RSS feed, but only need to publish the RSS feed link where it will only be reached by the people that the feed is intended for (for instance, if you're publishing a feed for journalists, you don't need to keep it secure, but it might be a good idea to only make it available through the media section of your web site, so that only journalists and other people interested in such news can access it, instead of just everyone, especially those that would be turned off by the actual content in the feed). You'll have to decide on this on a case-by-case basis. Let's take a look at the practical possibilities available to you. 2.1.1 Communicating With Special Target Audiences While most content published online is available to a mass audience, there are some cases when companies want only certain people that meet certain criteria to receive some of their content: • because they want certain content to be only available to certain people and not available to others, for instance when publishing inside information appropriate only for company employees; • because they publish this content as an added value service for some of their target audiences and as such don't want just anyone getting access to it; • because some of their content is interesting only to a very niche target audience, but still one of the many they "cover". 223 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS These reasons will become more transparent as we dig in to the actual possible uses. But the point is, you often won't want all of your content to be available to just everyone, but only to a specific target audience. And this is where RSS and communicating with special target audiences come in to play. 2.1.1.1 Communicating with Your Customers Communicating with your customers via RSS could be "the holy grail" of publishing with RSS, or at least one of the top possibilities you have available and should start using as soon as possible. • If you consider your customer content updates important you naturally want to make sure that all of your customers actually receive them. E-mail is no longer the content delivery tool to enable you to do so, as you have a good reason to fear that your content might not be delivered. RSS eliminates this fear. If your customers subscribe to your feed, they will surely get the content you prepare for them. No need to fear it's going to be stopped by obstacles such as spam filters or not be read because the recipient mistakes it for spam and deletes it on sight. • RSS is appropriate for delivering many different content types, such as product support updates, news for customers, added value content etc. … all this without adding to the recipient's e-mail load. • Because RSS can be secure, you don't have to worry about unauthorized people accessing the content you have prepared especially for your customers and should perhaps only be seen by them. • Because, if you use "trackable" RSS feeds (if every separate user gets access to his own RSS feed, such as in many RSS customization cases), you can track what your customers are interested in and increase your knowledge about them ! the knowledge you can then use to better meet their needs and increase their purchases. RSS is the content delivery vehicle that will help you to better manage your relationship with your customers: communicate with them; increase their satisfaction; get to know them better; increase their purchases etc. The only reason against using RSS for customer communications is its low penetration ! most people, and your customers are probably among them, don't even know what RSS is, let alone use it. 224 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS You want your customers to receive your content, so quite naturally you should want to deliver it to them using RSS. And again, you want your customers to receive your content, so quite naturally you should want to deliver it to them using the content delivery channel that's closest to them, ergo e-mail. There is no easy solution to this problem. By wanting to provide a better and more stable content service for the customer you are faced with having to convince him to start using a completely new content consumption channel, which in itself does not exactly make for "good customer service", "doing all you can to better meet the needs of your customers on their own terms" and "moving closer to the customer". Your only choice is to try to educate your customers that using RSS will benefit them the most, not only in conjunction with your company, but that it will actually increase the quality of their overall content consumption. While doing this you should in no way replace e-mail with RSS. If your customers want to keep receiving your communications using e-mail, don't take that away from them, it will only be your loss. Rather give them the option of both, while emphasizing the benefits of using RSS. But what are the concrete RSS content delivery opportunities when it comes to customer communications? 2.1.1.1.1 Special Announcements Do you often announce something to your customers? Such as letting them know of new product launches or improved services, and even letting them know of your latest case studies that they can learn something from? Use RSS to deliver such announcements, especially if it's of great importance that your customers actually see them. 2.1.1.1.2 Special Offers One type of special announcements are also special offers for your loyal customers: early product announcements for your most faithful customers; special discounts or product packages; exclusive offers for your best customers etc. 225 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Or, you could also use RSS to shoot new satisfaction or product creation surveys to your customers. 2.1.1.1.3 Product Support Updates If you are providing products that often have upgrades available, such as • new drivers for a hardware product; • new version updates for a software product, such as the Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2; • additional services that come in a package already bought by your customers; • new music tracks, if for instance you provide music compilations; • new content updates for an e-book you published; • new parts for your product that greatly increase its performance; • new educational material relating to your products; • new manuals for your products; • etc., or if you are constantly resolving the problems your customers are having with your products, such as • updating your customers on resolved problems; • new added functionality that will enhance their experience or answer to their growing needs; • etc., you can deliver this information via an RSS feed as well. 2.1.1.1.4 Business Relationship Information Think of the information you often have to deliver to your customers. If you own a web store you need to let them know when their product has been shipped and even when you've taken their money from their credit card account. Or you have to let them know when a product they wanted becomes available for order. 226 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This basic transactional information can quite easily be delivered using RSS, if you can generate personalized RSS feeds for your customers. The approach is just the same as with e-mail; the only difference is that you are making this content available through RSS as well. But there is other information pertaining to the customer's business relationship with you that should be delivered through RSS. • If you often need to resolve customer issues you can use an RSS feed to let them track how far you are with resolving their problems, and then deliver the final resolution report through their personalized RSS feeds. This will also work if your customers are only asking your questions; just deliver the answers using RSS. • This information might also include providing certain individuals within a company with easy access to new contracts, billing information and so forth. The information pertaining to the business relationship can actually encompass everything that is relevant to the customer and at the same time has something to do with his relationship to your company. For instance, an investment fund might use RSS to daily inform their clients of the exact value of their assets in the fund. An investment consulting company might use RSS to daily inform their clients of their total portfolio standings on that day. And the list of the possibilities goes on and on … Example: IBM Gold Service http://www.ibm.com Web site type: Corporate site A few years ago IBM launched a new web service, named Gold Service, aimed at its key corporate accounts with the goal of increasing interaction with them as well as increasing profitability, while reducing the need for real sales reps and at the same time reducing costs and consequently prices (and they actually did that ! they grow their profits from their key accounts by 30% a year). MarketingSherpa.com reported: 227 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS "Each Gold Service corporate customer gets access to a special IBM Web site developed just for their organization. This password protected Web site has their company name on the home page, and can include a wide variety of useful account information, such as: technical data and user tips for the IBM products they've purchased; email and phone access to customer support reps who are well-versed in their particular account; news on special IBM offers just for their company; a product catalog with items specially selected for easy integration into their current systems; and more." But the most interesting part is the way they communicate with individual people within these corporations. They survey each relevant individual to see how they can best profit from their company's personalized web site. "Survey results are entered into a customer database, and IBM then sends a monthly communication to everyone enrolled in the program. Gold Service Manager Dianne Lucca explains, "We've really evolved to one-to-one messaging. We send monthly communications based on their area of interest. Depending on their profile one person could get information on printers and a person two floors down might get news on large enterprise storage. In the old days we sent everyone the same thing based on what was installed in the account. But people don't have time to get everything now!" Exactly this would be a perfect fit for personalized content delivery via RSS. And it's quite possible that IBM's customers would appreciate the additional possibilities, if they are perhaps experiencing the same problems with e-mail as the rest of us. This just goes to show that RSS can be implemented in any kind of business environment. 2.1.1.1.5 Content as an Added Value Service Many companies are already publishing e-mail e-zines only for their customers that include premium educational content that the company publishes to give additional value to their customers, increase their purchases and increase their loyalty. Just imagine some possible examples: • An investment consulting company might regularly educate their clients on investment strategies and provide them with advice on how to best manage their personal assets. 228 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • A car manufacturer might regularly send safety and car-driving tips to his clients, including information on upcoming models (letting them be the first to find out), taking care of their car etc. The possibilities are endless. The key difference between this and regular e-zines is that "content as an added value service" is available only to your customers and not anyone else. It's just "a little something" to show your customers you really care for them and to help them even more. But e-mail doesn't have to be the only channel to deliver this information through. 2.1.1.1.6 How to Provide This Content Using RSS Feeds We've noted 5 different general content categories you can deliver to your customers using RSS. However, how to provide this content using RSS feeds still remains the question. Do you use just one feed to provide all of this information or multiple feeds or what? Here are your options: • If you don't have the resources to generate personalized and/or customized RSS feeds, your best bet is to provide individual feeds and let your customers choose what they are most interested in. For instance, provide them with individual product support update feeds on individual product support pages on your web site; and provide them with their added value content on your main customer page. • If you can provide customized RSS feeds just let your customers choose by themselves exactly what content they are interested in and then provide this content through a single feed. However, do be careful. It's not just the "content category" you have to worry about, but also specific topics within these categories. For instance, if you provide 50 different products you can't deliver all of your product support updates to everyone, but only to those people that actually use those products. If you are considering using RSS feed customization, give your users the option, for instance, of selecting what specific products they want to receive product updates for. 229 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • If you can go deeper and provide customized and personalized RSS feeds, you won't have any problems at all. It's best to provide both, customization and personalization. Allow your users to customize what information they want to receive from you (such as special offers, news, special announcements, added value content; perhaps even letting them choose what topics they are most interested in), but personalize some of their content, such as product support updates (only deliver updates for the products they are currently using from you) and business relationship information, which pertain to specific individuals (but it's still good to ask them exactly what content they would like to receive this way, because you don't want to scare them off by sending them contracts through RSS unprepared). You will naturally want to provide secure RSS feeds for most of this type of content delivery. 2.1.1.2 Communicating with The Media Press releases are usually interesting only to media representatives, and are as such a very important ingredient of your internet content strategy. If you want your press releases to be covered in the media, you need reporters to have easy access to them. And that means delivering news to them, using either RSS, e-mail or both. This again should be a separate content category, not to be mixed with others, usually best presented on a page devoted especially to the media. But no need to secure these feeds, unless you go so far as to create a special "hot news" content feed for your favorite journalists. Example: Intel http://www.intel.com/intel/ [RSS] Web site type: Corporate site Intel, one of the world's largest computer processor developers, provides access to its news releases, interesting especially to the media (and probably it's competitors), but not so much to the general public and its less involved customers, via a specialized RSS feed. 230 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS These press releases include everything new of interest to the media, such as new product announcements, their achievements, new business partnerships and other news aimed at getting the media to report about the company. All of this news is not of great interest to the general public or even their customers, but is interesting for the media reporting on new IT developments. It's especially important to note that Intel does not mix this RSS feed with its product updates and information RSS feed, which is of greater interest to a wider public. Their RSS presentation page is also a great example of how to present RSS to your public and get them to subscribe to your feeds. Example: Newsgator http://www.newsgator.com/press.aspx Web site type: Corporate site Newsgator is the company behind one of the most acclaimed RSS aggregators on the market. The media people interested in Newsgator have a specialized RSS feed available to them, carrying only press releases of interest to the media, but again, as with the Intel example, not interesting to the general public. These include news ranging from new product announcements to partnerships, technology developments, new services and investment funding. This RSS feed is kept strictly separated from the company's RSS feeds that they provide as content services to their users. 2.1.1.3 Communicating with Your Affiliates If you are using affiliates to promote your product, they are one of your key target audiences that you have to invest especially in to get the best results from them. One of your first ventures in to RSS should be to set up an RSS feed especially for your affiliates, or even more feeds for them; of course making these feeds available only to them and not your mass audiences. 231 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And this goes even if you are running your online business on an extremely low budget. You can set up affiliate feeds for nothing, so financial resources cannot be an excuse. First think of the different content you can deliver to them: • Provide your affiliates with news on what's going on with the program. • If you regularly provide new products for your affiliates to market, use RSS to announce them. • Provide easy access to new promotional material. • Provide easy access to new instructions, training material and other educational information that will help your affiliates market with greater success. • Publish some sort of "Affiliate Informer", letting your affiliates know which of your products are doing the best, what affiliates are achieving the greatest success and how, etc. How you provide all of this content through RSS will depend somewhat on your affiliate strategy, especially on how much content you really have for your affiliates. • If your affiliates usually specialize in marketing only a few of your products, it's best to provide them with individual RSS feeds for individual products (segmenting the feeds by product), which include new instructions, new tactics, new material, etc. However, even in this case still provide them with one general RSS feed where you'll let them know about what's going on with the program, announce new products, etc. • If your affiliates promote all of your products or if you provide only one product, you can create individual RSS feeds for individual content categories (segmenting the feeds by content category), such as new promotional material, new instructions etc. In this case as well provide one general RSS feed for your general program news. • Another option is packing all of this content together and doing only one feed, which will work especially well for smaller affiliate providers. • But, again, one of the better options will be providing them with RSS customization. But it's not necessary! If this is too expensive for your budget, just create "default" RSS feeds. 232 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In any case, if you decide for multiple feeds, make sure that you have enough content to bring them to life. There's no use in creating multiple feeds without a strong reason, such as much content. If you don't have a lot of different content to deliver to your affiliates, just provide them with a single feed. 2.1.1.4 Communicating with Your Employees Your employees are most definitely one of your key target audiences. • You need to motivate them. • You need to provide them with specific information pertaining to their work. • You need to educate them. • You need to integrate them in to the company and make them feel part of the community. • You need to build their awareness of the company, your identity, your values and your key marketing messages. Most companies aren't doing any of these things, and that goes for small businesses as well as large enterprises. You can be different, because in the end, it's your people that create your company, and all of your people are in fact also your marketers. It's not only about increasing their productivity, but communicating with them in such a way that they become evangelists for your company. You can never achieve that if you just leave them alone. No, you need to communicate with them on a regular basis, giving them the information that will gradually make them "live your company". On the other hand, you also need to inform them of what's going on, and make all kinds of relevant information available to them, such as what direction your company is going to, what new products you are launching, and when's the next big company picnic. Let's try to break all of this content down in to manageable content categories: • Corporate news This includes everything from the Annual report to new product launches to listing the company's successes and letting people know what direction the company is heading in. 233 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Community news and motivational content Includes introducing new employees, announcing the next company picnic, featuring especially deserving employees, letting your people know how various projects are doing and who can be thanked for their success, articles on why every employee matters and how they contribute to the overall success of the company, new case studies, best practices, what others are doing and what their responsibilities are, giving credit when and where it's due etc. • Corporate culture As already mentioned above, corporate culture does not grow on its own. It's not just a piece of paper you force every employee to read when they start working for you. But it is about constantly communicating with your people. Constantly telling them what you stand for and making the point with concrete examples and case studies (for instance, if you support any causes, give them concrete examples as they arise); giving tribute to other employees who are "living the company"; publishing relevant articles that represent what your company stands for; providing constant reminders of how your company communicate to the outside world and what it stands for; constantly communicating your mantra; etc. • Intranet content updates Do you have an intranet where you publish new documents and similar content that's important to your employees, such as meeting briefings, memos, reports, contracts etc. RSS is an excellent channel to deliver such content updates. It might require customization though, if you publish much of this stuff, so that the right content updates get to the right people. For instance, if you have many project groups, members of each project group should primarily get the content updates relevant to their work. 234 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Educational content Everyone wants to increase the productivity and effectiveness of their people, and to do so you do need to educate them. The people in your marketing department need to become even better marketers. The people that cover your finances need to learn how to do their jobs even better, and so on. Everyone in your company can become better at what they are doing, period. If you're not educating them constantly, you're losing out on their potential. Providing such educational content will definitely require customization ! you need to allow your people to select what educational content they want to receive and let them choose for themselves what content they'll profit from the most. But what content are we talking about? It can include relevant articles from different sources, whitepaper updates, industry news, case studies, etc. You don't even need to write this content in house -- you could easily syndicate it from other online sources. Does all of this look extremely "corporate", not appropriate for small businesses? It's anything but that. This is what every business should be practicing, no matter its size. Naturally, depending on the size of your business, you'll have to think about whether you can provide "default" RSS feeds (for instance, one feed for all the content categories noted above, or even a single feed for all of them combined, depending on how much content you will be able to publish) or you'll need to provide customization and personalization. The more people you have, the more complex your system will have to be. Just keep in mind that every feed you publish and every content item is of interest, relevance and importance to the people that are intended to receive it. Another important not to make is that RSS feeds for internal content delivery should be secure, as you really want to minimize the chance of the outside world seeing what you're talking about on the inside, unless you want them to of course. More or less, delivering content to your employees via RSS is almost just the same as delivering content to other important target audiences. But there is one key distinguishing factor: you can actually "force" them to use RSS, because your company is a controlled environment. • You can set-up RSS aggregators on every one of your company computers and even subscribe your employees to the relevant feeds. 235 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • You can easily educate them of what RSS is and how they'll benefit from using it. • You can make it mandatory for them to receive your company content updates via RSS. Yes, you can do all of this. The question is, why should you? 2.1.1.4.1 Why Use RSS for Communication with Your Employees • RSS is great for delivering internal corporate content because it won't overload your employee's inboxes with e-mail and so make them lose sight of the personal (business related of course) communications they have to be taking care of. On the other hand, e-mail clients can be set-up to filter such content updates and deliver them to especially designated folders, which means that they won't become overloaded anyway. And since your company is a controlled environment you can easily set-up the filters for them, just like setting up RSS aggregators. • RSS is more easily manageable, as content comes in lists. But in a way, e-mail does as well. • Delivering RSS content will present a lesser load for your servers, but it's questionable whether e-mail is giving you any headaches on this front. • RSS feeds are more secure and people cannot easily forward sensitive content to others. But then again, Microsoft Office 2003 already has the functionality that can prevent e-mail forwarding … it is however expensive, so RSS is a cheaper solution. • RSS aggregators are more appropriate for controlled content consumption. • E-mail can be deleted by accident or "lost", RSS content items, because the file is hosted on a server, cannot. • RSS can be consumed through mobile devices easier than, for instance, e-mail, because RSS content feeds are "light" and don't need much bandwidth. Also, you don't have to use client-side RSS aggregators. You can provide your employees with an in-house web RSS aggregator, and even let them aggregate other feeds from other sources in it. 236 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Since we are talking about a pre-defined content consumption point with predefined content that your employees need to use, if you make it mandatory, why then not just post all the content updates on your internal web site and not even make a fuss with RSS? Because many of your people will still want to use client-side RSS aggregators, because they'll already be aggregating other content there. It's just making content more easily accessible to them. But the question, why use RSS to deliver content to your employees, still remains. The best answer is "because in most cases, it's going to be less expensive than using e-mail", and because RSS provides more control. It's not a huge leap forward and it certainly isn't as important as using RSS for outside communication. And it certainly is not something you should terribly care about if you already have a good e-mail system in place. Chances are it's working just as well. This is a typical example of thinking twice before getting over-excited with some "new" technology and trying to implement it every. Granted, RSS might be a better choice if you are only setting-up such an in-house communicational system, but it's not a "make or break" decision if you already have such a system in place. 2.1.1.5 Other Target Audiences Other target audiences, especially appropriate for RSS content consumption, could also be your investors ! receiving your development updates, financial reports and so on, all of this through secure feeds. Also your suppliers and other business partners, and the list can go on. 2.1.2 Collaboration RSS, in conjunction with blogs, can be used with success for different forms of collaboration. The blog is used as an online place where all of the content is published and available to the people it is relevant to, and RSS is used to deliver content updates for the blog itself. It's a perfect match. 237 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Conducting interviews Many companies are already starting to use blogs in combination with RSS to conduct interviews more easily. Questions and answers are posted on the blog, usually private, and RSS lets the participants know when new questions or answers have been posted, without requiring them to check the blog every minute. It saves time and is an excellent choice for conducing written online interviews. And it's much better than e-mail, because it provides a constant record of what was said and by whom, without the confusion usually created by e-mails flowing back and forth. The other benefit is that interviews conducted using this approach can be immediately syndicated via RSS (answers can even be syndicated as they are posted) to other online media, or used in a variety of other ways that can use RSS as an input content channel. • Project collaboration Collaborating on projects is quite similar to conducting interviews. Now, e-mail is actually counter-productive when it comes to this type of cooperation, because it provides no real record available for everyone to see and it can easily become confusing. But with blogs and RSS, people can post project development updates, tasks and other relevant content, pertaining to the project, for everyone with access to see, in a chronological order. • Knowledge sharing The same applies for knowledge sharing. If you want different partners or team members or employees to share knowledge, blogs and RSS are again the perfect match. Everyone with the appropriate permissions can access and post to the blog, and even categorize content so that it's more easily manageable and controlled. RSS customization can work especially well here, because different people can select different "knowledge" (content) categories they are interested in and receive only those. 2.1.3 Providing Special Content Services Another targeted RSS content delivery opportunity is in providing special content services, which can either be added value services or paid subscription services. Imagine a bank sending you your bank statements via RSS. Now expand this idea to practically every content that is targeted and personalized for individuals. 238 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The other option, as we already mentioned, are paid subscription services. Naturally, because your customers are paying for the service, you want only those that pay for it to have access to it ! RSS beats e-mail here heads on. Such subscription services can include anything from the content we listed under "Specialized Content Updates" to paid-subscription e-zines. 2.1.4 Other Specialized Content Updates Remember the two examples from the 1st section of the e-book: • 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. • Another company uses RSS feeds as a security awareness mechanism at a Zoo, making security updates, such as missing children or handbags, immediately available to Zoo security sites and personnel with wireless devices. This is using RSS to deliver specialized content updates, and it's really pushing RSS use further in to advanced business opportunities. RSS is especially usefully when you need to syndicate content like this to more than one destination. Just as with the Zoo example ! they are delivering security updates to Zoo security sites and personnel with wireless devices, all of this using only one single RSS feed that costs next to nothing or even nothing to set-up. 2.2 Defining the Organic Possibilities [How] As you have probably already seen, the organic possibilities of targeted RSS content delivery to segmented target audiences are practically the same as using RSS to deliver content to a mass audience, so we won't go in to them again here. The key difference is that targeted content delivery often requires secure RSS feeds. 2.2.1 The Basics of Secure RSS Feeds RSS files are usually transferred through the web using the "http" transfer protocol, which also means that they can require http authentication to prevent unauthorized access. Let's first take a look at a more technical definition of http authentication: 239 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS "HTTP provides a simple challenge-response authentication mechanism that MAY be used by a server to challenge a client request and by a client to provide authentication information. It uses an extensible, case-insensitive token to identify the authentication scheme, followed by a comma-separated list of attribute-value pairs which carry the parameters necessary for achieving authentication via that scheme." "The 401 (Unauthorized) response message is used by an origin server to challenge the authorization of a user agent. This response MUST include a WWWAuthenticate header field containing at least one challenge applicable to the requested resource. The 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) response message is used by a proxy to challenge the authorization of a client and MUST include a ProxyAuthenticate header field containing at least one challenge applicable to the proxy for the requested resource." [HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication, published on ietf.org] In more understandable terms http authentication means that when a user tries to access a web page that requires authentication, he cannot proceed without entering an ID and a password. How does this work with RSS feeds? Remember the standard RSS subscription process where you add the link to an RSS feed you want to subscribe to your aggregator in order to add the feed to your list. The procedure is almost the same with an RSS feed that requires http authentication. However, if you do not also enter your ID and password in the place provided by your aggregator, you will be refused access to the feed and prompted to enter your authentication information. Only after providing appropriate authentication are you allowed to pass through and allowed access to the feed. Also, you will need an RSS aggregator that actually supports this feature; not everyone does. The authentication information can either be the same for all users, or you could even provide each user with his own set of authentication information. 240 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If you are interested in creating your own http authenticated RSS feeds by yourself, I strongly suggest you take a look at this guide (notice: the guide is valid only for servers running on Apache): HTTP Authentication Using PHP CGI and Apache However, http authentication alone is not enough for creating really private feeds, since the password is sent to the server as clear and non-coded text, which can be intercepted and read. To combat this problem, combine http authentication with SSL. Let's take a look at a definition of SSL: "These protocols provide endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography. In typical use, only the server is authenticated (i.e. its identity is ensured) while the client remains unauthenticated; mutual authentication requires PKI deployment to clients. The protocols allow client/server applications to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery." [Secure Sockets Layer, posted on Wikipedia.org] What the definition basically says is that SSL prevents internet "eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery." Web sites or pages that use SSL can be identified with the https:// pre-fix in their URL, as opposed to the http:// pre-fix used for pages not protected with SSL. If you are not hosting your web site on your on web server and want to use SSL you will need to find a web hosts that gives you that option. The Webmaster.org has a list of some hosting companies that do offer SSL. Another step forward from securing an entire RSS feed is even securing specific content items in the feed, giving only specific people access to specific content items, which could prove especially useful for internal corporate communications and providing access to sensitive information. 241 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: MyST Technology Partners http://www.myst-technology.com Web site type: Internet content management and delivery solution provider The MyST Technology Partners is one of the companies leading the way in new developments on the RSS front. In addition to providing corporate services they also offer internet publishers an advanced free RSS publishing service, called MySmartChannels. "MySmartChannels lets anyone quickly and easily publish, organize, and reuse information in a secure weblogging environment. MySmartChannels™ enables individuals and organizations to easily create and organize pools of information around a Web services platform, providing a variety of features including, secure weblogging, intelligent searching, automatic Office XP smart tag generation, news feed generation, and much more. With MySmartChannels™, your employees can publish and organize their thoughts, ideas, and writings about any topic that's important to their areas of expertise. Colleagues, co-workers, and business partners can be invited to subscribe or collaborate on relevant topics." One of the key features of the MySmartChannels publishing service are secure RSS feeds. Actually, all of the feeds created by their system are secure, unless the publisher decides to make them public. How does this work? • To start publishing your own feed with MySmartChannels you first need to open a free account, which you can do through their web site. • You are then given access to your own control center, where you can start adding your own RSS feeds. • Each feed you create is already secure, unless you decide otherwise. If you keep your feed secure, people won't be able to subscribe to it and use it, unless you give them the appropriate access information. • The MySmartChannels service solves this by providing you with a special tool with which you can invite new users to access your feed. They are then automatically sent an invitation e-mail, providing them with a link to accept your invitation. After accepting the invitation they first need to create their own ID and password, and then use this information to access their feed. 242 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • After a new user is added, you can give him additional privileges or take them away from him, such as permission to read the feed or even modify it. • You can furthermore do the same with individual content items in your feed, giving you even more control over what various users can access. 3. Secure Direct One-to-One or One-to-Many Communications Personal communication is in a way delivering content, but to a known and specific individual or individuals, and providing an easy method of providing feedback and starting a dialog. E-mail was the perfect tool for this, with the emphasis being on "was". But times are changing. We can no longer be certain that our e-mails will reach the intended recipients, due to the obstacles on the e-mail delivery route. Getting e-mail delivered is, as we've said many times in this e-book, getting increasingly difficult and is at times even looking a little bit like a gamble. Simply put, we can no longer be sure that our recipients are actually receiving our content. It's even gotten to a point where some people phone you to check if you received their e-mail. Doesn't that somehow defeat the basic purpose of e-mail? It can become even more time consuming and disorganized than using only the telephone. And not to mention the various dangers that e-mail "happily provides", such as viruses and other similar "pleasant things". Is RSS the solution in this case as well? Can it be used for one-to-one and one-to-many communications? It's certain not best suited for this role, because: • It doesn't provide an easy feedback loop. • It doesn't allow you to communicate with just anyone, and the communication itself isn't exactly organized. 243 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • People are just used to using e-mail, and that's not about to change any time soon. So you can just about forget about using RSS for your general communications. It's taking RSS to the limits of what it was first meant to do, but it actually can work, at least on a limited scope. Just consider the following possibilities. Ever since spam started becoming a real problem many web site owners started replacing their on-site e-mail address with web forms that their visitors can fill-in to send them an e-mail, without actually revealing the web site owner's e-mail address. Now, imagine replacing the delivery channel behind the web form from e-mail to RSS. Instead of receiving these messages to your e-mail address, fearing some of them won't reach you, they are instead delivered through your RSS feed directly to you or more precisely to your RSS aggregator. Since you are using a secure RSS feed only you or the people you trust can access it, which even provides more security and privacy than e-mail. The greatest benefit of doing it this way is the conviction you and your visitors can have that you will actually receive their messages. This can also work the other way around, utilizing RSS for dialog among known participants. But it does require a uniform communicational system. Example: Quikonnex http://www.quikonnex.com Web site type: Web based service Quikonnex is one of the more cutting-edge RSS publishing technology providers on the market today. While their actually technical solutions are still quite basic, they are still managing to push the limits of what can be done with RSS, especially with their implementation of RSS for communicational purposes. Everyone that registers with them, even the free members, also gets access to their RSS communicational service, which works especially well from their internet browser-based RSS aggregator. Through this service, you can send private messages to other Quikonnex users ! to their own private RSS feeds, intended especially for personal communication. This is how it works: 244 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • You launch their internet browser-based RSS aggregator and log-on. • You select the "Send a Private Message" option. • You can now enter the Quikonnex username of the person you want to send your message to, and your message of course. • The message is then "published" on that user's personal messages RSS feed. • If you want to view your messages, you use the "Messages" option, which launches a web page with your current messages, which you can also delete. It doesn't provide most of the functionality that we got used to with e-mail and is not very practical for communicational purposes, but it is a beginning. It is using RSS for communicational purposes and it is pushing the limits of RSS, so the people at Quikonnex can only be congratulated. Basically, an RSS communicational system would work like some sort of forum. Every participant in the discussion would have his own RSS feed, and whenever someone posted a message for him in the "forum", that message would appear in his RSS feed, and vica verca. As noted before, not terribly practical, but useful if you want to be certain that your content will be delivered and if you want more secure communications via secure RSS feeds. 245 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Advanced RSS Marketing Capabilities in Conjunction with RSS Aggregators There's more to using RSS for marketing purposes than "only" publishing RSS feeds. We need to take a look beyond "the feed" and inspect RSS in conjunction with its most important partner, the RSS aggregator, which makes RSS content consumption possible. RSS feeds cannot be used by end-users without RSS aggregators. Taking advantage of this fact provides yet another marketing opportunity for companies willing to invest in "creating" their own branded RSS aggregators and with enough pulling power with their users to convince them to download and install specifically their aggregator. The later might not be as difficult as it sounds, although there is a great deal of RSS aggregators available on the market already, with many of them free. Remember that most internet users still don't know what RSS is and what to do with it, and they consequently don't use an RSS aggregator yet. Your first task with this type of users, the majority, is to educate them of the benefits that RSS offers to them. You need to motivate them enough for them to decide to get an aggregator. And this is where your aggregator comes in. Why have your users jump the net to find an aggregator, if you can provide one for them? It might even prove easier to convert them to RSS if in fact you do offer them your own RSS aggregator directly on your web site, thus making the transition easier and smoother for them. Additional benefits might, for example, include a 5% discount on all purchases in your web store, if done though the aggregator, or access to additional content, available only through your aggregator. These two benefits alone might even be able to convince existing RSS users to switch to another aggregator, if it were good enough of course. 246 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And, if you plan on using RSS to communicate with your business partners and investors, providing them with a branded RSS aggregator might actually be the best possible choice, because the branded aggregator could already contain your RSS feeds. 4.1 Why Provide Your Own RSS Aggregator? But why go through all this fuss? Is it worth it? The benefits can be tremendous. • When people start using your branded aggregator they will in fact be interacting with your brand. Not only can your aggregator provide additional branding through aggregator design and visuals, but actually serve as an interaction tool between your brand and your visitors. This is generating a positive brand experience at its best. • You will constantly be in-front of your users, even when they are using other feeds, because they will be using your branded aggregator. • A branded aggregator could include special advertising slots to advertise your products, and special notification services that would allow you to visibly inform your users of new product launches or special offers. The possibilities of what you can do with your own software are quite endless. • You can provide easy access to additional information and services from your company through your aggregator, even an additional contact point for your customers. For instance, you could make it easy for them to contact you directly from the aggregator, ask you questions, receive answers, even order products or access other web services. • Remember the chapter on how RSS aggregators hold in their hands how RSS is perceived? In fact, depending on how RSS aggregators develop in the future, RSS might become perceived as a channel full of spam. It all depends on the aggregator. If you can successfully launch your own aggregator to your target audience, this is something you can avoid. • It will also help you fight content overload for your users, as your aggregator can be configured so that your feeds are especially spotlighted. 247 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4.2 How This Could Actually Work? Example: Quikonnex http://www.quikonnex.com Web site type: Web based service The people at Quikonnex most certainly grasp the need for bringing RSS closer to the people and making the start of their RSS consumption as simple as possible. This most especially manifests in their own web based RSS aggregator, which is available only to their members, including their free members. As an RSS publishing solutions provider their first move must be converting prospects in to RSS users, thus demonstrating the power of RSS to them. This makes concluding the sale for their solution much easier, especially with their branded web based aggregator. Their web based aggregator is called QuikView. It works somewhat different than most web based aggregators ! instead of having to visit a certain web site to access and manage your feeds, you can do so from your internet browser's sidebar, which makes RSS even more accessible to you. Getting the aggregator is relatively simple: you only need to follow their simple step-by-step instructions that demand that you only include the link to the aggregator to your Links Toolbar (in Microsoft's Internet Explorer). After doing so you need to click on the new link in your Links Toolbar, which will open a sidebar window, prompting you to log-in to your account. For first time users this will also mean registering on their web site, which can be accessed directly from the sidebar and is done in only one step. After completing the registration you are free to log-in to your new account. 248 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: the QuikView web based RSS aggregator You are now introduced with a completely branded web based RSS aggregator, running in your sidebar, which includes a banner ad for their company, is branded with their logo and other graphical elements, provides Quikonnex news and gives easy access to feeds by their publishers. The aggregator also makes it easy to communicate with other Quikonnex members using private RSS channels, participate in web conferences and later on, if you decide to become a Quikonnex publisher, also serves as an easy access point to manage your feeds. Quite a remarkable product that first makes consuming RSS feeds very easy, especially because getting their aggregator is quite a simple affair, then demonstrates the quality of the services provided by Quikonnex, advertises these services and lastly makes it easy to access these services if you become a publisher. And then, when you do become a publisher, you can even get your own customized/branded QuikView aggregator that you can share with your visitors, spread the Quikonnex mantra and get a commission on all new publishers that decide to use Quikonnex, if they join through you. 249 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In addition to the web based aggregator, Quikonnex also offers access to a customized edition of the client-side RSS aggregator Awasu. Although their version of the Awasu aggregator is not really branded, as it does not include any elements of their brand, such as their logo, access to their services etc., it does come with two pre-installed feeds from Quikonnex: their Support feed and their Assistance feed. Not exactly a branded aggregator, but it does provide instant access to some of their content, which is certainly better than providing only a "clean" third-party aggregator, and the content does serve as a disguised promotional message for their services. Screenshot: a Quikonnex customized version of the Awasu client-side RSS aggregator Most recently, Quikonnex also released a complement to QuikView called DeskView, which is a hybrid between a downloadable RSS aggregator and a web based RSS aggregator. This new addition to the Quikonnex family comes even closer to the concept of brandable RSS aggregators, since Quikonnex publishers can brand it with their RSS feeds and also have control over the initial copy of what users see when they open the branded RSS aggregator from a specific publisher. 250 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS End-users need to undergo a quick registration process to use this software and are, during the registration process, also automatically subscribed to the publisher’s RSS feed. DeskView can also be minimized by the user to a small alert window, which is also brandable with publisher driven information. Consequently, DeskView works well for the publisher, since it is quite heavily branded with his information and RSS feed, and especially well for Quikonnex, since it provides access to other Quikonnex RSS feeds (thus also generating exposure for every other Quikonnex publisher as well) and requires end-users to register with Quikonnex, which also gives them the option of promoting Quikonnex as affiliates. In addition, it provides end-users with built in capability to use Quikonnex’s RSS communicational system to communicate with other Quikonnex users. Screenshot: The introductionary DeskView screen, carrying the branded information about the publisher 251 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: DeskView in action as an RSS aggregator An RSS aggregator is a piece of software that can read and present RSS feeds in a user-friendly manner, as well as help internet users organize their RSS feed reading list. This is the basic description. Most aggregators go further than this basic functionality, but this is the "meat". How you implement this basic functionality of course depends on you. A "lean" RSS aggregator would include only the functionality needed for users to consume RSS feeds. A branded RSS aggregator on the other hand should go further and integrate the functionalities needed for the company to better promote its brand, its products, its RSS feeds and also keep a mutually profitable relationship with the customer. This could mean adding the following functionality to the software, in addition to basic RSS consumption capabilities: • A visually branded software interface 252 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Pre-installed company RSS feeds, presumably spotlighted in the reading list; personalized if possible (the last would have to be done in connection with the company's RSS publishing system that would automatically provide a personalized feed for each identified RSS aggregator user and automatically provide him with content relevant to his needs through the company feeds, for instance product support content updates) • An RSS feed customization module, if the company offers RSS feed customization • Ad serving module, capable of serving ads to users through the aggregator • Notification module, capable of serving special notifications from the company (this could be implemented as an RSS feed, but with an additional message posted on the screen when new content items appear; could also be used for every new content item from the company) • Communications module, basically a form that the user can user to send messages to the company, and even receive feedback; could even include a customer support system • Web store module, that would allow the user to browse the company's product line through the actual aggregator and even do a purchase • Etc. The possibilities of what you can do with your own software are really quite endless. Unfortunately most companies won't be able to afford such a solution that would provide them with such advanced marketing opportunities. But it doesn't mean that small businesses should forget about using this approach. Right now there are many RSS aggregators already available on the market, many of them free of charge, and even not supported by advertising. This software was mainly build by eager RSS users, without any outside funding. A good approach might convince them to modify their software for you for a modest price that would help them make at least something from their work. 253 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4.3 The Possible Pitfalls The fact that there are already many aggregators available on the market free of charge will work against you in using this strategy. You cannot simply expect to put out a mediocre or low-quality product and have people use it. • A branded aggregator should provide all of the RSS functionality provided by at least the popular free aggregators on the market. A faulty product will, sooner or later, be replaced and even create a negative experience of your brand. Do not go in to this if you cannot provide with a good user experience. • Excessive advertising can kill any free software. Keep it under control. The first goal of the aggregator should be to better help your visitors and customers, to make their RSS experience as positive as possible. That is what will generate the positive brand experience. The second goal should be promoting your content feeds, but in a way that does not intrude with the user's experience. The third goal should be increasing interaction between you and the user, making it as simple as possible for him. Advertising and direct marketing can only come in as the fourth goal. Abiding by these two basic rules should help you create a product that people will love to use. And when you achieve that, both your brand and the bottom-line will profit. 5. Syndicating Web Content to Various Internet Media Most of the ways of using RSS we introduced by now were in some way about syndication ! syndicating your content to other internet end-users. But RSS can also be used to syndicate your content to other internet media, for publication on their web sites, using the very same feeds you are using for delivering content to end-users, even providing customization (allowing other internet media to precisely customize what content they want to receive from you and publish on their web sites). 254 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Others can then take your RSS feed and display its contents on their web sites, providing you with links to the full-text version of the content on your web site. The benefits of syndicating your content cannot be disputed, but syndication does have its difficulties, as you will need to balance the various content, technology and promotional aspects related to it. Of course, anyone can take your RSS feed and use it to publish your RSS content items on his web site. If they find it beneficial to them, they will do it, no matter how you wrap your syndication. This chapter is not about this type of cases. It's about the other side of the story, where you actively work to get others to publish your syndicated content, moving them from apathy to valuable syndication publishers. 5.1 The Content Aspects The first question is what content is appropriate for content syndication anyway? Can just about any kind of content be syndicated? In theory yes, but in the real world no web site will publish content from other media that is not of exceptional interest to their readers, of exceptional quality and is unique at least to a certain extent. What kind of content you can't expect to get syndicated on other web sites? • Low-quality content and content with no apparent value. • Content that can be easily accessed through a variety of other web media and through large numbers of other internet publishers ! this is the content that is available practically "everywhere" and as such is not interesting to other web sites, since it doesn't provide any real added value to their visitors. • Content focused on your company and your web site; unless you want to syndicate it to web sites that specialize in providing such in formation. • Your promotional content; unless your syndication partners are actually your affiliates that would want to publish your syndicated content to easier increase their sales and commissions. 255 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Un-appropriate content types, but in relation to your target web sites. For instance, a web site that offers only short and punchy news won't publish long syndicated articles. Most web sites will find no value in publishing your "forum" feeds, and so on. The key characteristic of easily syndicated content is unique content that cannot be easily accessed from almost anywhere else; this might include unique news, unique articles or even unique commentary or blog postings from wellrespected authors. Some of the reasons for publishing such content might be: • Increasing the content value of the web site to its visitors. • Positioning the web site as an internet starting point for a specific target audience. • Filling the web site's content gap, which needs to be filled to satisfy the needs of the web site's target audience, but the web site cannot fill on its own. • Increasing revenues by earning commissions from syndicated product feeds. • Improving the positive perception of the web site by associating with a respected brand (providing its content). • Providing additional services to visitors. • Increasing web site traffic. • Increasing the frequency of web site visits. • Increasing the time-spent on the web site. The above are only concepts, so let's take a look at some examples of what content could be syndicated: • Frequently updated breaking news. • Latest downloads and software from different sources. • Specific news items, such as the latest and most dangerous computer viruses. • Financial updates, for instance price changes of certain stocks. • Forum updates, if the web site wants to provide access to a strong community, but cannot build one itself. 256 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Aggregated news from many different sources, covering one or a few key topics. • Etc. You have to view your content syndication as a service you are providing to other web sites; a service that needs to meet their needs and help them increase their value to their visitors. When determining what kind of content to syndicate, your first need to precisely determine your target web sites: • What audience is your content most appropriate for? • What kind of web sites reach and cover that audience? • What kind of web sites are you targeting? • What do these kind of web sites need in terms of content you can provide? • What are their reasons for needing syndicated content? • How can you specifically help them increase their value to their own visitors? • Can you specify at least a few concrete target web sites? • Are you a good match for them? • Are you their competitor or could your content harm them in any way, such as lead their customers away from them? Can you answer all of these questions? Only after doing so will you be able to determine what kind of syndication RSS content feeds to prepare ! consequently the key question after determining all of the characteristics of your target web sites is how to package your content in to RSS feeds that best meet their needs. Yes, syndication, especially if you publish much content, does mean you have to prepare a separated set of RSS feeds, which might not be the same as the feeds you are offering to your own visitors. You need to differentiate between your own visitors and your syndication target web sites. This, naturally, doesn't apply if you only publish smaller amounts of content, such as a few content items per week or even only a few content items per day. In that case you can just try and go ahead offering your existing end-user feeds to web sites as well. 257 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS But if that is not the case, careful feed packaging is crucial to successful syndication of your content. Now go ahead and create a list of content types and topics you are going to offer for syndication, carefully matching the characteristics you defined for your target web sites. Just list everything you are going to syndicate. This might include: • News from certain topics (such as Search Engine Optimization Industry News; Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Industry News; Content Management Software Industry News; Corporate News; etc.) • Blog postings (such as a syndicated RSS feed of a renowned expert's blog, or commentary feeds on various industry topics from different experts; etc.) • Articles from certain topics (such as RSS Marketing Articles; E-mail Marketing Articles; etc.) • Updates on latest forum posts on certain topics (such as forum posts on the topic of Asian financial markets) • Specific data feeds (such as a feed providing latest hard-data on selected financial papers from the Asian financial markets) • Specific product feeds (such as feeds on your latest books in the marketing category) • Etc. How might these be different from the RSS feeds you prepared for your own visitors? First off, the needs of your visitors might be totally different from the needs of the web sites you target. For instance, your visitors might be interested in getting all of your internet marketing industry news in a single RSS feed, while your target web sites cover only very specific niche internet market industry segments, and naturally only want to publish that content, and not everything you are offering to your own visitors. 258 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Or, your web site visitors might be interested in receiving content updates for all of your resident experts' commentary articles, while your target web sites could only be interested in one or two of them. Wouldn't it then be best to just segment your feeds as widely as possible and just let your visitors and target web sites choose what they like best? We already covered this subject when talking about segmented feeds and discovered that offering too many feeds to your visitors might confuse them and not meet their needs and capabilities at all. By all means, if the RSS feeds you publish for your visitors also precisely match the needs of your syndication target web sites, do use the same feeds for both. But if they don't, invest some extra time in re-packaging your feeds to meet the needs of possible syndication partners as well. Granted, close to none internet publishers put this additional effort in to preparing syndication feeds other web sites might use to display their syndicated content. You can and should be different and take that extra step. As more and more web sites will start providing content for syndication the game will go to those willing to do more to meet the demands of the market. 5.2 The Technology Aspects After preparing your content types and topics syndication list, you need to start packaging this content in to appropriate feeds, and this is where technology first comes on to the scene. Are you going to provide pre-made RSS feeds for your syndication partners to choose from, or are you going to provide them with an option to customize their feed to their liking (in this case, you can just use the same customization process you are using for your visitors). • If there aren't many different options to choose from, namely if your content is not very segmented, you can easily just prepare a few pre-made feeds. • But if your content is highly segmented, it's best to offer customization that will best meet your audience's needs. The process for feed customization can be just the same as with feeds for your visitors, and you can use any of the customization approaches we mentioned in that chapter. 259 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The next step, after making the above choice, is making your feeds easily accessible to your possible syndication partners. The problem is that many webmasters can't easily plug-in your RSS feed in to their web site, at least not without some programming expertise or help, because RSS feeds need to be parsed in order to be displayed on web sites. For those that have that capability, just provide the URL of the feed; they'll know what to do with it. Your problem are the web sites that do not have this capability, and they won't have a clue of what to do with your feed or how to implement it. You need to provide them with an easy way to do so. So the question is how to take the content within the RSS feed and turn it in to workable HTML on a web site. You need a way to convert the content from RSS in to HTML and then display it on the actual web site. The "displaying" part usually involves preparing some sort of "box" that includes the content titles and links. You can: • Use an already prepared RSS parsing script. • Write your own RSS parsing script. Writing your own RSS parsing script will require programming experience, but you can easily hire a programmer to do it for you, and it won't cost you much. You can find a variety of programmers that will do this kind of thing for you for almost nothing at Elance.com. If you want to use an already prepared RSS parsing script, here are some sources you can use to find it: • Hotscripts.com • ScriptSearch.com • FreeScripts.com • ASP Resource index • NeedScripts.com 260 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS These resources will give you a variety of scripts to choose from, in different programming languages. Just choose the one you are most comfortable with and also the one that your target web sites will be comfortable or capable of using. The scripts you will be looking for will probably be in the XML category. After finding the script you will need to modify it so that is displays your RSS feed the way you want it to be displayed. Most scripts will come with some documentation that will help you do so. The modifications you might want to make include: • The source RSS feed to parse • The number of RSS content items you want to display (recommended from 5 to 10) • What elements of the content items do you want to display (such as title, description etc.) • The display presentation ! how it all looks on your syndication partner's web sites; you might also want to consider pushing your logo on top of the box that displays the content etc. (this will depend on the uniqueness of your content and the power of your brand, which will naturally effect your negotiating position ! if your content is highly desirable for other web sites to publish, you won't have any problems forcing your logo on the top of the display box; if it is not, you might not want to push the subject). Why should you do all of this anyway? You need to prepare a "tool" that your syndication partners can easily include on their web sites, if they don't know or can't parse your feed by yourself. This "tool" should be a piece of code or a script that your target syndication partners can easily include on their web sites, preferably simply by pasting your code in to their web pages. If your target syndication partners are capable of at least basic code modification you could allow them to change some characteristics of how your content box is displayed on their web sites, such as changing the border colors etc. Also, if your target web sites use different programming languages, you will need to supply them with appropriate scripts for each of them, or simply use JavaScript. 261 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If you packaged your syndication content in to more than one feed, you'll need to do this for every feed. Example: Finance http://www.finance-on.net Web site type: Business news site The Finance-on.net web site provides its users with two different content syndication options. The first one is simply customizing their own RSS or XML feed, using the exactly same system they use for end-user RSS feed customization and exactly the same feeds, and then parsing these feeds on their own on their web sites. Because this is too complicated for most webmasters, the Finance-on.net web site also provides a content syndication "Javascript service". The users of this service can customize what content from Finance-on.net they want to publish on their web sites by pasting a short line of code on the web site. Customization works just the same as the RSS feed customization (even the user interface looks and works almost exactly the same), giving the users the following customization options: • Content type (articles / news, short reports, commentaries, press releases) • Content topics (General business news and affairs, Realestate, Carreers, The new economy, Marketing, Personal finances, Financial markets, Tourism, Europe etc.) • Content with specific keywords: users can also select from hundreds of keywords from the web site's "glossary" (company names, authors, people, ideas, concepts etc. ) to further reduce the number of hits from the above to customization parameters, receiving extremely targeted content. • The number of content items to be displayed • The width of the box in which the content items are displayed After customizing the content they want to display on their web site they are given a short piece of code to include in the web site's code, where they want to display the content. When the code is entered in to the web site it displays a branded Finance-on.net "box" that displays the content items, already customized. 262 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: an example of how the Finance-on.net content syndication box might look like The above box is displayed by the following piece of code, which also includes the parameter that defines how to display the content, based on the user's settings: <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="Javascript" SRC="http://beta.financeon.net/js/rokh1-10e381476ebbe5e8a34691ed62622339.js"> </SCRIPT> The webmaster only needs to include this code on his web site, where it could look something like this: 263 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Screenshot: an example of how the Finance-on.net content syndication box might look like on a web site Whenever someone clicks on the link in the box they are taken to the Financeon.net web site, more precisely to the web page that contains the appropriate article. If the article is open-access, the visitor gets immediate access to it. But if it is not, the visitor is immediately taken to the login page and is asked to either log-in or register. Consequently, the Finance-on.net web site also benefits by generating new registered web site users. As you can see from both of the examples posted the Finance-on.net content syndication box includes the Finance logo ! the business daily Finance provides unique content and as such can afford to push the logo next to its syndication logo, in addition to being a powerful Slovenian brand. Because of its strength, marginal web sites that display their content additionally profit simply by associating themselves with such a recognized and respected brand. The syndication users cannot remove the logo from the syndication feed, but they can modify the box's size (in their personal settings) and the outlook of the content background and borders, by including and modifying the appropriate CSS style on their web site. 264 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS <STYLE type="text/css"> .finlink { color: black } .fintd { background: #F9EDE3; color: black } </STYLE> The above piece of code needs to be entered in the <head> section of the web site's HTML code and modified, if the user wants to use a different background or border. Terms of Use In addition to not allowing users to remove the logo from the content syndication box, the business daily Finance also reserves the right to prohibit anyone from using this service. Certain rules also apply for those that parse the RSS or XML feeds by themselves: • Article titles can be published only if the Finance logo is in direct proximity to the article titles in such a way that it is apparent that this content is from Finance. • Links behind the article titles must lead to the location of the article on the Finance-on.net web site and not to any other web sites. • Content items must be displayed in full, without any changes. These terms of use assure that other web sites use the Finance-on.net syndicated content in such a way that it is apparent that this content originates from Finance and that the syndicated content actually benefits Finance by generating more exposure and prospective users. The JavaScript Problem While all of this is in fact very simple to do, making their content syndication very easy for the users, it does come at a cost. The syndication box uses JavaScript, which is considered as potentially harmful content by the Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, which means it blocks the JavaScript by default, but gives the visitor the change to allow it to run. Yes, it can be used on any web site that uses any kind of programming language, but that doesn't help much if it is blocked when visitors enter a web site that uses a syndication box prepared like this. So it still might be better to prepare a true RSS parsing script or scripts for your possible syndication partners. 265 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Syndication Customization Remember the discussion we were having about packaging content in to RSS feeds at the beginning of this chapter. Since Finance-on.net publishes huge amounts of daily content, it would be nearly impossible for them to provide pre-packaged RSS feeds that would satisfy the needs of all of their possible syndication partners. Consequently, their best choice was providing customization, where each syndication partner can precisely specify what kind of content from Finance he wants do offer on his web site. Promotion How does the business daily Finance promote the syndication services on its web site? Like most other web sites, they aren't doing much to present this possibility and its benefits to their users. This, and examples from many other web sites, shows that content syndication is still very low on the priority list of most internet publishers and marketers. Finance provides access to its syndication services only through the user's personal Settings page, after he is already registered and log-on to the web site. After accessing the Settings page, two of the many links available to customize the web site experience are available for content syndication, one promising easy and simple (which it is) content syndication on other web sites and the other being focused more on advanced users that already know what XML and RSS are and how to use them. Is this enough? If you want others to publish your syndicated content, you might want to do a lot more than this. And remember, just if someone uses an RSS aggregator it doesn’t mean that they know they can use RSS to display your syndicated content on their web site … even if perhaps that's just the thing they'd want to do. You have to tell them it’s possible, you have to promote it to them and you have to show them exactly how to do it. 266 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS How much does all this cost? Reading this example might make you wonder how much all of this really costs … and make you worry that you just don't have the resources to pull all of this off. Yes, RSS customization does not come very cheaply, but that isn't the only option you have at your disposal. • You can provide segmented RSS feeds that will meet the needs of your target syndication partners, instead of giving them the power of customizing the feeds. Offering segmented RSS feeds won't cost you a dime. • You can provide a simple RSS parsers (or a few parsers, if you want all web sites, regardless of their programming languages, to be able to use them) for your visitors to help them display the syndicated RSS content on their web sites. If you know at least a little something about programming you can quite easily customize pre-written and free scripts and offer them to your visitors. If you'd rather not do any programming at all, you can still hire an un-expensive programmer to help you out. It shouldn't cost you more than a hundred or few hundred Dollars, depending on the kind of programmer you get. The point is, everyone can provide syndicated content, you just need to be a little resourceful. You don't need to precisely follow the steps of large internet publishers; you can do it your own way, and get away with a much much smaller investment. Example: The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com Web site type: General news site The New York Times web site takes a somewhat different approach to content syndication than the business daily Finance. They do as well provide two general options for web sites that want to display their syndicated content, but they do it in a slightly different manner. The first option users have is using one of their pre-made segmented RSS feeds, made available for end-users, and parsing it by themselves on their web sites. 267 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS While the New York Times primarily promotes the RSS feeds as a personal content consumption channel, they also offer the opportunity to display the content from the feeds on non-commercial web sites or blogs. They also require attribution whenever New York Times content is posted and reserve the right to prohibit anyone from using their content. Just like Finance-on.net they as well do not provide any parsing instructions or anything similar that would help people display their syndicated content on their web sites. And just like Finance-on.net, they also offer a separate "headline syndication service", which as well is simple to set-up, although it does take more time. As the first step to using this service, they require that you apply by filling out a form that asks for your first and last name, country, e-mail address, web site URL and web site category (you can also check a special box in order to be updated on New Your Times affiliate programs). You are taken to a separate web site directly after filling out the form, where you can set-up your headlines service in a few steps. • Choose your content ! here you can first select the content category you would like to display on your web site. You can only select one category, as there are no more advanced customization options (just like providing segmented feeds instead of customization). Here you can also modify the look and feel of your syndicated content box (you can choose from 6 slightly different designs, specific the box width and the number of content items in the syndication feed). You can preview your syndication box (they call it a "Webfeed") in the right column of the user interface, which is a really nice feature. • After you are done you can request the code for your Webfeed, by entering your e-mail address and web site URL in a new form. • The code to display the headlines is delivered in an e-mail and can also be accessed through the web site you used to set-up your Webfeed. The e-mail and the web site include precise tips on how to implement the syndication code on your web site, which was a good move, since the code is quite complex. • You now only need to implement the code on your web site and you're done. This entire process is well-explained and easy to do. But again both the RSS service and the headline service are quite underpromoted on the web site, with the links to both services being displayed only at the bottom of each web page of the web site. 268 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Example: Lockergnome http://www.lockergnome.com Web site type: Specialized news site Lockergnome builds its syndication service on the fact that it enjoys a strong commitment and praise from its users, which is apparent right from the start of their syndication service presentation: "You are free to use any of these graphics on your Web site, email newsletter, or blog. Enjoy - and please keep spreading the word about us! Without you, none of this would be possible. We also syndicate content in RSS and JavaScript for your convenience." Their visitors can choose from three different content syndication options: • Displaying images with dynamic content that show article headlines from specific categories, chosen by the user. These can be placed on web sites by simply copying and pasting a few lines of code. And they are actually "powered" by RSS (they use RSS as the content source). Anyone can use this approach by using the free service provided by FeedBurner. • Parsing their RSS feeds. As opposed to other most other web sites Lockergnome does offer additional help and instructions on how to do this. • JavaScript feeds, which can be implemented on web sites by simply copying some code in to them. Lockergnome as well decided to go the RSS segmentation route. 5.3 The Promotional Aspects The promotional aspects of taking advantage of RSS content syndication include: • Promoting your content syndication service on your web site • Convincing your visitors of how they'll benefit from using your syndication service • Helping your visitors use your syndicated content • Actively promoting your content syndication service 269 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It all starts with promoting your content syndication service on your web site. How can anyone even start to think about using your content syndication service if they don't even know about it? It's not nearly enough to simply provide an RSS feed and expect everyone to know they can use it to display your content items on their web site in addition to consuming it in their RSS aggregators. And come to think of it, RSS feeds as well aren't very hugely promoted on web sites either. First decide on how you are going to lead your visitors to your syndication service (the service should be explained in detail on an individual web page) on your web site. Select a prominent spot where you'll "advertise" this service, and make it show on every page of your web site, preferably somewhere at the top and definitely "above the fold" so that visitors don't have to scroll down to see it. Also don't forget to promote the syndication service in all of your e-mails. Then think about how you'll attract the visitors to clicking through to find out more. Think in terms of powerful headlines, naturally tailored to what your visitors expect from you, that will grab their attention. Don't just say "Display our article headlines on your web site", but try to motivate them by providing them with a strong benefit, such as • "Increase your web site traffic and credibility by providing our content headlines and summaries to your visitors" or • "Increase the value of your web site and make your visitors stay longer and come back more often, generating more exposure for your products" or • "Turn your web site in to an internet starting point for your visitors -- provide them with daily news items they can look forward to and come back to read every day" or • "Generate more credibility for your services by providing top industry news from our content syndication service". The point is, you have to make it attractive, and then of course also deliver on your promise. 270 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Getting your visitors to click on the link that promotes syndication is only the first step. You now have them on your presentation page, already interested but still not convinced. • Explain to them what content syndication is. • Explain to them how they can benefit from it. The difficult part will be helping them use your syndicated content. • Even if the syndication options you offer them are as simple to use as copying and pasting some code in to the web site, even this might prove a little too challenging for many web site owners ! lead them step-by-step, even help them by providing screenshots that exactly show what they should do. • If you plan on providing them with direct access to your RSS feeds to use your syndicated content you are probably expecting that they already know how to parse RSS and display RSS content on their web sites. You are probably quite wrong. Provide them with a tutorial or with links to tutorials on other web sites. • If your syndication is going to be powered by a parsing script your users will need to upload on their server, providing a good tutorial will be crucial. Don't forget any details. What might make perfect sense for you probably doesn't for most of your visitors. All of this takes care of your web site visitors, but getting your content syndicated on as many places as possible will also demand some active promotion of your content syndication service. • Make a list of all of the web sites you believe would profit from your content and also reach your target audience. • Actively approach their owners, webmasters or editors and start personally discussing with them how they might use your content to their advantage. • Make agreements with them on a case-by-case basis, which might even mean preparing a special feed just for one web site, precisely taking care of their needs. Are you up to the task of promoting your syndication service as it deserves to be promoted? 271 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5.4 Generic RSS Syndication There is another aspect of RSS content syndication that also needs to be discussed. The approaches we were talking about up to this point were about getting individual web site owners to provide your content items on their web sites. There is also another way, which we could define as generic syndication. Web sites such as Yahoo!, Technorati, RSS search engines and directories, other online news aggregators, "consume" syndicated content from your RSS feeds to aggregate it and provide it to its visitors. These web sites can in fact become strong traffic generators for your feed and consequently your web site and your business. We'll be taking a look at how to take advantage of such web sites in the section about RSS promotion. 272 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. Using RSS and E-mail Together RSS and e-mail are in no way mutually-excluding, quite on the contrary, they can work together to provide for a better user experience, or at least, provide the users with a choice of content consumption channel. First, consider what types of content delivery e-mail or RSS are more appropriate for (although both can be used to deliver all of it). • • RSS E-mail • Frequent content updates, such as daily or even hourly news. Mostly content that is updated so frequently that if being delivered by e-mail would over-saturate the subscriber's e-mail • account. Even if many people still subscribe to daily or even hourly email updates, if the content is not crucial to their business or personal life, they sooner or later start moving it to the "to read" folder, to be read • when they have more time available. But the "to read" folder is usually not read afterwards. Complex combinations of content items that work especially well only if combined together, which is the case with many e-zines. Content that is so important that you need to be sure is delivered, not being stopped by any of the barriers that currently plague e-mail. This could be anything from important announcements for customers, product support updates, to crucial information for investors and/or top level management. • Content that needs to create a high impact, such as a new product announcement (best delivered using both channels, but e-mail is more "aggressive") or sales letters. Content that needs to be pushed to the subscribers, because the subscribers want to be pushed with it or need to be pushed with it ! timesensitive content, such as stockmarket updates, especially those that are customized to reflect the subscribers portfolio. Advertising supported content. 273 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Not strictly co-related content, which works just as well even if presented separately from other content. • Content items, especially news, that are not important enough for people to want to receive by e-mail, such as corporate news. • Internal (in-company) content. • Forum content updates. • "Listed" or "itemized" content, such as "the latest downloads" or digital catalogues. • Other types of frequently updated content. This isn't to say that RSS or e-mail shouldn't be used for all of the content presented above. They can be, and at best, users should be given the choice. As some of the practical examples already presented in this report clearly prove, there are beneficial ways of using RSS and e-mail together, making the best out of what each content channel has to offer. You could for instance publish a regular (weekly or monthly) e-mail e-zine with complex content combinations that work especially well together, and in addition to this also provide an RSS service to deliver your daily news or blog updates. RSS could also be used as a service for users that don't want to wait for content, but want to read it as soon as it becomes available, although that could undermine the value of your e-mail content update service for your advertisers. For instance, you could publish a monthly e-mail e-zine with your top articles and an RSS feed with all of your articles or other content items, published as they become available. There are no rules that could be used in every case and for every publisher. But in general, e-mail is the more appropriate tool to deliver editorially coherent content, while RSS is best at delivering more individualized content items that are not highly contextualized. 274 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS and e-mail can be a winning combination, especially when you use each channel for what its best. 275 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS Marketing with RSS 1. Take the list, describing your existing internet content delivery, that you made for Section I. 2. Now, with your new knowledge about RSS, again write down all of the audiences you want to deliver your internet content to, using RSS. Make certain that you follow the methods of delivering content via RSS, meaning that you structure your audiences by those methods. a. Put all of your “mass target audiences” under one section. b. Put all of your segmented audiences under another section. 3. For each of these audiences, write down exactly what content you are going to deliver to them. Be very specific. 4. Now write down how you are going to deliver this content using RSS, for each of your target audiences, and if necessary, also for the content you are going to deliver to them. 5. Using the information you just wrote down, prepare a list of all of the RSS feeds you are going to publish. 6. Think whether developing a branded RSS aggregator might work for you. 7. Add to the plan how e-mail is going to complement your RSS content delivery and exactly what content and how you are going to deliver with it. 8. If you are also going to invest your time in to syndicating content to other web 276 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS media, follow these steps: a. Write down what audiences you want to reach with your content. b. Find web sites that reach these audiences. c. Consider what kind of content you can provide to them. d. Create a list of target web sites and content appropriate for each of them. e. Prepare a list of reasons why they would benefit from running your syndicated content. f. Contact their webmasters and try to arrange for them to run your content. g. Prepare appropriate RSS feeds for them. h. Prepare an appropriate script for them to run your content. i. Furthermore, promote your syndication on your web site as well: i. Create a list of content most appropriate for the most syndication partners you want to target. ii. Prepare appropriate RSS feeds. iii. Prepare appropriate scripts for them to run your syndicated content iv. Prepare a web page within your web site where you explain the benefits of running your content and give them easy to follow steps on how to do it. v. Promote your content syndication on your web site. 277 Section VI: The Basics of Creating Your RSS Feed Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS There are several approaches to creating an RSS feed, and more seem to become available almost every week with the growing popularity of RSS. The most used approaches include: • Hand-coding your RSS feeds • Generating your RSS feeds with special client-side software • "Scraping" your existing web site to generate an RSS feed, using your already published content • Creating your own RSS publishing application • Using a simple third-party content management system, tailored especially for blog publishing • Using an external RSS publishing solution that you use only for RSS publishing and not for other elements of your internet content management • Using an advanced content management system, which you either bought as "out-of-the-box" or are using as an ASP ("renting" it) service • Using an advanced content management system developed especially for your company Your choice will depend on many factors: • Your programming expertise • Your budget • Your internal programming resources • Your existing content management solution • Your RSS feed requirements, such as customization and / or personalization Let's take another look at how the last point above would influence the approach you decide on: 279 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS publishing technology RSS customization Hand-coding your RSS feeds Not possible Using a simple third-party content management system, tailored especially for blog publishing This usually means blog publishing software that was especially designed to power blogs or other fairly simple and straightforward web sites. None of these currently on the market allow for RSS customization, and getting their developers to implement this functionality might be near impossible. You can however develop add-on modules for most of these, especially if they are open source, or have someone develop them for you. This might actually be cheaper than having a whole system developed especially for you, but you can forget about integrating it with user registration, especially because most of these content management systems don't allow for that anyway. Using an external RSS publishing solution that you use only for RSS publishing and not for other elements of your internet content management If you are using an external RSS publishing solution that doesn't have RSS customization already available (they usually don't), you can more or less forget about RSS customization as well. Using an advanced content management system, which your either bought as "out-of-the-box" or are using as an ASP (Application Service Provider ! "renting" a solution) service Same as above, if you bought a CMS "out-of-thebox" or are using it as an ASP service, chances are it doesn't have RSS customization available. One of the things you can do is pressure your provider to implement this for you, although that might prove expensive. The second option is using a third-party RSS publishing system that you use only for RSS, but then again, you would need a solution that makes customization possible, as well as can be integrated with your existing CMS in such a way that you don't need to enter the same content more than once. The third option is to develop this functionality itself, but naturally only if it can be integrated with your existing solution. Using an advanced content management system that you had developed especially for your company or you even developed in-house This is practically the only really feasible possibility when it comes to RSS customization (unless the CMS you bought already includes this, of course). If you developed your CMS in-house or had it developed especially for you adding this functionality shouldn't be at all difficult. 280 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As you can see, if you only plan to publish "general" or segmented RSS feeds, the technology should not be as great a problem. If you do decide to go the customization and / or personalization route, you will need either an advanced content management system that you can modify in-house, or a large enough budget to have an RSS publishing solution developed especially for you. If this is the case, this chapter really doesn't apply to you, because you will need to talk to your in-house tech team to see what can be done and how, or at least to your CMS vendor, which is practically the same. Let's now take a deeper look at some of the approaches you have available. Because this is mostly an e-book for marketers and publishers, we'll touch each of them only lightly, and give you additional resources to explore if you want to do this by yourself. A really great resource to help you on your way can be found here: http://rssgov.com/rssworkshop.html 1. Hand-coding Your RSS Feeds Hand-coding RSS feeds is reserved for people with at least basic HTML or XML coding skills, and for those with enough time to add new content items to their feeds by hand every time they want to update the feed. This is really simple, but it does take a lot of time all of the time, so it's really not recommended. But if this is something you would like to do, or at least if you would like to see how to create RSS feeds so that you can program your own application to generate your RSS feeds, here are links to some good online tutorials: • http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271 • http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/08/25/magazine/rss_tut.html • http://rssgov.com/rssworkshop.html Why hand-coding your RSS feeds is not recommended? • It takes too much time to add new content items to your RSS feed once you created it. • Customization and personalization are not possible. 281 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Segmentation is difficult at best. Adding new content items to a single RSS feeds is time consuming enough. Adding new content items by hand to multiple RSS feeds is even worse. • Tracking your RSS users is extremely difficult. 2. Generating Your RSS Feeds with Special Client-side Software There are now already a few client-side programs available that will help you create your RSS feed and publish it on the internet, right from your desktop. What steps would this include? 1. Generate your RSS feed using your desktop program. 2. Upload the RSS file to your server (some RSS publishing software will already to that for you). 3. Create a link to the RSS feed on your web site. 4. Add new content items to the feed manually every time: • • Option #1: Publish the content on your web site first and then include it in your RSS feed manually " Create and publish the content on your web site. " Launch your RSS publishing software. " Open your RSS feed and add a new content item to it with the software, linking it back to your web site. " Upload the RSS file to your web server. Option #2: Use your RSS feed to power your web site content [this might be a good option if only one section of your web site content is dynamic ie. is often updated, such as the news section; in this case you can actually “power” that content section through the RSS feed, meaning that every time you update your RSS feed that same content will be updated on the web site] " Launch your RSS publishing software. " Open your RSS feed and add a new content item to it. " Upload the RSS feed to your web server. 282 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS " Use a special RSS parsing script to display the content of the RSS feed on your web site. For example, take a look at RSS Builder, which is a free piece of software you install on your computer and use to create your RSS feed and even upload it to your server. This might be the easiest way to produce an RSS feed for someone running his online operation without any budget at all. Another free open-source alternative is ListGarden, which you can either run locally from your desktop or remotely from your web server. Other similar products are FeedForAll, which costs $39.95, and the NewzAlert's Composer, which costs $24.95. They are not free, but they do come with some additional features. While such products are very easy to use for practically everyone, they suffer from similar problems to hand-coding your RSS feeds: • Every time you want to update the RSS feed, you need to do so manually (in this case, using special software), which takes additional time as opposed to having RSS publishing capabilities integrated in to your all-round internet content management solution. It, for example, means you'll have to enter the content item title and description and everything else at least twice, once for publishing them on your web site and once for publishing them in your RSS feed. • Updating the RSS feed every time you want to add new content becomes even more of a problem when you are publishing multiple RSS feeds ! instead of having to update just one RSS file you now need to update several to deliver your content. • You can forget about RSS feed customization and / or personalization, as well as user tracking etc. But still, if you're running on an extremely low budget and don't want to use online services to create your RSS feed, this just might be the ticket. It is however important to add that some of these problems apply only to using this type of software “as is” (meaning that you only use the software by itself), without any additional “programming” or using any additional scripts. 283 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • You can use JavaScript, PHP scripts or ASP scripts to display (parse) the content from these feeds on your web site, thus eliminating the need to update your content twice, once for RSS and once for your web site. This can work great if you are using RSS only to power your web site news section. For instance, FeedForAll already provides a script like that to its customers. • You can even add RSS tracking to the pack, if you posses sufficient programming skills to program an RSS tracking script. 3. "Scraping" Scraping is taking your existing content, published on your web, and creating an RSS feed from it, using special tools. Some of these tools will use regular expressions in the HTML code to determine what content to pull from the web site and re-package as an RSS feed, while others will require you to mark up your web site with additional HTML code to tell the tools what to include in the RSS feed. While this might not be as elegant as having a "real" RSS publishing solution, it is easier to do than creating your RSS feeds by hand or manually. You have to choices for scraping: • installing special tools on your own web server and configuring them by yourself; • using third-party scraping services. The first option will give you more control and help you create a good output, but you will need some system administration skills or at least some help from your web server administrator, which as well should not be a problem. Here are some of the tools available to you: • http://www.mnot.net/xpath2rss/ • http://www.xmlhub.com/rssgenr8.php • http://sourceforge.net/projects/script4rss/ • http://sourceforge.net/projects/myrss/ The other way is using third-party scraping services, such as http://www.w3.org/2000/08/w3c-synd/#. These services can be even more difficult to use if you are not well versed with coding and they provide you with less control than hosting the conversion tools on your own web server. 284 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The clearest advantage of scraping in comparison with hand-coding or manual creation is that it is automatic, which means you don't have to update the RSS file manually each time you add new content items. But as with the other two, you can still forget about RSS feed customization and / or personalization, as well as user tracking etc. 4. Creating Your Own Basic RSS Publishing Application If you have the expertise or can afford to hire a programmer or already have one, you can quite easily create your own internal basic RSS publishing application. You can quite easily create a basic application using many of the free scripts already available on the internet. This really shouldn't cost you too much, but it will again only be suitable for running basic "general" RSS feeds or, possibly, segmented RSS feeds. 5. Using a Simple Third-Party Content Management System, Tailored Especially for Blog Publishing There is an abundance of blogging content management systems available everywhere around the internet. These solutions are tailored especially for blog publishing, but most of them also automatically output the content in to RSS feeds. • Many are free, and others are quite inexpensive. • Some are hosted solutions, meaning that your content is hosted on their servers and web sites and not your own, while others can be installed on your own web server (such as MovableType). The good news with these solutions is that they are very simple and easy to use and automatically create RSS feeds for you (using the software you publish the content on your web site, and the software automatically takes that content and creates an RSS feed as well), many will even provide you with simple functionality to easily create and automatically update segmented RSS feeds (still no luck when it comes to customization and / or personalization) 285 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The bad news is that they are especially tailored for blog publishing, which in affect means that they are really appropriate only for running web sites with mostly linear and not deeply-structured content, but not complex web sites that require complex web content management solutions. It's a good choice if you'd like to publish your entire web site in these solutions and don't already have a good content management solution; but if you already have a content management solution you are happy with, this might not be the best idea. It's also a good choice if your web site is "static" and not powered by any kind of content management system, but you would like to add a blog or news section to it. You can simply use one of these solutions to power just the news or blog section. If you would like to check your options and see what solutions best meet your needs, take a look at the Microcontent News Blogging Software Roundup report. A good list with explanations is also available here: http://rssgov.com/rssworkshop.html. 6. Using an External RSS Publishing Solution There are also a few online RSS publishing solutions available that can easily help you create a new RSS feed using a simple web-based interface, such as http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/ or http://www.webreference.com/cgi-bin/perl/rssedit.pl. These are very basic as well, but they are a start, and they are free. 7. Using Your Existing Advanced Content Management System If you have enough resources at your disposal, this is by far the best choice ! using your existing advanced content management system (either one that you purchased, are "renting" as an ASP solution or have developed especially for your company) to deliver content in RSS in addition to other content delivery channels. • You will have complete control over your feeds. • You will only post your content once, and then deliver it automatically through different content delivery channels. • If you can generate your RSS feeds dynamically and/or track your users, you can quite precisely track your RSS metrics. 286 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • RSS feed customization and personalization are finally made possible. • It makes creating affiliate-powered RSS feeds easy. All of this will of course depend on the functionality provided by your existing CMS, so you should check the possibilities with your tech team. But, if your CMS is an advanced solution, most things shouldn't be a problem. 8. Other As already mentioned, certain services that allow you to publish your e-mail content in an RSS feed are already available on the market … and for free. Just take a look at iUpload Mailby RSS. “Using MailbyRSS is simple. Organizations need only to sign up to the service to receive a special e-mail address and password from iUpload and can immediately begin to author content for their RSS channel by sending it as an email. When MailbyRSS receives an authorized e-mail message, it automatically creates or updates an RSS channel and generates any supporting web pages required.” Source: iUpload Mailby RSS In layman's terms this simply means that you create an account at Mailby and then send e-mail messages to the e-mail account they provide you with (this also means subscribing to e-zines and discussion lists and similar using this account), which in turn adds new content items to the RSS feed created for your account. To make this RSS feed accessible to your visitors, simply provide a link to it on your web site. The advantage of publishing an RSS feed by sending e-mail to an appropriate email account is that it simplifies your RSS feed generation ! simply send your e-mail content to the correct e-mail address and you’re set. The disadvantages are similar to scraping and using client-side software to generate the feed. 287 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Another interesting service is MailBucket, which allows you to simply send e-mail to an e-mail address you “create on-the-fly” and then “pick-up” the RSS feed from their web server. MailBucket is an experiment in alternative methods of email management. For now its only feature is a public email-to-RSS gateway: forward your email to [email protected] and have your news reader pick it up at mailbucket.org/slurp.xml (where you choose slurp, having checked that it's not already in use). The service is probably most useful to those who lurk on high-traffic mailing lists, but it could also be used as a rudimentary bridge between applications, with email as the transfer protocol. Source: MailBucket The interesting part here is that you can simply make up an e-mail address at MailBucket and send e-mail there, and the RSS feed will automatically be generated for you. 9. Summary These are only a few solutions you can use, and more and more are surfacing all the time. • By far the best option is using your existing content management system to deliver your content in RSS in addition to the other content delivery channels you are already covering, but this is a real option only for companies with enough resources. • If you are running on a tight budget and are publishing a mostly linear or noncomplex web site, using third-party blogging solutions is your best bet. • If you are running on a tight budget, but do not want to use blogging software (if you already are using a CMS you are happy with, or if the available solutions don't meet your needs), scraping or creating your own basic RSS publishing solution are among the best choices. • If you are running on a practically non-existent budget and don't have any technical resources or skills, your best bet is a client-based RSS feed generator. 288 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS The Basics of Creating Your RSS Feed 1. Take the plan from the previous section and use it to write down a list of technical requirements for creating your RSS feeds. Be very specific. 2. Now explore the internet (and also consider discussing this with your technical staff, if you have it) and try to find the best possible RSS publishing solution to fit your needs. 3. Implement the solution for your web site and create your first RSS feed. 289 Section VII: RSS Promotion Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS promotion, as a key ingredient to making RSS work, brings marketers new challenges, which can be compared with the challenges in the early days of e-mail. • Most people do not know what RSS is and do not understand it. • Most people do now know why they should use RSS and what benefits it offers them. • Most people are still, regardless of the spam problem, quite happy with e-mail and receiving information by e-mail. • RSS is something new and as such is not in the comfort zone of most. • Most people do not have RSS aggregators. • Many people aren't comfortable installing new software and many don't even know how to do it. • Many people don't care to learn how to use new software. Add to these the fact that people are already oversaturated with online content and you'll get a feeling of the promotional challenges that you are going to face with RSS. Promoting your RSS feed is not going to be as straightforward as promoting an e-mail e-zine or e-mail content updates service, as you will also need to educate people about RSS and how any why use it. RSS promotion consists of the following key ingredients: • "On-site" RSS feed promotion ! The RSS subscription mechanism and process • External RSS promotion • Affiliate RSS promotion • “Promoting” the feed within RSS aggregators All these are crucial to getting the readership you need to generate tangible marketing results with your RSS activities. 291 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1. "On-site" RSS Feed Promotion RSS feed promotion begins on your web site and with your existing communication activities, with your loyal visitors and subscribers, to whom you'd like to: • offer RSS as a supplemental content delivery channel; • offer RSS as a replacement content delivery channel; • offer RSS as an exclusive content delivery channel. There are two decisions to be made: • Where on your web site are you going to promote your RSS feeds? • How are you going to promote them? 1.1 Where? Let's take a look at some examples of where some internet marketers promote their feeds on their web sites. One of the most basic approaches is simply taking one of the images that usually represent RSS feeds and putting it somewhere relatively noticeable on your web site, such as Cisco, FindSavings.com, MrFire.com any many others are doing. 292 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Cisco promotes its News@Cisco RSS feed in the "Related tools" bar in the right column of the News@Cisco web site section, using an easily noticeable XML button, which unfortunately, like with most other web sites, has some meaning only for people that already know RSS and/or content syndication. In order to reach this web site section, the visitor first needs to navigate from the home page to the corporate section and only then to the News@Cisco section, which does make sense since the RSS feed delivers mostly corporate news and is not a "general" RSS content update service that would deliver most of the web site content. The FindSavings.com example is somewhat different, because this web site offers its RSS content update service for most of its content, so the RSS button is naturally positioned in such a way that it reflects this fact. The broadness of the FindSavings.com RSS content update service should be immediately clear to every visitor, because of the context it is presented in on the web site. 293 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It's the same with the MrFire.com web site, where the RSS link is placed right in the left column menu, again signaling that the RSS feed covers or should cover most of the web site content. 294 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The MarketingProfs.com web site, which also uses the same approach described in the examples above, in addition also promotes its RSS feed through its e-mail e-zine, which is a smart move that every internet marketer should follow. If you are publishing an e-zine or are sending out any e-mailings, do promote your RSS feed in there as well; make it as easily accessible to your audience as possible. In all of the examples above, the company is using only one position on the web site to promote the RSS feed. This will work especially if you publish only one RSS feed or if you use the RSS button as a link that takes the visitor to your RSS presentation page, where the other feeds are available. But, if you are publishing multiple feeds, you might want to consider promoting each of them more aggressively. 295 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The SitePoint.com web site, as you can see from the above two screenshots, promotes its individual RSS feeds right next to their appropriate content categories (the Daily Blogs RSS feed right next to the Daily Blogs column, etc.), in addition to the "general" RSS feed link at the bottom of the left column of the web site, which takes the visitor to the RSS presentation page. 296 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Lockergnome.com is doing the same, providing a direct link to each individual (segmented) RSS feed directly next to the category title on the front page, as well as on the actual category pages. Robin Good's MasterNewMedia.org is another great example of providing multiple access points for segmented RSS feeds. 297 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS His News feed is promoted directly at the top of the front page, next to the Latest News column, while the entire list of his RSS feeds can be accessed from his top web site menu. Additional segmented RSS feeds are made available right next to their respective content categories, available a little more down on the front page. In addition to all of this, the RSS feed link for each content category is provided within each individual content category, for that category. 298 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS What can we learn from all of these examples? Promote your RSS feeds everywhere on your web site, and elsewhere, where it makes sense. • Provide a "general" link to your RSS presentation page (if you have one) from your web site menu and preferably also using an RSS image to let people quickly know that you are providing RSS feeds. • Provide a link to every individual (segmented) RSS feed right next to the content category to which it belongs, which includes various menus or category lists, as well as content category pages. • Provide a link to your RSS feeds in your e-mail communications, especially ezines, as well. In essence, try to think of every logical location on your web site to provide a link to either your "general" RSS feed (carrying all of your web site content updates), segmented RSS feeds or your RSS feed presentation page. For instance, a good location to promote your RSS feed is directly next to your email e-zine subscription "box", just like in the example below: 299 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS All of the above examples should serve you well when identifying these locations. And remember that you should never "hide" your RSS feeds ! make them as easily accessible as possible. Think of them as you would of your e-zine subscription box ! they have to be noticeable and available from every page of your web site. But the problem with all of these examples is that they assume that the visitor already knows what RSS is or, if he does not, will click on the RSS link out of curiosity. Most of us are doing the same assumption mistake, just hoping that the RSS button is enough. Is it really? Aren't we hurting ourselves by acting as if we think that everyone on the planet knows what RSS is, and if they don't, that they should? This "strategy" might work for the web sites dealing with "cutting-edge and savvy internet users", but not for web sites that are targeting the "average internet user". So, instead of just publishing an RSS or XML button on your web site (simply adding a text that says "RSS feeds" or "Content feeds" won't do the job either), try to explain your RSS content update service in more easily understandable and benefit driven terms. 300 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Take a look at the below illustration example to see what we mean: The text doesn't explain what RSS is yet, but it does give a strong benefit to the prospective new RSS subscriber (the benefit will of course depend on your target audience and their characteristics) and better invites him to click on the RSS link. Once you've coined a suitable presentation, use that at the most prominent location of your web site, preferably right next to your e-mail e-zine subscription box. And this is the key ! link this presentation to your RSS presentation page, not directly to the RSS feed itself. Once you've done this you can still publish the little RSS or XML buttons next to the appropriate categories, which actually will lead to the RSS feeds. Just make sure you are using the most visible / prominent location ("the most visible" in terms of what web site venue you can afford to "invest" in RSS) to link to the RSS presentation page. 1.1.1 Auto-Discovery Aggregation Another important aspect of "positioning" your feed on your web site is enabling "Auto-Discovery Aggregation". Some RSS aggregators have the capability of quickly finding an RSS feed on the web site (and making it easy for the user to subscribe to it), if you place simple piece of code on your web site. The code is: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL"> Just include this piece of code, with the appropriate RSS feed URL of course, in to the <head> section of your web site code (on each page). If you are providing more than one feed do so for each of them. 301 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 1.2 How? The "How" can become more complicated than the "Where", because there are so many possibilities available and really not best practices are available or widely recognized is. Let's take a look at some of the possibilities: • Making the RSS feed available directly after the click on the RSS promotional image. There are a few mechanisms (additional possibilities) that can be used here, which will be covered in the next chapter. The key problem with this possibility is that it's really appropriate only for users that already know RSS and are using it ! in most cases the user will only see a bunch of XML code that won't make any sense to him, after clicking on the link (unless the publisher is using a service like FeedBurner, which makes the feed readable in a browser as well, or he's doing the transformation himself). On the other hand, this approach is great for users that know and use RSS, since they can subscribe to the RSS feed in the shortest time possible, without having to do any unnecessary steps. • The second possibility, also already discussed, is making the RSS feeds (their URLs) available from an RSS presentation page, where you basically educate your visitors about RSS and give them access to the feeds, using the above mentioned subscription mechanisms. This approach might work better, because it gives you the chance to educate people and explain to them what RSS is and how to use it. In fact, this approach combines both of these possibilities ! for instance, you could provide a link to the RSS presentation page from the most prominent location on your web site, and still provide direct links to RSS feeds for different content categories; or you could provide an additional link (presenting it with a question mark) to the RSS presentation page, right next to the link to the actual RSS feed. • The third possibility is providing access to the RSS feed after the visitor registers at your web site, which is the best option if you are going to provide RSS feed customization and/or personalization, because you can, in this case, generate an individual RSS feed for each user or at least mark each RSS feed URL with an identifier to help you identify individual users. And, just like with the other options, there are a few different approaches you can take to the subscription / registration process. 302 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS All of these possibilities work with the "Where" factor we already covered. Let's take a more detailed look at each of them. 1.2.1 RSS Subscription Mechanisms What's an RSS subscription mechanism? Consider some of the generic ways of subscribing to an e-mail e-zine. Two of the most popular are either subscribing through a web form (i.e. entering your e-mail address in to a web form) or sending a blank e-mail to a subscription e-mail address. Both achieve the same goal, but are different. When users subscribe to a new RSS feed, they as well use some sort of mechanism to do it. For instance, copying the RSS feed URL in to the RSS aggregator is one of these mechanisms, and the most simple (but not for the users) and most used one. The problem with this is that if a user, in his internet browser, clicks on the RSS link, all he's going to see is a lot of confusing XML code. There's nothing user friendly or intuitive about it. But there are also other, better ways. Certain RSS aggregators, both client-based and web-based, provide direct RSS subscription capabilities ! users can click directly on the RSS subscription link (usually a button) and the RSS feed will be automatically added to their RSS aggregator. These links aren't standard links to RSS feeds, but links to online "services" or your own computer, tailored for individual RSS aggregators, that can "communicate" with your RSS aggregator and automatically add the RSS feed in to your subscription list. Let's take a look at a practical example … Visit the Crocodyle's Action Tips blog and take a look at the little button images in the right column ! logos for various RSS aggregators. 303 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If you are using any of the "supported" RSS aggregators (in this case those are QuikView, Awasu, AmphetaDesk and RadioUserland), you can subscribe directly to this site's RSS feed by just clicking on the appropriate links, with your RSS aggregator running in the background. How does this work? The links behind the images aren't direct links to the RSS feed, but rather links to the before mentioned online services that can communicate with your RSS aggregator, or "link commands" that "route" back to your computer to communicate with your client-side RSS aggregator. Setting this up on your own web site is very easy and simple. To demonstrate this, we are going to use the RSS URL for the MarketingStudies.net RSS feed: http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss/index.rdf If you used this link behind your RSS image (the button you want your visitors to click on or use to get to your RSS feed), everyone that clicked on it would only see a lot of XML code in his internet browser. To prevent this from happening, you can provide different RSS subscription links (to the same feed) for different RSS aggregators, that will allow your visitors to subscribe directly through the RSS aggregator of your choice. 304 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS For most client-based RSS aggregators you would start the link with the following URL: http://127.0.0.1 This is basically a "loopback network connection" that immediately connects you to your computer. Another name for this is "localhost". Now you need to add the specific information that varies for each RSS aggregator. Let's take a look at complete URLs for some of the popular aggregators. Awasu http://127.0.0.1:2604/subscribe?url=http://www.marketingstudies.net/ rss/index.html AmphetaDesk http://127.0.0.1:8888/index.html?add_url=http://www.marketingstudies .net/rss/index.html RadioUserland http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/subscriptions?url=http://www.mark etingstudies.net/rss/index.html BottomFeeder http://127.0.0.1:8666/btf?rss=http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss/in dex.html HeadlineViewer http://127.0.0.1:8900/add_provider?url=http://www.marketingstudies.n et/rss/index.html nntp/rss http://127.0.0.1:7810/?action=addform&URL=http://www.marketingstudie s.net/rss/index.html SharpReader http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/subscriptions?url=http://www.mark etingstudies.net/rss/index.html Syndirella http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/subscriptions?url=http://www.mark etingstudies.net/rss/index.html 305 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Wildgrape http://127.0.0.1:8888/NewsDesk.html?add_url=http://www.marketingstud ies.net/rss/index.html To make all of these work for your RSS feed, just replace the MarketingStudies.net feed URL with your own RSS feed URL. Now you still have to take care of various online RSS aggregators (and some client-based), such as Bloglines.com. These provide their own subscription mechanisms with their own images that let their users know what RSS feeds they can directly subscribe to. Bloglines For instance, one of the Bloglines.com images is: If a Bloglines.com user clicked on it, your RSS feed would be automatically added to his RSS feed list at Bloglines. They even provide an easy "button generator" to create your own buttons: http://www.bloglines.com/about/subscribe NewsGator If you wanted to make it easy for those of your visitors that use NewsGator to access your feeds, you would again use the NewsGator subscription mechanism. You would simply need to enter the following piece of HTML code in to where you want the subscription image to appear on your web site, and replace the "RSS_URL_HERE" line with your own RSS feed URL: <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=[RSS_URL_ HERE]"><img src="http://www.newsgator.com/images/ngsub2.gif" alt="Subscribe in NewsGator Online" border="0"></a> This would display the following image on your web site and provide direct subscription access to your feed for NewsGator users: Let's take a quicker look at some additional aggregators and their subscription "mechanisms" … 306 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Bot A Blog http://www.botablog.com/botthisblog.php?blog=RSS_URL_HERE Fyuze http://fyuze.com/customize/clickthru.php?url=RSS_URL_HERE mobilerss http://www.mobilerss.net/fastfeed.php?url=RSS_URL_HERE NewsIsFree http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/info/?url=RSS_URL_HERE If you wanted to cover all available or even all remotely popular RSS aggregators you could need even more than 15 images and separate links for your RSS feed, which would make for quite a crowd on your web site. To combat this problem you have two options: • Provide access to all of these from only one RSS presentation page, where you also explain what RSS is. A good choice, but it does make subscriptions more time consuming for people that already use RSS. • Or you can create a drop-down menu that would open as soon as a visitor moved his mouse over your RSS button, and display subscription links for the aggregators you decided are important for you. An example of such a drop-down menu can be seen at Robin Good's MasterNewMedia.org web site. To power this Robin is using a free Javascript, which you can get here: http://www.methodize.org/quicksub 307 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS You can now provide a prominent "box" to invite new users to your RSS presentation page and at the same time provide existing RSS users with an easy way to subscribe to your segmented RSS feeds, which you display next to each appropriate content category on your web site. And you can then use this same Javascript on your RSS presentation page as well to make subscribing even easier. feed:// One of the problems RSS is facing is the lack of appropriate standards. On the "promotion" front, this can become quite apparent if you take a look at the various "links" you need to use to enable your visitors to easily subscribe to your feed by only clicking on your RSS button. But actually there is a standard that should make this simpler, especially when (if) all of the major RSS aggregators start supporting it. This might get a little technical, but please bear with me; we'll try to keep it as short as possible. RSS is transferred through the internet using three different "document transfer" protocols: http, feed and rss. Http is the predominant of the pack. 308 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A transfer protocol is simply a standard for transferring internet documents on the internet. Why you should know this in the first place? Because most RSS aggregators today can also use feed or rss protocols, which give RSS users the opportunity to easier process their feeds, and more importantly, make managing their RSS feeds easier. Let's first take a look at what http is: "The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the de facto standard for transferring World Wide Web documents, although it is designed to be extensible to almost any document format. HTTP Version 1.1 is documented in RFC 2068; version 1.0 (depricated) is documented in RFC 1945." [HTTP Protocol Overview, posted on freesoft.org] Rss (this is the older protocol, which is being replaced with feed) and feed are, on the other hand, transfer protocols specialized for RSS. An http link is the one we are most used to: http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss/index.rdf On the other hand the feed link to an RSS feed could look like this: feed:http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss/index.rdf If an internet user that uses a more up to date RSS aggregator clicked on this link the RSS feed would be automatically added to his RSS aggregator (or the subscription process within the aggregator would start). So the primary advantage of using feed is that users with up-to-date RSS aggregators can more easily subscribe to your RSS feed. This is because the feed link is processed by the RSS aggregator and not by the internet browser, as opposed to http. Unfortunately not all RSS aggregators support this, so you cannot just use feed as a general subscription link for your RSS feed. But you can add another icon that represents the feed protocol and use the feed link there ! experienced RSS users will immediately know what you are "trying to tell them" and will rather use this link to subscribe. The most widely used icon or button for this is: 309 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS … and this is what it could look like on a web site. The "standard" RSS button would be used to bring the user to the RSS presentation page or as a direct link to the RSS feed, while the feed button would be used as a link for the feed link. There are also some other advantages to using feed, because feed can also accept certain commands and parameters, which you put in the link. Registration Requiring registration to access your RSS feed is another RSS subscription mechanism, but we'll cover this one a little further down. 1.2.2 RSS Presentation Pages RSS presentation pages within your web site are a great way of getting those that still aren't RSS users to become RSS users. We could even go as far as to say that using an RSS presentation page to get people to subscribe to your RSS feeds is crucial, because most people still don't know what RSS is. Take a look at the following pages: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm http://www.1to1.com/View.aspx?ItemID=28371 http://tools.cisco.com/newsroom/contactSearch/jsp/syndicationSearch.jsp 310 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS http://www.mrfire.com/mrfirefeed.html http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html http://www.sitepoint.com/syndication/ http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rss/entrypage1.asp http://www.allen.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=54& All of these pages are good examples of RSS registration pages, with the best role models most definitely being http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm As you can see, this page contains the following answers and information: • "What is RSS?" • "How can I make use of RSS?" • "How do I get a News Reader?" (comes with RSS reader recommendations) • "How can I sign up to RSS feeds from BBC News?" (comes with screenshots for even better understanding and ease of use) • A list of BBC RSS feeds The page also does a fairly good job of explaining what RSS is and how BBC visitors can benefit from it. 311 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Only a few things are missing, such as some more information of all of the benefits and download & installation instructions for RSS readers. But other than that, this is the role model you can easily use for your own RSS presentation page. And the bottom line is that you do need to set-up an RSS presentation page if you are at all serious about making RSS work for you. 1.2.3 RSS Subscription / Registration Processes The RSS subscription / registration process is a much more complex affair than what we discussed in the previous chapters. It's used either for RSS feed customization or for providing access to RSS feeds only to the visitors that decide to register on your web site. Although this subject was already covered in great detail in the "Customized Content Updates" chapter, we still need to see what possibilities we have when planning the subscription / registration process, which we want to make as userfriendly as possible, but still in such a way that it enables us to achieve our business goals. So the first question is what are our business goals? • Are we using the subscription / registration process only because we want to offer RSS customization to our users? ! if this is the case, you should make the subscription / registration process as simple as possible, eliminating all the steps that would make things too complicated for your subscribers, such as requesting personal information from them, requiring their e-mail address etc. • Do we want to collect business and/or personal and/or "interests" information from our users to target our marketing campaigns? ! you first need to decide how important each piece of information is; make only those pieces of information that are really important for you required for the user to fillin; if there is some information you would like to get, but is not crucial, get it after the user already completed the required part of the registration and already received access to his RSS feed. • Do we want to collect certain business information that would help us qualify relevant business leads? ! same as above; make certain that you only ask for information that you really need and will actually use. 312 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • Are we using the subscription / registration process because we want to identify unique individual users to target RSS content to them and analyze their behavior (even on the aggregate level)? ! if this goal is combined with the others, simply follow the instructions for those; but if this is your key goal, you can make the registration / subscription process extremely simple. • Are we using the subscription / registration process because we want to limit access to the RSS feed (grant access only to those that qualify, such as our business partners with their own usernames and passwords; or because this is a paid-service)? ! in this case you will need to ask for information pertaining to the conditions for granting access, such as a special password that only those with certain permissions have or billing information. After you decide on these basics you can start to plan the process, starting with the information you'll require from your new subscribers. This may include: • Their customization parameters ! take a look at the "Customized Content Updates" chapter to get some ideas of the parameters you can use • Their personal information (name, last name, address, birthday etc.) • Their e-mail address • Their interests, not related to the customization parameters • Their business information (industry, number of employees, business goals, existing solutions etc.) • Etc. You should now take all of this information and prepare a "plan" for the process, which includes all of the steps the user must take to complete the subscription / registration process. Here's a generic example: 1. step (web site front-page): visitor clicks on the RSS button and is moved to the RSS presentation page 2. step (RSS presentation page): the visitor must select his customization parameters to customize his RSS feed (always put this first, because this is what the user wants ! additional information requests should be done later) 3. step (new data entry form): the visitor must enter additional required information (e-mail address, business information) 313 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. step (RSS feed link): the visitor receives his individual RSS feed link; below the link are some additional data fields where he can choose to enter additional information This is quite a simple example that should work for most web sites and for most target audiences. You of course still need to combine it with an RSS subscription mechanism; it's best that you provide the visitor with a choice of links that will help him add his new feed in to the RSS aggregator he is using. But there really are not set rules of how the subscription / registration process should work, so you are quite free to completely tailor it to your own business needs and your own target audiences, as long as you are not making it too complicated for them. Take a look at the examples in the "Customized Content Updates" to get more ideas. 1.3 Launching an Education Campaign When launching an RSS feed for a web site that previously had none it is recommended that you also launch an education campaign to educate your visitors what RSS is, how they'll benefit from it and how to use it. The best way to do this is by providing short articles on RSS, as well as an easy to follow RSS tutorial, also equipped with screenshots to make it easier to follow for your new potential RSS users. Two good examples of tutorials can be found here: • http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/resources/articles/quickstart.phtml • http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10088_7-5143656.html?tag=hed 314 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. “Promoting” the Feed within Aggregators Promoting the feed within RSS aggregators, at least for now, means only that you should pay special attention to writing: • your RSS feed title; • your RSS feed description; • your RSS feed content item titles; • your RSS feed content item descriptions. If your RSS feed is easily distinguishable from others and at the same time inviting, you have a much better chance of having it read. Getting people to subscribe to your feed is one thing ! getting them to read it is quite another. The RSS Feed Title Most RSS aggregators list feeds in an alphabetical order, which can become a problem if your RSS feed title starts with the same word as most of the other RSS feeds you might be competing against. For example, many RSS feeds from internet marketers start with the word "Marketing", which does tell the user what the feed is about, but makes it difficult to quickly distinguish the feed on the list from other similar feeds. Just imagine having 20 feeds starting with the word "Marketing" on your list. Sooner or later the user will stop caring about these feeds, because he won't know what feed is what and won't be able to organize his content consumption. You'll be on "the way out". To combat this make sure that your RSS feed title can be distinguished from others, and make it as short as possible as well. One of the best RSS feed titles comes from Seth Godin: "Seth's Blog". It's short (makes it easy to find on the list), distinguishable (how many Seth Godin's are there in the world?) and credible (practically everyone knows Seth). 315 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS You might not get away with this if you're not as well known as Seth, but keeping this lesson in mind can still pay off. Instead of naming your feed "Marketing Secrets Exposed" try using something more concrete, such as "Direct Marketing Case Studies" or "Direct Marketing Strategies". Don't generalize and remember all of the lessons on niche markets you were reading about all this time on the internet. If you can, relate your RSS title with your brand, especially if hold a unique name. The RSS Feed Description The same lessons apply to your RSS feed description. Keep it short and meaningful, and make sure that your content delivery on the promises you're making in the description; it's what you'll be judged upon. And again, don't generalize. Make a point that you are providing unique and concrete content that your readers cannot get somewhere else. The RSS Feeed Content Item Titles and Descriptions The RSS feed content item titles and descriptions should, if possible, grab the reader's attention and convince him to click-through to get the rest of the story; just like the other content on your web site. You'll notice the words "if possible" in the sentence above. Most of the time your RSS feed content is going to be an exact replica of what you are publishing on your web site and through your other content delivery channels, because it would simply take too much time to write different content item titles and descriptions for each content delivery channel. 3. External RSS Feed Promotion External RSS feed promotion is all about promoting your RSS feed on other web sites, mostly through appropriate search engines and directories. Olga Farber Becker, providing the RSS Submission Service, wrote this chapter for the readers of this e-book. 316 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3.1 External RSS Feed Promotion by Olga Farber Becker One of the ways to bring you visitors is to submit your feed to various directories and search engines that will then make your feed known to their audience. And even though some marketers say, that it's only important to submit to the major engines, I still think there is *some* point in what Traffic Equalizer defenders usually say: you may use one major source of traffic, let's say it brings you 100 visitors a day. Or you can get traffic from 100 minor places - if each one of them brings you even one visitor a day, it will be equivalent to that one-major option. Probably the best option would be to use the two approaches together, right? Even more true when we don't know which minor place can at some point become a major one. But of course, it may work differently for different target markets, different publishing frequencies and I'd say - even different mindsets of the publishers. What do I mean? Consider this: "Change the cause, not the effect.Thought is cause. Physical is effect. Trying to change the effect directly is banging your head against the wall. For example, if your sales have dropped, it may not be because your marketing is wrong. It could be that you have a negative attitude to your business or an aspect of it, for example. People have attitudes like, 'I hate going to work', 'I hate this job', 'I hate this customer service task', 'I wish I could just relax and do nothing all day'. If you have them and you are wondering why no matter what you do in your business things are not working out well, these could be a cause. Dig deep, be aware, and analyze your state and thoughts. They are always at cause. " [from David Cameron Gikandi's "A Happy Pocket Full of Money". I recommend you to read more on it at Wealth Beyond Reason] Feed traffic also depends on the frequency of your feed posts, on your target market activity and many other factors. But of course, the more you promote your feed and blog, the more traffic it can bring you. One of my customers, Mark Ijlal from Real Estate Investment Strategies, just reported doubling his blog traffic after the submission. 317 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS So, it's your turn to decide whether you want to submit your feed/blog to all the directories and the search engines, I'll just provide you with the list of them and some recommendations for the submission process. [I'd like to say 'Thank you' to Tinu Abayomi-Paul for her Marketing with RSS book, I have learned from it a lot about submissions and making the most of RSS feeds where search engines are concerned.] Just one remark: if you noticed, I said, submit your feed/blog and not just feed. Why? 1. Because instead of forming just a feed, you can instead publish to your blog and have your feed automatically created for you by your blog software, so you feed ;) two birds at once; 2. Because there are so many directories and search engines working with blogs and not feeds, that it's a pity not to use their power for your business; 3. Because there are many people who haven't adopted this new feed technology yet, but they would gladly read your blog; 5. Because you can't yet put a side panel on your feed with all your affiliate links, deep links into your site, links to your previous articles etc.; 6. Because you can put in your feed only the beginning of every message, and make the audience click through to your blog to read the rest of it. And if your blog is well connected to your site(s), it will help you to develop your business even more quickly and efficiently. And if this is not enough, take a look at this article "If an RSS feed is the Yahoo backdoor, is a Blog Google’s?", it should say it even better. As you know by now, feeds are used not only for blogs. You can bring your customers your corporate news, price/products updates etc. – I agree, all this may not fit into a blog, but we are talking about the widest possible definition of a blog here. This way you'll give your HTML-feed-equivalent any look or style you'd like, and still enjoy all of the benefits above. You only won't be able to promote it as a blog. Side note: the definition of blogs as discussed above is the most widest possible definition of a blog, under which we can understand that almost any kind of linear list of content items can be called a blog, at least as far as content aggregation web sites go. 318 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS And now we come to the web sites you can submit your RSS feed to. Here they are - not the individual directories or web sites, but links to whole lists of directories and search engines, where you can submit your new feed/blog in order to bring you more visitors: • http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/ • http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm • http://www.faganfinder.com/blogs/ • http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblog s/Directories/ • http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/ Weblogs/Directories/ • http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblog s/Search_Engines/ • http://www.kwsnet.com/blogsdir.html • http://www.blog-connection.com/submit-blogs.htm • http://www.fawny.org/xenoblogs/#Honourable • http://www.lights.com/weblogs/directories.html These lists are constantly updated and I highly recommend you to look at them – there are some directories/search engines that are highly specialized: to your location, to your feed subject, to your language etc. Many of these sites give you the exact links to submission pages, and also recommendations of how to do it better. Before you submit your feed/blog, the following can be useful: 1. I'd first optimize the site(s) for the search engines. I'd start with Tinu Abayomi-Paul's Marketing with RSS, Brad Fallon's Stomping the Search Engines. Or if you're interested in the whole system of getting traffic to your sites, John Reese's Traffic Secrets has my whole-hearted recommendation. 319 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. It's good to start publishing to your feed/blog often enough, some time before you start submitting, and for as much time as you can, during and after the submission. With many directories it works this way: when you update your feed/blog, they put your headline or just a link to your feed/blog in their "Recently updated" listings, and some visitors can come to you this way. With search engines it also works better if you update your feed more often. 3. Create a FeedBurner.com account With FeedBurner.com you can create parallel feeds, FeedBurner will give different newsreaders whatever RSS version is best for each one of them, it will show you the traffic statistics for your feed, it will embed your Amazon associate id to your Amazon links, make for you a headline animator, give you an RSS formatted version of your feed (if yours is created in Atom) and provide some other nice features. When you register your feed with FeedBurner, it gives you a new URL of your feed: use this feed URL when you give it to directories, in your autodiscovery tags, as a link of your orange XML buttons, etc. But beware: some search engines don't know how to parse RSS unless the URL ends with the special .rss extension (or .rdf or .xml), and the FeedBurner link usually doesn't have any extension. So if you see an error while submitting to a search engine, you can try and submit there your original feed URL. 4. Each time you post, go to http://pingomatic.com/ and ping them. Pinging helps you notify the major engines that your blog has been updated, so that they can parse only the newly-updated resources. “There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. However it would be expensive for all the services to crawl all the blogs in the world all the time. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you’ve updated so they can come check you out. They get the freshest data possible, you don’t get a thousand robots spidering your site all the time. Everybody wins.” 320 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS “So why would you want to be on these sites? One word: traffic. Blogrolling scripts like blogrolling.com and WordPress check update services to see if you’ve updated and then they reflect that on everyone’s site, usually by moving you to the top of people’s blogrolling list or putting a recently updated indicator by your link. Services like Technorati spider your links to tell who’s linking to you and who you’re linking to, almost in real time. If you show up on someone’s Technorati link list for their site (often called an "egorati search") they’re likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure. Other sites like weblogs.com and blo.gs list the most recently updated blogs and many people browse these to find something new when they’re bored. Many of the different services offer their own forms for pinging just that service, but keeping track of all those and hitting each one whenever you update would be a hassle.” Source: Pingomatic.com 5. Make a plan of submission, planning to submit to just 1 or 2 directories on the first day, so that it would be easier for you to start. And then try to submit to some constant (even small) number of directories each day. http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/ gives you an approximate order of where you should go first. They also offer a report of ranked engines/directories sites, by their importance. 6. Make a file in Notepad or any other editor, with your name, last name, all the URLs etc. Then for each listing you'll just copy and paste this information, you won't have to type it all again and again. WebAutomator is also useful - it'll type things for you. Or if you think your time is worth more, you may want to use my RSS Submission Service. I actually started it because I saw how much time the submission takes, and I was surprised to see no such service exists. 7. When you come to directories, look at the other feeds/blogs, that have a close subject to yours, and try to learn from it - look what you like there, and what you do differently. 8. When you look at the other blogs, look at their side panels and the links they put there: this way you can find a lot of new directories and search engines, which can be useful for your niche. 321 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Not to mention - you this way you can also find more sources to learn from, and also your potential JV partners: if they're in the same niche as you are, your partnership can be much more than just plain simple link exchange. More Ways to Generate Traffic Some other ways to generate traffic to your feed/blog are: 1. Participation in webrings There are so many kinds of webrings that “connect” similar web sites out there: for newlywed bloggers, for Movable Type users, for RedHeads, etc. You can find webrings matching your blog here: http://dir.webring.com/rw 2. Using TrackBack For each entry in a blog there exists a special code, TrackBack URL. Let's look at Seth Godin's blog: click there on any TrackBack link, and it will bring you to a page with TrackBack URL and some entries from other blogs. These other blogs just mentioned this entry of Seth's blog in their own blogs, and then they used this TrackBack URL for this entry to ping the server that publishes Seth's blog – so that Seth's blog now would publish links to their blogs, where they've mentioned this Seth's blog entry. If your blog software provides you with the TrackBack feature, well, just use it. If not, you can try Haloscan.com service – it's free, at least for now. 3. Reciprocal linking, JV partnering With blogs it's even better – your partners can put your link on their side panel, but they can also mention your blog in their blog entry. 4. Commenting in others' blogs Spammers have been using this technique for a long time now. ;) But it doesn't mean you can't use it - it can bring results if your comments are really in place, and they show that you're an expert in your field. 322 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Blogexplosion If you have the time to look at other blogs, you'll earn points for others looking at your blog, details at http://blogexplosion.com. And finally, there are all other ways you generate traffic to a regular site: forums, PPC, ezine ads, writing articles, etc. Whatever you choose, don't let anything stop you. Visualize your new blog and feed, smart, helpful, sparkling with new ideas and placing you as an expert in your field – and start doing something now, today. 3.2 RSS and Search Engine Positioning It was already noted that RSS feeds and blogs improve search engine visibility and positioning, but now there is also concrete proof that this is in fact true, as the next case study clearly demonstrates. Using RSS Feeds For Marketing And Branding By Sally Falkow, http://falkow.blogsite.com The IAB Nielsen/Net ratings report "Internet Search Brand Effectiveness” clearly shows that search results affect an array of brand metrics, including aided brand awareness, unaided brand awareness, brand image association and purchase intent. The researchers discovered that when test subjects were asked to name a brand they were 27% more likely to name a brand of a company that received the top spot in the search results, as opposed to the control group who did not see the search engine result page. As a brand strategist I was extremely pleased to see these results – I had been advocating search results as an online brand building strategy for some time. When I started blogging in 2003 I used several of the free and low cost blog platforms available. I was told that blogging and RSS feeds would get me increased search visibility, and as I was aware of these studies on the connection between search visibility and brand recognition, I was keen to create a ‘cloud’ of page one search results. But even after almost a year I was not thrilled with the results. 323 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Then I made a connection with DVCO Technology and while I was collaborating with them on a project for online media rooms – www.onlinemediaroom.com - I met Bill French of MyST Technology Partners. Their platform works a little differently and their RSS feeds are set up specifically to create that cloud of content and increase search visibility dramatically. Applying what I knew about writing content and optimizing content for search results, I started to blog in MyST in August 2003. In just under a month the blog was at #1 and #2 on Google for the term website content strategy. I also managed to garner several other page one results and found that indeed my brand was getting more and more attention. In late September I started another blog called Internet Marketing Strategy and set up the RSS feeds on related terms. The purpose was to go after a new set of search terms and get onto page one with those keywords and phrases as well It is now late December and I have 75 page one positions and 57 #1 positions on terms like • RSS, blogging and PR • Optimized Press Releases • The latest Internet Marketing Strategy • Content strategy SEM • Web Content Strategy • Corporate PR and Branding • Blogging PR and Marketing • Internet PR and branding • Web content is king • Website content strategy 324 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS My business has trebled in the last six months. I believe it is a combination of my understanding of how to develop good, on message, keyword rich content and the RSS feeds provided by MyST Technology Partners. BTI Communication Group, Limited BTI provides business telephone systems. They have been operating for 20 years Although they do traditional phone systems for businesses they have kept abreast of the technology changes. In 2003 the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) market really took off. The technology matured and became a viable option. The market (and the Internet) was flooded with marketing material from big players with big budgets. A company with a limited budget could have been buried in this avalanche of content online. There is no way they could compete head –to-head with any of the big players like the Bells, Cisco or Avaya. Using this system of a blog and RSS feeds aggregating and syndicating their content, they have increased their Internet footprint and visibility from zero results on the first three pages for any search term to do with business phone system or VoIP to 120 page one results on terms like • VoIp solution provider #1 #3 • VoIP small business #5 • VoIP small business phone #7 #8 • VoIP business phone #7 #8 • VoIP benefits #2 • VoIP market demand #1 #2 Even the highly competitive term business phone system, which is competing against 24 million other web pages, is now at #23 on Google and moving up fast. 325 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The RSS feeds have influenced journalists in this space too. As a result of finding their feeds and their blog, two journalists have interviewed BTI executives and clients for influential online newsletters aimed at CIOs and CFOs – BTI’s perfect target audience. The traffic to their corporate website has increased by 50% and they are starting to get leads from the Internet. Although this is still in the early stages, and the resulting increase in content and search results has yet to translate into a significant impact on their bottom line, there is no doubt that it has increased their visibility and brand value. Other companies who are paying to appear on page one for these terms are shelling out over $5.00 a click for these top positions. 1. VoIP Provider - Small/Medium Businesses Cut voice communication costs. Sign up for a free onsite assessment and get details on how Covad VoIP can improve your business. www.voip.covad.com (Advertiser's Max Bid: $5.52) Both of the above mentioned web sites are run by BlogSite, a new service by MyST Technology Partners, which takes RSS and bloging further for companies that need to generate more search engine exposure.. A blogsite extends the notion of a weblog to provide a broad range of features that enhance your visibility and discoverability on the Internet. Unlike traditional weblogging tools, Blogsites integrate multiple weblogs for your company or marketing team, as well as syndicated guest weblogs, and other information sources that increase your search rankings for hundreds, even thousands of relevant search key-phrases. Blogsites also provide an array of content aggregation services designed to provide a simple and effective way to create and maintain a formidable Internet presence. Source: BlogSite 326 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS One of the key points of blogsites is that they draw content via RSS from other content sources to create a more valuable information resource site (also more “search engine ready”) than what most bloggers could create by running a simple individual blog. “Blogsites are typically used for PR and to compliment SEO visibility, and RSS feeds flow from all this content to generate greater reach for the company,” as Bill French of MyST Technology Partners explained to us. Example: BTI Communications http://blog.btigroup.com/public Web site type: Corporate blog / brand site The BTI Communications blog is a good example of an “integrated” blog / brand site, boosting the company’s position in the VoIP marketplace through thought leadership content pieces and in addition by including relevant VoIP content from other content sources. The web site itself includes a number of integrated VoIP blogs, as well as a collection of auto-generated feeds about the VoIP market (“VoIP Radar”). The Radar automatically integrates content from different web sources and on different VoIP sources, making the web site a central information point for VoIP, thus generating added value for the web site’s visitors. All of the content available through the web site helps generate greater reach for the company through better search engine visibility and from all of the RSS feeds it provides. The examples above clearly outline the strategy to be taken when the goal is to maximize search engine placement with the assistance of RSS, both on the publication and syndication/consumption levels. 327 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Affiliate RSS Promotion In addition to standard external RSS feed promotion it also makes sense to promote your RSS feed through your affiliates, if you are running an affiliate internet marketing program. Here are some possibilities for you to consider. • If your RSS feed provides valuable content, your affiliates might be interested in syndicating it on their web sites and promoting it there as well. But to make them interested you will need to provide them with an incentive ! commissions on all sales made through their RSS feeds. o Provide them with individual syndicated RSS feeds with URL parameters (for individual content items within the feed) that will tell the web site that the new visitor came from an individual affiliate, in order to be able to pay him his commissions. o The same can be done with RSS feed URLs ! your affiliates could promote your RSS feed URL on their web sites, but again the links from content items to your web site should have parameters that would tell the web site which affiliate the visitor is coming from. • If your affiliates are driving traffic to your web site, make sure that the people they refer, if they subscribe to your feed, are still counted as their customers. You can do this by adding a special parameter to the RSS feed URL every time a visitor from one of your affiliates visits the web site (the parameter being equal to your affiliate's affiliate ID). This parameter would need to be added dynamically, and would need to enable visitor recognition. Whenever that visitor visited your web site from the feed, the web site would recognize him as your affiliate's customer and consequently enable the affiliate to earn a commission if a product is purchased. • Provide your affiliates with product feeds they can syndicate on their web sites, just like Amazon.com is doing. Whenever someone clicks on the product link from the RSS feed, the web site recognizes that visitor as a customer belonging to an individual affiliate and can so determine who earned the commission from this affiliate. All of this will require some additional programming on your part, but it just might be worth the trouble. 328 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS RSS Promotion 1. Promote your RSS feed on your own web site: a. Create an RSS presentation page: i. Write an introduction to RSS. ii. Write an RSS user’s guide. iii. “Place” the RSS feeds on the presentation page (including the most relevant tools for easier subscriptions). b. Decide where on your web site and where in your e-mail messages you are going to promote your RSS feeds. c. Start promoting your RSS presentation page on the most appropriate location. d. If you are providing segmented RSS feeds promote them next to each web site section, relevant to specific feeds (it’s best to do this with an RSS image and a drop-down menu for quick subscription; but don’t forget to add a link to the presentation page as well). e. Enable RSS auto-discovery. f. Launch the educational campaign and let your users know they can now receive your content via RSS as well. 2. Promote your RSS feed externally: a. Prepare a file with all of the information you need for RSS feed submissions. 329 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS b. Start submitting your feed to the available web sites. 3. If possible, try to promote your RSS feeds via your affiliates as well. 330 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section VIII: The Basics of RSS Metrics 331 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS One of the things marketers need to successfully use a channel is the capability to track how it is performing and to find ways of improving results. We used to think that e-mail is, from this point of view, one of the "perfect" marketing channels. We could track exactly how many people subscribe to our email lists, how many people receive our e-mail messages, how many people open them and what they do after opening them, for instance clicking through to our web site and making a purchase, and how many people and when unsubscribed. By carefully examining and comparing our data on e-mail open-rates we were able to determine what subject lines work best and thus constantly improve our results. One of the earliest reservations against RSS was that it cannot be tracked as email can be. That there are no real metrics we can use to monitor and improve performance. Were these reservations really valid? Before we answer that question, let us for a minute first consider if e-mail metrics are still "all that". • Since Microsoft introduced Outlook 2003, which is a hugely popular e-mail client, open-rate tracking has been on a steady decline. Simply because a default Outlook setting prevents images from downloading and thus also disables the "tracking pixl" e-mail marketers were using to track how many people and who actually opened their e-mails. This situation got even worse with Microsoft's recent introduction of the Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. But not only Microsoft is the problem ! many spam filters are well are blocking e-mail messages with tracking capabilities, meaning that such messages might even not reach their recipients, let along be tracked. • We might be facing the same situation with trackable links in our e-mail messages, as more and more spam filters and webmail services are talking about filtering out links (or even whole messages) that present a possible privacy threat for their users. • "Total measurability" might sound good, but most internet marketers really weren't that close to really measuring the entire impact of their e-mail marketing campaigns, simply because the e-mail tracking solutions they are using are not integrated with their web analytics solutions they use for web site usage analysis. Consequently many marketers could not precisely say what people coming from their e-mail messages were doing on their web sites. 332 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If we go back to RSS we can add that most reservations about RSS because of its apparent lack of measurable metrics are in fact not valid. What Metrics? But still, RSS metrics are not as straightforward as e-mail metrics or as "simple" to implement, partly because there are no RSS metrics standards available yet. First, let's see what metrics an RSS published would ideally like to track: • Circulation: How many individual people "subscribe" to your RSS feed? How your circulation is changing over time; is it increasing or decreasing, and when? • Readership: How many of your subscribers actually "view" your RSS feed in their aggregator, as opposed to only having it "listed" in it? In a way, this would be an equivalent to the e-mail open-rate metric, as it would tell you if your RSS feed, after people subscribe to it, is actually generating enough interest that your subscribers check what's in it. • Actual readership: How many of your subscribers actually click-through through your content items to read your content. These are of course only the basics. A savvy internet marketer would also want to know what promotions and what web site placement and design drive the most subscriptions, and what is happening with his subscribers. For instance, does their content browsing lead to purchase decisions, how loyal are they etc. Fortunately most of the later can be determined by web server log analysis, since it is directly related to how your visitors use your web site. • Analyzing web site referrers will help you determine where your RSS subscribers are coming from (which other web sites). • Analyzing click-through paths after clicking on the content item in the RSS feed should help you see what your RSS users are doing on your web site after reading the content in the feed, which would also include purchases. However, circulation, readership and actual readership could prove more challenging. The "Methods" There are quite a few methods available to "track" circulation, readership and actual readership, and they range from very basic to highly advanced and complex. 333 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The following three "methods" should be suitable for most RSS users, while RSS power users could start playing with other possibilities. • Web server log analysis • Using third-party RSS trackers • Per-user generated RSS feeds Basic RSS Metrics: Web Server Log Analysis An RSS feed is only a file stored on your web server. Consequently, you can get at least basic RSS metrics from your web server log file analysis, based on what is happening with the RSS file. Let's take a look at some of the basic metrics you can get from this type of analysis. What you actually get from this will depend a lot on the type of software you use for log analysis. RSS aggregators consume RSS content by requesting and accessing the RSS file, which is logged on the web server where the RSS file is hosted. Most log analysis software will define the RSS file as a "page" on your web site, meaning that the basic statistics for the RSS file should give you the same information that you would get about usage stats for any other page of your web site. The most basic of these is the aggregate number of hits (or file requests or page views, which in the case of RSS feeds actually mean the same) your RSS feed received in a selected time period. For instance, in the period from 2004-10-01 to 2004-10-07 your RSS feed might have received 100 hits. Unfortunately, this data alone cannot tell you much and can easily be missinterpreted. 100 hits does not mean that 100 people used your RSS feed in this period, or even how many of these hits were made by how many people. It could easily mean that 10 people over the period of these 7 days used your feed 10 times each, or even that 1 person over the period of these 7 days used your feed 100 times. Many people get carried away looking at hits for their RSS feed, thinking that they are reaching hundreds and hundreds of people, while they could actually be reaching less than 10. 334 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS This is because RSS aggregators, when users have them open on their desktops, usually automatically check for changes to the RSS feed, automatically downloading it and creating a "hit". Users can set their aggregators to check for changes once per day, once per week, once ever hour or even once every five minutes (and everything in between). So one user's aggregator could be generating more than 280 hits or page views for your RSS feed per day. Just by looking at the number of hits your RSS feed is getting doesn't tell you anything. The only real use from this piece of data is watching the trends ! comparing the number of hits you are receiving each week and seeing whether the number is increasing or decreasing. And even this won't tell you much. Let's say that 100 of the people that were using your feed last week were generating 1.000 hits per week. But this week you got another user, who generates 2.000 hits per week. Comparing the two numbers could give you the impression that your readership greatly increased, while in fact it hasn't. Unfortunately most log analyzers will, using their default settings to analyze page views, only get you this far. In most cases, circulation, readership and actual readership are still going to be a mistery using only what we just described above. One thing you could do is supply your web analysis software with more information on where visitors that read certain content are coming from. Most RSS feeds contain "standard" links to the content presented on the web site, meaning that these links are just the same as they are on the web site. Let's presume that the URL of one of the articles on your web site is: http://www.marketingstudies.net/content/article1.html Usually, publishers use this very same URL for internal links on the web site, as well as in their RSS feed, which makes RSS tracking even more difficult. The trick is in adding "a little something" after the "original" URL string, such as this: http://www.marketingstudies.net/content/article1.html?src=RSS 335 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As you can see we added a short parameter (src=RSS) to the URL string, and we are only going to use this parameter for links in our RSS feed, and not on our web site or anywhere else. This additional parameter shouldn't actually "do" anything (unless your web site content is database driven; if this is the case you should check with your programmer what you can use). Your visitors will get to the exactly same web page if they click on the URL with it or without it. But, your web server log will "record" this parameter, helping you determine what content items from your RSS feed your subscribers are actually reading. Whenever someone clicks on one of the content items in your RSS feed and is taken to your web site, the click will be recorded as a visitor from the RSS feed, telling you at least approximately how many people are really using your feed (actual readership) and what content interests them the most. And then you can use your log analysis software to further see what these people are doing on your web site ! are they buyers? How do they compare with your other visitors, for instance with those that come from your e-mail messages? You can use any kind of parameter you want ! the point is in adding "something" that can help you differentiate from visitors that got to a certain article from the RSS feed and from other sources. This same approach can be used to determine what works best in terms of RSS promotion on your web site. Let's presume that you are experimenting with three different positions of the RSS button on the web site, and you want to know what position drives the most subscribes. It's easy. Just mark each RSS feed URL from each position with a distinctive URL parameter and then analyze your web server logs to see what position performed the best. Putting things more lucidly ! if your RSS feed URL is: http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss.xml don't simply use it "as it is" for every of the three positions of the RSS button you are testing, but rather add an individual URL parameter for each position, such as: http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss.xml?p1 http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss.xml?p2 http://www.marketingstudies.net/rss.xml?p3 336 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Web server log analysis will now tell what URL got the most hits, which will give you an indication of what position (or other elements you are testing) worked the best. You don't need to change anything, except the link to the RSS feed. While all of this might not give you all of the information you want, it's still better than nothing. And not to forget: e-mail open-rate tracking as well cannot be implemented as simple as 1-2-3. Using third-party RSS trackers If you want more information and do not mind using third-party services, you must give FeedBurner a try. "FeedBurner is an RSS/Atom post-processing service that allows publishers to enhance their feeds in a variety of interesting and powerful ways. By republishing their feeds through FeedBurner, publishers gain detailed feed statistics, maximum feed format compatibility, "shockproofing" to absorb bandwidth spikes, and more." One of the most interesting features of the free FeedBurner service is its ability to track RSS usage and give you some approximate RSS metrics, such as: • Circulation: an approximation of how many individual people requested your RSS feed in the last 24 hours and trends for the last 7 days. • Hits: the exact number of hits to the feed, which is basically the same metric we were discussing in the previous chapter. • Clickthroughs: the exact number of individuals and bots who clicked-through your individual content items. While we do need to understand that this information cannot be 100% accurate, it is good enough to help you make editorial decisions and help you get an approximate understanding of how many people are using your RSS feed and how that is changing through time. FeedBurner also provides some other interesting features, which you can either use or not, such as: • translating your feed on-the-fly in to a format appropriate for your users' aggregators; 337 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • making the RSS feed readable in internet browsers as well; • placing Amazon.com product ads directly in to your content items to help you make more Amazon.com commissions; • enabling your feed for "Podcasting"; • applying a Creative Commons License to your feed; • adding HTTP authentication to your feed; • etc. But don't expect you'll be able to use any of this with your feed "as it is". After registering at FeedBurner you will be "required" to enter the URL of your feed, which will then be used by FeedBurner to create a "new" feed, hosted on their server, with all of these features enabled. You'll still be publishing your old feed, but directing your visitors to the one hosted at FeedBurner. Per-user Generated RSS Feeds Web server log analysis and using third-party RSS trackers are unfortunately more or less "it" for the small business RSS publisher with severely limited funds. But companies willing to invest in the development of their own RSS publishing solutions or can afford to purchase advanced Content Management Systems, can take advantage of the possibilities provided by RSS feeds generated for individual users, as we already explained in the RSS Customization chapter (and also presented a technical concept you can use to develop such a system). This however is not reserved only for web sites providing customization, but can also be taken advantage of those offering only individual or segmented feeds, as long as each feed is generated on a per-user basis. If an RSS feed is generated on a per-user basis (either dynamic RSS feed generation or static RSS feeds), you can easily track: • how many people subscribed to your RSS feed (the number of generated RSS feeds for individual users, which works especially well if you require users to register on your web site); 338 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • how many people (and which people) are requesting your RSS feed daily (all requests from an individual user can now be attributed to the user of that feed, or in the worst case to that user and to all the users that the original user gave the RSS feed link to); • how many people are “unsubscribing” from your feed and when (if a user hasn’t requested your RSS feed in a certain period of time you can assume that he “unsubscribed” from it and isn’t reading it anymore ! this can be tracked automatically and can provide you with “live” statistics on how many people are “unsubscribing”); • how many people (and which people and to what) are clicking-through your RSS content items (if an RSS feed is generated for an individual user, you can also add individual URL parameters to the content item links to track each user’s clicks). As already noted, the best way to provide “per-user generated RSS feeds” is to require users to register on your web site and receive a unique RSS feed and RSS feed ID. However, you can still take advantage of the above concept even if you do not want to force your visitors to register. Dynamically generate a new RSS feed ID and URL (best if you do this with dynamic RSS feeds, since you don’t want to create hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds no one uses and store them on your server’s hard drive) for each visitor, or more precisely for each web site visit. Do this per user-session (session cookie) or even by using persistent cookies, which will help you identify returning visitors, which will work well if you are offering segmented RSS feeds ! if the user accepts persistent cookies, he will be given the same RSS feed ID each time he visits the web site with his persistent cookie, so you will be able to attribute segmented RSS feeds to each unique user; if the user does not accept cookies he will get a different RSS feed ID on the web site each new time he visits, which will mean that if he “subscribes” to another feed from you, that feed will have a different ID than the previous one he “subscribed” to, so you won’t be able to attribute those two feeds to the same user. When a user “subscribes” to the feed, he will actually request it, which will tell your system that this is now a “live” feed, which is actually being used, so that you can start tracking it (and also record a new RSS user). When the feed is no longer being used (requested) for some time you can count that as an “unsubscribe”. 339 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In somewhat more technical and precise terms: • a new RSS ID will be generated per session or per persistent cookie, but that RSS ID won’t actually be an RSS file yet, but just a unique identifier; • when someone requests that RSS ID from the web site for the first time, that RSS ID will be stored in the database (in a specific table, reserved for “live” RSS IDs); • once the RSS ID is activated, the system starts generating an actual RSS file for the ID, enabling users to access it. The other option, but the same principle, would be generating a new RSS feed ID for each web site page view, instead of per session or per persistent cookie, which would make things easier to program, but would not work terribly well if you provided segmented feeds (the same reason as why per persistent cookie should work better than per session, as already explained). All of this information could be recorded in the web site’s database and then used for more in-depth analysis. For companies that can afford such CMS solutions or that can invest a little something in to developing such a solution, RSS can become even more trackable than e-mail. 340 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Hot to Get Started with RSS The Basics of RSS Metrics 1. Considering your technical capabilities, consider how you are going to measure your RSS feeds. a. If you are using your own RSS publishing solution, upgrade it to accommodate for RSS tracking. b. If you are using one of the more basic RSS publishing solutions, start using FeedBurner. c. Make sure that all of the links in your RSS feed carry the appropriate URL parameters that will enable you to track visitors using your log analysis software. 2. Watch how your RSS feed is doing and then gradually improve it based on that information. Evaluate your success once every month and prepare a list of improvements for next month. 341 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Section IX: RSS and Blogging Interviews 342 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Robin Good, MasterNewMedia.org Web site: http://www.masternewmedia.org 1. Robin, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Thank you for inviting me and a big hello to your readers. I am Robin Good, a new media researcher, analyst and advisor who likes to play the role of the technology explorer that scouts and tests new technologies for effective communication and distance learning. Now-a-days there is very little true communication taking place between companies and customers in these new industries, and while press releases still play the major part in the public communication efforts of a company, the customers are looking for more honest, truthful, unhyped and genuine information about the companies they want to buy from. So, I talk a lot to users as well as to companies. I get lots of bad, boring and amateurish online demos and I truly spend quite some time testing and trying out many of these new technologies. To make all of this research activity valuable I have also chosen to become an independent online publisher, and through a mini-network of sites I am sharing 95% of what I discover with the public. You can see some of this work in free display at MasterNewMedia (http://www.masternewmedia.org/), Kolabora (http://www.Kolabora.com/) and MasterViews (http://www.masterviews.com/). I also like to give wings to other independent reporters, change agents, and online activists. I provide the means and facilities for talented writers, journalists and tech specialists to gain rapidly experience and credentials by contributing news to my own sites or by supporting the development of their own independent channels. (See the Communication Agents Initiative and is growing set of sites at http://www.communicationagents.com/ and http://robingood.typepad.com/ . I share with them my communication expertise and help them bring to reality their desired calls to action and attention. 343 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. How do you believe RSS will shape the future of the business and marketing world? RSS is such a powerful and revolutionary online force that I think it is very difficult to clearly anticipate where it will lead us exactly. The impacts maybe numerous and very diverse. Being RSS a highly cost-effective, and easy to implement information distribution channel, it will give wings to all of those applications where the ability to share in near real-time updates to news or to other information that is in constant, periodical change, is of critical importance. RSS is outstandingly good for news distribution, for product updates and customer support, for creating information feeds out of processes and tasks that we normally discount as possible sources of useful information. Since RSS does not expose the recipients to risks of spam or continued interruptive marketing communications, businesses can utilize RSS to provide niche information channels with customers and partners on topics that are very specialized, without incurring in any large investment or need for extra human resources to maintain it. Marketing can also take immense advantages of RSS by leveraging its fast growing distribution to extend the reach and visibility of important company news and information to major technology publishers, RSS search engines and directories. RSS is an evolved equivalent of the traditional press release channels, with the advantage that there is no need here to fake the prose or to hype the traits of any product or service. RSS closely reflects the direct and veilless communication style of professional blogs, where direct, genuine information and stories are shared with readers in an open digital conversation. Early intelligent use of RSS (and blogs) can give a significant competitive edge to those companies adopting this communication paradigm early rather than late. 3. In your experience, what are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Let me say that I foresee a very great number of possible uses for RSS in business and marketing which will surface in the coming 12-18 months. 344 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As of now, I see what I call newsmastering (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/07/11/top_emarketers_discover_rss_n ewsmastering.htm ) as being probably the most effective use of RSS for creating a viable information-based business online. Let me explain this to you in simple terms: A newsmaster is someone capable of designing search formulas and filters that tap into the vast amounts of online information including the Web and the full RSS universe (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/19/the_birth_of_the_newsmaster.htm ) . By continuously refining such search rules and filters the newsmaster is capable of creating unique information feeds that cover very, very narrow topics. It is like creating a Web Alert on Google that sends you an email when a web page appears that matches that content. RSS search filters can do much of the same and the result obtained is a newsfeed containing very focused items. If the work is done well, there may be very few items appearing in the feed, and even many days were none appear. But by combining multiple of such very specialized newsfeeds into one, the newsmaster is capable of creating dynamic news compilations that have no rivals in the world of competitive intelligence, market analysis, data monitoring or in the emerging enterprise information integration industry. These native RSS newsfeeds, can be utilized to create visibility, exposure and to rapidly extend reach through the major search engines. To achieve this it is necessary to operate in parallel on two fronts. On one end by promoting and submitting your RSS feeds to the growing number of qualified RSS search engine and directories, and on the other by generating full-content Web-based information sites, which are fed by the same feeds but which do provide access to the full content of each news item. RSS newsfeeds can easily be converted into Web pages, so it is not difficult to create parallel niche Web sites that complement the rich exposure generated by RSS feeds. In the business model I am envisaging and which I have myself experimented, the RSS channel is the messenger keeping my readers and supporters informed, while the web site is where they go to get a full fix of anything they want to dig into deeper. 345 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In this view, the RSS channel carries only a limited amount of information relative to the whole article or essay being published, and allows the RSS users to have enough content to evaluate if the news item is of their interest or not. It allows easy scannability of my updates. There is something you like or are terribly interested in? Well, just clicking on the RSS article title link allows anyone to dig deeper into anyone of my stories while taking them home to one of my web sites. Where is the business? My web site pages carry themselves contextual, non-intrusive promotional messages, recommendations for books (which I can personally direct or leave to automatic selection – wish I could the same for the ads) and other complementary, relevant and backed-by-the-editor (me) sponsorships. This produces, if well executed, tangible return in terms of advertising profits (Google AdSense and others). If properly linked by existing credible resources, a newsmaster channel on a dedicated topic can generate profits in less than 3 months time. And the more and the better this is implemented, the greater the financial returns can be. 4. But what are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? Costs, efficiency, reach, ease of use, exposure, visibility, re-use, syndication, access. RSS is really a godsend in that it provides a content distribution and delivery mechanism that is completely controlled by the end user. This is an important aspect of the media revolution we are witnessing today. Across all new media fronts, consumers are taking control. In news and content media, consumers are becoming producers of content and RSS greatly facilitates this process. It makes it easy to distribute content to online audiences in a competitive way to traditional newsletters. Implementation costs are next to zero. It significantly extends reach and visibility online. 346 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS It favors re-use, syndication and the new media politics of remixing and newsmastering. It leaves end users free to decide what information they want to receive, in control of when to read, or stop receiving what they have selected. It allows others to repurpose and rebroadcast your content, message or news while doing this in a sustainable way. Viral marketing at its best! Please note that this apparent automated and simple-to-use process is instead rather difficult to be executed in an effective way, unless the newsmaster is a) well skilled in research methods and techniques, b) has good familiarity with IT, c) can mix and match the use of different technologies, and d) is willing to continuously refine and extend his information channels. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/03/02/the_rss_newsmaster.htm and http://mysttechnology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/51065) Ethics play also an important role in this job, as the newsmaster really needs to work out filters, resources and clues that make his compilation of news truly valuable and unique. Thus, this apparent unskillful profession not only requires passionate and culturally thick human beings, but it does serve a major important role in the evolution of collective intelligence through the fantastic mechanism of this system called the Internet. Through newsmastering activities, individuals become effective live librarians and organizers of the online content being created every second. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/03/24/the_future_of_news_the.htm) We NEED newsmasters to create meaningful content channels out of the enormous amount of information that is growing in front of us by the minute. Newsmasters are information DJs, content curators, digital information librarians, research masters and enterprise information integrators in a live and quickly growing information universe. Without them we could possibly drown inside this information tsunami. With them a thousand opportunities emerge that may enrich our know-how, our just-in-time need for learning, our insatiable desire for knowing more. 347 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Newsmasters help organize the network while providing a sustainable and socially beneficial activity to everyone. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/19/the_birth_of_the_newsmaster.htm) 5. Where do you see the future of RSS? The future of RSS is in its re-use. Really Simple Syndication. That is the acronym that fits best RSS purpose and mission. When you start to syndicate heavy amounts of this RSS stuff you can see what kind of things can happen. Nonetheless I like to think of myself as a futurist and one who can see a bit further ahead than most if my ICT and new media colleagues, I am completely overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities and applications that a technology like RSS will be able to generate. The newsmaster road by itself is a fascinating and highly attractive scenario. I think that it will keep us busy for a while, and my expectation is that as more people discover this opportunity and start to use it, the more we will start discovering what other related opportunities maybe. 6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? I now view these claims as similar to the ones coming from the Web conferencing industry and affirming that people are adopting conferencing tools because of the terrorism scare or to save money in flights. This is just a marketing play. Yes, people do not need to travel anymore to meet and discuss with someone else, but web conferences DO NOT replace face-to-face meetings. They offer new ways and opportunities to have them as well as creating the option to try to convert some of the traditional ones into virtual ones. But the two things, at least in my view, are very different. 348 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Web conferencing enables meetings and exchanges that are quite different from the traditional ones we used to have. It opens up new opportunities and ways to do business with others. It extends and complements in a very rich way what traditional physical meetings have offered us for a long time. In a similar way, RSS is not here to replace email, but to complement that medium and possibly to contribute to its evolution. Newsletters will keep on being sent via email. Along with an RSS version on the side. Letters to a new possible partners or business customers will still be sent via email and not certainly via RSS. It is clear that generic news-type of information, as well as other publicly relevant data could greatly benefit from free RSS distribution to interested parties rather than through a newsletter or email report. On the other hand personal exchanges, discussions and two-way types of conversations requiring multiple parties engaged on clarifying or deciding about an important issue are still better managed by email, by chat or live voice-over-IP technologies than with RSS. In my view RSS will not replace email in the near future. 7. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS still has to overcome? There is still plenty to improve. Large adoption will become reality as soon as standard tools start to embed RSS reading and RSS output into them. Search engines are tasting the flavor of it but are somehow hesitant. Office applications have not awoken of this opportunity yet. Browsers are gradually adopting and integrating RSS reading technology inside of them. Publishing tools are slowly integrating RSS generation, syndication and aggregation. 349 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Research tools are emerging that have understood part of the potential (Onfolio http://www.onfolio.com/ , Pluck http://www.pluck.com/ , Near-Time Flow http://www.near-time.com/ , iNetAdviser http://www.offliner.com/site/en/products/ihelper/ , SurfSaver http://www.surfsaver.com/ , Netsnippets http://www.netsnippets.com/ , ContentSaver http://www.macropool.de/en/ , eGems http://www.egems.com/ and more etc.) Collaboration and conferencing tools are completely dormient about the potential of RSS to create highly useful recording artifacts of virtual conferences and meetings including text transcripts, image feeds, slides, and more. Email is ahead of the bunch and has already found successful products and services leveraging the ability to read RSS newsfeeds inside email or to easily convert emails into RSS feeds. I maybe superficial and unable to bring up prestigious statistics on this, but my personal feeling is that RSS is NOT encountering major challenges in being adopted. Yes, it may take some time before reaching mass adoption, but just wait for Microsoft to integrate it into its next browser or OS release and you will see that change rapidly. 8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. 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. 350 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 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. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/08/20/rip_mix_feed_alan_levine.htm ) 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 - https://www.google.com/adsense/) from day one. Very sustainable if not altogether profitable. Look for example at the work being done by Waypath with their Blender experiment (http://blender.waypath.com/) and see other useful and complementary uses of RSS that can be economically profitable. 9. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? RSS is one more ammunition available to your strategic marketing and distribution arsenal. All by itself it is of limited use today. Used in conjunction with quality web sites, blogs or dedicated information services it can be a very powerful addition. RSS is not the communication tool on which to invest all of your attention, but it is a very important component of any valuable and long lasting online information strategy. 10. We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? RSS is a perfect complement to email as it provides a parallel, spam-free channel that puts users in the driver' seat. If you use email for a discussion list, RSS can complement and enhance your existing infrastructure by adding an RSS channel that carries all of the messages taking place in the discussion. If some readers prefer RSS, they have the option to switch to that medium. 351 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Any email, newsletter or discussion list can be easily converted into RSS. YahooGroups does this by default, and services like iUpload Mail2RSS (http://mail.byrss.com/) offer one of the many alternative roads available. My suggestion is therefore to complement your email marketing campaigns with one or more RSS feeds providing your customers with a quality alternative to traditional email updates. Also for newsletter publishers I suggest making all of the content of their newsletters to be available as a RSS newsfeed that will certainly extend the reach and visibility that same content may have online. I myself convert all of my newsletters content to RSS and it always surprises me how much extra reach I can achieve with this extra distribution channel. (See http://mail.byrss.com/Pages.asp?ID=36358&N=365 or http://mail.byrss.com/pages.asp?ID=34744) One important thing to keep in mind is that unless you promote and submit your RSS newsfeeds to a good number of the major RSS and blog search engine and directories your content may remain accessible by only a few. (See http://tinyurl.com/3eb5j ) It is by spreading the RSS content around through multiple communication channels that one can leverage at maximum its potential. 11. For instance, you're offering a number of RSS feeds as well as an email update service on your web site. Could you perhaps compare their individual impact on your business? Which do people use more? Have you noticed any differences in the responsiveness of your e-mail subscribers in comparison with your RSS readers? It is difficult to give you a good and reliable answer on this. As of now, the instruments that I use to measure the return of the two vehicles are not sophisticated enough to allow me to share some definitive opinion on this. These tools are improving every day and soon everyone will be able to monitor, track and verify the quality and effectiveness of its different content distribution channels. In my opinion the impact of email and RSS is very complementary, at least for now. I have readers and supporters who read my content both through email and through RSS. They know that if they want to see my latest news in near real-time they need to check my RSS feed and not my daily or weekly emailing. 352 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS allows my readers to scan many of their preferred news sources together in one location (their RSS newsreader or online aggregator) and I do see a growing number of people making use of this innovative channel. Some readers are very new to the Web and they feel more comfortable with email. Others are more educated in terms of technology use and prefer to get my RSS feeds. I have yet no final clickthrough data comparing RSS newsfeeds to traditional email alerts or newsletter reports but it is my strong impression that both would have very high rates of responsiveness. With new publishing services capable of integrating contextual ads, sponsorships or relevant promotions inside RSS feeds we will soon be able to give a more definite answer on this. 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? I think that the best way to expose RSS to new users is by way of providing them with something that they have not seen before, that is highly useful for them, and that they could not do otherwise. So what you do is you create RSS newsfeeds on highly specialized topics and you promote and make these feeds accessible from as many news aggregators, distributors and syndicators as possible. The more your RSS newsfeed is a specialized information channel on a specific topic the more readers can appreciate its uniqueness and value. The more this is just another channel for distributing your rants the more confusion and the less appreciation you will get. Outside of these strategic issues, here are a few simple pro-active steps that anyone can take to contribute to the popularization of RSS and in helping more people understand what RSS is al about: 1) Use RSS feeds in your email signature – Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com/ ) can help you out. 2) Create RSS newsfeeds for each category of information you cover. The more, the better. 3) Provide easy access to all your RSS feeds next to the content you traditionally publish. 353 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4) Offer direct one-click subscription to personal RSS news aggregators with tools like Quicksub (http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/ ). 5) Publish a rich tutorial about RSS and display a link to it next to all the RSS feed links you promote. 6) Submit your RSS newsfeed to the best search engine and directories specializing in blogs and RSS (See http://tinyurl.com/3eb5j ) 7) Promote through articles or editorials the use of a good RSS newsreader or aggregator. Focus on a few of what you believe are the best ones. I like Kinja (http://www.kinja.com/) and Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) which are both Web-based, as well as Feeddemon (PC http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp) , Newzcrawler (PC http://www.newzcrawler.com/ ), NetNewswire (Mac http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ ) on my desktop. There are certainly many other good ones out there (http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information _Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/ News_Readers/ ). 13. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? 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. If you are a would-be RSS newsmaster, this is one of the best time investments you can make of your passion and talents (http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/_archives/2004/4/21/37574.html ) You need not to sell someone else marketing book, or promote a software package you like only in part. Your task is the one of delivering quality, focused, niche content information on a very specific topic. One of the ways to get at it is to aggregate, filter, select and mix multiple and disparate source of information, by extracting relevant content from RSS search engines, directories and other unique content sources. 354 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS By complementing this effort with contextual advertising mechanisms, such as Google AdSense (https://www.google.com/adsense/) , sponsorships or affiliate Amazon book sales (http://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/ntg/browse/-/567864 ) one can rapidly build a self-sustainable online publishing business. Once again the beauty of this is that while providing a truly useful service to subscribers one can also make a good living at it. Stop surfing, start making waves. 355 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Dana VanDen Heuvel, blogSavant Web site: http://www.blogsavant.com Width: Raj Devasagayam, PhD Siena College, NY 1. Dana, thank you for being here with us. Could you please tell our readers something more about yourself and why they should trust your advice? There are a lot of smart bloggers out there and even more smart marketers. I bring a rather different perspective in that I pull in concepts from a cross section of disciplines such as marketing, sales, economics, change management, anthropology & sociology and other schools of thought. From a more practical perspective, very few marketers have also been sales, and IT people, and vice versa. I bring a unique combination of experiences to bear on marketing and sales problems, and more specifically, Internet marketing and Ecommerce sales problems that most others can't. 2. Your blog was also voted as the Best b-2-b marketing topic blog by MarketingSherpa readers. To what do you attribute this success? There are a couple of factors that influenced this award. First and foremost, sticking to the 'voice' that I developed for the weblog over a year ago. The voice of someone from the trenches of marketing and sales that shares some of the ideas that I encounter so that others might benefit. Secondly, I did a fair bit of 'grass roots' promotion to ensure that the awareness of the weblog was at its peak. As a marketer, and as someone who promotes that value of weblogs for corporate and personal promotion, I did this as more of an experiment to test the power of the weblog community. Obviously, the experiment got the results I was hoping for. 356 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Lastly, this award was a 'people's choice award', if you will. The people that voted were people that I had somehow connected with over the past year by commenting on their blogs, linking to them, weighing in forums and newsgroups that they focus on, and by simply 'napsterizing my knowledge' to help out in the weblog community. 3. For those of our readers that don't know what a blog is, could you please define it? Simply put, a weblog is merely a website with information shown in reverse chronological order. There are more advanced definitions that you can pursue, but at the end of the movie, that's the lowest common denominator. Further, from a non-business perspective, a blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. As I mentioned earlier, blog postings are almost always arranged in reverse cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly. While I can certainly offer my view on 'what a weblog is', I submit that there may be others with views that may resonate with your audience. Dave Winer's definition: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog Dr. Jill Walker's definition: http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definition.html 357 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. The key question here of course is how has your blog contributed to your business success? Are you seeing any direct or indirect results, especially when it comes to sales? Without question, the weblog has exceeded every objective that I originally stated for the project. It has expanded my network, brought in both career and speaking opportunities, and has given my access-through-association to some amazing thought leaders in the marketing space. The act of having a weblog and blogging actually has eased entry into online communities that I would have otherwise had trouble gaining access to simply because my 'position on the issues' was well documented on my weblog, and engaging in virtual dialogue was but a click away. I advise that people pick their own objectives and measures for their weblog. I meaure success from the weblog in a couple of ways. The first metric is the number of 'connections' that the weblog allows me to make with like minded professionals that I can add to my network where we might enjoy some mutual gain from idea sharing now, or in the future. I have connected with dozens of people through the weblog that have made a very significant impact on my career as a marketing and sales professional. Another measure of success is a bit less quantifiable, but no less powerful, and that is the personal brand equity that the weblog is building for me. For example, I recently made a career change where the weblog contributed significantly to my obtaining interviews. Forward-thinking employers are very keen to read up on employees via there personal weblogs. The weblog shows a great deal about who you are, and provides a substantial differentiator from other candidates. 5. Can blogs be an effective sales tool? That depends on what you mean by sales tool. If you're asking whether or not you can use blogs to “sell”, the answer is yes. People are selling content via blogs, using blogs to support product sales, and selling advertising within blogs. They are no different from websites in that regard. Whatever you can do on your average ecommerce site, a blog can support. 358 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS If you're referring to them as a communication channel from a corporation, or from an individual salesperson. Insofar as they are communication tool between salesperson and customer, I believe that they can be, however, I have yet to see them used for that express purpose. Weblogs could add significant value where a sales person works on project-related sales where the progress of the project could be documented, and comments registered. This electronic record could then be turned into a credibility building tool illustrating the trustworthiness of the sales person and the thoroughness of their follow through and service during and after the sale. In my current role, managing a sales operations group, I can instantly see the value that blogs can add in the information sharing and dissemination process, especially if you have field based salespeople that don't come in to the corporate office every day. Every company I've worked with has a 'communication problem' with their sales force. There's always too much 'push' information going out through email, and there's never a historical context to put new information in because it's all episodic, and old emails get deleted. Weblogs serve to correct the push issue viewers can pull information via RSS readers or from the website itself on an as needed basis, and they solve the history issue because posts can be archived according to category and are referenceable and searchable from and online database. I would ultimately like to see weblogs, or weblog-like functionality, integrated with current CRM and SFA software that we is already deployed in the field sales force. More tools aren't the right answer, but the right tools, integrated well, can go a long way to increasing salesforce productivity. 6. If so, how should our readers begin to develop their own blogs? What advice can you give them? Could you perhaps break this down in to a simple to follow process? Before you consider developing your own weblog, take the time to consider your purpose for creating a weblog, and craft a simple mission statement and a few objectives and expectations for your weblog. This exercise will help you through a couple of things, the first of which is deciding whether to obtain your own domain and install weblog software yourself, or whether you would be better served by a hosted weblog service. 359 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Once you've got a general purpose for this endeavor, I advise the people take the time to follow a ten-step process to ensure that their weblog is both on target and sustainable. If the blog is simply for personal use, there are a few steps that can pretty quickly be eliminated. However, if a business blog is in your sights, don't shortchange yourself by skimping on the planning stage. Here are the 10 universally applicable steps that any company should take in on the path to blogging. Granted, one can argue that there are more, fewer, others and the like, but if you ask yourself these questions and come up with honest answers, you'll be well on your way to a successful weblog. 1. Check out (read and subscribe) other weblog sites in your industry, vertical market, or product category. What do others write about, what do the write about YOU, and how large is the community around the weblogs are all questions to pay attention to as you review what's already in the market. The objective here is to get some idea of who your community is and what they're interested in hearing, and to garner ideas on what to do, and what not to do with your own weblog. 2. Determine how your weblog maps to your marketing, sales, and/or business strategy and objectives. I separate those because if you're doing a sales blog, you're going to have a different purpose than if you're doing a blog for your entire business. The weblog has to mesh with your market segment, target market, and has to be positioned in the same customer frame of reference as your existing brand. There are a number of ways in which a blog will sync with your objectives: • Illustrate your market leadership position • Exude Thought leadership in your market or vertical • Improve search placement • Develop new customer communication channels • Develop a resource center for your customers/prospects 3. Consider the risks inherent in blogging. One of the biggest being how to maintain and sustain your weblog presence and regularity in posting. This often comes down to a resource question. In fact, most issues around corporate blogging stem from issues of resources, including the question of “who should write the blog?” 360 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Set guidelines and parameters for your weblog. These can be as simple as, "Make your mother proud, don’t lie, write to inform." 5. Map the process for sustainable successful blogging in your company. How will the blog be sustained? Who will do the updates? How frequently? Who will review? Who will respond to comments? Who will manage an editorial calendar? 6. Brainstorm content topic areas, categories of information, and events/features that you can use to differentiate your weblog. (event promotion, new white paper, marketing news). 7. Determine key words we want associated with your company and look for a domain name that might contain those words. Pick a title that describes what we do and why people would want to visit our site. 8. Build a personal blog, test it out. 9. Build a company blog, populate with enough stuff to start promoting. 10. Begin promoting. Syndicate (RSS, XML feeds). Put link on main site, in resource center. Promote to customers (maybe by letter). Promote blog in your company email signatures. Register weblog with weblogs.com and others. 7. How can they then use their blogs as a powerful sales vehicle? There are a couple of ways that I can see using the weblog as a vehicle for sales. As I mentioned earlier, you can do almost anything that you can with an ecommerce website. However, there are a couple things that you can do that are't typically within the realm of your average e-commerce site. 1. Keeping your customers aprised of the latest products & deals via the blog and RSS. Look at Amazon.com. They offer RSS feeds of many of their product categories, letting bibliophiles subscribe to the product area of their choice, getting the latest steals and deals fed right to their RSS readers. It's totally relevant, totally permission based, and readers love it. They could expand on this theme if they more effectively used weblogs to offer more content and value-added commentary on the products, garner more positive search rankings, and keep archives of the product information. 361 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. Putting your thought leaders and technical people in the spotlight to drive customers toward specific product solutions, or to support their existing purchases. Sun Microsystems and Macromedia are doing a wonderful job with this tactic. They have a multitude of bloggers under the corporate umbrella posting relevant news that has really made an impact in the communities that exist around their product lines. 8. The next natural question is, how can blogging be applied to corporate sales strategies? That's a pretty broad question to tackle, and I would argue that one needs to review the basic tenents of your average sales strategy to be able to determine where you might properly apply the leverage that a weblog can provide. If we look at weblogs being used most basically as communication tools that can be plugged in to any of a number of corporate processes, then you begin to see where you might find value in utilizing weblogs as part of your sales strategy. For example, a company might have three general objectives for their account executives in a given territory. Let's say that those objectives are account acquisition, account penetration, and account retention. Weblogs can be very useful in addressesing at least one of the hypothetical issues that might exist with each of those objectives. 362 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Strategic Objective Account Acquisition Account Penetration Account Retention Strategic Question How can I better communicate my unique value proposition to those customers who are searching for my services in a specific area? How can I introduce my existing long-time customers to other services in my portfolio that they've been reluctant to use? How can I show my current customers that they're not alone in struggling with the current turmoil that's shaking our industry and that we do have solutions to meet their needs in these turbulent times? Weblog Fit Weblogs are currently one of the most effective tools for showcasing one's understanding of a particular customer's market, vertical, or business and can be particularly helpful in improving one's ranking in the search engines with little more than the content provided for the weblog. The weblog also 'puts a personality' on the company and helps the customer in their evaluation of the core character of those whom they will be working with. Weblogs allow the author to tell a story of another customer's great experience in a level of detail not afforded those who stick to the typical corporate case history format, and do so in a unique and credible voice. By featuring other customers' experiences with each of the services in a portfolio, a sales organization can better equip their existing customers to vicariously experience the advantages of the service and form their own opinions on how that service might benefit them, paving the way for the sales conversation during the next customer visit. Weblogs are an excellent way to offer third party confirmation of issues through the comments, linking, and trackback features of weblogs. Telling clients all the same story of how they're not alone and being able to reference industry analyst data, while backing it up with other customers' comments is a great way to reinforce your position as a consultative solution seller in each of your accounts. The weblog helps the sales organization do that across multiple accounts. These are but 3 examples. There are many more that one could come up with simply by applying the benefits of weblogs to some of the challenges they face with the sales organization. 363 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. How about individual salespeople? Should they keep their own blogs as well and why? What are the best approaches for them? I submit that whether or not individual salespeople keep their own blogs depends on the size of the organization they sell for, their own unique customer base and the weblog policy put forth by the company. If the organization is a large, public company that strives to keep a uniform voice across the salesforce, they would be wise to follow the model of the Jupiter Media analyts' weblogs, where each analyst has their own blog, but they're all available in one place. Sales people who want to differentiate themselves would be wise to keep blogs. I have a friend who is trying to differentiate himself as a salesperson in New York City. The blog is a perfect vehicle for doing this. The rules are pretty simple. Be smart, don't say anything dumb about your company, etc... 10. In addition to your own blog, could you recommend some of the best examples our readers could use to learn from? I'm of course talking about blogs that actually have an impact on sales … Well, Lori Richardson over the the SalesProcessDiva weblog has some great content on lead generation and sales & business process. Her URL is http://loririchardson.typepad.com/salesprocessdiva/. Brian Carroll is a lead generation master and runs a weblog called the B2B Lead Generation Blog. His URL is http://blog.startwithalead.com. The easiest way to find more weblogs on sales, or whatever topic you fancy, is to search Google for “your favorite topic” + blog or + weblog. You'll be amazed at the results you'll get. 11. Could you perhaps also share any interesting case studies with us? There are number of case studies that fall in the realm of business & marketing weblogs, though they are not sales specific. 364 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Stonyfield Farm's, an environmentally conscious maker of gourmet dairy products, uses weblogs to maintain community with their loyal customer base is a great example of using weblogs to target unique customer segments by their affinity to the brand. For example, they have weblogs related to children's health and women's health, both representing unique segments for them. The weblog has allowed them to capitalize on their "personality" in the world--they care about the environment and maintain touch with their loyal, long-standing customer base. CEO, Gary Hirshberg, wants to "be real" and saw the blogs as a way to do that--inspired in part by the success of blogs within the Howard Dean presidential bid of early 2004. Another case study of note is the ACCA, the trade association for 4,000 heating, ventilating and air conditioning companies. The ACCA has created is a highly efficient way of communicating with its members through its weblog, ACCAbuzz. VP for Member Services & Communications Kevin Holland describes ACCAbuzz as “not a primary communications vehicle yet. It’s more of a secondary channel.” But it’s a key part of his overall marketing and communications strategy. 15% of the 40,000 visitors per month to ACCA’s site click through to the blog page. He’s taking development of the blog step by step. In addition to guest bloggers, he will eventually explain to his members how to subscribe to the blog via an RSS feed. For now, “they understand the writing and the usefulness of the blog. But I don’t want to bother them with the technology.” His goal: to cross promote and re-purpose all the content he’s creating for the site, for his e-newsletters and for the quarterly print magazine. 12. I'm also wondering, how can blogs be integrated in to sales processes and models? Blogs can certainly be integrated into the sales process. If you look at the sales process from a traditional perspective, there are a few areas where blogs can be integrated. Below, I highlight how salespeople can use weblogs in customer facing processes, but there are numerous applications inside sales organizations as well, which I'll save for another time. First, during the prospecting phases, it would be helpful to have a weblog as a 'personal branding' tool to put a stake in the sand, so to speak, on exactly what value you purport to bring to your customer, and to showcase the open dialog that you have with your past and current customers. What better way to really open up the conversation than by being totally transparent and reference able. 365 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Second, throughout the discovery of needs, quoting and presentation stages, a salesperson could use unique client weblogs to house all of the data on the solution that is relevant to that customer. Using a solution like Movable Type or TypePad, you can own a blogging tool that allows you to create as many weblogs as you have clients. I've used this successfully with some of my clients in the past year. Third, in the post sale follow-up, a weblog is a great way to dialog with customers and keep tabs on your project or post sale action items. Again, it's all about transparency of communication. Lastly, ongoing service that you're providing to one customer and the knowledge you gain in solving unique customer problems can be leveraged on your 'public' weblog for the benefit of all customers. You really establish your added value proposition when you constantly add value long after the sale. With a weblog, or series of weblogs, salespeople will have a much easier time 'scaling' their knowledge across their customer base. Source: Sales Executive Council “INFORMATION ON SALES PROCESSES” 366 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. To move on to another topic, among other things you're also an expert on Sales Force Automation. What is SFA anyway and how can it improve our sales? Sales Force Automation (SFA) is Software and systems that support sales staff lead generation, contact, scheduling, performance tracking and other functions. SFA functions are normally integrated with base systems that provide order, product, inventory status and other information and may be included as part of a larger customer relationship management (CRM) system. SFA systems are designed to support automated processes like the sales process I just reviewed. 14. Can small businesses also use it and how? Blogs are already being used in small business (by small business, let's assume that we're working off the same definition – “one that is independently owned and operated and which is not dominant in its field of operation”) for a number of reasons. Companies like Northfield Construction (http://www.northfieldconstruction.net/) are using weblogs as their primary internet communication vehicle, and have integrated them wholesale into their website. Weblogs are ideal for small businesses because they require very little setup and can be very inexpensive to run and maintain. They also have the additional benefit of being very 'search friendly', meaning that they search engines are prone to picking up the content in a company's weblog simply as a result of the inherent design of the weblog architecture. 15. Could you perhaps share any best practices with us? There are some simple best practices that my good friend Bill Flitter of Pheedo (http://www.pheedo.info/) put together that I'd like to share. 1. Focus on your core interest area to establish yourself as an expert. 367 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. Create at least 15-20 meaningful posts BEFORE you open your blog to the public. When people visit for the first time, you’ll have more then one post to share with them. If your blog is rich with information, most likely people will continue to read it. 3. Figure out who the a-list bloggers are in your niche and participate on their blog using comments and trackbacks. Links to your blog, outside your blog and within in your blog are all important to search engines. 4. Continue to write on target content The biggest challenge most companies have is keeping the blog current. What I always suggest is you must look at it as a prospecting/networking tool that needs to be included in your marketing mix. It is just one more tool in your sales and marketing toolbox. 368 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Bill French and F. Andy Seidl, MyST Technology Partners Web site: http://myst-technology.com 1. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to conduct this interview. Could you please start by first explaining what MyST actually is and what marketing oriented, communicational and content delivery solutions it offers to modern enterprises? Let’s start with "What is MyST?" First, MyST has nothing to do with Myst, the game. "MyST" derives from a nickname for "MySmartTags", the name of the first web service solution we built. We liked the term and named our company MyST Technology Partners. We don't actually have a specific product named "MyST". Our knowledge server product is name the MyST Web Services Platform, which we frequently refer to simply as "MyST". Since this web services platform is the foundation for all of our other products and services, we often use the term "MyST" as an umbrella term that covers all of our technologies and solutions. Our objective was to create an abstract information space, together with supporting services, designed to help companies solve its own specific "knowledge management" problems. We don't really like the "KM" phrase, but the reality is that information has become a key asset—if not the key asset—in most organizations[1] and there is a tremendous need for systems that help workers transform information (raw data) into knowledge (information that increases one's ability to act wisely)[2]. We designed MyST (the web services platform) around two basic concepts: agility and security. The platform defines a relatively simple and highly abstract model for dealing with information objects. This model includes a pervasive security model that permits granular permissions control over every aspect of the platform. It is useful to think of the objects at this level as elemental objects from which more specific (i.e., less abstract) knowledge solutions are built. To facilitate the creation of such solutions, the platform supports what we call business logic plug-ins. 369 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A business logic plug-in is a piece of software that "plugs in" to the MyST platform to add native support for the business logic needed for a specific knowledge solution. The platform can simultaneously support any number of plug-ins, giving it a chameleon like quality; the platform can easily look like whatever it needs to look like to most effectively address a specific knowledge solution. Our MySmartChannels Weblog Application Server is a concrete example of how a plug-in transforms the MyST platform into something more specific. MySmartChannels refines MyST's abstract object model into one organized around idea of channels of information. Channels are created around specific subject matter areas and contain any number of information items that are about that subject. Channels themselves are organized into higher-level containers knows as spaces. To this, MySmartChannels adds the ability to transform (using industry standard XML and XSL technologies) channel content into not only HTML web pages, but virtually any imaginable format including XML, RSS, RDF, Microsoft Office smart tags, OPML, SharePoint WebParts, topic maps, even formats that have not yet been invented. The MySmartChannels channel metaphor embraces the idea of personal weblog publishing but extends the idea to weblog applications that are composed of many channels interacting as an application in a secure environment. Thus, MySmartChannels can be seen as both a concrete solution built on MyST and also as a platform for building specific weblog applications. With this background, we can address the second part of the question, "How does this translate into our ability to deliver solutions for enterprises?" By designing solutions as federations of loosely coupled services built on an abstract underlying platform, we have been able to rapidly offer solutions for a (seemingly) wide variety of business problems such as: secure enterprise weblogging, partner compliance monitoring, collaborative manuscript review, competitive intelligence monitoring, content management and syndication, secure RSS creation and management, weblog communities, search engine visibility optimization, project management, distance learning, Office XP smart tag authoring, and others. While these may seem like very different applications, they all share the fundamental qualities of using information to empower users to make decisions more effectively. The MyST platform, extended with business logic plug-ins such as MySmartChannels and others, is an ideal "box of legos" for creating solutions such as these. 370 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. If I understand this correctly, MyST is not limited to delivering content only through RSS, but instead allows for different output formats? Which? MyST (by virtue of the MySmartChannels business logic plug-in) can deliver content in virtually any imaginable format; RSS is just one example—dozens of examples, actually, when you consider different RSS versions and variants. At its core, all information objects in the MyST platform is available in a canonical XML format we call MyST-ML (MyST Markup Language). The MySmartChannels presentation framework uses standard XSLT processing to transform information from its canonical form into any desired format. All content formats delivered by MySmartChannels—HTML pages, RSS, PHP, XML, RDF, etc.—are generated in this manner. New XSL transformations, which we call models, can be created by anyone familiar with standard XSL. Once registered with the MyST platform, these new presentation models extend the capability of the platform to deliver new formats. As a concrete example, consider Microsoft Office XP smart tags. Smart sags are words or phrases in Office documents with links to relevant information. While this may sound like a normal hyperlink, it is different. Hyperlinks are defined by a document author; smart tags are added automatically and without modifying the document. Microsoft has provided an interface for developers to create their own smart tag recognizers that are called by Office XP to apply smart tags to a document. It is entirely possible for different users to see different smart tags in the same document. When properly developed, this allows relevant information to find you rather than you trying to find it. Microsoft defined a data format (MOSTL) to exchange smart tag subscription information. By creating an XSL model that transforms MyST-ML into MOSTL data, MySmartChannels can transform any channel into a smart tag subscription document. This makes it possible for a user to subscribe to smart tags for channels of interest. Just as importantly, this new model turned MySmartChannels into a smart tag authoring and publishing environment that requires absolute no technical knowledge of smart tags, MOSTL, or Microsoft technology on the part of the author. As new content delivery requirements arise, chances are the new requirements can be satisfied by simply creating new XSL models. Even for the most challenging new content deliver requirements, it is likely that the combination of a new business logic plug-in and one or more new XSL models will meet the requirements. A key point is that neither of these scenarios requires functional changes to the core server platform, even in the face of radically changing requirements. 371 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. How about delivering content through e-mail? From my perspective what I expect in a CMS is inputting content once and then delivering it over a wide array of different internet media... Since our platform makes it so easy to access information objects in any form, creating alternative processes is really quite simple. Although we have an integrated email notification component, we've been very busy building alternative forms of notification and awareness services (ergo, people are not asking for more email). Building our basic email platform services into content-oriented applications is fairly straight-forward for almost any developer - we currently use it for things like password changes, and other administrative processes for MySmartChannels. 4. True, people do not want more e-mail. However, many publishers want their users to have the choice of subscribing to RSS, e-mail or both, using just one subscription system and process. Is this possible and how? Yes, this is possible with MySmartChannels (and applications built on it). However, we don't provide this type of functionality on our free public experience site. Users already know what e-mail notification looks like and how it works. Our platform has been hosted publicly as a sandbox for understanding new ways of working with information. 5. You use HTTP user authentication to grant access to content. Do you foresee this as a problem when it comes to integration with systems that use cookies to identify users instead? No. HTTP authentication is not the only mechanism available; it just happens to be the one currently surfaced by the MySmartChannels HTTP interface. 6. So it actually will be possible to easily integrate your system in solutions that use cookies and then use cookies as a means of authentication? Do RSS readers support this? Sure. We don't rule out other forms of authentication but so far the types of applications and integrations (such as we have with Microsoft Office Research Tasks) HTTP authentication works well and seems to be what enterprises are asking for. 372 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. For instance if some company wanted a single-point access to all their content and wanted to use cookies as a means of authentication? Would that be possible or is there some other better solution? The MyST technology stack is highly layered. At the core knowledge server level is an API that accepts authorization credentials as method parameters. The MyST Web Services Platform exposes a SOAP interface to the core knowledge server. These SOAP methods accept credentials as SOAP method parameters (optionally using an SSL message transport.) MySmartChannels exposes an HTTP GET/POST interface that uses HTTP authentication to obtain user credentials which are then supplied to the MyST platform via secure SOAP messages. This layered architecture provides the agility necessary to address different authentication requirements. 8. Does MyST make personalization (not customization) possible? Yes. All MyST platform interaction is based on a named user context. As such, it's very easy to build XSL models that factor in presentation based on who the user is and what interests they may have. Currently, our platform does not include specific functionality for capturing interests; however, the platform itself is extensible enough to do so. On a related note, the MyST platform provides for typed associations between information objects, so creating a highly personalized network of information is relatively straight-forward. We are currently exercising this capability when tracking invitations that are made and accepted by users. The current MySmartChannels user interface provides a way to see this in action. 9. Please take a look at www.babycenter.com and their e-mail information service. Can such a thing be easily built in MYST and using RSS? Well, "easily" is term that needs a definition, and by definition, all content applications built on MyST naturally support RSS as well as other supported syndication and integration services like MOSTL (Microsoft Office Smart Tags). Sure - MyST can be used to build almost anything you can envision that involves content, but the bigger question - will users adopt RSS for this purpose? I believe that over time, they will unless something better than RSS interrupts that trend. 373 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. You said that MyST and MySmartChannels meet the requirements of content delivery. Could you please provide some examples from the business world and explain what advantages your combination offers over other content delivery solutions? Imagine a collection of business processes that collect information about a software vendor's partners and resellers; the objective of which is to determine if the vendor's name and products are prominently mentioned on the reseller's Web site and that link references to whitepaper downloads and demo applications are properly represented. This is a business intelligence process that requires automated introspection of dozens (perhaps hundreds) of partner sites. It also requires capture of the results and then sharing of the results to a team responsible for partner and reseller relationship management. The content that the intelligence process gathers must be delivered in context to each team member's security and permissions. So for example, a partner manager must be able to review the intelligence reports about each partner and create action items necessary to get each reseller into compliance, whereas, the executive sales manager might only need to watch the overall progress of the effort to get all resellers into compliance. MyST and MySmartChannels provide (with ease) the ability for the executive to subscribe to information at a summary level, while other participants in the process must see more details. The requirements for permission-based visibility don't stop at HTML pages; search, RSS feeds, and integrations with external applications must also exhibit these same visibility objectives. Our platform asserts a consistent content visibility across RSS feeds, Office XP integration, and every aspect of content delivery. 11. Could you please name a few companies using this and explain how specifically they are using it? Well, as a matter of policy we don't disclose specific customers that are using our platform for business and market intelligence gathering for partner or competitor information. Our customers are using the MyST platform for exactly the process described in the previous question. 374 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. If I understand this correctly MyST stores content in XML files? How about SQL or Oracle databases? Actually, MyST does not store any content in XML files. MyST uses XML as its native data interchange format, making it appear that all content is stored as XML. The MyST persistence layer is based on SQL. We currently use MySQL, but all database access is abstracted through a persistence layer, making it possible to replace MySQL a different SQL database. 13. How can integration between the user database from your system be integrated with already existing user databases companies have, for instance Web site user databases? In our view, one of the best ways to integrate with any information space is to use XML (XSLT specifically). For example, we already integrate many different Weblog systems under one site called kLog News. This site demonstrates the use of extensive XSL-based aggregation capabilities to assimilate content from 15 different content databases. 14. Are your solutions, MySmartChannels for example, focused on any special target audience? And how appropriate are they for small businesses and entrepreneurs? As far as specific target audiences - No. In fact, MySmartChannels started out as a demo application to exercise the MyST Web services platform. Some of our early users encouraged us to build it out with lots of things that make it look and feel like a Weblog tool. However, we quickly realized that every application built on MyST was fundamentally a platform for building less and less abstract things. Today, MySmartChannels is hosted as a free public experience site where we welcome individuals, and companies (both large and small) to experiment. Our intent is to allow the marketplace to help us find appropriate uses for this technology. To date (with the encouragement of paying customers) we have built about a dozen different types of applications that are fairly specific in terms of functionality. In essence, each one is an exercise is transforming MySmartChannels to meet specific IT requirements. 375 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Small business users have found the public experience site useful for creating Weblogs, private knowledge channels for their clients, and enhancing Google visibility for their products and services. MySmartChannels seems to provide a wide array of uses for individuals and small businesses that need agile content services. We've even discovered a few are using it to create, host, and manage RSS content. This is a good use of our platform because it removes any need for the RSS author to actually know about the technical nuances. They just create channels, add items, and magically, all forms of RSS emerge. For small business entrepreneurs we are particularly interested in establishing partnerships that will help them create new business ideas, products, and services that leverage our platform. 15. In order to take full advantage of MyST, how much technical expertise is required from the customer? Will technical issues be a problem for smaller businesses that do not posses adequate expertise in-house and cannot invest in outside experts? That depends on who the "customer" is. Some customers will use the MyST platform but will never know they are using it - their user interface will be a Web application that runs in their Web browser and will be designed for very specific objectives. Other customers will be IT groups that install the MyST platform on their corporate network as a Weblog Application Server which will be used to create highly secure knowledge management applications. And we have already seen demand for our platform to build integration systems in larger firms. The technical aspects would be considered demanding for small business owners, but not for entrepreneurs seeking highly leveragable technology assets for rapidly addressing the demands for new products and services. Anyone with a firm grasp of XSLT, is able to transform MySmartChannels into an application of their own design. If additional business logic components are required, a good understanding of Java servlets is necessary and perhaps SOAP (simple object access protocol). 376 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 16. I think this might be an interesting niche for you, since many marketers right now are seriously looking in to RSS to deliver their content due to SPAM legislation and other problems ... Well, yes - we would agree that this is a viable business niche that's likely to produce healthy revenues, however, we don't have the marketing skills necessary to attack this emerging segment adequately. We would prefer to find a "product champion" that knows more about marketing systems and how best to apply RSS while we focus on the technical details of the business requirements. 17. So it would be necessary for a marketer with limited XSLT expertise (if any at all) to use MyST? What should such marketers look for in a contractor for this job? Yes, non-technical users currently employ MySmartChannels for a variety of information management tasks. One such objective is to create channels of content for marketing purposes and syndicate that content. This is fairly automatic since any and all content stored in the MyST platform is available in a variety of XML formats such as RSS, and may be syndicated by simply understanding syndication concepts. To create custom applications, such as advertorial sites and other applications intended to support marketing initiatives, we recommend that people with XML and XSLT skills be involved. Or, our own professional services staff is available to assist. 18. I have a feeling that all the technical aspects of what we are discussing might be very overwhelming for most small business owners and marketers ... Don't you think this limit's your solutions' reach? Yes - it is overwhelming for most, but by definition, this is one of the marks of disruption. Over time, many applications [suited to specific business processes] will be developed on the MyST and MySmartChannels platforms and eventually provide extremely easy-to-use systems for small businesses. At this date, MyST and MySmartChannels are intended to make it easy for content-oriented solutions providers build complex applications quickly and efficiently. 377 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 19. Imagine a marketing professional looking to enhance his communication with his target audiences. What besides blogs could he specifically use MyST for? How can it specifically increase his bottomline? Blogs are one aspect (i.e., one specific model) for delivering information. We believe that the best content management platform is an agile one; making it possible for marketing professionals to provide alternative ways for messages to reach audiences. Ideally, such a platform would be able to handle ways that are most effective today, and able to adapt [without significant effort] to tomorrows desires. A few years ago, content management platforms were built and sold without any anticipation that RSS would be important. Today, most of those platforms need to be retooled to provide RSS support and many are experiencing difficulties because these types of service requires some thought about encoding, security, and variants. In a few years, other XML formats will become important, and the MyST platform is already prepared to outlive today's requirements. In fact, MyST was designed with the express belief that it would face constantly shifting IT requirements. 20. You mention about a dozen different types of applications based on MySmartChannels. Could you please tell us which and how specifically they are being used by your clients? Their results? Rather than use up a lot of space talking about more than a dozen applications, let's focus on a few. PartnerWatch PartnerWatch is a business intelligence service that evaluates partner and reseller Websites to determine how they reflect on a company's own products and services. This service provides vendors with the first cost-effective method for reviewing partner and reseller content for compliance. Imagine the embarrassment of a company when a published "premier partner" doesn't even mention a company's name on their Website. 378 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS PartnerWatch provides a web-based business intelligence system for tracking the online behavior of partners and resellers with regard to a company’s products and services. By automatically searching, classifying, and reporting on the "web footprint" of each partner and reseller, PartnerWatch provides a sales [or marketing] staff with a complete picture of how their products and company is represented on other sites. This tool also assists in making certain that all partners and resellers comply with agreed-upon representation of products and services, which increases brand identity and product visibility on the Web. It does this by including a light workflow that utilizes integrated Weblogs and action channels to create actionable tasks to deal with the gathered intelligence. Through consistent follow-up with partners and resellers, our customers are also able to indirectly improve search engine rankings for their products and services - because there are simply more [accurate] representations of the company's brand. Q&A This interview was conducted with MyST application that provides a structured [and secure] space to ask questions and gather answers. Q&A is a basic application model that makes it more efficient to gather the feedback of multiple respondents to a set of questions. This is a process that occurs in many aspects of business and publishing. Ideally, users should have a secure space to ask questions and reuse the questions for multiple responses - indeed; this is the nature of km tools. MyST just happens to be a good platform for providing this functionality, but the use cases appeal to a number of information-worker processes. These are just two instances of the many business and enterprise applications that are built on the MyST platform. Other applications include advertorial systems for generating greater Google visibility, market intelligence systems, integrated Weblog applications for knowledge management (kLogs), manuscript review, and even data integration components. 379 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 21. You said that some are using your platform for RSS content management. Let's assume I have a static HTML web site. Is there a way for me to manage content through your platform and then deliver it though my static site? Yes, but you might want to use a richer XML format than RSS. The MyST platform hosts many XML formats including one called MyST-ML. This format is available on all channels and spaces created in MyST and provides a complete XML feed of your content. So, by simply accessing this format, you have all the tools necessary to create, manage, and host content that may be utilized by other external applications and Web sites. 22. Small business entrepreneur partnerships: What are you looking for in a partner? And if they come to you with an idea how you can help them implement MyST in their business, how would this work? How much support could you provide them? Ideally, we’re looking for existing companies (or startups) that need specific technology to build new types of products, services, and businesses. We believe that the MyST platform provides a remarkable reduction in time-to-market and superior benefits for rapidly building extremely agile distributed applications and we’re in a position to provide the technology, services, and OEM licenses as necessary to launch new entries in the IT services space. At a fundamental level we’re tilting toward helping companies that are interested in creating disruptive products and services, however we're not interested in directly compensating anyone for helping to make this approach come to life. We have a number of products and services that have been designed for our early [paying] customers. We believe that many of them represent emerging IT demands that will naturally fall out of our day-to-day control and into the hands of designated firms whose focus will take them to commercial viability. As such, we’re now in a position to seed new business relationships with actual products and services that are presently generating revenue. 380 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 23. If we stay with small businesses for a while - imagine an internet marketer publishing a newsletter for his audience, small business owners. How could he go about converting them from e-mail to RSS and a news aggregator software? Small business should provide incentives if they want to accelerate the adoption curve. For example, a specific feed may include some premium content for a limited introductory time frame. There are also many news reader application vendors that are looking for new users, so there are probably lots of ways to create pricing bundles that include (what appears to be) free news reader clients. 24. Don't you think this could be a huge problem, since most people are techno phobic and are not as willing to change their behavior and what they use? Absolutely! Change is difficult for most people until it's more painful to stay the same. In 1912 very few people drove automobiles because it was cheaper to own a horse and feed and water it to get from point (a) to point (b). However, at some point along the emergence of automobile technology, the cost-benefit lines crossed and it became much easier and more satisfying to own an automobile, not a horse. The same lines are converging concerning XSLT, XML, and RSS; it's only a matter of time. 25. I think this problem applies to all e-mail marketers who are right now communicating with larger masses of people. In reality, is it possible for a publisher to convert his 10.000+ subscribers to new technology? In our view there's presently no meaningful reason to simply convert customer bases to a new delivery mechanism. What is meaningful is to provide information in alternative publish-subscribe formats. Eventually, things like RSS will be a basic staple of doing business just like Web pages are now considered an essential presentation form. Plotting how to move a customer base from one format to another is probably not the right objective. Rather, businesses should be considering these new concepts as potentially useful competitive advantages that can be used to disrupt information models in their respective segments. 381 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 26. Take a venture capital funded small business. The owner regularly sends information to his investors by e-mail. Since your application of RSS can be more secure, how can he convert the investors to rather receiving content in secure RSS? The only way people will switch to a different method is if there are benefits that exceed the current method. The business owner could point out that the email method requires creation of a report once monthly, whereas, the RSS feed is realtime; investors learn about happenings at the company as they happen. If investors feel like real-time information is better than latent information (as I suspect they do), perhaps they will make the leap to install a news reader. Don't underestimate them there was a time when that exact audience would never have considered using an email client to read mail - but they all eventually installed one. 27. You make a good point, but an investor can also as log-on to a secure web site, published by the funded company, and get the info there without having to install new software. Why do it with RSS? What benefits can he be offered? The one benefit that seems to resonate with all information workers is that information should find them automatically when and where they happen to working. In most cases, people tend to forget to visit sites and portals to catch up on the latest happenings. And even when they do remember, how many times (and how much money is wasted) logging into sites to find that nothing has changed since the last time visited. This is a massive waste of time and resources even for modest-sized companies. RSS eliminates this waste and creates an awareness of information change at the moment [or shortly after] the change occurs. It is simply more operationally efficient and this is why enterprises will likely adopt RSS in mass quantities long before marketing firms will. 382 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 28. Given your track record, we're also interested in your entrepreneurial background. How did you develop the idea for MyST and then build your business around that idea? Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? Andy and I are both entrepreneurs - we like to say we're self-unemployed. ;-) All kidding aside, we created the idea for MyST during a series of instant message chats (the text of which will be published someday). The idea emerged from our experiences at Starbase Corporation (now part of Borland). We noticed two things in enterprise information systems - i) plenty of friction to publishing knowledge, and ii) plenty of friction in finding stuff. MyST is a very narrow attempt to provide ways to chip away at some of the knowledge management problems that corporations face. Eventually, it will provide additional functionality for finding stuff easily. 29. Are you developing your company more based on instinct or more based on formal business planning? Well, that's an interesting question, and here's an equally interesting answer we're developing a technology and collection of products, not a company. The company that emerges will be the outgrowth of very well-planned technology and persuasion by our early customers as to how best to employ the technology. 30. Where do you see your company in 5 years? What are you going to do to get there? If history is any indication, we'll be working in a bigger company that has decided to leverage our skills and platform for many products and services. 31. Thank you for sharing all this information about MyST with us. Let us now move backwards and off your solution. Could you please explain in simple terms what RSS actually is and what benefits it provides? RSS (Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is a defacto standard that emerged from the need to publish summary headlines about stories. It is an XML format that provides very simple collections of items that are easy to parse and utilize in many types of applications including Web sites and desktop tools. From our perspective, RSS provides a standards-compliant method for creating awareness about discrete information objects. Most of our customers use our tools for kmrelated solutions and RSS is a good format for creating a greater awareness of information changes. 383 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 32. Right now many marketers are looking in to RSS to replace or compliment their e-mail publishing activities. What problems do you foresee with this? Is this the solution to growing e-mail delivery problems? We're not specifically focusing on the use of RSS for marketing purposes simply because no customers have stepped forward indicating a great demand for our platform capabilities in that solution. However, there's no argument that RSS can augment [or perhaps replace] email as a marketing information stream. One of the problems with RSS is that it's not as easy to determine the affect a feed has on sales. Although RSS is not the solution today, it may become a significant disruptive force in the near term. 33. Who's innovating with RSS feeds -- what are the truly unique implementations of RSS that could get entrepreneurs and internet marketers thinking of creative applications? (G) We tend to focus on business and enterprises uses of RSS, but I believe there are some unique things that could be done from a marketing perspective - so far though, I haven't seen any serious innovation in a marketing sense. A few amazing RSS readers will eventually emerge in various customer segments like entertainment and journalism. But I think anyone that has written an RSS newsreader ought to consider rewriting to embrace an agility-based architecture. Newsreaders could be more flexible in terms of skins, brandawareness, and presenting visually appealing UI's. Imagine an RSS "reader micro-client framework" designed to deliver a customized visual experience based on the feed that the user has selected. Furthermore, consider that the same transport mechanism (RSS) carries instructional payloads and other content (through name-space extensions) that controls the look, the behavior, and the presentation of the content. Lastly, consider that this "framework" is a very "smart machine" that transforms the channel [between provider and customer] from a monolog, to a dialog - thus allowing the customer to interact with the provider in visible (human ways), and non-visible (machine-driven) ways. 384 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Under the covers, TiVo is a magnificent CRM system that walks the fine line between a simple interface and a significant improvement in customer experience; and they achieve this while gathering lots of useful information that helps the customer as much as it guides the content providers to create better content. RSS readers are approaching a crossroads where they must transform themselves from largely commoditized utilities to smarter and much easier to use applications. 34. What's really going to drive readers/customers to adopt RSS? Buyers of what products and services are most likely to adopt RSS? (G) 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. ;-) 35. Who should be most interested in implementing and using RSS? I mean what kind of business model or product type is most suited for RSS. I guess I'm thinking from a marketing perspective here though... Help me expand this perspective some. (G) Who should be most interested in implementing and using One of the great aspects of RSS hasn't been explored for the most part; name-space extensions. This would allow lots of unique and refined business and information processes to become very intelligent about what they do with RSS items. Imagine a feed where each item carries special meta-data to make the receiving application smarter. Or, consider the idea of embedded tags that include specific instructions that are generated in the feed based on the type of content item and the permissions of the receiving application or individual. This is the future of RSS and it really doesn't look like your standard RSS 2.0 feed. These are the sort of research projects that we're using the MyST platform for. 385 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 36. On to the topic of blogs. Do you think these are only one of the "next big things" or are they here to stay? I remember back in the days when all the talk were e-zines, and today it's blogs. What's next? People tend to see things in very stark contrast. Actually, the current movement in technology circles is not specifically about blogs - rather, it's more about reducing content friction and increasing content agility. This is to say that perhaps in reality, the current "next big thing" is a continual adoption of technologies that reduce operational friction and increase operational agility. In a nutshell, this idea describes things like open standards; XML, XSLT, RSS, RDF, XTM, and a myriad of underpinnings that are now reaching stages that are mature enough to show extremely powerful results. Blogs and RSS in marketing are simply slices of that "big thing". The next big things will occur in many business segments where entrepreneurs have applied the philosophical concepts of loosely-coupled information models. As proof that this pattern is predictable, consider the rapid drop in XML seminars and conferences since 1999. In that year, everyone attended XML conferences. Now, they're hard to find because the practitioners are now off in their own business domains implementing solutions that leverage XML technologies. There will be a similar behavior for RSS. 386 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Tom Hespos, Underscore Marketing Web site: http://www.underscoremarketing.com 1. Tom, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Sure thing. I'm Tom Hespos and I'm the president of Underscore Marketing, an integrated media agency with offices in New York. Most people know me from columns that I've written for Mediapost, ClickZ and other publications that serve the interactive marketing community. 2004 marks 10 years in the industry for me, so I guess you could say I'm somewhat of a veteran in the space. Back in 2000, I started an online community known as the Old Timers List, which caters to experienced professionals in the online advertising and marketing industries. I started Underscore in May of 2002 because I saw a need for a truly integrated media agency and wanted to capitalize on that opportunity. Today, we service such clients as Claritin, the European Travel Commission, The Mathworks, Eurail and Eyeblaster. We also provide media services to many agencies you all know and love. 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you ask). I like to think of it as the best way for Internet users to manage the content that gets pushed to them every day. Essentially, consumers can subscribe to feeds published by their favorite websites with an application known as an RSS reader. (Personally, I use NewsGator.) Consumers can subscribe or unsubscribe to feeds whenever they like, which is RSS's primary differentiator from e-mail content delivery. Whereas consumers might be hesitant to give out their e-mail addresses for fear of receiving spam or unwanted e-mail, RSS is risk free. If you decide one day that you don't like a particular feed anymore, you can unsubscribe immediately and never hear from that content publisher again. 387 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? For content publishers, RSS is a terrific solution for content delivery because there's very little work that needs to be done to set up a feed. I'm a blogger, and the Movable Type software I use to manage my blog automatically updates my RSS feeds every time I update my blog. It's a great solution for people who like to read my stuff, but don't necessarily want to visit my blog every day. E-mail used to occupy that niche, and publishers used to have to develop newsletters to please that constituency. But RSS handles it in a more effective and efficient fashion. 4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results? That depends on what you mean by »worked«. As an advertising guy, I'm still looking for ways to find an ad model for RSS. I'd like to reach consumers through that channel, but there are many challenges that need to be met before that can happen. Like so many channels in interactive media that came before it, RSS started as a decidedly non-commercial medium. Most people don't expect to see ads in their feeds, so it's quite risky to simply start plopping ads into feeds because subscribers can push the »unsubscribe« button at any time if they don't like the advertising. Still, I think feeds can be supported by either advertising or subscription revenues, depending on the preference of the consumer. Past experience tells me that most would rather put up with advertising than spend money on most types of content, so I think advertising will eventually come to RSS in a big way. From a publishing perspective, I've used RSS a couple different ways. My blog has a feed that interested folks can subscribe to. The feed also updates a WINKsite I have that lets mobile users access my content on their phones and such. There are a great number of other ways publishers can use RSS to deliver content, but I haven't taken advantage of many of them because my number one priority is running Underscore – publishing is kind of a hobby for me, if anything. 388 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? I've said this before in prior interviews (and been raked over the coals for it by the RSS junkies out there), but my opinion on this hasn't changed. The tech community, particularly folks who blog, know what RSS is and use it in their everyday lives, but we're really not going to see the penetration RSS deserves until it grows beyond the early adopters. One of the ways that can happen quickly and efficiently is if RSS readers are built into applications like Microsoft Outlook. One could argue that Microsoft would be able to do this quickly by cutting a deal with (or acquiring) NewsGator or another company, but I'd guess that it would be easier for Microsoft to simply build the functionality itself. For me, the acid test for penetration is whether my Mom knows about a particular technology. Right now, she hasn't the faintest idea what RSS is or how it can help her. Building the functionality into something she already uses would be the quickest way for someone like her to become aware of RSS and start using it. Mainstream online content publishers will really jump into this with both feet if they think the potential penetration of RSS usage is likely to climb upward like e-mail did years ago. But until that happens, the slow movers will likely ignore it. Personally, I think RSS could get to 30-35 percent penetration among Internet users within a year or two if something like this were to happen. 6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? That's a function of penetration of the RSS readers. When you think about it, RSS has significant advantages over e-mail on the consumer side. Folks like you and I know that there's no spam involved with RSS, plus we can search and sort feeds in ways that allow us to get to the information we're looking for more quickly than we can with e-mail. With those advantages alone, what consumer wouldn't want to migrate toward RSS? The problem is one of awareness and penetration. Simply put, if more people become aware of it, more people will use it. One of the cardinal rules of publishing is that the dollars always follow the eyeballs, so if there's a significant number of consumers out there who want content via RSS, the publishers will push the feeds. 389 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. Perhaps this also depends on the kinds of content we want to receive? For instance, I certainly want to receive my portfolio information daily by e-mail. Don't you think there are some types of content people want to be "pushed" with? Sure. And the better the customization, the better RSS can compete with e-mail. If you're one of those folks who follow companies online, it would be great to get news releases, stock quotes and anything associated with the specific companies you follow. Don't get me wrong, I like getting Google News Alerts in my e-mail, but I'd rather have a custom feed that I could check a couple times a day instead of getting a ping in my inbox every 10 minutes. But different strokes for different folks... 8. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? 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. 390 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. Very good point. Let's presume we're running a quite well-read feed. How do we get the message to these people about our new product, without the fear of being canceled? With e-mail we have solo mailings, how about here? I think the key is to manage expectations about what will be contained in the feed. Let's say I'm marketing Harley-Davidson motorcycles online. Publishing only a single feed that encompasses everything about Harleys probably wouldn't be the approach here. They've got so many different stories to tell – there's the brand lore, stories about how people enjoy their motorcycles in the real world, aftermarket parts, cool customizations, etc. Maybe it would be best to publish several feeds, among them a feed on new product releases. Anyone subscribing to the new product release feed is going to want that information and won't likely unsubscribe once they receive it. That's not to say that you can't cross-promote new product releases within the other feeds. But maybe the story within the feed simply says »The new 2005s are in. Click here for more information« in other feeds, while the new product release feed has detailed specs on the 2005 Fatboy. 10. Also, many internet marketers are using e-mail autoresponders and autoresponder series as a marketing tool. Is there a way to get that same kind of functionality with RSS? Or does the long-term switch to RSS mean that we will also have to change are marketing approaches and strategies? I've used autoresponders a couple times, most recently to promote an event I was putting on. Attendees could e-mail the autoresponder to get all the details about the event, including driving directions, times and contact phone numbers in case they had trouble making it to the event. It was a neat trick that people dug, but after I set it up, I asked myself »Wouldn't it have been easier if I simply posted this information on a web page?« Between the web and RSS, it would be pretty easy to fulfill on any objective we're trying to reach by using an autoresponder. But if autoresponders float your boat, it's cool – e-mail isn't going anywhere anytime soon. 11. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? You might expect an ad guy like me to say that the first step is advertising in feeds. Nah. 391 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS First, I think RSS presents an interesting opportunity for marketers who also publish content. If I'm a pharmaceutical marketer who wants to provide lifestyle information to consumers who suffer from a particular medical condition, RSS is a great way to do it. There's no need to pay a vendor to transmit e-mail to a list or invest in software that will allow for communication of this content to e-mail subscribers. Instead, you seek opportunities to advertise and publicize the feed, push your content out to subscribers with very simple tools and cultivate a reader base that way. I think scenarios like this represent the first marketing opportunities for RSS. Down the line, ad-supported feeds may become accepted, but for right now I wouldn't take the chance of putting a client into an RSS environment unless the ad was very relevant. If I was working for a golf club manufacturer, I might place an ad for a new line of clubs into an RSS feed about popular golf courses. But if I were working for Coca-Cola, I wouldn't plaster every RSS feed I could find with Coke ads, even though almost everyone is in the target audience for Coke. I think the ad has to have strong, contextually relevant ties to the content or the campaign would likely be a disaster for both the advertiser and the publisher. 12. How about other relevant business uses? It doesn't take much to set up an RSS feed, so if you're already publishing e-mail newsletters, I'd recommend setting one up as soon as you can, particularly if your audience overlaps with the tech early adopter community to any degree. There may be some folks out there who might not want to subscribe to your newsletter, but would subscribe to an RSS feed if given the opportunity. Since publishing a feed is easy and doesn't cost much, it only makes sense to offer your consumers a choice as to how to receive your content. 13. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? As I mentioned before, let folks choose between RSS and e-mail (or both). In a medium driven by consumer choice, this only makes sense. The focus should be on covering all the bases with consumers. 392 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 14. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? None of our clients is currently pushing this, but if I had to offer some tactical advice, I'd say promoting your feed wherever you promote your newsletters is a good first step. It also wouldn't hurt to let your website visitors know where they can download a free RSS reader. I think Yahoo is among the publishers doing a pretty good job of promoting RSS. You can add feeds to your page on My Yahoo pretty easily, so when you encounter news items from publishers who publish feeds, subscribing to the feeds through My Yahoo is simple. 15. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? I don't know that converting e-mail subscribers to RSS would be a desirable objective for too many content publishers right now, unless they wanted to reduce their costs to disseminate e-mail to their subscribers. If I were running a major content site with a significant e-mail subscriber base, I'd likely leave them in the channel they're currently in and let them make the transition to RSS organically. Some people will always like getting their updates and news via e-mail and as marketers, we need to respect that. As RSS becomes more popular and evolves over time, I'd let whichever subscribers wanted to switch to RSS do so and not pressure any e-mail subscribers to switch if they don't want to. Additionally, there might be subscribers who want both RSS and e-mail. For instance, I like getting the RSS feed from MarketingVox so I can search and organize the information, but I'm also subscribed to their daily newsletter so that I can get the daily update in my email and scan it for important stories. I'm not likely to switch to one or the other anytime soon, so why prompt me to commit to one channel? 393 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 16. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? It's easy to subscribe to an RSS feed with a single click or a »copy and paste«. Bloggers have pretty much gotten a handle on this – simply post the address of the feed on the home page and anywhere else it's relevant, including the areas in which newsletters are promoted. If I were promoting a feed for a client, I'd advertise it in all the obvious areas of the client's site. But I'd like to see some external promotion as well. One of the tactics we've been able to employ to get targeted subscribers efficiently is »coregistration«. We place our newsletter subscription offer in areas where consumers are already signing up for offers that are relevant to their interests and lifestyles. For example, if I'm trying to get subscribers for an e-mail newsletter about lawn care, I might buy a placement on a site that's offering coupons for home improvement stores and pitch consumers there. We pay the publisher only when people subscribe to our newsletter. This tactic is easily adaptable to promoting RSS feeds. It might also pay off to place some paid advertising for the feed in relevant areas. By way of hypothetical example, let's say Chevy produced a feed for Corvette enthusiasts and wanted to promote it to Corvette owners. After I placed »subscribe now« links in the Corvette portion of the GM website, I'd look to advertise the feed in places like CorvetteForum.com, where enthusiasts hang out. I might also look to promote it with paid search and organic search optimization, so that people seeking that kind of information would be able to find it easily. I think some promotion ought to be done with some of the feed aggregators and such, so that folks looking searching engines like Blogdigger, Technorati, etc. will be able to find the feed and the stories contained within it fairly easily. 17. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? I haven't looked into this as much as I'd like to, but I think basic metrics can be gleaned from server logs. From the logfile requests for the RSS feed, we can get an idea of the number of unique users, clicks to content on the main website and other metrics that can give a basic idea of what's going on with readership. I'd also look at blogs and feed aggregators to see whether the blogging community is picking up on stories contained in the feed and whether searchers can find the stories without too much of a hassle. 394 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 18. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Thanks for having me. I guess the thing I'd like to add is a wake-up call for all the folks I'm likely to get hate mail from for suggesting some ways marketers might leverage RSS. As I mentioned before, there are purists out there who oppose any sort of marketing or commercial presence in new Internet channels. I can respect that because no one likes to see ad clutter or flagrantly obvious product placements alongside content that previously existed in the non-commercial space. None of us likes it when we go to our favorite non-commercial website one day and find ads there. At the same time, there are lots of folks out there who subscribe to the misguided notion that all content should be free and that marketers have no place in emerging channels like RSS. But I'd argue that there's a certain point at which publishers, even amateur ones, spend so much time creating and aggregating content that they can't possible invest any more time unless there's a paycheck in it. It can't be a hobby forever Either they have to start running ads or they have to start charging subscription fees. Given what I've seen about the willingness for people to pay money for content, I think it's inevitable that some of the people publishing in RSS will need to support their feeds with advertising. It's part of the development of any medium that reaches a significant number of people. To take the next step forward, publishers need to be able to monetize the content they put so much effort into producing. Right now, advertising is a proven model for doing so. Again, thanks for having me. 395 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Bill Flitter, Pheedo Web site: http://www.pheedo.com 1. Bill, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Rok, thank you for this opportunity. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Pheedo. I oversee both the sales team and outbound marketing efforts. 2. Your company is one of the few today that are focused on RSS publishing and marketing. How do you see this market developing in the future? I only see growth in content syndication. The format (RSS/ATOM) doesn't matter much to me. I care about what it does. More specifically, I care about the marketing implications of RSS. Just to clarify, I use RSS generically, like many may use Xerox or Kleenex. When I mention RSS, many times I mean content syndication. RSS Advertising flows off the tongue well. RSS has been around for about 5 years. Adoption has been slow but within the last year, it's looking like a hockey stick. I feel RSS will replace email in certain situations. Email is good for one to one or one to many communications. RSS is good for one to many but I do see that changing on a mass scale. For example. Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more efficient then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed. Secondly, if the problem of SPAM doesn't get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to communicate with their customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email – one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that. In both cases, RSS is just a more efficient means of communication. 396 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS anyway? I'll give you 7 reasons: 1. Sender ID 2. CAN SPAM ACT 3. Blacklists 4. Known Sender 5. Email Filters 6. Bonded Sender Program 7. Cost of Sending Email These seven items are a result of SPAM. The items represent an effort being put forth to stop SPAM but it is still a huge problem. I do believe RSS will be around no matter if SPAM was eradicated. RSS has some distinct advantages over email marketing, which include: 1. 100% opt-in – no worries of legal threats by consumers. 2. One-click unsubscribe – RSS raises the bar. Marketers will need to think about what their sending before they hit the enter button. I think this is a good thing. There is no free ride with RSS. Consumers are demanding control (do-not-call list, CAN SPAM Act, Privacy Bills etc.) and RSS delivers that control. 3. 100% deliver rate – If I publish a feed or advertise in a feed, it reaches the intended recipient. This is minus any technological hiccups. Point being I don't have to worry about SPAM filters, Blacklists, Sender ID, etc. My biggest worry now is whether or not I am publishing relevant content when my customers want it. 4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal? It’s growing. The feeds we are working with are seeing double-digit increases in their traffic every month. There are pockets where RSS is more popular like technology. Marketers who test RSS advertising will be ahead of the game when RSS goes mainstream. 397 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today? 1. External Communication: Create an RSS feed on your site. If you publish a newsletter already, creating a feed from that information is easy. It takes little effort. I strongly encourage this practice if you are in the tech sector. 2. Internal Communication: Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more efficient then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed. 3. Advertising: If the problem of SPAM doesn't get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to reach new customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email – one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that. RSS puts the control in the hands of the publisher and consumer. It will become a more effective marketing channel because the market will demand that publishers be more conscience of the amount and relevance of the ads in feeds. Consumers will act as the filter. If the noise-to-value ration is out of whack, the consumer will simply vote with their mice. 6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? In May 2004, we did a case study with Fortune 500 company. We tested several ads in Infoworld’s RSS feed. The six-week effort outperformed the best click through rate in email by over 26% as compared to the industry average of 8.7% CTR reported in DoubleClick’s Q4 2003 Email Trend Report. Furthermore, we were able to lower the effective CPM by three times of that over email, saving the client thousands of dollars. 7. Are there any other practical uses you can think of? There are only a few of us testing RSS as a marketing vehicle. Infoworld and Nethawk Interactive have been testing it but have been tight-lipped about the results. Kanoodle is sticking ads in RSS by using an XML feed. That’s how early RSS advertising is. 398 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? If you’re publishing a newsletter already, create an RSS feed of the information. It’s easy to create and costs virtually nothing. Everyone wins. I do not subscribe to email newsletters any longer and I know I am not alone. 9. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing, especially if the publisher doesn't want to make content available as it is created, but in one single issue? This is just a technology issue not related to RSS. You can publish the information in one batch if you wish. 10. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? Promote your RSS feed in your newsletter and offer RSS as an option to your newsletter subscribers. Link to Lockergnome’s quick-start guide for consuming RSS feeds http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/resources/articles/quickstart.phtml Place the orange RSS buttons on your website with a “?” next to them. Link the mark to detailed information on what RSS means and why you like it. Additionally, on your unsubscribe page, offer another alternative besides email to consume the information you publish. Quickly explain RSS and its benefits over email. If you can even save 1-5% of your subscriptions by offering this information on the unsubscribe page of your website, it’s worth the effort. 11. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Yes (see answers to 10 above on how). Bottom line is to promote it every place you promote your newsletter including signature files, business cards, website etc. 399 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Again, RSS is a great tool for one to many communications. A customer has to be proactive to start reading your feed but this a very good thing. You know this customer really wants your information. You can argue an RSS subscriber is a better customer because of the steps involved in subscribing to a feed. Additionally, because the unsubscribe process is so easy, you know everyone reading your newsletter is a quality customer. 12. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? Anywhere you promote your newsletter or website, promote your RSS feed. I don’t think there are any tricks. Make your customers aware that you have a feed available. Very simple. 13. Do you perhaps have any advice in terms of writing for RSS? Nothing new here then what you’re doing with your newsletter content. Write compelling, relevant content. Headlines grab your customer’s attention as well as the attention of search engines. In a time starved world, keep it short. It seems more people like full feeds versus partial feeds that you have to go back to the site to read the full content. This is a business decision you need to make. If your site produces ad revenue, having readers come back to the site for the full content makes sense. Listen to your readers. 14. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? The state of art measurement is click-through-rates and reviewing your log files. Obviously, that is not enough. RSS is early and measurement tools will be developed. Email marketing has evolved quite considerably since the early 90’s. The measurement tools got much better. I see the same progression happening with RSS. Matter of fact, Pheedo is working on a few now. 400 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. Lets now move further to RSS advertising. How does this work and how successful can it be? How can publishers for instance use their own feeds to promote their own products? How can they sell advertising to third-parties? As our case study proves, RSS advertising has significant advantages over email. The results speak for themselves. Buying ads in RSS feeds is much like buying ads in newsletters with one exception. The targeting can be better because ads can be matched on the fly to content in the feeds. Or category matching can be done as well. We created a quick demo that can be seen here http://pheedo.com/# Currently, selling ads in your own feeds is a manual process. How manual this is depends on the tools you use to create the feed. You can include a separate post for an ad or attach an ad to a post. My suggestion is to clearly label the ad as such. Another idea we are testing is the idea of sponsoring an entire feed. For example, “Today’s content is brought you by XYZ.” This is also proving to be a viable RSS ad unit. We are also testing spliced feeds. Test, test, test. Listen to your customers. 16. So how can RSS publishers get "on board" with your services? What benefits do you offer them? Currently, we are testing our technology, unique ad units and tracking tools. We are reaching out to publishers willing to test ads in feeds. When we do a launch of the product, we want to be certain we have the right solution that works. We have to consider the entire value chain – advertisers, publishers and readers. Ads in feeds are a little controversial. I expect that to change. It is just where the market is at with the early adaptors. 17. One final question. Many web sites now offer more than one feed. How do you feel about that and what do you suggest? Again, this is start-of-the-art. This will change. You’ll be able to create one uberfeed from all the feed the publisher creates. Tools will get smarter and more user friendly. You’ll see tools like Pubsub for the enterprise. 401 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 18. In your experience is offering multiple feeds good business practice, or does it just add complexity? Offering multiple is where we are at today. If it’s right for your business do it. Keep the user experience in mind because, yes, if you have too many feeds it can be overwhelming for your consumers. Your consumers will tell you what they want. Just listen. Tomorrow, I see a time when I visit my favorite online newspaper, like the New York Time for example, I’ll have the ability to create a custom feed. It will be my own personal newspaper delivered to my computer as the news breaks. That is pretty powerful for the publisher. That is one-to-one marketing at its best. 19. Would you like to add anything? RSS is not perfect. Today, it is not user friendly. Click on an RSS button on most sites today and you land on a page of code. To the average Internet user who knows nothing about RSS, this means nothing. They may even think the page is broken seeing all the code. Lack of measurement is a problem for publishers. How many subscribers do I have? What are they reading? When are they reading it? What works, what doesn’t? Again this will all change as RSS adoption increases. These are some of the problems Pheedo is attempting to solve. 20. Is there a way to get around people seeing just all the code after clicking on the RSS button? What do you suggest? Yes, you can use XSLT programming. However, users who view your feed with a browser that does not support XSLT will see the code instead. It transforms the page where the XML feed sits into a consumer friendly page. Here is a sample page: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion 402 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Alex Williams, DecisionCast Web site: http://www.decisioncast.com 1. Alex, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? What is your company's experience with RSS? Thanks, Rok. Glad to help spread the word about RSS. I just love RSS. It's changed how I use the Internet. It's a big part of my business strategy. I use RSS in my webcasts to spread news about the event s I do. It helps increase the number of people who register for my events. It is also handy during events for publishing content that I am producing on the fly. RSS gets the word out. And it's viral. Someone who sees something about my events may blog about it. That person's RSS subscribers may then read about it and blog it themselves. I use RSS in the blogs I write. And I use it as a search engine tool. RSS is a big part of my business. Our core business focus is to produce webcasts and provide social networking systems that integrate webcasts and web conferencing with web-based applications that are connected with RSS based services. Our webcasts focus on issues related to the technology sector. We are doing several events over the next several months. From Sept. 30-Oct. 2 we will webcast Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. In November, we will do a webcast about outsourcing called Outsourcing Conversations. In January, we will do RSS WinterFest and in March we will do Searchfest. Each event will use webcasting, RSS tools, weblog applications and wiki's (open editing environments.) Our events are a mirror of the services we provide clients. The webcasting platform is the foundation for the service we provide. From there, we help clients integrate other collaborative and content authoring networks. We will create events built around the client's market focus. We will get the speakers, do the PR, find media sponsors and make it all work together. But if a company just wants a webcast platform, we can provide that, too. In this regard, we are currently offering a special, 30-day webcast trial. You can register for a free account at: http://microurl.com/658190735 403 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? Sure. But let me give you a reference, too. Go to www.socialtext.net/rsswinterfest. You'll see a link to »Explaining RSS.« There are some good explanations there. RSS is a publishing and subscribing format that for me is about speed and convenience. With RSS, a web site publisher can publish newly updated information from their web site that automatically feeds to the site's subscribers. How can your readers use it? One of the best ways is to start a blog, using a service that offers RSS feeds. I use a service from MyST Technology Partners: http://www.mysttechnology.com. Here's a haiku I wrote about RSS: publish and subscribe really fast, simple to do no e-mail, spam mess RSS is not e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe. And you do not have to wade through a ton of messages to get the information you want. RSS allows you to scan hundreds of feeds without having to visit hundreds of web sites. Finally, here’s how I explained blogs and RSS last winter to my 10-year-old daughter’s class 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? It's fast and it's viral. 4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with that results? I use it to promote events and webcasts. I find that registrations go up at a very steady rate when I promote my events through RSS feeds. Plus, I use it during my events to get updates and news about what others are saying about my events. 404 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? That's the million dollar question. RSS penetration is still tiny but companies like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Sun are using RSS in many ways. Increasingly, media companies are using it. Search companies have adopted it. Efforts are underway to make it seamless so it's just part of the OS. I think it will go far, especially as a services tool. The real issue is about content. It is easy to publish content to the Internet. RSS allows for content to be published and subscribed to quite easily. As more content goes online, the more valuable RSS and syndication becomes. 6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? Has radio been replaced by TV? No. Did the VCR kill the movie theater? No. Is RSS disruptive? Yes. RSS has changed how I navigate the Internet. I do not subscribe to e-mail newsletters as nearly as much as I once did. Will I stop using email? No. Will I continue to publish an e-mail newsletter? Yes. My habits will change but e-mail, at least for me, is here to stay. 7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? Do you use e-mail for the most part as correspondence? I do. E-mail is great for correspondence. RSS is great for publishing blogs and updates to your web site. Unlike e-mail, I rarely use blogs as a correspondence tool. 8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? It's one of the best PR/brand marketing tools out there when used with blogs. It really works. It helps a company be a real information provider. That's a big deal. It's one of those technologies that can really affect a company's bottom line. Imagine if your customer service people published blogs with tips, updates, etc. Now, what if your CEO wrote a blog? Blogs work when taken to this level. 405 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Ask Microsoft about what Robert Scoble has done for them. He is a huge PR machine, simply because he publishes a weblog that has an RSS feed. He is passionate and has thousands of avid subscribers. He gets quoted. 10. How about other relevant business uses? Affiliate marketing: Keep affiliates updated about your products. One company, PubSub, offers an IM client that gives a running feed of the feeds you follow. They can get breaking news very fast to people. As may be expected, this company is getting a lot of attention from the media and financial services sectors. 11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? I see RSS as one tool that can be used with e-mail and other media. You do not want to publish everything with RSS. A company description on a web site does not get updated that often to need an RSS feed. RSS is designed for sites that update often. That's how it should be used. E-mail and RSS do work together quite well. For example, I will often refer people in my e-mail newsletter to my blog. I will offer people to subscribe to the blog in the e-mail newsletter. You can also offer the e-mail newsletter in your blog, in case people want e-mail updates. 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? Offer simple instructions for how to use RSS. Give your readers resources they can use. Offer webcasts on how to use the RSS feed. It's a PR opportunity. Simple as that. Treat it as a campaign like you would for a new product or service. 406 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Yes. There are free services. i-Upload offers a service called MailbyRSS. Why should a marketer offer this service? It is another way for your voice to be heard, People may choose to get your RSS feeds. They may also want to continue receiving your e-mail newsletter. 14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? Keep publishing good content. Make it interesting for people. Also, think about your entire content publishing platform. At DecisionCast, we help companies integrate different content publishing and rich media tools so they can create webcast and content authoring networks. There is a huge opportunity for companies that really embrace these social networking tools and services. 15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? Use off-site promotions to promote your blogs and RSS feeds. In the newsletter, tell people that they can get more information at the web site. Offer them something that will drive them to the site. 16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? There are tools available. A good tool set is offered by Feedburner. They have done an excellent job. Plus they create an image for you that you can cut and paste into any html document. It uses Java script so it scrolls your latest blog entry in the image. 407 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting Web site: http://www.shawncollinsconsulting.com 1. Shawn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Hi Rok, it's my pleasure. I am the CEO of Shawn Collins Consulting, which is an affiliate program management agency, as well as the Webmaster of the AffiliateTip.com affiliate program directory, and a founder of the Affiliate Summit conference. I've been involved with affiliate marketing since 1997, and I authored the book, “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants” (Pearson Education), as well as the AffStat affiliate marketing benchmark reports. Currently, my focus with Shawn Collins Consulting is on managing affiliate programs, and on of the elements I've been introducing to the affiliate programs, as a means to communicate with current affiliates and recruit new affiliates is to run a blog for the programs. 2. Shawn, what do you think of using RSS for internet marketing and publishing? How should we do it? I think RSS is definitely the future for Internet marketing and publishing. It's so versatile and easy to publish, though I think there needs to be more progress in the accessibility for newbies. It's sort of the realm of marketing geeks right now. As far as how to do it, there are endless ways to implement RSS creatively. Some common applications are to publish articles via blogs, rather than the typical dynamic content management systems. The old, dynamic way is not so search engine friendly, while RSS enables articles to be picked up quickly by search engines and indexed quickly. 408 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS In order to get widespread pick-up of the RSS feeds, it's essential to make the feeds as accessible as possible. It's a good idea to make feeds available in as many of the following as possible: ATOM, RDF, RSD, and XML. Additionally, do your best to get the individual reader to opt-in by having a newsletter subscribe area on every page, and enable them to spread the word with a tell-a-friend link on all pages. Also, make the content of the blogs available for reprint, so long as there's a link to the blog referencing it as the source. 3. Do you believe RSS can someday replace e-mail as a content delivery tool? That seems pretty impossible to imagine right now. I don't know that e-mail would be replaced by RSS, because RSS can be so much more than email. I do think that plug-ins like NewsGator will become more popular, so that more savvy end-users will bring RSS feeds into their e-mail clients in greater numbers. But ultimately, RSS has the potential to be stronger than e-mail, even in its current state. For example, My Yahoo users can currently have RSS feeds delivered to their homepage. I think many more big portals, destination sites, and membership groups will use it as a means to communicate updates and news without having to labor through Spam filters. 4. But how can we use RSS and e-mail in combination? We, or at least some of us, are already doing it. I signed on for the trial of NewsGator a couple months back, and quickly became addicted to it. I subscribed to key blogs, and whenever they are updated, I have the posts delivered straight into a folder in Outlook. When the post arrives, I get a notification. 5. How about from the marketer's perspective? What I'm basically interested in is how to combine e-mail and RSS as marketing tools? I'm sure there are a lot of great synergies out there. For now, I'm fusing them together in pretty simplistic ways, like promoting individual posts via email newsletters. That's the extent of my bringing the two technologies together so far. 409 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. I'm really interested, since you are an affiliate marketing expert, what in your mind and experience are the best ways of using RSS for affiliate marketing, from the affiliate owner viewpoint? Since it's increasingly challenging to reach the inbox of affiliates, with Spam filters, ISP black lists, abandoned email addresses, etc., I think RSS will emerge as the preferred tool for communicating with affiliates. 7. But won't there be a problem with personal one-on-one communication with affiliates, since RSS is still mainly a one-way delivery system? No, I think this is really the perfect solution. Affiliates don't generally have a difficult time reaching affiliate managers (except in the cases where it's a bad affiliate manager that is unresponsive). For instance, I make my phone, email, fax, and AIM contact available to affiliates. My vision for the usefulness of RSS is to be a one-way form of communication – sharing updates, news, and tools with affiliates in an uncensored environment, since email has become too difficult with all of the Spam and other assorted hassles. Besides, it you wish to enable comments on a blog for feedback and interaction, you can do so. 8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Yes, I am a DMOZ editor in the affiliate marketing category, and about a month or so ago, I started up a new subcategory for affiliate marketing blogs at http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Web master_Resources/Affiliate_Programs/Blogs/ There are lots of general affiliate marketing blogs, as well as a growing number dedicated to affiliate programs, such as ClubMom, Collectibles Today, Mondera, and Rockler. One of the premier sites for affiliate marketing blogs is ReveNews.com. Currently, they are hosting a handful of great affiliate marketing blogs, and I understand there are plans to offer branded blogs to affiliate managers there in the near future. 410 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. How are you using your feed for affiliate marketing purposes? What success are you achieving with this? Do you perhaps have any hard-data in regards to e-mail VS RSS in these areas from your own personal experience? Currently, I'm using it strictly as a communication device, where I can post daily or more frequent than daily updates if necessary, and they won't be an imposition on the affiliates. If they have an RSS reader, they can access the content at their leisure. I don't have any substantial feedback so far, and no mechanism to see how much penetration I am getting. My only benchmarks are that I am seeing my RSS pages picked up by spiders in the search engines, and I consider each of those to be a subtle recruitment ad for the respective affiliate program. 10. How about from the viewpoint of an internet marketing affiliate? RSS is a fantastic way to update and maintain a content site for an affiliate. So long as the site is being spidered by the important search engines and listed in the various blog directories, the blog posts will be quickly syndicated. Many affiliates are catching on to the fact that if they churn out content around 'elephant terms' (keywords that yield top commissions in Google Adsense), they can make a bundle. In addition to Google, affiliates putting out quality articles in RSS can generate revenue with BlogWords, and blogs are the big target as potential affiliates by affiliate managers in the know. 11. How about using blogs in affiliate marketing, again from the affiliate program owner's viewpoint? It makes all the sense in the world for affiliate programs to pursue and place increased value on blogs as affiliates. In general, contextual placement of ads is the best way to make money in affiliate marketing, especially if an affiliate has unique content, and they integrate text links into their content (i.e. making every instance of the word book link through an Amazon affiliate link). In my experience, content affiliates convert better than other types of affiliates, so I go out of my way to bring in as many bloggers as affiliates. 411 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. Do you perhaps know of any great examples of affiliate owner's publishing their own blogs? I know of lots of great examples, but if I shared them, the owner's of the blogs would have my head, and I'd no longer have them as affiliates. ;-) 13. How much impact do you believe publishing a blog might have on an affiliate program's success? It's hard to put a figure on it, since it's a pretty new concept for affiliate programs. However, I think any affiliate program publishing a blog is going to have extended reach and penetration with their affiliates, and that's priceless when it comes to communicating news, tips, resources, and changed terms in a program. Any program with an active blog should expect incremental revenue as a result of reaching affiliates they would not otherwise reach, as well as recruiting new affiliates. 14. Could you perhaps give our readers some more advice on how to best publish a blog for their own affiliate program? The quickest, free way to get a blog going is to use a no-cost service like blogger.com. However, judging from the affiliate program blogs that are out there now, it seems that Moveable Type is the vendor of choice, as they are very affordable and customizable. It's a fairly easy job technically to install and launch a blog, but due to other benefits, like a built in audience and targeted syndication, I'd suggest going with a site like ReveNews. 15. How about in terms of content? The content will vary from program to program, but I would suggest breaking news down to different categories, so affiliates can easily decide if it's an item of interest to them. Some suggested categories are: coupon, data feed updates, newsletter, and tips. I also post news items when the merchant company is in the news. 412 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Tom Barnes, MediaThink Web site: http://www.mediathink.com 1. Tom, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I'm CEO of Mediathink. Mediathink is a Marketing Services company that focuses on measurement and accountability. We work with companies who have an urgent need to quantify the performance of their marketing spend and improve their efficiency. 2. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? The greatest benefit of RSS is that it allows a more nuanced relationship with customers who aren't quite ready to identify themselves as prospects and provide personal information. We think technologies like RSS force companies to improve the relevancy and increase the quantity of content that relates to their offering. 3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Publishers have embraced RSS faster than any technology that has preceded it. Eventually everyone who has contact management software will need to use it. RSS will change the face of media as more consumers insist on pulling content and look to evade commercial interruptions. 4. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? A lot of smart people think that wide adoption of RSS will mean the end of email. We don't. We're telling clients that RSS is an adjunct to email. Email is a point to point communications tool. RSS is more like broadcast—one to many. 413 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS RSS will certainly end the »Spray and Pray« email insanity. This will make spam even easier to identify. This is a huge step forward for legitimate marketers. It will also force people to send smarter email—email tuned to specs the recipient defines. Conditional content becomes essential in email marketing with the advent of RSS. Every new media technology brings predictions of the end of old media. It happens only with storage. TV didn't kill radio and the web didn't kill TV 5. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Right now the best use of RSS in a marketing context is to educate customers and prospects about a company's offering and the environment in which the offering is used. The best kind of info for RSS is that which is highly perishable and minimally confidential — info that is immediately relevant that benefits the company when made widely public quickly. 6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? • Delta Airlines sends me a number of opt-in newsletters. In my opinion, some of that content would work better in an RSS feed, while other content still works best only as email. • I receive special fare offers to cities I’ve defined, from cities I’ve defined. This is conditional customized content that comes to me when conditions that are part of my data set are met. This content should continue to come as email. But— • I also receive generic offers that are strictly price-driven with no conditions around my preferences other than my home airport. They are great offers, I like getting them, but, given the nature of the offer (low price) they are not tailored to my profile. These offers should come via RSS when I’m in the mood to travel. I could subscribe to the feed prior to a vacation or mood and then unsubscribe when it’s not relevant. This makes the offers more urgent too—helping Delta move their clearance inventory faster. RSS users will know EVERYONE is seeing the offer so interested parties will find incentive to move quickly. 414 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • If I were a very frequent flyer I might subscribe to an RSS feed for security wait times only when I’m traveling—being notified only when airports I’m interested in have delays. I wouldn’t have to profile myself-- so anyone, not just Delta--could provide me that information. What a great opportunity for a travel provider, who has no current relationship with me, to offer up a valuable unilateral concession and build some brand equity. 7. How about other relevant business uses? For internal communications it could be revolutionary-- provided it can be made secure. You could build interdepartmental feeds that, for example, could keep a remote salesforce on top of critical inventory and price fluctuations. Secure RSS and Rich Media RSS are the future of web communications. 8. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? Could you perhaps recommend some effective business strategies to use with RSS? It depends on the business. If I'm building software games I'm constantly posting tips and tricks to my RSS feed. If I'm in the insurance business I'm building a feed about changes in benefits planning and H.R. law. Feed the information that will make prospects more similar to your best customers. 9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? Determine the relevancy of the feed vs. an email. The whole game here is to weigh the value of the personal information you get in a newsletter subscription vs., an RSS feed. While you can get metrics on your RSS you don't get the kind of oneto-one data you get from email. RSS is an intermediate step between a one time anonyms web site visit and a highly intimate email newsletter subscription 415 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Sure—if you want to. If you can't send conditional content (or don't want to) RSS is the perfect replacement. If your open rates stink, and you've done everything you can to improve your email efforts use RSS to »build down« your customer relationships. Simply email instructions a few times as part of your regular e-mail campaigns. AOL offered me a 2.95 a month deal to keep me on when I wanted to bail. It worked. RSS allows you to keep in touch with people who don't want or need your email any more. There are a lot of people who get fatigued just by looking at their inbox. You don't want to abandon your relationship. Get more personal with your email functionality or get less intimate with RSS. Let your customer decide. 11. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? Converting site visitors into RSS subscribers is WAY more important than converting newsletter subscribers. Again RSS is an intermediate step. It's a date— not a relationship. That's why it's so important to marketers. Of course you have to be committed to content development to make RSS work for you. RSS means it's easier-- not only to distribute content on the publishing side --but to filter it on the recipient side as well. So once you embrace that reality you are forced to generate even more relevant content and deploy it more strategically. Grow quality and quantity of content and your RSS subscriber base will grow too. 12. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? If you vend to a customer who needs content help you can build content for them that links back to you. Use Adwords to drive readers to your content and encourage them to subscribe. Use RSS 2.0. It’s easier and backwards compatible. 416 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? From a guy much smarter than me, Greg Reinacker, and his blog: http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=641 “This problem has been discussed before, and I know Derek Scruggs has built at least one prototype of something that can do subscriber tracking. We're using the same mechanism to power the NewsGator Tips feed, which is customized for each individual user. It's simple really: 1. Get a user request for the RSS feed, say /rss.xml 2. Redirect the request with a 301 permanent redirect to /rss.xml?user=123456789 There you go. If you assign users an individual ID, you can track them to some extent. You can't just look at how many times the feed has been retrieved (not relevant), but by looking at all the data in aggregate, you can tell how many users you have subscribed, the date they subscribed, the approximate date they stopped reading, and other useful data. You can tell, with pretty decent accuracy, how many individual people are reading each post. And if you are lucky enough to know something about an individual subscriber, you can customize the feed just for them. For example, with the NewsGator Tips feed, we trickle out tips one per day, based on the date you subscribed. It's not hard - you just need a smart server, and your clients need to react correctly to certain HTTP status codes.” _______ I realize the above is a bit technical. The long and short of it is: The tracking capabilities are much less sophisticated with RSS... but that’s the point—mitigating intimacy to allow customers or prospects to control their proximity to you and your brand. Don’t make people build a rule for their inbox that sends your mar-com straight to the trash heap 417 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 14. Let's now move on to the topic of blogs. What basically is a blog, who should write it, why and how? Everyone should have at least one and probably two: one professional and one personal. As they become more entertaining and more relevant they will gain readership. As a matter of course we build a unique blog for every one of our clients. We'll use an obscure URL and blog relevant links with commentary. It shows we care. It's easier for our clients to look at it when ever they want and it builds a newsfeed for anyone who loads a reader. It's all about enabling our clients whimsy without making us crazy. 15. So you do believe that blogs can be a great marketing tool? How do you think one could integrate his blog and e-zine? Absolutely. People are already doing it. Who doesn't love gorillamask.net or boingboing.net? 16. And how could one maximize his blogs effectiveness in terms of marketing himself, his services or his products? To say content is king is a cliché, but it's more true now than ever. The thing that gets me pumped about all this technology is that distribution power is losing its tyrannical hold over the media business—content and creativity are finally ascendant. That's important. You have to have a third eye for your clients needs. Sense your customer's content demand and turn into an overnight sensation. My favorite example is how posting a link to the Paris Hilton video made a couple of bloggers into media stars literally overnight. 17. How should blogs be integrated in to marketing strategies? Customers who build blogs about you or your competitive space (or mention you or your business in their blogs) should be rewarded. Links back to your site will result in superior search engine results leading to an increase in traffic and perhaps to increased sales. 418 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 18. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Integration is the most important factor. This is not an either or proposition it is about customizing the mix of web channels to the needs of your brand and your customers propensity to embrace new technology and the dynamics of your industry. 419 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Paul Chaney, Radiant Marketing Group http://www.radiantmarketinggroup.com 1. Paul, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? By profession, I am an internet marketer. I work full-time for a non-profit association as the Online Marketing Manager and outbound email list administrator. In addition, I own Radiant Marketing Group (www.radiantmarketinggroup.com), a consultancy geared to helping small businesses establish and enhance their presence on the internet. I provide a variety of services including web design, SEO/SEM, email list marketing, and blogging. 2. You are one of the marketers declaring the demise of e-mail. What do you believe will happen and why? Email is fraught with problems. Here are the major ones I see. . . 1. CAN SPAM The difficulties and hurdles associated with CAN SPAM compliance is proving to be a major headache for marketers. Apparently, it has had little effect on the amount of spam as well, in spite of recent fines and prosecutions. 2. Spam filtering, especially AOL. In spite of the high bar that has been set by email best practices, it is not unusual to see bounce rates as high as 30%. AOL can be particularly tedious to deal with, but you have to because so many people use the ISP. While CAN SPAM set the low bar for standards, the ones that still own the playing field are the ISPs, and it's a bit like the Wild West out there. The law in the form of CAN SPAM may have come to Dodge City, but out in the territory, the outlaws (ISPs) still make the rules. 3. SPAM Spam is still so prevalent, in spite of efforts to stop it. Need I say more. 420 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Overcrowded inboxes I believe people are weary of so much email in their inboxes that less attention is paid to it, with the exception of personal mail from friends and family, or business-related mail, of course. Because of the above, I feel email will lose its status as 'king of the hill' in online marketing and content syndication. It won't happen today or tomorrow, but it will happen. In fact, perhaps the slide has already begun. I would love to see some research tracing a history of email performance over the last few years, to determine if such a slide is in place. I think that as RSS evolves and the ability to track performance becomes more enhanced (Believe me, someone will figure out a way!), you will see email continue to decline. I give it two years for the landscape to change. 3. So you do see RSS replacing e-mail as a content delivery vehicle? Having said what I've stated above, I believe that for the present, using BOTH email and RSS is the best of all possible worlds. To answer this question more succinctly. . . er. . . OK, I'll go for it. YES! I think it will. That is not to suggest that email has no place. I just feel with the advent of RSS, blogging, wikis, and other forms of social media, email can't help but lose its status. The future will be more a la carte and less main entre. In other words, there will be several forms of syndication, not just one main one. Blogs, RSS, and email used in tandem are an unbeatable combination for the present. 4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal? Where do you see the future taking us? RSS is an arrow in flight. If you attempt to take a snapshot of its penetration or effectiveness at any given moment, it will have already passed that point. RSS is not a mainstream technology yet, that's true. Give it time. More and more mainstream news/content sites are beginning to use the technology. Therefore, it is getting in front of more eyes. RSS readers are becoming more prevalent and userfriendly. It won't be long before RSS readers are integrated into operating systems and/or email programs such as Outlook. When that happens, it will explode! Give it two years. . .no more, and you will see a sea change in the landscape. 421 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Don't you think we could somehow integrate e-mail and RSS communications? If we could, how would it be best done? It's already being done. The software we use for our outbound email, Listmanager by Lyris, has integrated RSS feeds into its latest version. So, our readers can get the content either way. Other listserver software providers will certainly follow suit if they are not doing so already. In terms of the 'best way', I think that is pretty good. 6. Why and how should marketers and publishers start using RSS anyway? Could you perhaps give us some basic steps? Why? Any additional means to syndicate content is a good thing, in my opinion. How? The way we've done it is to create XML feeds for any website content that changes frequently (What's new page, news, press releases, feature articles, product announcements, etc.). We're integrating RSS with our email broadcasts as well. Blogs are, of course, a primo way to integrate content syndication. I am huge fan of business-related or corporate blogs. RSS syndication is built-in on virtually all blogging software platforms with which I am familiar. Basic steps: • Create XML feeds for frequently changing web content. • Integrate RSS with email • Start a blog that is RSS enabled. 7. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today? This is a reiteration of the question above. Again, any web content that changes with frequency should have an RSS feed tied to it. Blogs are absolutely necessary, whether they are employee blogs, PR blogs, product marketing blogs, or more top-down corporate blogs. I would say blogs and RSS go together like peanut butter and jelly! It never hurts for the CEO to blog as well. (Bill Gates, take a hint from Jonathan Schwartz or Mark Cuban.) My mantra is: If you have a business, you need a blog! READ MY LIPS: Blogs are a key component to the mainstream adaptation of RSS. 422 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Sure. Here are several. . . CEO blogs: Jonathan Schwartz Weblog - http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ Mark Cuban's Blog – http://www.blogmaverick.com News RSS feeds: AgapePress News – a Christian news service – http://www.agapepress.org Yahoo! News - http://news.yahoo.com/rss Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/fdc/rss.shtml Bizjournals.com - http://www.bizjournals.com/rss_promo/ Consumer Products Blogs: Weatherbug Blog - http://weatherbug.blogs.com/ - using it to track Hurricane Frances, and to market the Weatherbug desktop app. Quickbooks Blog - http://quickbooks_online_blog.typepad.com/ - used to market and create buzz about Quickbooks. Moreover.com – Here's am extensive list of RSS feeds. . . http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html 9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? You have to educate subscribers for sure. Most laymen have no clue at this point, in my opinion. Here are some ideas that, combined, could help RSS reach the tipping point in terms of mainstream usage. . . • As blogs become more mainstream, so will RSS. • As readers see the 'Syndicate this site' type phrases, and the little orange buttons more and more, they will learn the ropes. 423 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • A good, simple explanation of what RSS is all about listed on the website would certainly help. (Simple is important. Don't send readers to Lockergnome's explanation, send them to Wikipedia.) • As RSS readers become more user-friendly, and knowledge of them becomes more prevalent, usage will pick up. • As RSS readers are built into operating systems and/or email clients, they will certainly help. • As more and more websites use RSS, that will help. 12. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Sure it's possible. There is a certain segment of the population (me being one of them) that likes to try new things just because they are new. Others will try it because a trusted source encourages it. Still others because they are weary of the problems associated with email. How? Educating subscribers as to the advantages of RSS as compared to email is certainly needful. Providing easy access to feeds, even providing links to credible RSS readers. For example, the non-profit organization I work with is partnering with one such company who will provide us with a custom reader. Our RSS feeds will be built-in and the main window of the app will a special landing page version of our website. All our readers have to do is download and install the app, and everything we are syndicating is there ready for them to read! Why? It depends on the goal I guess. If the marketer's main concern is metrics, then RSS is going to prove less than satisfactory. If the issue is getting the message out, then a combination of email and RSS is called for. Personally, I believe the synergy between RSS and email will be such that one could benefit the other. I think usage of RSS could contribute to an increase in email subscriptions, not detract from it. It's not unlike a shopping mall concept. In any mall you will find businesses that provide the same or similar products (clothing, music, restaurants, etc.) located in proximity to one another. The natural inclination would be to think that would be bad for business. Conversely, the convenience of mall shopping is an enhancement. While that analogy may not be perfect, I think it is fitting. 424 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? Provide the feeds. Provide an explanation of what RSS is. Provide a link to download a reader, or partner with some company to provide a reader customized with your feeds already built in. I like the way Yahoo! has done it http://news.yahoo.com/rss. 14. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? One thing that comes to mind it to include the same type of information as mentioned above (or links to it) in your email marketing messages. Just include links in the footer or sidebar. Make it part of the template. You could say things like, 'Want another way to receive this content? Subscribe to our RSS feed.' or 'Don't want to have to wait until we send this message to get the content, subscribe to our RSS feed.' Usage will increase not merely because you are promoting it yourself, but because of the variety of ways news and information about RSS is getting out into internet space from manifold sources. It is the cumulative effort that will achieve the desired ends. 15. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? RSS is not optimal for that in its present generation, obviously. Some indicate that it won't ever be. I think that kind of talk is malarkey! I'm not a developer or programmer mind you. I am an advocate of the old adage, 'Where there is a will, there's a way.' and 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' Metrics are the marketer's Holy Grail. Give it another couple of years (maybe less) and I'd bet you'll see improved metrics for RSS. 16. Would you like to add anything? Here's just a summary of some of my thoughts. . . 425 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Simply put, RSS is the internet's rising star. Email is the albatross. While I won't go so far as to consign email to extinction, I will say that its effectiveness will continue to lessen. (I'd love for someone to prove me wrong!) RSS will continue to evolve and improve. Eventually, it will be fraught with its own set of problems, however, and the next best mousetrap will have to be invented. For the moment, the most practical use of RSS is to combine it with email as a parallel marketing strategy. As metrics improve for RSS, perhaps we will be able to be ascertain its effectiveness in adding to the bottom line. 426 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Jim Gray, Quikonnex.com http://www.quikonnex.com 1. Jim, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Certainly, I'm Jim Gray, Co-Founder of Ebizworks, LLC. I've personally been working on the World Wide Web part of the Internet since early 1994 and I'm pushing almost 30 years of experience with computer technology. My business partner, Carolyn Peltier, and I started Ebizworks about 4 years ago with the intention of providing online education for folks building and managing websites. However, with some of the challenges that have come about in the past couple of years with email, we found a new niche in the delivery of information directly to user's desktops. We started developing the Quikonnex.com model in February of 2003 and started accepting customers for our services last September. 2. How do you see the impact of RSS on the business and even more importantly marketing world? The RSS impact will be significant as it requires a whole shift in thinking by business and the marketing community. The mindset has to shift from 'What do I want my readers to know?' to 'What do my readers want to know?' It's all about putting the customer in control and the marketing community, in my opinion, is reluctant to do that. 427 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? RSS has only scratched the surface. It has been around for since 1999, when RSS 0.90 came out, however, it's largely been held prisoner by the techno-geeks of the Internet. While I'd seen the RSS/XML icons on various websites, I ignored them (and some folks call me a geek, so you'd think I'd have paid attention) because there was no real communications about what they were. Carolyn and I got into it because we were simply looking for a way to deliver our content reliably to customers without the need to worry about spam filters or getting our domain shutdown by a malicious spam complaint. We wanted something on user's desktops that would alert them to new information available from Ebizworks. RSS provided an answer to our need, but then we recognized that it could also provide an answer for Ezine publishers struggling with the same challenges. The ability for RSS and other XML methods to become a ubiquitous means of communication is only limited by the imagination and creativity of the people publishing with it. Microsoft sees it as being a part of their next operating system, so it won't be that many years down the road when we see RSS (or something similar) on everyone’s computer. 428 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. And where do you see the future of RSS? What can we expect? To be 100% honest with you ROK, I could care less about the future of RSS. What I care about is what technologies provide the most effective ways to disseminate and distribute information. Quikonnex is about getting people connected and RSS is simply our tool of preference today to get the job done. However, I do expect that over the next 5 years, publishers using RSS & XML as their primary newsletter distribution tool will be equated to the email marketing gurus of 2 years ago. If you think about it, the age of the Email Ezine started about 5-6 years ago and peaked about 2 years ago. The 'gurus' have been looking around for the last year and a half for a new bandwagon to jump on and they're starting to see one with RSS and Direct to Desktop Communications. In a year, instead of all the offline seminar promoting the building of email lists, we'll see them all standing on stages talking about building RSS subscriber lists. In reality, there's not anyone person now that fully understands the implications of this type of technology. We're facing several standards right now with RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM and they're not inoperable. Most people using feeds do not realize that these are not version numbers, but totally different standards for delivering a feed. In 5 years, we may be facing 3 different versions of ATOM along with the 3 versions of RSS. The folks developing the news aggregators are going to have a real challenge. 5. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses and strategies for RSS? Do you perhaps know of any interesting case studies on this subject? To effectively utilize RSS, the information transmitted must be linked to high quality and relevant content. What actually goes into the RSS feed itself should be short, simple and hard hitting... a teaser to get folks to click through to read more information. Putting ads directly in a feed is not an effective use of the bandwidth. What business should do is provide quality information, use the feed to announce this information, and entice them back to their websites and there expose them to advertising in the periphery of their sites. Once a business is producing great content, the real secret is not in getting their own visitors to subscribe to their newsfeed, it's in getting other website owners to syndicate the content. 6. How do you see RSS in relation to e-mail? I'd personally like to see email fixed. I really like it for one on one personal and business communications. However, as a delivery vehicle for one to many, it's never going to be restored to heyday of 5 years ago. It's too invasive and prone to abuse. 429 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. As you mentioned in your introduction you are one of the people behind Quikonnex. What exactly is Q? Quikonnex is what Carolyn and I call a channel service provider. We chose the name 'channel' for very specific reasons. To just be a provider of RSS feeds and blog pages is too limiting. The word channel gives us the flexibility to utilize any technology to deliver information to people. For example, we do a lot of teaching to our members online utilizing voice conferencing rooms and web conferencing rooms. These are simply other channels that get information delivered. Our private messaging system (QMTP) is another channel for communications. But Q is more than just the technology; it's a community of publishers. It's the members that make Q what it is, not the technology. 8. From what I gather, you managed to bring your product much further than just simple RSS content delivery? How exactly are you utilizing RSS? RSS is one component of Quikonnex. We've integrated it into our blogging and content management system, we've integrated our QMTP system into the RSS feed, and we're teaching our publishers (and giving them the tools) to utilize this technology to get their content syndicated on other websites. We're also very close to being able to provide RSS feeds that are password protected. Our publishers will soon be able to determine down to an individual, who can have access to their feeds. 9. The one thing that really amazed me with you was the level of evangelism you managed to achieve with your customers. How did you do it? Carolyn and I are very approachable. We actively invite our members and publishers to join us in regular voice and web conferencing rooms. We're available via instant messaging, live support, and telephone. And yes, we even check email. 430 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. What system enhancements do you have planned for the future? I just mentioned one and that's the private channel. This will be valuable to sites and publishers that want to provide subscription based information. We're developing quite a few code generators to make it easier for publishers and users to integrate Q content on their websites and to provide easy syndication of content. The main thing that we've been concentrating on though, is making it easier for publishers to get subscribers converted over. Frankly, the orange XML button is for geeks only. 11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? You've hit the nail on the head with this question. It is ALL about integrating new technologies into the marketing mix. RSS/Blogs/Email/Instant Messaging are all just tools to those businesses can use to communicate with their customer base. People on the Internet jump on new technologies abandoning older system... this is wrong. If you've noticed, you may have recently receive postcards and information packages from some well know online marketers such as Armand Morin and Corey Rudl. They look at traditional 'snail mail' as a part of their marketing mix. RSS should be viewed the same. Right now, blogs and RSS feeds are hot with the search engines, so a website owner should have one... period. However, to use it exclusively would be a mistake. The perfect mix is to use an RSS feed for the one to many communications and to use email for one on one customer correspondence. 431 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? The best way to convert a subscriber from email to RSS is to not let them realize that's what they're doing. If a publisher is producing good content, then subscribers will want to get their information. They just need to make it easy. That's our challenge. We're always revisiting what we can do to make it easy on the subscriber. You step the subscriber that's new to RSS through a learning process. It's not unlike the early days of email, when the first obstacle was to convince someone to get an email address, to use something other than their AOL email system to manage it, and then to personalize it by getting their own domain name. 13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Absolutely. There are a lot of advantages for email subscribers getting information via feeds: it's reliable, searchable, and virus free. For publishers and marketers I just want to say one thing... Google. Does the content you distribute via email get into Google or the other search engines? 14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? RSS Publishers can use many of the same techniques that email publishers use. Drop down subscription boxes can be RSS enabled. I expect the marketing community to develop all kinds of innovative ways to get new subscribers into RSS over the next year. I know Carolyn and I are working on some pretty creative techniques. I can't discuss them yet, but viral marketing will definitely play a part in it. But the simplest thing for a website owner to do now is to get rid of that ORANGE XML/RSS button! It's geeky and doesn't tell a visitor what to do with it. Start talking plain English! 432 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? There's a rash of new search engines being created just for the purposes of helping user find relevant feeds. Before Google and Yahoo, there were thousands of directories and search engines that accepted website submissions. Over the next year, we'll see thousands of RSS search engines spring up, each one hoping to become the Google of RSS. Take advantage of the ability to submit your feed URL to them. We've got some ideas up our sleeve too on how to provide a mechanism for feed providers to get the word out about the information they provide, but I can't talk about it here as I'm still a couple of months away from launching them. But, creativity if everything on the Net. Syndication, viral marketing, SEO all will play a huge part in getting this technology into the hands of the masses. The important thing to remember though is that quality content will be everything. 16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? Our publishers see exactly the same information through Quikonnex's statistics system. They know how many users are accessing their feeds, viewing their blog pages, and clicking through to read items. RSS feeds do not have to be manually generated files. With database driven feeds, programmers can capture any information that a publisher wants. The only limitation is in what information is obtained from a user during the process. Some of our subscribers are 100% anonymous, but for most, we've got their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The person manually creating a feed with their text editor is missing a huge opportunity. They're going to be like the majority of email newsletter publishers. They'll be providing information to a huge list, not realizing whether or not their subscribers are reading their stuff or just sucking down bandwidth. 433 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Alex Barnett, Microsoft Web site: http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn 1. Alex, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I am Online Customer Experience Manager at Microsoft UK, part of the team responsible for our online marketing communications, including email marketing, websites development & management and CRM. 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format (in fact an XML schema) designed for the syndication of online content. 'Publishers' (typically news sites) who want to syndicate out their content can do so in standard way so 'Readers' who want to consume that content can know which part of an article is the title, the author, the date published, and which part is the content itself. A 'Publisher' in this definition means any application (including websites) that want to make its content available online for a 'Reader' to consume. By 'Readers' I mean any applications that consume RSS. Examples are websites who republish content provided by another website onto their own website, or programs that are RSS aggregators The standardization of syndicated content means that anyone who wants to easily make their content available 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? RSS has benefits at multiple levels for multiple scenarios. The beauty of RSS is that any type of content can be made easily exposed for consumption. 434 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Firstly, at a technical level, RSS has become the dominant 'industry standard' format for the syndication of content. Without a standard that both Publishers and Readers can refer to, it means that each Publisher and each Reader has to agree, separately, on how the content should be formatted. Without this standardization, syndication of online content between parties becomes a potentially expensive and complex exercise to set up and then maintain. RSS takes this friction out of the process. For the Publisher, the additional benefit exists in that if they choose to, they can make their content easily available for consumption. These days anyone can become online publisher, but there is little point of publishing if no-one reads the content. 4. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? RSS has been around for about 5 years now. In the last year in particular, more and more of the high traffic news are making their content available through RSS, including the BBC, CNN, Reuters and New York Times. Everyday I'm seeing another major news site offering RSS. It’s not just the big news sites offering RSS. Applications such as Amazon, eBay, and Google are now providing RSS-enabled services. Blogs practically come with RSS as standard. From the content provision perspective, RSS content is practically everywhere and the momentum is set to continue. The other side of the RSS coin is consumption. Many sites that you visit today are probably consuming RSS content from another provider and republishing this either as their own content (through arrangement) or with links to the original source. This is one form of consumption, the other, aggregation is more explicit. Yahoo, MSN and other services are now allowing customers to 'subscribe' to RSS feeds via web-based interfaces. RSS readers are another from of aggregation, where a user downloads an application (a reader) that then collects all the RSS content they have 'subscribed' to. There is very little research today in the way of data on the consumption through aggregators. One recent study suggests that as little as 1.4% of internet users use any type of RSS aggregator. It is still early days yet. 435 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS I believe the climate is right for this early trend to become very significant. Firstly, most of the content on the web is becoming RSS enabled. So the content is there. Secondly, spam and time-management are real issues for internet users today and RSS has the potential to help in these two problem areas. Thirdly, RSS is being looked at very closely by the software development industry – RSS may well become part of the fabric of the next generation of software so its adoption will come as default. 5. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? The discussions I've been aware of are about RSS replacing marketing content delivered by email. There are two extreme camps in this debate. One camp argues that RSS is too cumbersome; its penetration too low and too complex for the average Jo to use, so RSS will never take off. The other camp argues that email marketing is dead, that spam will force users to subscribe in a purely opt-in manner via RSS and that users will never subscribe to an email newsletter once they've tasted RSS. Lost in all this is the customer's preference. It should be about giving the customers choices. If they want to visit the website only via their browser, mobile device, or IM alerts or their fridge...let them. If they want to receive your communications via email – let them subscribe. If they prefer RSS then cater for that too. It needs to be about providing a mix, just as any marketer should know. The fact is that spam today is a very real problem. There may be a fix down the road, but as sure as eggs is eggs, in my view, will a temporary halting to the spam onslaught - the arms race will continue. Spam may never go away. 436 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Given this circumstance, users are less likely to give away an email address than ever before. But does that matter? Remember that email marketing is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The fear that some marketers have around RSS is that it will become the consumer's preferred method of receiving content instead of email, meaning that email addresses will be harder to come by. But if your audience is getting the content (and say, clicking through to complete a transaction) then why do you need an email address? The anonymous default nature of RSS is also disconcerting to markers – if you don't know who (demographically for example) is subscribing then how can you target? There are two possible solutions to this. One – create specific RSS channels focused on topics, so that the at least you know the subscription base is actually interested in the content in those channels. This then allows you to direct messaging appropriately. Second – provide a personalized RSS feed that requires the user to provide you with the marketing profile information you actually need before they can get access to the feed. We're experimenting with the latter at Microsoft. Another consideration on all this is your target market. RSS is at an early adopter phase. These early adopters are generally technically savvy, so if you audience is comfortable with new technologies then RSS is an inexpensive way to get your content out there. Marketers need to understand the ROI and effectiveness of RSS and compare these to the other tools available. It is still very early days regarding the measurability and metrics definition around RSS, but I think we'll see a lot of activity in this area on 2005. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have a role to play in this and will hopefully take a part in this debate soon. 6. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? There are many ways to compare RSS and email, so I'll touch on just a few and it depends from which perspective you look at it from - the marketer's or the consumer's. From the email marketer's point of view there are pros and cons. Pros: • RSS is easy and inexpensive to implement and maintain; there is no overhead concerning DPA issues; is viral in its nature; counters the unsubscribe trend. Cons: 437 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • RSS is generally anonymous in its subscription base; is easy for a subscriber to unsubscribe, ill-defined metrics, limited in presentational formatting compared to full html email For the consumer, there are very few cons and plenty of pros. Pros: • RSS is easy to subscribe to, no personal information to give away (generally) including email address; is spam free, is easy to unsubscribe from. Cons: • RSS reader is another application to learn and use. A more comprehensive analysis is available at Email v RSS, let us move on... 7. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? There are several effective marketing uses of RSS • Make email newsletters available via RSS. Example: ZDNet is essentially making their daily email news update available via RSS: Between the Lines daily updates • Make your website content available via RSS, ideally broken down into topic channels. Example: Microsoft is making large amounts of its product news content available via specialized RSS channels. • Provide customizable RSS feeds. Two examples: o Yahoo News lets allows users to create an RSS feed alerting the user when news articles appear that contain user defined key words. (http://news.yahoo.com/rss) 438 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS o In the UK, Microsoft is providing a customizable RSS feed to developers that register their interests with us. The content is aggregated and delivered through a single RSS feed that is based on the answers the user provides on two profiling questions. The feedback we've had from our developers on this has been very positive. We seem to have struck the right balance around the data we ask for and the value provided through the service. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/preferences.aspx • Include the occasional marketing message in your non marketing RSS content feed. • If buying online media, find out if the media owner will allow an ad to be placed within their RSS feeds. 439 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Alan Webb, ABAKUS Web site: http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en 1. Alan, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Sure, I am the founder of ABAKUS Internet Marketing, which is a search engine marketing company with special focus on achieving top rankings on the organic results of Google. The company was launched in 2002 although I have been reverse engineering algorithms since AltaVista and Infoseek days. I currently write articles and moderate in various search engine marketing forums such as SEOchat.com and Searchguild.com. 2. If I'm not mistaken, you are primarily a search engine optimization expert. What can marketers do to get the highest possible ranking for their blogs? Can you give us some step-by-step advice and instructions? Each blog script is different. There are however some general rules which apply to not just blogs but all dynamic websites. These are... a. Make sure your blog does not create session ids for guests. Session ids are the death for indexation and therefore ranking on search engines. If your blog script does create session ids you can program your blog not to create one for HTTP_user_Agent Googlebot, slurp, scooter, MSNbot and Yahoo! Slurp (the main search engine spider user agents). b. Keep the number of parameters in a URL to a minimum. Although Google can index up to 4 query strings ('?' + '&'), it is generally better to keep them down so if your blog has over 2 query strings you may consider using mod_rewrite or php url rewriting to make the urls 'flat'. Meaning no '?' or '&' in the url. c. For rankings be sure that the individual post page has an appropriate title which would be something that would likely be searched for in a google box. Avoid framesets at all costs. 440 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS d. Be sure to get as many inbound links as possible. You should also make sure that internal linking is thorough. Try to get it so that from the homepage of the site, every blog post is no more than 2 clicks away. This helps with the Google PageRank distribution and indexation. e. Get a DMOZ entry. f. There are whole bunch of on-page optimization aspects that should be addressed. I have written a tutorial on the basics which can be found here... http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/seo-tutorial/grundlag.htm 3. And does having an RSS feed as well help here in any way? Yes, building link popularity is really a public relations exercise. The more that find you blog the more chance that if it is good a link will be placed to the site. It does in itself however give no ranking boost apart from the link popularity aspect which however is very important nowadays. 4. Could you also recommend some other promotional strategies and tactics that in your experience work especially well for promoting blogs and RSS feeds? A good idea is to contribute in forums on your theme with your blog in the signature. Notice I stress contribute not spam! You can also contribute to your topic specific newsgroups/usenet. The key to getting a good pagerank and ranking is very inbound link focused nowadays. Get as many links as you possibly can. This comes naturally with quality blogs. Being of course the first to announce something major can also bring a lot of interest to your blog. Regular posting is also important to get a link. No one will link to a blog that posts just once every two weeks or so unless the post is something special each time. If it is a company blog mention it in press releases. A lot of SEO nowadays requires public relations skills. Getting the word out is crucial so consider ways to promote the blog through all marketing channels, not just SEO. 441 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. How has your blog helped you in your work by now? What advice on how to best use their blogs for marketing purposes can you give to our readers? In our own case, we have gained respect from peers as we have announced significant research and have been the first on many SEO news issues such as new Google data centers and found tools that have yet to be announced for example by Google. This in turn gives the blog links which in turn increases its pagerank which is then distributed through out the rest of the site helping rankings for the whole site in general. Links anywhere into a domain are always a plus for the whole site as long as the internal linkage is thorough. We also now have attracted the attention of major media players such as major online and offline magazines that read the blog regularly. Hence it is great for the other PR (Public Relations). Another important factor is it adds with each post a new page to our website which is potential entry point into the site. This means more search engine traffic overall, my forum does the same so I now have over 70,000 pages that are indexed in Google. Each a potential landing point into the site. 6. How are you integrating your blog and your e-mail newsletter? Could you please explain your strategy here? Truth be told, I'm not. I do point out the blog to the 3,000 newsletter subscribers I have. 7. In addition to your e-mail newsletter you are also publishing an RSS feed. How do these two work together for you? How are you combining them in your marketing strategy? I try and get as many outlets as possible in order to promote my company. I decided early on I wanted the lot. Forum, newsletter, blog, articles, rss feed etc. Were developed to a. Provide good content that could be spidered and b. To get linked to and help in building link popularity. I do not have a marketing budget as I don't need one. I receive over 3,000 unique visitors a day from search engines landing on my forum, blog and content pages. So overheads are low due to my main concentration on search engine traffic and syndication of my articles and Blog. 442 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. Could you please give us some hard-data on how many people subscribe to your e-mail newsletter and how many access your web site through your RSS feed? Have you noticed any differences in the effectiveness of both? Email subscribers are split into my German language and English language newsletters. In total there are around 3,000 subscribers. The newsletter is quite popular as I write articles and not just the latest news in the search engine world. As for the feed, I have no hard stats on that but I notice in referrals that the traffic from rss feeds is rising steadily week on week. 9. If you could publish only using e-mail or only using RSS, which would you choose and why? RSS as it is more likely to reach those that are larger media players and could mean some good publicity in a major publication. Writing the newsletter is not easy I have to do it in both English and German language. I would never give the newsletter writing up though as it is fun and it is important for repeat visitors. The newsletters btw are all archived... http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/newsletter.htm 10. What are the strongest benefits you see in using RSS? What in your mind are the most important marketing uses? Mass distribution without mass expenditure in short. 443 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Crt Jakhel, Dergan http://www.dergan.net 1. Crt, could you please quickly introduce yourself to our readers, especially your experience? Coming from a mixed background of programming / mathematics and stock market trading, in 1998 I've tied together these two areas and set up an online forum and data archive aimed at individual investors; at the time this was a rarity in Slovenia since both the internet and the stock market had not yet become household terms. In 2000, I've accepted a proposition from the Finance daily newspaper to convert and upgrade the site into Finance's internet edition which has moved on to become the fastest-growing online news source in Slovenia in terms of population growth and also the most heavily frequented one. In late 2003 I've left Finance to once again start from zero, this time concentrating on mutual funds. The project is still under construction. 2. When did you first start using RSS? A RSS channel was implemented in Finance from the start; I've toyed with the format before but there were various factors limiting its practical use; for the most part they are actually still in force today. One, there was not all that much demand for it apart from people who build their own sites and needed a news source. Two, hardly anyone had an RSS reader installed. Three, for the advanced, tech-literate users that were actually capable and likely to use such a method of news distribution, there were simpler file formats that did the job just as well and anything XML-ish was just overhead. Speaking of overhead, Finance uses a data feed from the local stock exchange. Their market snapshot used to be a tab-separated file. Since they switched to XML, it's some 20 times larger and its practical content is just about the same. Setting up a bit of code to read the feed in a different format takes an hour at most. Downloading 20 times the amount of data for the sake of it being in format A instead of B is just plain masochistic. 444 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS While I understand the value of standardization and coming to a common ground, it is questionable to what extent this actually is a practical and not only an intellectual point. I continue to believe that there are many situations in which RSS is far from being an efficient method of delivery. In general terms, this is the dilemma of developing a universal, all-purpose solution which also takes care of your problem versus writing something that's optimized to your needs, that's all it does and it does it just great. 3. Could you perhaps share some results with us? As Finance grew from 2,000 to about 15,000 unique users per day, the number of people using the RSS feeds has, nominally, grown to several hundreds. Of those people, maybe 3 have actually communicated concerning the feeds. During three years of my watch at Finance there were maybe 5 questions about RSS. We believe that most of the feeds were activated but not used. On the other hand, the Finance morning bulletin which comes by email continues to be the biggest single generator of site traffic. 4. It seems that RSS means many different things to many different people. For me it's only a content delivery vehicle, one of the many. What is it to you? It is a content delivery vehicle, and not a particularly good one at that, which has been blown out of proportion. This has happened because of the increasing need to do something about the noise level and delivery difficulties of email. (Remember that RSS was a "sleeper" technology for years; it's only been resurrected recently and is in no way something new.) It is, however, questionable whether the end users feel the same pressing need to move away from email as do the people who actually send email as their main way of doing business. I would say that there is some danger of RSS "overheating", of collapsing under the weight of misplaced / misdirected expectations. But then I'm a person who likes to stick to the stock market saying "take care of your downside and the upside will take care of itself". I tend to look for deficiencies, shoot things down and go with the survivors. 445 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What in your mind are the most appropriate practical RSS business uses? How can small to large size businesses best take advantage of it? Software is the showstopper. I would say RSS can realistically be of good use in a controlled environment, such as a company intranet, where you can rely on, or dictate, RSS readers being installed. Apart from that I see some difficulty in telling the general audience "you have to install a special piece of software so we can talk to you". You'd have to be a pretty unique source of information to push that through. 6. How would you rate RSS penetration? Do you believe it will ever become a mass medium? What will it take? I believe RSS penetration in Slovenia is just about zero and honestly I don't see people, end users, crying out for it. Worldwide, I've been neglecting my "big picture" somewhat in the last months since I've transitioned to a new project, but I think RSS has reached a status of something that can indeed be useful to many - but not as an obvious choice satisfying a pressing need. But this is related to the question above - infrastructure. If (possibly "and only if") a RSS reader becomes part of Microsoft Outlook, there's the chance of things changing overnight. I can't really speculate on the probability of that happening. Microsoft has, in my view, demonstrated that it's big enough to shape the online world instead of just following it, so I don't see them being under pressure about it. (Why don't I talk about open source products? Hey, I love them. I use them myself. I'm a Linux admin of 10+ years. And all of this just doesn't cut it with the office staff. Let's stay focused, okay?) 7. RSS is often compared with e-mail. What do you think on this subject? We keep coming back to two basic questions: one, exactly who feels the need to move away from email? It is really the recipient's need or is it mainly the need of the professional senders? Two, how do you make people install readers, in effect having them pay in time and effort to hear you? What makes you so valuable to them? Email stinks in the sense that democracy stinks: it's far from perfect but nothing better has come up yet. (In fact, the problem of email noise / signal ratio is quite similar to that of the noise in a democratic society where everybody speaks and often nobody listens; and to the question of information overload. But let's not digress.) 446 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. In addition, RSS is dubbed as the "perfect spam-free medium". Would you agree? That would depend. If you define spam as somebody inserting unwanted messages, I would say that RSS or other straight-from-the-source methods is quite safe on that front. However, at least from the user's point of view, that's far from being everything that can bother you. If RSS grabs market share, everybody will concentrate on it, including people hard-pressed to make a sale. In this future I see ad-covered readers and channels where topical information is interspersed heavily by ads. Ads in general can be damn close to spam on the noise and nastiness scale as far as the user is concerned. Of course in a perfect world that would not be so; and yet it is. Nothing is perfect. Perfection is for suckers. 9. Where do you see the future of RSS? For one thing, I believe I've spent much more time thinking about RSS in this interview that I will spend in the next few months of actually putting content online and delivering it to my users. :) In general terms I see RSS as a niche mechanism in controlled environments and a supporting player in distribution of high-attraction content. I'll be somewhat surprised if it comes to more than that. As in the stock market, in the online world it's in your interest to always be prepared, but always stay flexible. If I'm ever surprised by RSS's success, hey, that's great; I'll go along as it comes. But right now: no demand and a real danger of over hyping. 447 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Jeanne S. Jennings, JeanneJennings.com Web site: http://www.JeanneJennings.com 1. Jeanne, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Sure, Rok. I help organizations become more effective and profitable online. I'm an independent consultant with over 15 years of experience in marketing strategy, focusing in the online world – e-mail, websites and Internet, and before that CompuSerrve's business services network. Reed Business Information US, Hasbro and The United States Chamber of Commerce are just a few of the organizations that have benefited from my expertise. I write a monthly column on E-mail Marketing Optimization for ClickZ.com, publish The Jennings Report, a free e-mail newsletter for e-mail marketing professionals and speak to industry groups on standards and best practices in e-mail marketing on a regular basis. I earned my MBA from Georgetown University in the late 1980s and still live in Washington, DC. You can subscribe to my newsletter and learn more about my expertise and how I help my clients at my website, http://www.JeanneJennings.com 448 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. What do you see as the biggest problems e-mail marketing and publishing are facing today? Do you believe RSS can be used to "save the day"? Delivery is one of the biggest challenges facing e-mail marketers and online publishers today. The onslaught of spam in inboxes necessitates the use of more and more stringent spam filters, at the personal, corporate and ISP levels. Assurance Systems recently reported that 15% of legitimate e-mail does not make it to the intended inbox; one ISP was found to be blocking over 25% of the legitimate messages entering its system. These 'false positives' (when legitimate permissionbased e-mail is incorrectly filtered as spam) are only going to increase as the fight against spam intensifies. RSS has many of the advantages of e-mail (timely delivery, HTML formatting, live links etc.) but with one important difference: it's not delivered to the recipient's inbox. Instead of being delivered via e-mail, RSS is a separate feed, outside the email channel. To date there are no filters on this pipeline. And because of how RSS is set up, there should never have to be. RSS feeds are 100% opt-in; a recipient must sign-up to receive a specific publishers' or marketers' RSS feed; they can also opt-out of that feed at any time. The control lies completely with the recipient. There are no 'unsolicited' RSS feeds – and therefore no need for filters. 3. That's all true, but how about personal communications? Do you believe RSS can be used there as well, especially considering the problems with e-mail delivery Can it? Sure. Does it make sense? To my mind, probably not on a large scale. I think it's a good solution for one-to-many communications (publishing and marketing) but less so for one-to-one communications (which most personal messages are). While it would address the filter issue, I believe that SPF/Sender ID, automatically whitelisting people in your address book and other technical solutions like that are going to be the real way to save personal e-mail from filters. 4. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS? As the instance of 'false positives' rises, RSS becomes more and more appealing to anyone sending legitimate content via e-mail. It's the most reliable way to be sure you content gets to its' intended recipients. 449 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal? Penetration is low. But then again, you're talking to someone who was setting up private networks (the precursors to websites) and e-mail programs in the late 1980s, before 'Internet' was a household word and before e-mail was a channel for mass communication. Penetration, usage, even knowledge of the existence of these things was very limited just 15 years ago. Many people never imagined that e-mail and the World Wide Web would be so widely accepted and integrated into our personal and business lives. The same may happen with RSS. But it is too early to tell. 6. So, in your opinion, the safest bet would be to start publishing in RSS right now? If you have the resources to do so, yes. 7. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS is facing? Other technologies. The advent of SenderID, SPF and other technologies positioned to resolve the spam problem are one threat; if they succeed before RSS becomes widely accepted, the benefit of RSS is greatly diminished. Also a challenge: other technologies, some of which may not even be developed yet, which help publishers and marketers 'get around' the spam filter problem. RSS isn't new; it's a decade-old technology originally introduced by Netscape. It's just getting more attention now because it's a way to get around the new issues surrounding e-mail, spam and false positives. 8. Could you perhaps give us more information about SenderID and SPF. Do you really think these can solve the delivery problem? Let me try to give you an explanation in plain English, rather than tech speak. SPF and SenderID are two flavors of a single technology to confirm that the sender e-mail address domain is in agreement with the server it was sent from. An example: if an e-mail had a from address of ''[email protected]' the receiving server would check to be sure the server it came from was designated by hotmail as one of the servers they send mail. If it was it would be delivered; if not, it would be rejected. There are a few steps that need to be undertaken to make this work. For example: 450 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS • organizations who send e-mail need to publisher their SPF records (basically registered their servers). • organizations that receive e-mail need to build in the process to check incoming mail against the SPF records. There are also still kinks to be worked out. One example: the web-based 'forward to a friend' mechanisms which send from the publisher's server but use the e-mail address of the person who wants to send this to their friend in the 'from' line. That said, Microsoft and the other big ISPs are working together to resolve issues and put a framework in place for this to be used on a wide scale. Do I believe this will 'solve' the delivery problems entirely? Not at first and probably not alone, But it's a step in the right direction to weeding out the fraudulent mail in a way that isn't a threat to legitimate senders of e-mail. 9. How about the technologies that will help us "get around" the spam filter? I believe that SenderID will be the first of many technological responses to the spam/spam filter problem that will make our current technologies unnecessary and obsolete, which is a good thing. Right now filtering based on content, blacklists, whitelists and the rest are the best we've got, but they are taking a broad, rather than a targeted, approach. Addressing the key issues in a more focused way, as SenderID does, should result in fewer false positives. 10. RSS is 100% opt-in and is not exactly what we would call a "push" medium. But marketers sometimes need a little "push". What are your thoughts on this in relation to RSS? Obviously as a marketer you'd rather have the 'push.' You'd rather be in control. But the Internet is a relatively new marketing/publishing channel and you need to tailor your techniques to fit it. Seth Godin was one of the first to talk about the different dynamic of e-mail and online marketing, where the prospect, not the marketer, controls the relationship. This is just an extension of that concept. Whether it's hitting the 'delete' key, unsubscribing from future e-mails or turning 'off' an RSS feed, it's in the prospects control and we have to recognize and honor that. It's how online works. 451 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 11. A great point. But how about when we, subscribers, want a little "push"? Such as getting our stock portfolio updates by e-mail? Hmmm. Not sure I know where you're going with this one. I've not come across any targeted content one-to-one RSS feeds to date. I guess you could do it, but I'm not sure if the cost would be worth the benefit. My impression of RSS to date is that it's not made for this type of one-to-one dynamic content delivery. That's a real benefit of e-mail and I'm not sure its one RSS can match or beat. 12. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today? To talk to existing prospects and customers, to build relationships with them. RSS today isn't about acquiring new prospects; it's not like traditional direct mail marketing, where you rent a slew of third-party lists and look for new people. It's about building relationships with people who know enough about your company to be willing to learn more. It's not cold calling; it's following up with warm leads. 13. What are the best ways of doing all of this? If you have a website, you have an invaluable tool for building your e-mail or RSS subscriber list. I believe every website should have at least now and preferably both (offer the visitor a choice) of these options – here's why. I like to think of a website as an online trade show booth. At an offline trade show you set up a booth, provide information about your company and collect business cards so you can follow-up with qualified prospects. A smart sales organization wouldn't hand out literature and hope that interested prospects contacted them. You've got to get the business cards and take the initiative to follow-up. And the web is no different. And that's where an e-mail/RSS strategy comes in. You need to have a strategy for acquisition, also known as growing your list, and also for communication, to follow-up with those folks in a timely manner, probably using a combination (depending on your product and the quality of the lead) of telephone (for direct selling) and either e-mail or RSS (to keep in touch with prospects and turn warm prospects into hot ones). 452 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 14. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Online publishing is obvious. The array of publishers, in all different industries, who have RSS feeds, is staggering. From small electronic industry publishers like Marketing Sherpa to large print general news outlets like the New York Times, they are taking this delivery channel for a spin. But that's not all. Large and small organizations that market and sell products are also getting into the act. Toys R Us publishes an RSS feed on top selling toys; Newlook Marketing publishes an RSS-based hosiery catalog and Apple publishes an iTunes RSS feed to sell music. Are they great sales and marketing efforts? Probably not yet. But the potential is there. And as the incidence of false positives rises, the incentive to put resources behind it to make it more effective grows. 15. Are there any other practical uses you can think of? Too many to mention here. It's a channel for the distribution of information, just as television, radio, telephone, print, e-mail and the Internet are. There are some types of information that are better suited to one channel than to the others (Imaging sending a spreadsheet via e-mail versus trying to provide the same information via telephone), but past that there's really no limit to what can be conveyed by each channel. 16. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? The jury is still out on RSS, very much the way it was in the early days of e-mail. With e-mail companies began experimenting cautiously, shifting small portions of their budget into this untested channel with low penetration. As e-mail became more mainstream and companies started to see a positive return on their investment (or at least the possibility of one), they expanded their programs. I believe it's wise to use the same approach with RSS. Multi-channel marketing, done well, can greatly increase the impact of your message and lift response. If you're having e-mail delivery issues, you might offer the RSS feed of your content as an alternative to your readers via your website, direct mail and/or your standard e-mail communications. 453 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 17. Are there any ways we can do this with the people that are subscribed to our e-mail lists, but aren't receiving our e-mail due to various barriers? If it's just the occasional e-mail that's filtered, you can send out a 'you could be missing our e-mails' note and offer RSS as an option. If you know or suspect you have a longer term problem, where no e-mail is getting through, you need to go a step further. You can send an e-mail to these folks from another e-mail account which might get through (depends on what is triggering the filter) or you can go offline using phone or direct mail to contact them. If you have a serious problem, you probably want to use a multi-channel strategy, starting with e-mail (which tends to be most cost-effective), then sending a direct mail piece and finally following up via telephone (usually the most costly, depending on your quantities). Each effort should build on the last and you should increase your list conversion rate with each effort. 18. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing, especially if the publisher doesn't want to make content available as it is created, but in one single issue? For publishers, I like the idea of keeping with the 'issue' format rather than a 'piece meal' approach. It's more in line with what readers are used to. You can control what you send and when, so setting your RSS up to handle a single issue should not be a problem. 19. But don't you think that with RSS people are expecting more content pieces more often, but shorter? Or is it just that we're getting them used to this? It's what a lot of organizations are doing now, but it doesn't mean that's the standard. RSS is relatively new and still evolving. With e-mail everyone was used to text, but now most are able to read and prefer HTML. It's all in which format is best to deliver the information. And much like e-mail, in the early stages you might give people a choice: do you want to receive articles as they are available or in a less frequent issue format. Much the same way we used to offer people (and many still do) daily e-mail updates vs. weekly. 454 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 20. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? It's an education process. You need to explain the benefit and then, if they're interested, provide step-by-step instructions for setting up an RSS reader and signing up for your RSS feed. Again, we did a lot of this back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was with CompuServe, educating people about logging on (remember phone couplers and dial-up?) and later about installing graphical user interface software to 'front' the text-only system. It takes some thought, but done effectively you can educate your readers and facilitate their shift to RSS. 21. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? Sure it is. We've converted many print newspaper readers to getting their news from websites. This is a much easier shift. As I said above, it's all about education, if you decide to do it. Should you decide to do it? That depends. I'm not convinced RSS is a solution for the long term (I was convinced early on that e-mail was). To use an example from the consumer goods world, I'm not yet sure whether RSS is the VHS (the video technology that took hold) or the Beta (the one that didn't). The 8-track tape (dud) or the cassette tape (stud). And even in those cases, those 'long term' solutions were replaced by DVDs and CDs respectively. Bottom-line: use caution. If you are having significant delivery problems, you might put a large effort on shifting readers to RSS. If not, dabble in RSS for readers who want it and educate yourself. That way if it does become the delivery vehicle of choice you'll already be partially up the learning curve. 455 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 22. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? Education. Step-by-step instructions with live links, lots of FAQs and technical support. Also motivation for the subscriber to invest the time and possibly the money (to buy a reader) in the new channel – tell them what's in it for them. Don't force the issue (switch or lose our content); but make it attractive for them to take it out for a test drive. 23. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? We could do an entire interview just on this! Direct mail or inserts in print communications can be very effective here (just as they can be for growing your email list). The key is to explain the benefit, provide an incentive, give them step-bystep instructions, offer support and keep doing it. People need to see some things 3 to 5 times before they take hold. Once is not enough if you're serious about changing a habit, which is what reliance on any communication channel really boils down to. We faced these same challenges with e-mail and now it's a widely accepted medium. 24. Do you perhaps have any advice in terms of writing for RSS? What kind of content is appropriate? Again, it's a channel. What kind of information do your readers want to receive from you. What do they value? It makes the value proposition, whether you're talking marketing or publishing, that much more critical, because the day the reader decides the value isn't there is the day they cancel the RSS feed. And you lose the opportunity to continue communicating with them via RSS. 25. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? We're working on that. As with any new technology, it's not necessarily 'fully formed' in the early years. We weren't able to track e-mail open rates on a widescale until roughly the year 2000; e-mail marketing and publishing existed before that (I launched my first website and e-mail newsletter on the Internet (as opposed to on the CompuServe Network) in the mid-1990s). As the technology grows, so will our ability to track behavior. 456 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 26. Is there anything else you would like to add? While I believe the jury is still out on RSS, I encourage organizations to experiment with it. The more organizations and individuals who are working with RSS, the quicker we will identify its strengths and weaknesses as a communication vehicle. And the sooner we'll know whether it's here to stay or just another blip in the online world. 457 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Dwight Shih, Ideoplex Web site: http://www.ideoplex.com/blog 1. Dwight, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I'm an unemployed code/content wrangler in southwestern Connecticut. 2. How do you see the impact of RSS on the business and even more importantly marketing world? Is this a trick question? I'm not optimistic about RSS as a standalone content format. I think that it's the combination of weblog for search permanence and RSS for dissemination that represents the true opportunity. In business, the ability to distinguish between the urgent and important, the important, the urgent and the neither urgent nor important is a major time management issue. Email has the unfortunate tendency of making everything appear both urgent and important. If a significant portion (important, urgent and neither) could be institutionally shifted to RSS and weblog, then business could more effectively manage their inboxes. For example, human resources and facilities broadcast messages are a prime candidate for RSS and weblog. In marketing, I think that we're finding that yesterday's mass markets have become today's fractionalized markets. And that weblogs represent a potential vehicle for communicating to those fractions. I think that the major hurdle for marketing is that there is a tendency to rely upon glitz rather than message and that's just not going to work over RSS. 458 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? I am pessimistic about the future of RSS in general marketing. RSS is still in search of the killer application. Although the weblog community finds it essential to follow large numbers of sites, most people are better served by hunting down their information as they need it. Marketing will not develop and craft messages for RSS delivery until an audience is established. One of the reasons that I'm very interested in email based aggregators and the aggregator within my.yahoo.com is that they represent an opportunity for RSS to infiltrate current behavior rather than require new behavior. My thinking is that aggregators need to get onto user's desktops via stealth, not brute force. Until we reach a critical mass of aggregator adoption, I think that RSS marketing will be limited to technical audiences. 4. And where do you see the future of RSS? My previous answers may indicate that I'm pessimistic about RSS. That's only true in comparison to email. I don't think that RSS will ever become as big as email was before it broke. But RSS can assume the broadcast role that email once provided and be a major factor. Consider your typical sales/marketing funnel. It's tempting to say that the final stage is most important, because it yields the highest quality prospects. But if the mouth of your funnel isn't wide enough, then the final stage won't provide the volume. I see RSS as broadcast and email as narrowcast. You need both. 5. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some examples? I’m a believer in one to one marketing. I think that RSS provides a vehicle for transforming anonymous masses to identifiable prospects. Once upon a time, people were willing to provide their email addresses for mass marketing. Now, they are much too protective of their privacy. If we look at the range of communication vehicles; we have websites for anonymous pull, RSS for anonymous push, and email for personal push. That’s the new internet marketing funnel. 459 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS As I stated previously, I think there is an opportunity for weblogs and RSS to dominate the important, the urgent and the neither important nor urgent communications within business. From a knowledge management standpoint, email inboxes are untapped black boxes. If we can move that knowledge from the inbox to the weblog, then that knowledge becomes searchable and publicly accessible. I think that we’ll start to see weblogs and RSS replacing email for project management communications. The weblog will provide a permanent record of the project evolution and RSS will provide a de-politicized dissemination of project status. 6. What does RSS mean for content management solutions? I don’t know. I think that CMS is still a solution looking for a problem. In one sense, RSS is just another implementation of the publish-subscribe idiom. Since email is a perfectly acceptable alternative for internal business applications, I don’t think that RSS is going to open the door for a new set of internal CMS applications. For outward facing applications, I think that the barrier lies in the minds of the content publishers. I think that bugmenot demonstrates that readers don’t want to register for access to content. Once publishers accept that, we’ll start to see growth in the use of CMS driven RSS. 7. We're especially interested in more advanced uses of RSS that can only come from full CMS integration, and not just basic content delivery. For instance customized and personalized RSS feeds, limited-access RSS feeds, etc. What are your thoughts on this? I view RSS as a broadcast communication channel. I think that it will be a mistake to personalize RSS, that's a role that email should fill. But if we define personalization as targeting for the individual and customization as targeting for the group, then customization has promise. For example, customers of a networking company are probably not interested in a feed that covers the full product line. But if I use a Wi-Fi access point, then I may be interested in a feed that covers just that product line: security updates, firmware upgrades and new product announcements. 460 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. So how far can we actually take RSS? What are the basic requirements for this? Do we start with a CMS or something else first? I believe that the power of RSS lies in its relationship to permanent content. And for a sufficiently broad definition of CMS, I think that effective RSS requires a CMS. I used to think that it made sense to save RSS items. I now see RSS as notification with search engines as the global store. I think that gmail, with its 1 GB store and its admonition to never delete, is an affirmation of this approach. 461 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS James Robertson, Cincom Web site: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView 1. James, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I'm the Product Manager for the Cincom Smalltalk product line. You can find information on that here: http://smalltalk.cincom.com. I've been the Product Manager for three years now. Before that I was a technical sales consultant and trainer for the company that owned VisualWorks (part of Cincom Smalltalk) before Cincom. As Product Manager, I keep 'an ear to the ground' for trends, changes, and requirements in the IT sector (specifically, development). I read a lot of trade journals, and I follow a lot of websites. I also interact with customers and engineering on a regular basis – both in meetings and in conference calls. More formally, I make high level decisions on what we should (and should not) support in our products. My daily research helps me in that regard, as does constant communication with our customers. I also impart information back to our customers (and other interested parties) via my blog: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView. The blog is the reason that I got interested in RSS and syndication in the first place. 2. In your experience, what are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Syndication feeds are an excellent way of publicizing something like a blog or Wiki. In my case, I create new content for my blog daily – as I write this, I've got two items queued up for posting as soon as I get a network connection. A blog provides a place to offer a compelling, honest, and unfiltered view into a company. Press Releases tend to be highly processed (and typically, quite dull). A blog provides actual emotion and opinions. Where does RSS enter into this? Reading websites takes time. I currently subscribe to 283 syndication feeds in BottomFeeder (a free, open source RSS/Atom news aggregator – http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder). There's simply no way that I keep track of that breadth of information via web browser bookmarks. 462 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? By itself, RSS isn't that interesting. When combined with an aggregator, it's a powerful tool. When I navigate to a site in my browser, I have to 'eyeball' it in order to figure out if there's new content or not. With an aggregator, I subscribe, and the tool tells me when there's something new. It also allows me to sort, search, and filter – all so that I can instantly find the things I actually care about, and ignore the things I don't need to worry about. As an end user, RSS (or Atom) are tremendously useful – they help me do my job. They also help me serve my (potential) end users. By syndicating the content of things people will find of interest, I make it easy for them to keep up with what we are doing. At present, we syndicate: • All of the Cincom Smalltalk community blogs: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs. These blogs offer opinions, information, and commentary on happenings in the Smalltalk world • The Cincom Smalltalk Wiki server – http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki. The Wiki provides product information (releases, support, patches, etc.) • The Cincom Smalltalk public Repository. This is a source code database, and reporting on it lets people know what kinds of projects are actually being worked on – both at Cincom, and in the wider user community. • Cincom Press releases are syndicated, allowing interested parties to be notified right away - http://www.cincom.com/rss/Cincom-pr.xml. 4. Could you perhaps share some hard-data results with us? How are your RSS feeds working out for you? When I started my blog, I was getting 10-15 page views a day, and I stayed at that level for months. After awhile, I got an email from someone asking me to provide an RSS feed. After we went through the requisite 'what the heck is RSS' conversation, I added one. My daily page views (html, not counting the RSS at all) tripled. It continued a steady rise after that as well – I'm now getting between 3000 and 5000 page views (again, html, not counting RSS) per day. I provide full text RSS feeds, and the feed still drives a significant level of traffic to my HTML page. 463 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Consider that for a moment. Within an XML feed, there's really no easy way to track readers – on your main site, there are ways to do that. My experience is that having an RSS feed – even a full content one – drives traffic to the main site. Once your audience is there, you can use whatever methods you use now in order to entice them to stay and find more information. RSS is currently used by 'leading edge' people – many of whom are influencers (in a marketing sense). Once you've reached them, you've effectively reached a much wider audience. 5. Also, could you please define a Wiki for us and tell us how marketers can benefit from developing their own Wiki web site? A Wiki is a user editable website – see http://www.cinconmsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki for an example. Wikis require maintenance, and work best when used by a community of users (in the case of the above Wiki, that community is Cincom Smalltalk customers). A Wiki is a great way for you to get content out to a wide audience quickly – using a simplified markup system, anyone can produce decent looking html pages. They do require maintenance though – like everything else on the web, they are subject to spam attacks and defacing. 6. But what are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? The ability to inform a wide audience of changes and information immediately. With a website change, the interested user has to scan the site 'manually' in search of new information. Even information that is marked as new can be missed easily – I miss things that way all the time. With RSS, interested parties get notified immediately – and this allows for better communication with our customers and prospects. Anything that improves communication with paying customers is a good thing. 464 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. How about other possibilities and benefits? As I mentioned above, RSS is mostly being used by a 'leading edge', early adopter audience at present. These users tend to be influencers, and getting their attention can be highly useful (depending, of course, on what your market is). In our case, Smalltalk has a reputation as an 'old' language – something we need to counter from a marketing perspective. Using my blog – with its RSS feed – I've managed to reach a number of influential developers in the Java and .NET camps. It would have been extremely difficult for us to get a message out to that audience in any other way – they would be extremely wary of traditional marketing messages. RSS has helped us reach out and 'punch above our weight class' 8. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration? Where do you see the future of RSS? Right now, it's very much in the bleeding edge, early adopter phase. Those of us who use aggregators and write blog content can easily get sucked into the perception that 'everyone' knows about these channels. All you need to do is meet a group of customers and interested parties at a conference or meeting to find out otherwise. I'm very active in evangelizing RSS, and I point out the free aggregator which I author (BottomFeeder) regularly. I also keep it up to date and add features on a regular basis in order to keep it fresh. I suspect that RSS is getting close to the crossover point – Microsoft is encouraging staffers to blog (about 1000 or so people there blog now). That tells me that MS is probably going to add support for RSS to IE – Opera already has it, and there are Mozilla plugins. Once that happens, it will be as big as the web is. 9. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? I don't think that RSS will replace email for personal communication – it's not immediate enough. I can see a combination of RSS and IM tools replacing it though: • RSS for mailing lists • IM for personal communication. Especially now that IM is making its way to phones 465 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. What do you see as the greatest challenges RSS still has to overcome? Ease of use. At present, it's still too hard for most people to subscribe to a feed. Most people expect to click a link in a browser, and have 'the right thing' happen. It does for web pages, for music, videos, etc. For RSS, clicking on the orange button yields one of two things: • An ugly bunch of XML – which looks like programming errata to the nontechnical user • An error, because the browser doesn't understand the extension (.rss, .atom, etc) For lots of people, they try an orange XML icon once, and then learn that it's simply something they don't understand (and apparently don't need). We really need a standard URL form that would automatically subscribe a user to the appropriate feed when selected. There are a variety of aggregator specific 'hacks' for this at present, but it needs to be universal. 11. Could you perhaps give us some examples of these possible solutions? There's a proposal out for a link format that would subscribe users to the 'default' aggregator (the same way that a normal link launches the 'default' browser). BottomFeeder supports this proposal, and there are (technical) details here: http://www.25hoursaday.com/draft-obasanjo-feed-URI-scheme-01.html. There are other solutions, such as URLs that are specific to the aggregator running on your desktop (BottomFeeder supports its own format for that, as well as the formats for most other popular aggregators). The main drawback at present is a lack of consensus as to how to proceed in this direction. Everyone has ideas; so far, none of those ideas have progressed to the point of becoming the defacto answer. 466 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? It's another channel. It's a full replacement for mailing lists (eventually – you need to offer these things in both forms for now). It's a way of getting your message out through the currently 'cool' new technology that everyone's talking about, so it helps make you look 'with it'. 13. But what kind of content to publish using this channel? Do we for instance go the way of mass e-zines or should we employ RSS in other ways as well? How about internal corporate communications, etc.? You should use RSS wherever it makes sense, just like any other technology. For instance – we have an RSS feed hanging off of our source code control system on the Smalltalk team. There are two other interfaces into the system – a web interface, and a 'smart client' interface. Most of the developers like having the feed, because they can apply filters in their aggregator to show them only the items that are of interest to them. That way, they can use one of the other interfaces into the system (when they need to modify an item) when they are notified of things they need to know about. I think RSS is also a full replacement for mailing lists – both internal and external. It removes the problem of spam. 467 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 14. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? RSS is fairly easy to figure out (for a technical person) – and there are tools for producing it. Every blog tool can push it out. SharePoint supports it, as do most Wiki tools. There are tools available for syndicating mailing lists (in fact, all Yahoo mailing lists are available via RSS now). The harder part is getting people to subscribe. There's no 'magic' to this, unfortunately. If you want people to read (and subscribe) to your content, you have to write regularly and compellingly. Keyword hacking for Google pagerank isn't going to cut it – I've grown my blog's readership from 10 page views a day to over 5000 via the hard work of writing on a variety of Smalltalk and IT industry topics. Over the last two years, other bloggers have noticed and linked to me (as I, in turn, do with content I find to be interesting). For customer specific channels (mailing lists, bug feeds, press releases, etc), it's somewhat easier. You can inform your customers of the new service via the channels you use now, and include links to: • One of the many 'What is RSS?' pages out there. I recommend this one: http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/ • Include one or more recommendations for aggregators – and make sure to include links to tools that will work on Linux and Mac! You'll likely be surprised at how many of your intended audience uses those platforms 15. But won't this be too complicated for most users? And especially for instance for managers who are pressed for time as it is? Most of the tools out there install very cleanly, and come with a few default feeds pre-installed. BottomFeeder even comes with full documentation and a tutorial, and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Using an aggregator is no more complex than using a mail client. As well, there are server based tools as well – BlogLines being the most well known. Like Gmail, it lives in your browser, and uses the web metaphor that most users already understand quite well. The bottom line is, there are tools for everyone in this space – your best bet is to have someone try a few out, and then make recommendations. 468 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 16. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? I don't really think there's any shortcut to this. You have to create content that people find compelling, and are willing to come back for. You can slap anyone on a mailing list (they may have your mail end up in the junk folder though). You can't force people to subscribe – by its very definition, it's an opt in audience. I unsubscribe from content when it doesn't interest me anymore, and there's really no way to get around that. You have to be willing to put in the effort to create fresh, original, and useful content on an ongoing basis. 17. Is there any way to make the subscription as easy as possible? Certainly. Provide auto-subscribe links on your web page that support the popular tools. That way, users will just have to follow the metaphor they already understand – clicking a link – to subscribe 18. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? There are a number of services that will syndicate your content for you and others which will propagate your own feed – I use Artima and Syndic8 for that purpose. These are both widely read, and Syndic8 (http://www.syndic8.com) is regularly searched. I also registered my feeds with Feedster (http://www.feedster.com) and Blogdigger (http://www.blogdigger.com) – both are RSS/Atom search engines. Having your content keyword searchable through these channels is crucial; I can find out what someone said on a topic via Feedster faster (and usually more reliably) than I can with Google. If you plan to syndicate content, you have to register with these sites Another thing you can do is make sure that you ping the servers that people check for fresh content. Technorati is the most well known here; there's a free service called ping-o-matic (http://pingomatic.com/) - updating that server will end up propagating out to over a dozen other services. These were very important in helping me grow traffic in the early days of my blog, and they are just as useful now. 469 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 19. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? RSS is accessed via HTTP – the same way that your web page is accessed. Ultimately, you can use all the techniques available for website tracking. 20. Could you perhaps recommend some software marketers can use to better publish and market using RSS? Well, I've done all of my work in Cincom Smalltalk. Mind you, I'm a marketing guy, but I've been able to crank out RSS support for our blogs, our Wikis, our source code tools, and our bug reporting tools. There are also pre-packaged solutions out there for email lists and tools like SharePoint. To be honest, I've written all of our (Cincom's) tools myself – part of my purpose is to demonstrate the ease of use and productivity of our product. 21. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Nothing that I can think of. Thanks for being interested! If you have any follow up questions, I'll be happy to field them. 470 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Kim Bloomer, KimBloomer.com Web site: http://www.kimbloomer.com 1. Kim, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Yes, and thank you Roc for inviting me to this interview. I am a firm believer in multiple streams of income so I have just that: • I always take a proactive approach to all I do so I publish a RSS channel on holistic pet care, AspenbloomWellPet, offering the products I use and adhere to for my family and my pets, along with lots of articles, news and information to help people take an informative approach to the wellness of their pets. • I also co-publish a channel with Cathy Carlton, Kick The Email Habit. I met Cathy during one of the training conferences offered by the Quikonnex system I use to publish my channels. We took an instant liking to each other, and since Cathy had already formulated and designed the whole channel and website, we decided to combine our efforts and strengths into the service that Kick The Email Habit has evolved into. We now offer an article bank on Kick The Email Habit, a free e-book on how to publish on Quikonnex in an easy, step-by-step How To, and we also offer channel building and management services for those who want the capability of publishing through RSS but don't want to learn it or don't have the time to manage a channel themselves. Last but not least we offer advertising space. http://www.KickTheEmailHabit.com • We also recently starting building and managing the channel for the International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce (IVWCC) of which we're members. • I also just recently started another channel under the »AspenbloomWellPet umbrella«. We have unlimited subchannels we can use so I publish one specifically on natural Pet Products and talk about those products which I use and sell. The new subchannel is specifically all Christian and I have several copublishers involved in this effort including Cathy Carlton. My website is http://KimBloomer.com 471 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS I originally thought one channel would be enough but then ideas multiply and I just keep adding channels! It's so much fun and not hard to do, especially when you have a partner like I do who can explain what I can't and vice versa. 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? I can sit here and sort of laugh at that question Roc because I'm not entirely sure I totally understand what RSS really is. The explanation I do understand is that in a nutshell it is Really Simple Syndication. I've actually written a couple of articles on this subject. When you think of syndication what do you think of? Well, I think of television series for one. Every week during PrimeTime television each network has several shows that come on during a specific time slot and the whole nation sees the show at the same time in their time zone. Those shows are syndicated shows. They were produced once but all the stations on each network carry that same show all over the country. The show doesn't have to be redone for each station in each city – it's syndicated. It's duplication at its finest! So, if you want to use RSS on the Internet the principle is the same. When you have your syndication code figured out (I don't have to do that as that's part of the service I receive on Quikonnex), you offer your code rather than a link exchange. So, now let's say many sites have picked up your syndication code due to your diligent offering of this code, right? Well every single time you update your RSS feed with content, that same content is simultaneously updated on all the sites carrying your code. Like I said, duplication at it's finest. 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? First of all the fact that I don't have to update my content to all the sites carrying my links that's real easy! I'm going to really break the mold here when I say I've never delivered my content in any other format. Nope, not email. I was on the threshold of doing just that though. 472 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Here's how it went: I am always being asked questions about pets and rather than having to continually have to repeat myself and bring my point home each time on why holistic is the way to go, I decided I would knock out two with one meaning I would deliver an email newsletter to everyone I knew to start and hope they'd share that with everyone they know and so on. Then I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself PLUS I'd promote my business. That's what I read over and over again on business promotion so I knew I'd have to do that. Then I started finding out about autoresponders, lists, opt-in/opt-out, spamming, and etc., etc. I was none too happy about all of that but was resigned to the fact when I chance happened upon a banner on an article bank website I was inputting an article to. The banner said something like »Do you want to deliver your newsletter without all the hassles, in RSS/XML format« So, I clicked through the banner got to the Quikonnex site, and the rest is as they say history. I kept going back and forth over that for a few days but I just couldn't turn away. I KNEW emphatically that this was the way I was going to go. I had been reading about blogs and RSS in some techy newsletters I subscribe to. Oh and not because I'm so technically inclined either. I subscribed to them to try and get some bit of a handle on what the happenings were on the Internet. I am anything but technically inclined and yet I am publishing in RSS. 4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results? As I've stated all through this interview, I use it daily in publishing my channels on Quikonnex. How has it worked for me? Well, I would not want to publish any other way. I can actually sit back and grin when I read what all the other ezine publishers are going through. Not because I'm so great or think that they're less than, absolutely not. In fact, there are many very savvy ezine publishers out there today. The difference is, I don't have to worry about all the hassles normally associated with email publishing. The results are that I have far more readers (which is what I truly want) people who take the time to read what I write and utilize what I write in their own lives. Even more, I can track »hits« just like you do on a website. I can see how many are stopping by each day and what »item« is the most read, etc. The biggest hits are on the syndication feeds, picking them up and putting those links on their sites. My hits are growing exponentially as a result. 473 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Well that's somewhat of a loaded question to ask a technically challenged person! My thoughts on the current RSS penetration is that we haven't even skimmed the surface YET. So, the depth and width is wide open. It's going to grow exponentially just like my channels are. In fact, I think it's a mounting huge snowball waiting to gather major momentum. 6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? Hmmm. I've thought on this and talked at length on this with many, many people Rok. My answer is ambiguous at best I think. Email isn't dead but it might kill you as Carolyn Peltier, Quikonnex founder is always telling us. The reason we say that is because of all, and I do keep repeating myself, all of the hassles associated with getting a newsletter delivered to an inbox these days. Every single day I read that it's still a great delivery of marketing and every day I read why it's not so great, so maybe I should be asking you what you think of email marketing, Rok, as a delivery tool? Actually, sitting where I am using RSS and loving it, I would love to see way more people get comfortable using it as a means of content delivery. It brings back the fun to publishing and it makes it much more comfortable to subscribers and readers –gives them back the control they're lacking in email. I try to unsubscribe to those Yahoo Groups I've joined and they never unsub me. It's very frustrating. Of course, those are quite different than an email newsletter but the delivery is the same and most times, I don't have time to read an entire newsletter so, quite frankly, I dump it. I would rather read an article a day from each publisher rather than an entire newsletter and that's doable on the system I use. So, I don't know if RSS will replace email, but I hope so, so I can read what all these great publishers and writers are offering without it cluttering up my email inbox along with all those stupid spam emails. Let's not even go to virus troubles...whole other subject! 474 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? Oh, I have a great big grin on my face! Easy, ever try comparing a horse to a Lear Jet? Well that's email compared to RSS. Both will get you there but at what speed and in what style? I love horses, always have but I sure don't want to ride one from here to say NY – I live in NM. Would I blaze across the country in a Lear Jet? Absolutely! 8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Well, I won't pretend to be the expert on marketing uses or practices here Rok. I usually, and this is the absolute truth, go with my gut on most things. I'm not always right, and I'm not the savvy type either, I just kind of do everything based on past experiences and mistakes and advice and go forward from there. In this case, I took the step into RSS without thinking about marketing it or anything. I just think of it as a very simple way to deliver the content I want to share to promote wellness and my products in keeping with that. Guess I never think much about the direct marketing implication here, it just plain ol' makes sense to me to use something that duplicates my efforts repeatedly without any extra work on my part. I market the Quikonnex system along with what I do, and that's easy for me to do because I use the system, and it delivers on the promises. It makes it all very simple to share and explain. 9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Sure, I'd love to. Here's what I do to share the RSS experience and I just wait to see how many catch on or not. 475 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Like I stated earlier, I belong to the IVWCC. All of our virtual meetings are done online through moderated email lists. So, when we have for example our monthly Meet & Greet, my inbox is swamped with up to 800 or more email just from this group alone over a 48 hour period. Then I have to quickly sift through all of the ones I want to connect with and so forth. Well, I think a lot of information gets missed that way. How do I know, because I know I skim rather than read through during those. I send out, very consistently, during these Meet & Greets information on Quikonnex, on Kick The Email Habit, and the services we offer. Even so, after the Meets I still get women contacting asking me, what is RSS? What is Quikonnex? What is a channel? So, I am putting together a FAQ to answer these questions by posting that FAQ to our channels. They get really excited when they understand the viability of the delivery of their content, their profiles, etc. Some have said they wouldn't have started an email newsletter if they'd known about this and others decide to continue while watching what we're doing, and dabbling as free co-publishers to get a feel for the whole thing. I love it! So, that's how I apply the practical marketing – find a need and fill it. I like keeping things simple, and really simple syndication plays right into that for me. 10. How about other relevant business uses? I use my channels like an ezine, blog, and website all-in-one almost. It delivers my content, promotes my products, and I make my announcements, news, etc., all right here in one easy to use system. I don't have to database anything myself, I don't have to keep track of subscribers, I have a 2-way communication Private Message system for readers/subscribers to be able to talk to me, and it operates like a forum in that we have a place for readers to leave comments. Of course, if I don't like what's posted I can delete it but that hasn't happened yet. Not only that, but it all links up with my website. It's all done in one place so that simplifies things even more for me. The best part, I don't get spammed on my channels. 476 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? Well, I'll be honest here and say I do still use email. I have to because so many of the things I do still require me to do so. If email has to still be used, I'd rather see it used as a form of communication and leave the marketing in RSS. Once everyone starts to realize how viral and dynamic RSS is, they won't want to continue to market in email, at least that's my opinion. So RSS and email together, hmmm. Tough one. I don't think we should have a wall dividing those who use RSS on one side and email on the other. Rather, I'd like to think we could all use RSS to market our goods and take back some control of what's gotten so out of hand on the Internet. Then use email for simple communication. I'm really, at this point Rok, not sure how we can integrate it. I consistently try to show everyone how they can continue to use email while getting their feet wet in RSS. Then, as they get excited about how it all works, they'll want to leave the email behind. It's not that I'm against email per se, just that I'm not sure it's such a great way any longer to market ourselves. This is not a finished answer and I don't think it will be for some time to come yet. 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? One of the things other publishers who use this system are saying is that they lost many subscribers because the subscribers didn't get it. I have never had to worry over that since I've only ever published using RSS. However, what I believe most of the publishers have told me is that although their subscriber base shrank, the readers they have are actually reading what they write. Who wouldn't when you can pop in for a couple of minutes a day and read the latest post without having to sit through an entire newsletter? 477 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS I think, after how I've been explaining RSS over and over again, the best thing to do is learn about RSS. It's not as scary as anyone thinks, I mean look at me – a technical dummy 101! I am using it though. I learned about it by reading. So read what you can find, then put together a FAQ for your subscribers. Explain to them how the power will be back in their hands. No more missed delivery dates, no more bounces because of an IP ban. They'll always have access to your news. Start an RSS feed before quitting your newsletter and prime the pump so to speak. Get them used to going over and reading your feeds, ask for feedback and comments. Then one day you'll just want to announce that you are now switching to the RSS feed. Explain how you won't need to use their email address any longer because they'll be getting your feed live in living color when they want it, not on a day they may not have time to read it. Every day they can pop in and read your news. I know on Quikonnex the founders are working on a lot of things that will make it so easy to use that subscribers will use our system simply because they'll be in control of when and how much they want to read in a format that will make their email newsletters unnecessary because they won't need to access their inbox for their news. Lastly, you'll have to ask them to subscribe to your feed over and over again. I do in nearly every single post I make to my channel – or I try to. Why? Well think about TV commercials. Do you always run out and buy the item the first time you see it on TV? I don't think so. Nope, you probably see the commercial so much that you finally HAVE to go get that item. Same thing with RSS subscribing. 13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? I not only think it's possible I know it is. Maybe not your entire list but then, a lot of your list subscribers are, how shall I say this – dead weight. They aren't really reading what you put in your newsletters, they're just subscribing. Now, when you publish an RSS channel/feed people are actually looking to read news feeds, and if they know they'll be in control of the subscription like they are on our Q channels, it gives your subscribers a feeling of power they haven't had before through email subscriptions. 478 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS How, you ask. My partner Cathy Carlton, would be a great one to ask that question to. She had so much trouble with her email newsletter she actually just told her subscribers she was moving the whole operation to RSS through Quikonnex and some stayed with her and others didn't. She knew that since the search engines get pinged every time she inputs an item into her feed she would have subscribers back way quicker than it ever took to build her email list. I on the other hand have never had to convert email subscribers to RSS. I'll tell you Rok that I am really very pleased with the minimal effort it takes to publish this way. I do send out a notice to my address email box whenever I start a new RSS channel feed. I also do word of mouth offline, and online I plug it every single chance I get. In networks, meetings, whatever, I tell about my RSS channels. It's like email in that respect but much easier and broader than an email list. Sure you may have huge lists but there are so many who are switching to RSS feeds/channels simply to get out from under all the complications of getting an email newsletter out only to have it deleted. So why should you do it? Because if you don't I think you'll regret that decision in a couple of years. We all need to keep up with the technological changes that are coming our way as much as possible. Plus, I think in a way email is like an old car – you have to keep repairing it over and over until the repairs are way more money than a new car with payments, not to mention the unreliability of it. RSS is fast and dynamic and it gives the marketer a chance to get back to what they do well – market, and publish. The subscriber can control what they read and access your database easily – at least through Quikonnex they can, and have a little bit from you each day if you choose to do that. 14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? I honestly don't have the answer to that Rok because I guess I'm not that savvy. I provide content I want to share according to what I value, and would buy. Then, like I said, I ask viewers to subscribe nearly every single time I post. I haven't done that yet on my newest channel though and I am already growing that viewership daily. Maybe that's a better way to think of subscribers in this venue – as viewers. Tell them to check in daily to see what news you have. Give them an incentive to stop by and view your feeds daily. I know you're good at that Rok. The reason that viewership is even growing is because the search engines and blogs get pinged every single time I input something so guess what? I keep on inputting! 479 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? Okay, once again I'm laughing out loud because I share by word of mouth. That's just what I do. I tell people and hand them my business card with the URL to the channels. If they are animal lovers I give them the URL to my pet wellness channel, if they are into marketing/advertising, I give them our URL to Kick The Email Habit, and so on. Most people think it's a website because the average person still doesn't know what RSS is but they do know that they can get »live news« online. Same thing. I usually say I publish an RSS channel on »holistic pet« or »Christianity«, etc. That usually gets them curious enough to go check it out. Like a commercial we've got to be repetitive to be heard where this is concerned. It's gaining momentum though folks. The more you talk about it and share it the more you'll want to know and the more you'll learn. Funny but RSS is like that. 16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? Well, here I go again sounding like a commercial for Quikonnex but it's the truth – we have a stats page already set up for us. So I just check on the stats and of course the biggest hits are on the RSS feed. I've watched my stats regularly since I started publishing back in April and they just continue to go up and up each month. Mostly all I do is publish, and tell others about it. Initially with each new channel I do submissions to directories and then continue to input content. 17. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Yes, Rok, why don't you come and do some co-publishing with me on my channels – you can do that as an affiliate for free, and get the hang of it. Then you decide if you think it's worth changing over. I know you're doing RSS feeds on your site but what about just publishing separate from your website, in RSS, without email and just see how you like it? I am not saying that tongue-in-cheek here either. Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you Rok, I hope I've helped with some of the doubts and concerns. Doubt is good because it keeps you seeking to find out the truth. 480 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS You can check out my channels here: http://www.Aspenbloom-WellPet.com http://www.KickTheEmailHabit.net (joint effort with Cathy Carlton) http://www.sharingspirit.net (several co-publishers on this one including Cathy Carlton) http://quikonnex.com/channel/page/ivwcc (Cathy and I manage this one for the IVWCC) 481 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Trina Schiller, TLC Promotions Web site: http://www.tlcpromotions.net 1. Trina, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I'd be happy to Rok. I am Trina Schiller, of TLC Promotions, publisher of The Trii-Zine Ezine. I am a stay-at-home mom, who just happens to be a business owner, both on and off line. Self improvement, writing, networking and RSS are my passions. Publishing the Trii-Zine, allows me to experience those passions all in one place. I bought my first computer in 1998, intending to find some way to generate an income from home. I spent my first two years on the Internet teaching myself how to use my computer, and searching for my niche. In 2000, I built my first web site, and a year later I published the first issue of the Trii-Zine. I provide a variety of services to my clients; from business consultations to web design, advertising to channel management. I've even done some scam busting. I really feel that learning is a process, and sharing what you know with others, is part of that process. 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? The easiest way for me to describe RSS is to compare it to a news ticker, or teletype machine. It's a system that spits out information as it is updated by its source. Using an XML application and a feed reader (aggregator), RSS files are created to transmit a data feed, containing headlines, complete articles, private messages, blogs, or just about any other content you can think of. 482 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Just as your browser reads HTML and translates it into a viewable, readable web page, the aggregator translates RSS data into something readable. However, unlike a web page, which must constantly be revisited, to check for updated content, an RSS feed is dynamic, providing the feed subscriber with automatically updated material each time the user opens the aggregator program. (Provided, of course, that the feed has been updated from its source.) RSS feeds can be used for just about anything you can think of. It can be used as a delivery vehicle for publishers, a training ground for anyone teaching any subject, it can be used for private messaging, and even for keeping in touch with family and friends. Because it is a media rich application, you can easily share your home movies with family members around the world. 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? I'd have to say that first on my list is the 100% opt-in guarantee. There is no way that any person can be unknowingly, or unwillingly subscribed to an RSS feed. Alternately, unsubscribing is just a matter of deleting the feed from your bookmarks, similar to deleting a channel from your television menu. Next on the list would have to be the fact that subscribers are guaranteed to get the material they've asked for. There are no ISPs or filters involved no accidental deletions. Readers do not have to search through their inboxes, trying to find what they subscribed to. In addition, as a publisher, I don't have to fudge my words, use special characters, or scan my content for filter trigger words. It also allows me the option of sharing audio and video files with readers, without having to send them to various other locations to download, or view them. Then, of course, there is the syndication factor. RSS feeds are syndicatable; therefore, my articles can be shared exponentially, much the same as Dear Abby makes it to breakfast tables all over the world. You just can't get that kind of exposure through any other medium. 483 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. But how has RSS worked for you? How do you use it and with what results? It provides my readers, on-demand access to my publications, with very little effort on their part. It has also allowed me to more easily and interactively train and relay information to my Melaleuca marketing team, and it provides me with a secure personal communications system, that my friends, family and business associates can count on to reach me, without getting lost in the shuffle. The feedback that I have received from others has been very positive. My subscriber rate is steadily rising, and the interaction between my readers and myself has been rising as well. The fact that my readers can post comments directly to the feed, I feel, has brought me closer to those I write for. 5. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? RSS has actually been around for quite awhile. However, it was reserved for the technically inclined, up until now. Now that blogging is becoming more popular, I see the de-geeking of the technology more rapidly unfolding, making it a more practical application for everyone. Once people get past the learning curve, as was necessary with email, I see no limit to its use. The technology itself is not restricted to web blogs, but has unlimited potential. 6. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? Not only do I think it could happen, but I think it should happen. For one thing, I think it is the only real practical solution to the spam issues that plague online publishing. It puts the subscriber back into the driver's seat, giving them control over the subscribe/ unsubscribe process, rather than relying on the publisher and/or and autoresponder script. I've seen many online publishers close up shop simply because of having to deal with all of the red tape involved with compliance to the new spam laws. For myself, I have found the transition to be liberating. I am able to devote more time to writing quality content, now that I do not have to worry about whether or not each issue will pass the filter test, or be misconstrued as spam, by a forgetful subscriber. 484 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? Email was a great medium, until spammers became superior in technology and methodology. But they [spammers] continue to be several steps ahead of those working to fight against them, and all of this warring over the inboxes of the world has really made email delivery impractical, even risky. Publishers online, just as their off line counterparts, rely on advertising to pay the bills. The inclusion of advertising in an email publication tags the email as commercial. This puts the publisher's livelihood at risk. The use of RSS removes all of the risk variables from the equation. It's free, fast, secure and guaranteed. Not only that, but it removes the dangers of viruses, trojans, worms and other nasties that can be impregnated into an email. 8. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Two words: Syndicated advertising. Syndication amounts to massive continual exposure. The more web sites syndicating a feed, the more exposure the contents of that feed will get. That is why I have started a new advertising service, utilizing RSS syndication. Not only will syndication put your feed all over the place, but it is an unobtrusive way to brand other web sites, with your name. It is like link trading on steroids. Not only are you putting your name on another's site, but you are putting your content there as well. The participating webmaster has his back scratched as well, by being able to offer his customers your content, without a lot of work. Another issue to take into consideration when thinking about RSS vs. Email marketing is this: There is every indication that companies like MSN, AOL and others are going to capitalize on the spam problem by following Habeas' lead, implementing bonded sender programs, requiring huge fees. This will most assuredly put small business owners out of the game. RSS will keep those small business owners off the bench and in the field. 485 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? The best example that I can offer you is an explanation of what I have done with RSS, outside of ezine publishing. That would be advertising syndication. My partners and I have formed a new advertising agency totally based on RSS. The reason being that, on top of the exposure that syndication itself provides, search engines love RSS feeds. Feeds rank well among search engines; therefore, using them as an advertising tool just makes sense. We offer a service where our clients write advertisements, in an article format, we post them to our feed, after optimizing them for the search engines, of course, and the feed is spidered by the search engines, allowing our clients articles to show up in the search results for the keywords they are based on. It has been my experience that pulling customers to you is more effective than pushing your ads in their face. The pull comes from being listed in search results. Plain and simple, people use search engines to find what they are looking for, so to attract new customers, you need to put yourself in those search results. RSS can do that, where classifieds and email advertising can't. 10. How about other relevant business uses? RSS can be used in many business applications, being that it is a one-to-many communications system. It can be used as an interactive training forum, and as a secure, in-house communications platform, for interdepartmental relays. It can be used to transmit files without handling bulky file attachments, simply by uploading the file(s) to your server, and posting a link to the feed, for download. The system is secure so that there is no need to worry over whether or not your transmission is going to be hijacked, somewhere along the way, infecting those you are communicating with. Feeds can even be privatized, requiring a password for access, to keep secure information that is not for public use. 486 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? RSS is best used for the one-to-many communication needs of companies, whereas instant messaging systems and email, although less secure, would be the one-to-one methods for communications. 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? The best way to raise awareness, among subscribers, is to write articles about the benefits of RSS. When you can educate the public about the benefits of anything, you will peak their interest. Human beings are curious by nature. Although most people are resistant to change, if you can show them that the benefits are valuable to them, they will try it, if for no other reason than to see whether or not you know what you're talking about. Besides that, no one wants to be left behind, when it comes to being, 'in the know.' 13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? It is already proven that subscribers can be converted to RSS. It is being done every day. All I have done to convert subscribers is to explain why I choose to publish this way, the email-freeness, of it and show them where to go to subscribe. (Most people find it to be a kick. The most common response I get, following subscription, is, 'Wow! This is cool.' RSS simplifies communication. I can communicate directly with real people, quickly and efficiently. People know that if they use my RSS based messaging system, that I will read what they've sent me. No more guess-work. Communication is what networking and marketing are all about. 487 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Why risk losing that important contact, sifting through your inbox? Here's an example of what I mean: Those that choose to communicate with me via email, know that they should never send mail to my own domain. I will never see it. The reason being, tlcpromotions.net receives well over 9,000 pieces of email every day. That's after filtering. It's 99.9% spam, what I refer to as, sex, drugs and bootleg software. My daily task is to empty the box, nothing more. AOL subscribers, that could not receive my ezine before, are now able to subscribe and read it; they can communicate with me, by knocking on my desktop, rather than shooting in the dark, trying to hit my inbox. I would have to ask, 'Why wouldn't people want to convert?' There's no down side to it. So you have to learn something new. Isn't that why we're on the net in the first place? 14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? That first part is the magic question. The same problem exists with email... How to you get large number of subscribers. It's really not a matter of how many; it's a matter of the quality of the subscriber. You can apply the same methods with RSS subscribers as has been done with email, you just need to be a little more creative and walk them through the process. A hundred regular and loyal readers are much more valuable than a thousand email recipients that you don't know from Adam. 15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? As I said earlier... syndication. By writing good, quality content, other webmasters will want to syndicate your content on their websites. Word of mouth is the best off-site promotion method around. 488 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 16. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? I can only answer that by using Quikonnex.com as an example. I do not know what other systems have in place, as far as stats tracking goes, but I can tell you what the folks at Quikonnex have put in place for their channel [feed] publishers. Their system is set up so that publishers have a fully operational control panel, such as a webmaster has for his/ her web site. Within this control panel you can track the hits to your channel pages, feed links, subscribe links, the whole ball of wax. It captures IP addresses, not email addresses. One of the reasons I use Quikonnex as my feed system is the fact that they have made it incredibly user friendly. I didn't have to go back to college to learn how to use it. That is something that is very important to me. Basically, if you can copy and paste, you can publish a channel feed. 17. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? You are most welcome Rok. Thank you, for inviting me to discuss this topic with you and your readers. I would like to invite anyone, having questions about RSS to give me a shout. I am always more than happy to share what I know with others, and if I don't know the answer to a question, I promise to find out. If anyone would like to send me a message, your best bet is to reach me through my personal messenger, RSS powered, of course. http://triizine.quikonnex.com or visit my zine http://www.ezines1.com/triizine 489 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Rick Bruner, Executive Summary Consulting Web site: http://www.executivesummary.com 1. Rick, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Could you please explain to our readers who you are and what you do? I am an Internet marketing analyst and consultant. I mainly do market research around the effectiveness of online advertising and marketing strategies. I run a company called Executive Summary Consulting, www.executivesummary.com. I also am an evangelist for business blogging -- that is blogging in a corporate context. I publish a weblog on that topic at www.businessblogconsulting.com . 2. What are your thoughts on using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? In general, it is excellent. Way back in 1996, I did PR for a company called Marimba that was at the center of what was then a hot new Internet trend that the media called "push technology." The idea was a way to distribute content down to people's desktops without requiring them to come visit your site all the time. It was all the rage for a while and publishers were very enthusiastic about the idea, but loads of different developers had competing, incompatible platforms for "push," so as a user you had to download one piece of software to subscribe to Site A and another for Site B and another for Site C and so on. So, several years later, RSS brings that idea back, but with the crucial difference that it is one standard protocol (actually, there are a handful of related protocols, including RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom and so on, but they're fairly compatible), so that people can read the syndicated content from lots of different sites with one single reader application. There are, in fact, dozens of different reader applications and web sites out there, but they all use the same protocols, so it's just a matter of which reader tool people like best, they all do more or less the same thing. 490 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Using an RSS reader (or, more accurately, an XML syndication reader, as that also describes related protocols like Atom, which is something like the next generation of RSS), a person can monitor updates to dozens or hundreds of sites in one interface without having to visit each site. XML syndication strips the content down to its essence, so you don't have to wait for all the elements of the site to load. It also lets the user control some variables, such as showing only the first few words of new articles or the articles in their entirety. Publishers, meanwhile, have similar controls on their end to control how syndicated articles are shown. They can, for example, provide just summaries and require people to click through to read the full article, or they can syndicate the entire article down the pipe, with or without graphics, etc., whatever they prefer, within some limitations. 3. But how would you compare RSS with e-mail? Many marketers are starting to believe that RSS just might replace e-mail as the preferred content delivery tool. What do you think? I disagree. Just like TV didn't replace radio (entirely) or the Web didn't replace newspapers, RSS isn't going to replace email. For one thing, according to research I just conducted in July 2004 for an email marketing services client called Quris, of the 2,543 respondents to our survey (Internet-using Americans age 18+), only 1.4% currently use RSS. Therefore, it would be ridiculous for marketers to abandon their email marketing programs in favor of RSS, given that virtually 100% of Internet users currently use email. That said, there is a good reason to also implement RSS. There is a grain of logic to the argument for using RSS instead of email, namely that permission marketing email is struggling against the onslaught of spam. In particular, it's having trouble getting through a lot of the anti-spam filters on networks and people's PCs. Also, people are more reticent about opting into email programs because of spam and general email overload. RSS, by contrast, is impossible to force on someone. It is purely an opt-in subscription model: the person copies a URL into their reader to subscribe. The marketer doesn't have any identifiable address for subscribers, so they can't force content on people, outside of that one syndication channel. If people tire of the subscription, they remove it from their reader application. There is no being removed from the marketer's database. The subscriber is in total control of the relationship. It's quite a simple protection from spam. 491 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Thus, I do think marketers would be wise to ALSO implement RSS subscriptions for their existing email programs, for the small but growing number of people who want to receive content that way. You should be able to do all the same customization, in fact, of RSS content that you can currently via email. But, as I say, the fallacy is to think that email should be abandoned in favor of RSS. If it ever comes to that, that would be years off. For now, running both programs in parallel makes the most sense. 4. So you do see a bright future for e-mail? Yes. I firmly believe that a confluence of factors are going to stem the tide of spam in the next year or so, a combination of legislation, better filtering technology, bonded sender and sender ID programs, and increasing dependence on best practices among legitimate email marketers. Spam is so bad and there is so much attention about it, it really can't get worse at this point, it can only get better. And all the forces noted above are working towards that goal. People are never going to give up email to communicate with other individuals, and for that reason, marketers still have a chance to get in on that platform. The onus is more than ever on marketers to embrace best practices, such as double-optin, frequency caps and keen attention to relevancy, because otherwise they will get stuck on blacklists, screened out by spam filters and otherwise experience diminishing returns. But for marketers that do it well, email continues to perform very well, despite spam, and its economics compared to traditional vehicles such as direct mail are incomparably more cost-effective. 5. How would you suggest marketers start using RSS today? Simply start. Doing it now means you're still an innovator. But it's so easy to implement, you can't be afraid of any technical excuses to not getting started immediately. It's already built into many publishing applications; you just need to turn it on. And if it's not built into the applications you're using, you should complain about that to the developers of that system and meanwhile ask your tech folks to look at how hard it would be to implement a custom solution. It's not rocket science; RSS stands for (these day) Really Simple Syndication. If your tech folks can't figure it out given that name, they should be embarrassed. 492 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Lots of companies have rolled out RSS so far, including mainstream content publishers like Rolling Stone, BBC, Reuters and National Public Radio, merchants such as Amazon, eBay and Woot, and various other marketers for press releases and other web content, such as Apple and even the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Health. At minimum publishing your press releases in RSS is a no-brainer. 493 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Derek Scruggs, FanPrints Web site: http://www.fanprints.com 1. Derek, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Thanks for the opportunity Rok. I have a few different irons in the fire. The thing that occupies most of my time right now is FanPrints – http://www.fanprints.com – which just launched last month. I am general manager, which encompasses marketing, operations and tech development. In addition to FanPrints, I also spend a fair amount of time wearing the general manager hat for Click Thru Stats – http://www.clickthrustats.com – a click-tracking ASP. Finally, I still do a little consulting via Escalan – http://www.escalan.com – but I've generally stopped taking on new projects to focus on FanPrints and Click Thru Stats. 2. First of all, could you perhaps give our readers an easy to understand definition of what RSS is and how they can use it? RSS is just a simple, standardized method of syndicating your content to other sites as well as pushing it to end users who choose to subscribe to it. The most common use of it right now is with blogs. Blogs have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, so I won't spend much time on that. However, you don't have to have a blog to make use of RSS. You can use it to drive site traffic via syndication, deliver press releases, or as a value-added service. For example, at Click Thru Stats we have experimented with delivering our reports via RSS and will do more of this in the future. This is very useful. Instead of logging into as web site view a report, your aggregator can periodically go fetch the report for you. 494 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? Syndication, open standards and ease of use. Syndication allows your content to be on a lot of sites as well as delivered to subscribers' desktops. Because RSS is an open standard, it's easy to find tools that support it and there are no worries about Microsoft or someone like that holding your content hostage. Ease of use in that there are none of the headaches associated with email – bounce handling, spam filtering, managing email addresses responsible. You just publish the content and let the aggregators come get it. 4. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? This is an important issue. There is something of a chicken & egg problem with RSS in that you need for a lot of end users to start using aggregators before its value can be fully assessed. This will be a slow process, but it's moving in the right direction. Yahoo has integrated RSS with the next version of My Yahoo, which will be in general release soon. The next big wins will be for AOL and Microsoft/MSN to integrate them. 5. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? For some things, yes. As more users gravitate to RSS, I think you'll see more and more companies posting a link on their home page to their RSS feed. But I don't think they'll necessarily call it “RSS feed.“ It will just say “click here to stay updated on our site/company/cause”. The little XML icon and the phrase “Syndicate this site”, which is what you see on most blogs, have got to go. They have no meaning to the average end user, and what you see when you click on them is even worse. Companies like FeedBurner are doing a lot to move us to a more intuitive model. See http://feeds.feedburner.com/FanprintsBlog for an example of what happens when you click on an RSS feed served by FeedBurner. Compare that to what you see at http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml. 495 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. How would you compare RSS and e-mail as content delivery tools? RSS is less of a hassle in terms of delivery headaches and is seamless with your web site. On the downside, it's not as good for metrics and it can be a bandwidth pig. Email is very good for measuring and testing, but the spam problem has made it a huge pain in the a** to the point that you can't really trust the metrics – “Did we really deliver 1,000,000 messages, or did 200,000 get swallowed by an errant spam filter?” 7. The key question most of our readers are asking is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS? Right now I mostly use it in the context of a blog. Blogs are a great tool for establishing an online “voice,” and RSS is the “transmitter” of that voice. Another very important byproduct of a successful blog is what I call search engine “mojo.” If you blog on a regular basis, Google starts to notice that and spiders your site more often. If you start linking to other sites and getting other sites to link to you via your blog, it's a win-win for all involved – more voice, more content and more fun. 8. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? FanPrints (http://www.FanPrints.com), one of my companies, develops personalized trading cards for sports fans. In order to penetrate the online sports market cheaply, we've focused on making connections with the many sports-oriented blogs. We link to them in our blogs and post comments on their blogs. (These are “real” comments, not spam.) It's still early days -- we just started the blog about three weeks ago -- but one of those fan sites is already our top referrer after Google AdWords, which of course costs more. 9. How about other relevant business uses? I've never used it myself, but NewsGator has a case study about using RSS with Visual SourceSafe, a source code management tool. See http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=615 NewsGator also features a plug-in that allows posted RSS items to automatically schedule things in your Outlook Calendar. See http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=706 This may seem kind of meaningless, but imagine having a feed for a series of seminars held around the company. A user could subscribe to be notified when one is happening in his area and automatically have it posted in his calendar. This is still down the road, but the future is being created now. 496 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? Limited for now, except as in the example above. We have not started our newsletter yet, but when we do we will mirror it from email to a blog (and thus to an RSS feed). We will do the same for press releases, and in all cases we'll submit our feeds to sites like Syndic8 to make sure the world knows we exist. 11. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? Frankly, I would not spend a lot of time on this with the possible of exception of content publishers. Everyone else, I would add a link labeled “What's this?” right next to the feed and link to a site that does a good job explaining RSS. One is CNET http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10088_7-5143656-1.html?tag=ne.rss. Another more home-grown looking explanation is at This is True http://www.thisistrue.com/rss.html Content publishers may want to go the extra mile like CNET has and put up their own explanation with links to aggregators from their site, which is what This is True did. 12. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? It's possible, I suppose, but I haven't seen any metrics that suggest it's worth the trouble. Until I see a case study showing a demonstrable ROI for doing this, I'll stick with the status quo. 497 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? I've never tried to “convert” RSS subscribers in any way. As a user, I've noticed that I subscribe to something for one of two reasons (or both): excellent content or a desire to somehow stay connected to a web site. For example, I often stumble across new products and technologies that I may want to use someday, though not right now. So I'll look for an RSS feed for that site to keep me in touch. As an example, I'm currently subscribed to the Pheedo feed (http://www.pheedo.com/) because I may use their services one day. I subscribed to the FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) feed for a while before trying out their service, which we use with FanPrints. So I guess the answer to your question is, “convert subscribers by having relevant, reasonably frequent content and make it easy for people to keep tabs on you by RSS.” 14. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? If you're publishing a blog, here are a few things you should do: Make sure you're pinging the various weblog search services. The easiest way to do this is to configure your blog to send pings to Ping-O-Matic http://pingomatic.com/ Submit your feed to Syndic8 – http://www.syndic8.com Post trackbacks to other blogs. Don't be a spammer, but if you have something relevant to say in response to someone else's post, copy the trackback URL from their post and paste it into the trackback field for your blog. Why? Because then you'll be linked from the original blog's site, increasing the chance that people will find you (and helping your Google mojo). From a search engine optimization perspective, try to use keywords relevant to your site, both the title and the body of the post 498 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. How can we measure the success of our RSS feed? With e-mail marketing we have open-rates and other statistics. How about with RSS? Last year Greg Reinacker of NewsGator and I experimented with developing tools for tracking success (see http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=641). We came up with a pretty good system, but we didn't evangelize it very well. NewsGator supports it, and I believe FeedDemon does too. But most aggregators don't, so it's not reliable. The good news is that some of the things that work with email, notably opentracking, usually work with RSS. The bad news is that most RSS publishing tools don't support them very well. FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) is a step in the right direction, though they still tend to have more of a publishing metaphor to their stats (e.g. focusing on “circulation” stats). This is how email marketing evolved, so that's not surprising. I once worked with an email service provider called Email Publishing (which eventually became part of DoubleClick). Their early revenue came from publishers. Marketers came along later. 16. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add? At one time I was very gung ho about RSS for marketing. I'm still optimistic about it, but I believe it can potentially go in a couple of different directions. One is a publishing and content focus, which is the status quo. Another possible direction is personalized marketing like with email. This is still rather speculative. In the worst case, RSS will continue to be a great content distribution mechanism and, for marketers, a source of clicks in the same way the email newsletters are. I'd love to see RSS evolve to support more direct marketing principles – personalization, segmentation, testing etc. – but that really depends on what the access gorillas such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN do. Perhaps Google will bring something new to the table with Gmail. So far, none of these guys is doing much to push it in the direct marketing direction, so who knows whether any of that will come to pass? But it wouldn't surprise me to see a startup come along and Change Everything. As computer pioneer Alan Kay said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” 499 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Christopher Knight, EmailUniverse.com Web site: http://emailuniverse.com 1. Chris, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Sure, my name is Christopher Knight and I'm an author, entrepreneur and business builder. My last company delivered over 8 billion permission based emails annually on behalf of over 1,000 business clients who hired us to manage over 50 million of their email list members. This past Summer I have been working on email deliverability research as well as ezine marketing for my next training manual/book product that will be out in October. I can be found on the web at: http://EmailUniverse.com/ 2. E-mail is currently facing many huge issues, which have become so big that many are now starting to debate that it might be nearing its end and being replaced by RSS as the preferred content delivery vehicle. What are your thoughts on this? Email is 35 years old as a basic technology and it's just getting started. People who say email is dead and RSS is the replacement are alarmists at best. It is no coincidence that those who say, »email is dead and RSS is the answer» are from businesses that are promoting RSS related services, tools or advertising. 500 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. Where do you see the future of RSS in the internet marketing and publishing world? RSS is just another incredible tool that gives power to the strength of the relationship between publishers and their members. In other words, it solves some of the problems that email currently is experiencing, but it's a much different tool. It's about PULL instead of PUSH. Email is PUSH whereas RSS is PULL. Every great publisher will embrace RSS over the coming year or two. No doubt about it. 4. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? I see RSS as more than just a publishing medium. It's a great tool for the delivery of critical information between partners, vendors, clients, employees, investors, and even the government. All stakeholders in every organization can use RSS beyond the basic »to publish information« model. Unlike email, RSS as a tool is a closed system. It's more like IM (Instant Messaging) than it is like email because email can be spoofed. I have yet to see RSS be spoofed. One great way to use email and RSS together is to use email to notify someone when your RSS feed address changes. ;-) 5. How could RSS work for e-zine publishing? As simple as offering an RSS feed for each newsletter you offer. I would never do RSS-only though as that would be silly. Best to offer both email and RSS as the majority of your members most likely don't know what »RSS« means yet. 501 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. Do you have any other advice on how to combine e-zine publishing with RSS? What in your mind are the best strategies and tactics? Do the same strategies and tactics as with e-mail delivery apply here as well? I'll offer one scary tip to keep in mind when implementing RSS: In a »pull« type tool, your readership builds over time and compounds. If you ever change your feed, you just lost all of your members. In email, if you change your list name or move from one ESP (Email Service Provider) to another, your list members move with you. 7. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Consider asking everyone who wants to subscribe to your RSS feed to give their email address to you in exchange for the RSS feed address -- so you can notify them of additional RSS feeds you might offer in the future or notify them if you change anything in the future (such as moving to a new domain). Only a small handful of publishers are testing this model right now. I am not yet, but considering it. Promoting an RSS feed is different than promoting a newsletter as you're able to open up to the blogosphere world to promote your RSS feed in all of the blog and RSS search engines, directories and other feed aggregators. 8. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? Excellent point. If your members are not early adopters or technology/Internet or computer related in niche, perhaps you are better off chilling for another year before turning off your members who are not ready to hear about RSS yet. For those who are ready to introduce their members to it, I think it's clearly an educational process where you educate your email list members to the benefits of RSS, how to get an RSS reader and what they can get from RSS that they won't get from the email newsletter (perhaps more frequent updates and more inside information that perhaps you don't publish to your ezine.) 502 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? You must offer RSS because email list members are abandoning their accounts. It use to be that people would UNSUBSCRIBE if they wanted to get off a list, but today – with spam being too loud of a problem, many are just shutting their accounts off and washing their hands of it. Every newsletter could have that little RSS button so those who are ready to adopt it can just sign up. You may even find members want both, RSS feed and your email newsletter subscription so they have an additional level of assurance of getting your quality content. 10. You offer e-mail e-zines as well as RSS feeds on your web site. How is this working for you? Awesome! Based on our stats, we have quite a few thousand members that have subscribed to our RSS feeds over the past half year. We've made a few mistakes along the way, but overall RSS rocks! I can't wait until we'll be able to deliver dynamic RSS feeds based on keyword search terms. Others are already doing this and we'll be adding this functionality soon. 11. Have you perhaps noticed any differences in responsiveness from your RSS readers and e-mail subscribers? We have not begun tracking order conversions between pitches made via email vs. an RSS feed pitch, but website analytics are in our near-term future. There is a spike every time a new post is sent out via RSS and if it's during the business day, there will be a 20-40 minute residual spike and then it tapers off or comes back again after lunch. If we post into the evening, we don't always see the same sustained spike in traffic – but this varies by site and focus. 503 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. Could you perhaps compare the number of your e-mail subscribers and the number of RSS readers for us? We have 150k+ permission-based email list members and I'd estimate about 2000 RSS readers. The number of RSS readers is a bit difficult to estimate as web aggregators such as Bloglines (one of the top referrers we see) allow many hundreds or thousands of visitors to see our content without having to be subscribed to our RSS feeds. Our audience is mostly email newsletter publishers, email marketers and about 20% are email technology folks. I'd estimate that 90% of our email list members are only faintly aware of what RSS is and could care less. That will change in 2005 as RSS gets more traction as an irresistible technology. ABOUT CHRISTOPHER M. KNIGHT: Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. You are invited to get your weekly dose of email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: [email protected] or visiting: http://EmailUniverse.com/ezine-tips/ 504 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Chad Williams, RSSads Web site: http://www.rssads.com 1. Chad, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I'm a technology consultant, and part-time web entrepreneur. My background is in enterprise software and services. 2. What made you start with the RSSads service? Primarily because of frustration with RSS feeds that don't include enough content because publishers make money from banner ads and (for now) want to use RSS to lure users to web pages. Hopefully by allowing publishers to insert ads directly into RSS feeds, more content will be made available via RSS. 3. Why should marketers and publishers start considering using RSS anyway? It’s a really convenient way for people to monitor news and information sources. I think that marketers and publishers will find they can expand their user base and make it easier to establish a direct connection with users via RSS. 4. But don't you think RSS penetration is still too low or marginal? It’s probably still an early-adopter technology. But my personal experience is that it’s useful enough that it will certainly thrive as a technology. Also, my personal belief is that it will do best in the 'business internet'. Maybe it’s not something that teenagers will be using right now. But for some niches it’s going to be really important. 505 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. What do you believe are the best ways companies (from individual entrepreneurs to large businesses) can use RSS today? It depends on the use case but generally speaking I think that RSS works best when users are monitoring large volumes of non-critical information. Also, using RSS along with blogs is the most common scenario – in this case, the most important issue is to maintain some semblance of a human voice, and to be honest. There are a lot of areas out there where it can be really useful. 6. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? For instance RSSJobs, which screen-scrapes various job sites, is a good use of RSS. Craigslist has RSS feeds, and works well for monitoring jobs, items for sale, etc. Large businesses might make use RSS for announcements to any audience of customers or business partners who are interested in that company's latest news. 7. Are there any other practical uses you can think of? Almost any dynamic, changing information updates can be published via RSS. 8. Let's now move further in to the topic of RSS advertising. How exactly does this work from the publisher's point of view? A publisher integrates technically so our system can insert ads into their feed(s). They then have a website they can log into to set prices and do ad approval. We're not launched yet so I can't get much more specific yet. 9. How about advertisers? Advertisers can purchase ads via our website similar to the way Google AdWords works, except that the focus is on purchasing ads in specific publishers' feeds. 10. How would you compare RSS advertising with other internet advertising models? It’s early but it appears to provide a way to reach niche audiences, and reach users who might have tuned out popup-ridden websites. 506 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 11. What are the key benefits of RSS advertising? User convenience is the most important benefit. Also, its early days so there's the ability to reach users who may have tuned out messages in email and other saturated channels. 12. What kind of metrics models are you going to use? What kind of data is going to be available to publishers and to marketing agencies / advertisers? We'll provide view tracking, and other common usage metrics. 13. How about publishing your own ads for your own products in your own RSS feed. Do you have any advice for our readers on how to best do this? I think this is the other major use for RSS advertising. The key is to publish information that people are really interested in, and not just boring press releases or something else that users will tune out. For instance, a high-tech manufacturer might provide an RSS feed for product liquidations that lets people monitor if a particular type of laptop is available below a certain price. 14. How about buying RSS ads from other RSS publishers? What should we be especially careful of? How should we approach these publishers? I think the key is to be honest with your messages and select publishers relevant to advertise with. RSS and blogs are closely linked, and blogs that use Google Adsense have conditioned users to be okay with advertising but to expect a less intrusive and more relevant ad message than the banner ad world typically delivers. 15. And finally, what kinds of RSS ads work best in your experience? Short text messages that tell users exactly what you're advertising. Skip the unintelligible buzzwords and be honest. 16. Would you like to add anything? Everyone should feel free to go to www.rssads.com and sign up with us today! 507 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 508 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Tig Tillinghast, MarketingVox Web site: http://www.marketingvox.com 1. Tig, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? Sure, I publish MarketingVOX News, an online marketing trade journal. 2. Could you please explain your business model to us? We're completely advertising supported. We have a small but highly-focused (probably the most highly-focused) audience of media buyers, planners, marketers, etc. These are tough people to reach. It turns out they get Ad Age and AdWeek in paper form, but it sits on their office floors unread. They go online to see what's new, and they do so briefly. We've gone into ad agencies and marketing departments and we see it happening first hand. This is where the trade press will wind up – not because companies like MarketingVOX drive it there, but because readers are driving it there. It's arguably a blog – at least it has blog origins. I'm not a big fan of the »blog« term, as I really see it as a fairly pedestrian form of website we've been seeing for about a decade. Our editorial is mostly reviews of stories published on other sites, but put into perspective by actual practitioners. We've found that most trade journalism is perpetrated by liberal arts graduates (nothing against them) that haven't had any experience in the relevant discipline. Anyway, we're beginning to plow some of our earnings into freelance editorial that is more investigative, or at least interesting. This allows us not just to aggregate and comment upon news from other pubs, but also to move the ball forward, so to speak. 3. Very interesting. How is producing your own research content working out for you? Are the returns what you were expecting them to be? This is so new that it is very hard to determine. I won't really know until winter what sort of general effect it will have had on traffic. Our first stories will come out in a couple weeks, and I hope to keep them coming out fortnightly. They generally take six weeks to put together, so it's not something other sites are doing. 509 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. Could you please give our readers, mostly marketers and entrepreneurs, advice on how to best start their own blog and why? I'm a blogger who's not particularly a fan of blogs. The self-referential »my opinions« blog bores me. I don't think these are read terribly well, either. These sorts of blogs are the ones that create the numbers imbalance between blogs and blog readers (about 2 million versus 4 million, according to some oldish figures). That said, I think blogs can be incredibly valuable when people have something to say regularly, especially when that's combined with specific expertise and/or experience. Corporate blogs can be useful despite their tendency to lack these qualities. Corporate information is so guarded often that the presence of a blog gives an information outlet that serves both the company and press, customers, employees, etc. 5. Do you perhaps have any advice for corporations and even small businesses to overcome this problem? The best thing a company can do is to appoint a trusted person the blogger and then effectively indemnify him/her for whatever they do. There must be a trust in one person's judgment; otherwise the blog smells like a fearful thing written by someone looking over his shoulder. As soon as there is a review process – or worse, the presence of a committee – it changes the dynamic of the blog and they might as well put up a series of press releases instead. One of the greatest benefits of a blog to a corporation is the voice it lends them, but they must let a voice come through cleanly. Companies are funny creatures, and they often find offense in very nonoffensive statements. A blogger given reign, and then told to use judgment »or else« will very often produce a blog not worth reading. I think part of the process of putting up a corporate blog should be adding a rider to the employee's contract absolving the blogger of anti-disparagement clauses, etc. It sounds extreme, but it's from these circumstances that the personality of the site comes through. 6. From my experience the key element in running a successful blog is great content. How should one write for his blog? Absolutely. Great content is a combination of a bunch of elements. All need to be present to some degree, but you can rely on one or two pretty heavily. You need newness, good writing, personality and voice, creativity, consistency (both in timing and content), hewing to a specific audience niche, willingness to pick up a phone and do some reportage and, finally, an openness to reader input. 510 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. But how can you get "real" news? This question is especially relevant for those that don't have experience in investigative journalism … I had an early journalism background, mostly daily paper stuff, so I know from reporting, and I've found that news comes to blogs rather quickly. Since blogs are partly communal, you wind up with lots of people tipping you off to interesting tidbits. Some of these things can be »blogged« right away as tiny stories – what most bloggers do. Many of them can be developed into full-blown stories, which few bloggers seem to want to do, either from fear of not knowing how or from lassitude. Some »low fruit« potential blog stories I see all the time: • Submitted leads • News reports written by non-experts that can be spun or set right by getting research or comment from audience experts. • Often a news site or trade rag will fail to ask the obvious question when doing a story. Blog writers are often the people best equipped to follow-up. • Interviews. Conventional news sources always seem to interview the celebrity folks in an industry or area, not the most interesting people. Note: don't fall into the email interview trap, where you give a list of questions and get a list of answers without follow-up. I can tell which interviews were conducted this way because the answers are highly-self serving and often fail to cover the most interesting aspects of the questions. When you have a phone conversation, or at least a series of email follow-ups, the interviewees sense an interactive relationship in which they need to be more open. 8. Can you give any advice on "how often to post"? I think a blogs traffic has a lot to do with frequency of posting. A daily blog will get many times more traffic than one that posts every other day. That said, if you have something to say only every other day, consider getting help from a colleague, or better still just publish every other day. 511 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. By saying a "daily blog" do you think that one post per day is enough or would you recommend more? How much? I'm asking because publishers need a way to determine how much to invest and what to expect in return? I suppose it depends on the content type. Most blogs are opinion blogs, and writing more than one entry a day can stress the production of most thinkers. News blogs, like MarketingVOX could never get away with just a post a day, but the creative requirements are much lower per post. The most productive blogger I know is the man behind PaidContent.org. I would have sworn it was the product of four or five posting bloggers, but Rafat Ali does it all by himself. A good rule of thumb is to go by audience expectations. If the blog is a replacement for a trade rag, you'll need to have a minimum of three and probably more like ten posts per day, very likely requiring more than one person. 10. Once we do start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business? Blog-generated business must be reader driven. Blogs that flog tend to be tedious. Concentrate on the content. If you must make a pitch, do it in an adjacent ad, which will lend more credibility to the editorial content. 11. You're also publishing a daily e-mail newsletter. How does that work in combination with the blog? And more importantly, how does that work in combination with RSS? Great question. We're still learning about this. The newsletter is just another means, like the RSS feed, for folks to access the content. It's also another means for our advertisers to access the audience. Interestingly, some advertisers are more interested in one form or the other. Also interestingly, these advertisers tend to do much better in one form over the other. Most interestingly, this format in which they do best often isn't the one they insist they buy. We're working on lining them up correctly. It's tough to predict. Product categories sometimes are indicative, but it also is sometimes a product of their creative. 512 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 12. Could you perhaps give us some specifics? As for RSS, this is used mostly as a traffic generator to the site, rather than as an ad vehicle itself. To give some scope, we have about ten times the number of people coming to the site as come to the RSS feed (We use the very nice, and free, Feedburner service to account for this). We may introduce ads into that content, but frankly, the economies aren't that great yet. When we go up another order of magnitude, it'll probably be worth it. 13. Could you perhaps share some hard data with us on how many people subscribe to the e-mail notification service and how many use the RSS feed? Sure, we have about 14,000 unique site visitors in a given week. About 600-700 RSS readers in a given 24-hour period. Emails go out to more than 6,000 folks each business day. It's an intensely-read email. We get about 60 percent + open rates after an hour or two of sending it. I get counts of about a thousand opens before mine even arrives into my account. It's as though people are hanging onto their return keys waiting for the silly thing to show up. Sometimes I wonder for the mental health of our audience. They should get out more. If you've been in the agency business, you'd know what I mean. 14. Have you noticed any differences in the success of both delivery vehicles? For instance, are e-mail subscribers more "active" and "responsive" than RSS readers? It's very hard for me to know what the heck the RSS folks are doing. Feedburner tells us how many of them are clicking on this article or that. We've been changing the format of our feed almost weekly, trying to tweak things. Once we get it right, we'll measure more robustly. I have a gut feeling that RSS people are info junkies that put our feed next to 50 others, meaning that they'll sometimes dive down into interesting content, but that they're going to be much less »sticky.« 513 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. An interesting comment. I admit to doing the same. So you are actually feeling that e-mail readers are more "valuable" in terms of readership and responsiveness? Maybe. I can't claim to know just yet. That theory might be countered by the frequency with which RSS people come. Once you're part of their feed, they might look over your headlines several times a day. It might be low impact, but it's high frequency. Once they get to your site, I do suspect that they're not as valuable as the email or – more still – the web site visitors, at least in terms of stickiness. Will be interesting to measure. 16. How in your experience can RSS and e-mail be both used to work together? I haven't had time to try linking these rascals. Frankly, when I see stories about how RSS is going to replace email for marketing, newsletters, etc., I wonder what these writers are looking at. RSS is the creative equivalent of text messaging. Fax machines give better content. Don't get me wrong. I use RSS, but for a highly-specialized purpose: skimming through hundreds or thousands of headlines extremely quickly. I think that's how most everyone uses it. If RSS is the answer to spam-laden email, I'll take email. The vast majority of people don't want another application to futz with for internet viewing. When the web came along with the browser, FTP programs largely went away as a consumer application. I don't think RSS is an email killer, or even much of a complementer. 17. How about when rich media will be added to RSS (if that happens)? And when it becomes more integrated in to applications such as MS Outlook? Those are two elements that definitely make RSS much more attractive. RSS isn't even an early adopter technology, it's an early, early adopter technology. I wish I could remember off hand the most recent stats I saw, but it's a terribly small percentage of web users employing feeds. It's for tech weenie or media weenies right now. Those one of those two changes you suggest may be coming down the pike could change that in terms of adoption. The imminent introduction of better distribution - Safari, in a few months for browsers and in email readers Outlook will definitely increase the universe. But the richer media experiences don't mesh well with the RSS killer app. 514 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Here is my beef with RSS in terms of its potential to replace email: • In its current mostly-text format, it serves the purpose of allowing people to skim vast amounts of content quickly. My suspicion is that this is the killer app for RSS. • As a result, some (few new) people make collections of relevant feeds so that they can do this efficiently. Publishers like me put their rich web content into feed format so as to gain additional distribution, or even sell RSS ads. • If the feeds become richer, they impede the efficient review of that vast collection of content. If they become very rich, they effectively become web pages, and we already have people using browsers for that. • I can see browsers and email programs stealing some of the features of RSS as well. For instance, you can have lists of bookmarks that get downloaded in the backgrounds so that a user can click quickly through them and have new content marked up. Browsers have attempted this before (IE used to have better features for this years ago), but they never went the full distance. • Email newsletter publishers have great flexibility, tracking ability, richness capabilities that don't infringe on the raison d'etre of the containing application, and – most importantly of all – predictability of circulation. Deliverability concerns in the email space will eventually be taken care of – a topic for another day. Put that against the potential for RSS to gain these qualities and also gain a similar audience universe, and it looks improbable to me. That said, I'm often wrong, so we're trying to figure out the RSS model simultaneously. 18. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog? Create great content. Humor helps immensely. Funny stories get passed around. I've used AdSense, AdWords, and their ilk from search engines other than Google. Results weren't spectacular. We had some humorous press releases that got passed around, which helped us get started. 19. Could you perhaps give us examples of these press releases? I'm reluctant to because our branding has evolved from a highly informal blog to a sometimes funny trade magazine. We are striving to become more interesting less by our informality and more through our expertise, daring and competence. This isn't something we'd put out now that we've grown up. But here's an example: 515 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2003/09/08/we_screwed_the_pooch _up2speed_changes_name_to_marketingwonk/index.php One thing I'm going to be trying shortly is sending out releases on specific stories we're doing. For instance, I have a reporter in Beijing and one states side doing a story on the blockage of »inappropriate« political content in China on U.S. internet company sites. No one's really looked into the complicity U.S. media firms have with Chinese censorship. That'll get ballyhooed about as something for other news outlets to cover. Our marketing strategy is largely to spend money on great freelancers working on terribly interesting stories (if obliquely related to online marketing), and let that attract the appropriate attention. 20. What are you looking for in a freelancer? First, the basic identity of someone who can be a hungry reporter – digging for details others might not even think to seek. This person needs to know the material, which is often online advertising, but sometimes something completely different. The two folks doing the China story wouldn't know an online ad if it sat down next to them in tourist class. But they know Chinese officials and dissidents. And, somewhat importantly, Chinese. Creativity is necessary. We'll come up with a few great story ideas, but sometimes the original assumptions won't pan out. That will often kill the story completely, but a great reporter will see where there IS an angle and bounce off in that direction, often bringing back something much better than we originally intended. For any given story, there will be a bunch of options for freelancers, and I winnow them down based on their writing. Reporters that are good enough writers and confident enough to be able to be humorous will often get the nod. Being funny requires more effort and skill than people often assume. Even for pieces that are decidedly unfunny, the author capable of being so will give me much better copy. 516 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 21. And for the last question, how do you measure the success of your blog and the success of your different content delivery vehicles? We rely on profit and loss statements to a great extent. That said, some loss leaders are appropriate. RSS is a good example of something that doesn't drive any revenue, but probably drives traffic to other sources of revenue. If it isn't making money, then the audience doesn't much care for the content, and/or the advertisers don't much care for the audience. There is a place for blogs that garner audiences that advertisers don't care about – and these blogs shouldn't be judged, obviously, on profits. This just isn't one of those blogs. 517 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Alain Jourdier, MarketingDriven Web site: http://marketingdriven.blogspot.com 1. Alain, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I am a marketing strategist and business communicator. I primarily work in healthcare and with CEOs to get them to better understand and think through their marketing and business development strategies and activities. Invariably, I end being a coach and an advocate for the CEOs as we work together. I believe to be effective at what I do, I must understand the very soul of a company and its leaders. I search for an intimate relationship that allows me to be honest, direct and supportive. My philosophy is that marketing and business development are activities that are far more complex than is generally understood, which means that it's not about marcom, it's about the total essence of the business from the person who sweeps the floor to the CEO and the board of directors. It's a mindset that is thoughtful about all details in the delivery of the promise that is the brand. What I do is ask as many questions as I can about all aspects of the business as if I don't know anything and you have to explain it to me. What I do is ask the right questions and simply listen. What I do is look for the creative and innovative fiber that must be in every organization in order to survive and thrive. I believe that often the knowledge that my clients are looking for is locked within the organization and it's my job to become the archaeologist that digs them out and makes sense of them. That's why my tagline is Every Act Is A Marketing Act...Everyone Is A Marketer. 518 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. How do you see the impact of RSS and blogging on the business and even more importantly marketing world? Can these two make a huge difference? And if they can, what kind of difference? What will be different? How should we start preparing for that right now? RSS has been my savior in tracking the blogs that most matter to me. I believe that the value for business has yet to be discovered. The pace of information is so brutal that it is nearly impossible to keep up. With RSS, the ability to manage information is much more controlled so that in the course of a busy day, you're able to be more discerning about the barrage of information you get and need. I eventually see RSS being the knight in shining armor in our fight against spam as more and more people go to an RSS format to communicate directly with opt-in people. With RSS, the decision making is in the hands of the recipient, not the other way around. That's a critical distinction and one marketers need to focus on. Creating a world of customers and potential customers who feel they have control in how you communicate to them will have a freeing effect that will build the kind of receptive relationship all marketers seek. We should start preparing for this by supporting those who are diligently working on making RSS more powerful and sophisticated. We should be looking at how we can integrate this technology into our marketing mix. When the Internet became a reality, we marketers had to go from understanding print and electronic marketing channels, such as television, to rearranging our brains to think differently. As we all know click throughs and banner ads and other online concepts became extinct and the real work of improving this channel started. When you think of RSS, you're really talking about a creative approach to have that all important dialogue with people who want to hear from you. 3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Where do you see the future of RSS? I think RSS is in its infancy, just like blogs. I'm not sure we really know how far this can go up the evolutionary scale. Somewhere in some place we've probably never heard of, someone has a better idea for making it better and more useful. I think all technology has an exponential potential, it all depends on its intrinsic value in the course of each person's life. If it helps me manage my busy world, then it's a part of my day. As blogs become important you're going to see people adopt RSS. 519 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? I believe that currently the best use of RSS is to bring pertinent information in a systematic way to our best customers. It's a way to develop a clean, well qualified list of people who are genuinely interested in what you offer. As we all know, a clean prospect list heightens the probability of success. For example, I get my daily email from Healthorbit.ca which aggregates new health related news and product development and research findings. Many top companies like Bayer, Medtronic, et al. use this channel to get the word out and get people to link up to them. It's an excellent example of how to simplify my life so that I can keep up. 5. How about for blogging? What companies and individuals should blog, why and how? Excellent question! Anyone, or company, who isn't blogging is missing a terrific opportunity to relate to customers and potential customers in a much more intimate way. Here's why: No matter how hard you work at making your website topical and pertinent, it's still a website often filled with corporate speak. You don't really »see« the company or its »soul«, yet with a blog you can actually have a dialogue, you can discuss issues that show how you think, how you resolve problems, how you position yourself and your clients. It's about having a face-to-face meeting with the world. How could you not want that? I find that my blog is more important to me than my website so I am in the process of streamlining my website and directing people to my weblog as a way to really stand out as a professional. I see it as a way to help prospective customers and existing customers make a decision about me and what I offer. It's my differentiation strategy. I am getting more business from my weblog because people have a way to discerning what I stand for and how I can help them by seeing what interests me and how I feel about them. 6. What would you advise a small internet business, considering using RSS and blogs? Like Nike said for all those years, Just Do It! Build that unique community of likeminded people who want to hear from you. It's the best way to create relationships that are meaningful to the bottom line as well as to what you are truly passionate about. Why else are you in business? 520 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. What do you believe are the best ways of promoting a blog and the best ways of getting people to "subscribe" to an RSS feed? Promoting a blog and RSS feed probably needs to start the old-fashioned way, with every piece of communication you send out whether on paper or online. You need to create buzz within your own world and then extend to everyone....but first you need to have something that is well thought out, purposeful...and make it fun, life is way too short. 8. Is there anything else you would like to add? Finally, I encourage people to be fanatical about what they do and make sure the world knows about it. Not in the extreme sense, but in a learning and teaching way. Most of what marketers do is educate about what marketing is and how it can be used for a particular company's business process. To be passionate is to be engaged in life. Thanks for the opportunity to share. 521 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Heiko Hebig, Six Apart Web site: http://www.hebig.com 1. Heiko, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I am a 31-year-old German living in Hamburg and heading up Six Apart's German operations. So I am basically busy promoting TypePad and Movable Type and educating Germans about the benefits of weblogs. 2. What in your experience are the greatest benefits of using RSS as a content delivery vehicle? First of all, by saying RSS, I really mean any existing syndication format. RSS or Atom, you will not see me engage in religious war over standards. What they both have in common is that they enable syndication, and that is what matters to the users. I, the writer, can offer my news to the world in an easy-to-read format and I, the consumer, can subscribe to thousands of feeds from around the globe and actually manage, track, and read them in newsreaders and similar applications. 3. There's been much talk in some circles lately about RSS replacing email as a content delivery tool. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it could happen and why? About one year ago, I put some thought into a Syndicated Communication Client [1], inspired by a longer conversation I had with Ethan Diamond, Phil Wolff and Steve Gillmor. It's nothing more than a rough sketch of how to unify the user experience of jointly consuming email and news feeds. [1] http://www.hebig.com/syndicated_communication/ 522 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The issue at stake is rather complex though. First of all, why should we replace email? Many claim that email is broken and then complain about the amount of spam piling up in their inboxes. The counter argument is that if too much spam gets through to your inbox, you just don't know how to configure and use spam filters. It's much like asking: How much do I need to know about how an engine works in order to drive a car? From an end-user’s perspective, he or she should not have to worry about configuring spam filters. Yes, certainly the end-user needs to be educated about spam, but that's about it. Everything else should be handled by ISPs, Emailproviders, or similar services – unless you are an experienced user and know what you are doing. So provided you are in control of the spam problem, email actually works just fine. However, seeing RSS-Mail as a feed that is jointly updated by whoever is on the distribution list, it is of course much less prone to spam. Spam just can't get into your way if only a limited amount of entities know – or are able to guess – your address. So if any two-way communication generates a random RSS file (which ideally is encrypted or at least auto-password protected), and this conversation is managed and tracked by an RSS-Mail-Client, we would maybe have a pretty good conversation mechanism in place. How does it scale? How about storage? Quite frankly, I don't know. Currently, my email spam filters work just fine. 4. The key question is what are the best practical marketing uses of RSS, especially in terms of e-commerce and community portals? I think and hope that RSS will replace many if not most email newsletters. »Subscribe to our Newsletter« should be replaced by »Subscribe to our product (or services) feed«. If your customers matter to you, you should at least give them an option between both formats. In the end I certainly hope that RSS wins over email newsletters. Now some marketers might argue that email is more disruptive than an RSS feed and they bet their money on this surprising moment of me discovering their irrelevant message in my inbox. Well, sorry, but this bet will be lost. 523 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? Any marketers interested in taking this further should take a look at how C|Net is using RSS feeds, or examine the wide variety of press feeds are available from Nokia's web site. That should get their minds going. Now abstract that functionality to your specific business area, be creative, and test your ideas. Make sure you understand how people use newsreaders. Make sure information is well structured and can be filtered. 6. How about other relevant business uses? I think if you sit back for five minutes and put your mind to the basics of news syndication, you will start to see many practical uses that might enhance or change the way you do business today. There are many, many options, and we are only at an early stage. RSS does not have to be generated or read by human beings. What if I could track my FedEx shipment via a personalized RSS feed? What will be different? Is that an advantage? If yes, to whom? 7. But how can we integrate RSS with our other internet communications, especially e-mail? If you look at newsreaders like Newsgator that plug seamlessly into email clients like Outlook, I think we have come a long way already. Oddpost also does a great job in trying to unify the user experience of RSS and email and I think they will come up with great ideas for the next generation Yahoo! Mail service now that the team has been acquired by Yahoo! Inc. At the end of the day, we have to ask: What types of information is distributed and consumed via RSS, when is that information needed, who needs access to that information and when? And while the approach might sound simple, the answer to your question certainly isn't. 8. Do you perhaps also have some advice on the subject of news syndication? How can publishers profit from this and how can they best implement it? First of all, publishers need to have a clear strategy in place. Simply jumping on a train by putting up an XML button on a web page is no benefit to anyone. If all of your readers love your content and the way you distribute it, and your format of choice is not RSS, well, that's ok. 524 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Looking around in Germany, publishers seem to be more concerned about ePaper and locking up their content behind registration bars than letting news flow via syndication. And quite honestly, I don't have a business case hidden in my pocket that outlines how to profit from well-implemented news syndication. But I also know that hardly anyone is signing up for online news in ePaper format. You have to have a goal. Increase reach, build up audience, target a specific segment, spread a specific message or create a certain image. RSS may help you in the process. 9. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? I had to teach my parents how to use a web browser and the email client; I will be happy to teach them how to read RSS files in a newsreader. It's not more complicated than writing an email. It's just less common. Publishers don't seem to have a problem offering PDF files for download. Now consuming a PDF file is complicated. Users have to download Adobe Acrobat Reader and install it. Then they click on the PDF file and if they are lucky, the PDF file loads inside their web browser, completely changing the UI and user experience of the browser. Once you have a proper newsreader installed, subscribing to RSS feeds is really just a matter or right-clicking an XML button. It's not more complicated than reading a PDF file. 10. Can we now move to the subject of blogs? How has your blog helped you increase your business? What is your strategy? While my blog has certainly helped me increase my personal network of friends and business partners that has never been the aim of my postings. The weblog evolved from emails I sent out to a small group of friends, colleagues and associates on a more or less frequent basis. Instead of spamming their inboxes with yet another interesting link, I decided that a weblog would be a better distribution mechanism, causing less noise, and allowing push through RSS feeds. 525 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS I continue to post stuff that I like. Things I find interesting. Issues I find worth discussing. Sometimes, my audience reacts. Sometimes my audience remains silent. Did I mention I got my job through my weblog? 11. How would you suggest other marketers start with their own blogs? How should they do it? How can they best use their blog for marketing purposes? Be honest. Be yourself. If you are an expert, share knowledge. Share experience. Be passionate. Have an opinion. Don't be afraid. And keep on going. Don't be discouraged if, after six weeks, the world has not taken notice yet. Become an active member of a community. Get involved. Share your thoughts. Provide a second opinion. But also: set your own rules. Make yourself a home. Be friendly to your neighbors. And if you have a barking dog, but up a warning sign. 12. Could you also give us some advice on how to best promote the blog? What strategies and tactics do you use? Don't focus on how to get the next referring link from your favorite blogger. Don't focus on traffic or unique readers. Provide a consistent flow of useful information and candid opinion. Don't force it. I said it above: be yourself. John Moore, Brand Autopsy Web site: http://www.brandautopsy.com 1. Could you start by introducing yourself and what you do…? I’m John Moore, former director of national marketing for Whole Foods Market and former corporate marketer and field marketer for Starbucks Coffee. Currently, I’m involved with setting up the Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice which will diagnose a company’s marketing problem (i.e. disease) and then prescribe a marketing prosperity program (i.e. remedy/treatment). 526 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. How did you do it (the Brand Autopsy blog) and what can we learn from your example? With Paul Williams, my co-blogger and Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice partner, we dissect … I mean … blog about all things marketing and branding related. Basically, the Brand Autopsy blog is a forum for Paul and me to share our thoughts, learnings, and passion for marketing. We’ve always had opinions on current marketing goings-on and with the blog, we now have the opportunity to share our thoughts/opinions to a broader audience beyond our marketing peers at work and beyond our circle of “offline” friends. Our blogging process is rather simple – when we run across something that interests our marketing/branding minds … be it from an article, a television/radio commercial, a press release, a mention on another blog, or something from our current work projects … we blog about it. Now, we do try to flavor our posts with a little humor and some personality to keep things lively. While we take our jobs as marketers seriously, we take ourselves lightly. 3. You do not offer any content updates by e-mail. Why is that? We currently do not have a Brand Autopsy Email Newsletter to give updates but that doesn’t mean we will not have one. The Brand Autopsy blog is an “extracurricular” activity for us and the free time we have to spend on the blog is somewhat limited. So, we choose to focus our limited time on posting new blogs and not on managing an email newsletter. 4. So the reason for not doing e-mail is basically the lack of time, joined with the ease of publishing via RSS, and not that you would believe that e-mail is an inadequate content delivery vehicle? Lack of time and usability/accessibility of RSS makes doing an email newsletter less important to us. Spam is another deterrent to us doing an email newsletter. Trying to dodge all the spam filters on the market is becoming a job in itself for many companies maintaining an email newsletter. Plus at this time, Brand Autopsy does not need to generate a database of users so collecting email addresses is not an importance to keep our blog site going. And … we frankly like the fact that blogs and RSS feeds allow readers to pull information from us rather than us pushing information to them. 527 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Is RSS the best medium for content delivery right now? One of the reasons we do not have the impetus to do a Brand Autopsy Email Newsletter is because of increasing usage of RSS feeds. RSS is one of the best and easiest methods for those online to pull relevant information. The usability and accessibility of RSS feeds has come a long way in a short time. Through RSS feeds I am able to better and more efficiently manage not only my blog subscriptions but also manage my access to traditional news sources like the New York Times. 6. Advice for other marketers/entrepreneurs on starting their own blog. Starting a blog is easy … there are countless blogging applications on the market, some free and some for a low monthly fee. Answering why one should they start their own blog is a little more difficult. If as a marketer/entrepreneur you believe in learning through sharing, then starting and maintaining an active blog is a great way to learn through sharing. I have become a better, smarter, and more engaged marketer since I started blogging. Also, I encourage anyone who has a passion for anything, to share that passion with others. And blogging makes it easy to share your passions broadly with others around the world. If you have access to the internet, are passionate, can type, and have some initiative … you can (and should) blog. It is that easy. 7. Advice for larger companies/brands starting their own blog… First advice for companies staring their own blog is you need to listen. Second advice is to be prepared to implement some of the thoughts/ideas you hear from listening to customers. A blog is a conversation between a company and its “user” community. If a company’s culture is one that values conversing with customers, then they should start their own blog. Another piece of advice is to assign day-to-day responsibility to someone who has a broad understanding of your business, your customers, and is someone who embodies the culture/values of your company. I would advise against having some from your internal or external Public Relations department manage the blog because they may be too accustomed to regurgitating company sound-bites and not be able to carry on an authentic, real, and spontaneous conversation. 528 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Finally, be prepared to not direct the conversation on the blog. This is probably the greatest hindrance to companies/brands wanting to start their blog as they are not prepared to give up control. Blogs are not the traditional top-down and highly crafted marketing communication tool that advertising is. Instead, blogs facilitate bottom-up conversations from customers to companies that is more organic and free-flowing in nature. For many companies, giving up control and letting grassroots communication from customers direct the conversation is frightening. 8. But how can companies overcome this problem? As a consultant, how would you approach the solution? It is more a matter of company culture than anything else. Some company cultures are extremely protective about their so-called “proprietary and confidential” information while other company cultures promote being as transparent as possible. I’m a huge proponent of transparency and especially transparency in marketing. Given the access the public has to information, both “private” and public”, I believe a company should be forthright in disclosing as much information as possible because if they don’t disclose it … someone else will. As a consultant, I recommend that companies operating their own blogs foster a culture of listening and responding to the comments and conversation generated from the blog. By listening and responding to customers on the blog, it will show company leadership the benefits of treating communicating to customers as a twoway street and not a one-way street. Then again … transparency is new territory for businesses of all sectors. Some cultures will embrace transparency while others will not. I hope customers choose to do business with companies that embrace transparency and then … and only then will the non-transparent companies become more transparent. 9. Real-world examples Unfortunately, I have yet to run across a corporate blog where the dialogue is truly authentic. I’m sure there are some out there but I haven’t found one yet. Why is that? I think it’s because most companies believe the viral nature of the internet makes it too risky to share authentic and spontaneous company communication. I also think many companies fear over-sharing as in sharing proprietary and confidential information in a public setting. I also believe most companies do not value the listening conversations to be had from having a corporate blog. 529 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 10. So one of the problems is the fact that they don't want to share information. What are your thoughts on this? In the 21st century, is it better to withhold your knowledge or freely share it with the world? As mentioned above … due to technology, access to information is abundant and because of that access, I believe a company should be forthright in disclosing as much information as possible. If they don’t disclose information… someone else will. 11. So how can a blog be a branding tool? How can it enhance the brand? I believe marketing is the articulation of the brand. Marketing should tell the story of why a company or product is meaningfully unique to a consumer. Anywhere a message exists about a company or product exists, marketing exists. Marketing happens at every customer touch-point. And blogs are another customer touchpoint in a marketer’s arsenal. However, the major differences between blogs and other marketing touch-points like radio/television commercials, print ads, in-store signage, and newspaper stories are … blogs have a built-in communication feedback system, blogs are timely, and blogs are personal. What brand wouldn’t want to have more meaningful, timelier, and more personal connections with their customers? Blogs can allow a brand to do all that and much more with customers. 12. Could you recommend some blogging strategies? There seems to be only one meaningful blogging strategy … blog about what you’re passionate about. This works for large companies, small companies, nonprofits, and individuals. Blogs work best when they are used to share passions. If a large company or brand is passionate about aerospace technology … blog about aerospace technology. If a small company is passionate about changing the way the world eats … then blog about changing the way the world eats. If a non-profit is passionate about feeding the homeless … blog about feeding the homeless. If a person is passionate about yo-yos … blog about yo-yos. Also, focus your corporate weblog on telling the story of your company and its products and services and not on selling your company’s products or services. 530 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. Should companies encourage their employees to publish their own blogs? What kind of rules should apply to this? Should they perhaps even control these blogs for content issues? If a company’s culture is cool with its employees carrying on candid conversations with customers then they should encourage employees to blog. If a company is not comfortable with this then they shouldn’t encourage employees to blog. The best rules I’ve seen for corporate blogs were written by Robert Scoble (Microsoft uber-blogger). (Go to www.changethis.com for his Corporate Weblog Manifesto.) 14. I gather it's basically a comfort-zone issue? But what would you suggest and why? Could employee blog communications enhance the brand and how? Employee blogs can help to enhance a brand by personalizing the brand. Blogs have the power to humanize a company by putting a face, a voice, and a personality to a brand. At some point in time, growth companies can grow so big they become “bad.” Microsoft’s bigness and dominance equates to being an evil empire in some people’s eyes. However, through Robert Scoble’s blog and John Porcaro’s blog, Microsoft doesn’t seem so big and so bad. Robert and John are Microsoft employees who, through blogging, personalize their work experience at Microsoft. Both Robert and John put an informative voice, a friendly face, and a nice personality to a brand that can be perceived as being big, bad, and evil. Wal-Mart is currently trying to reverse their image of being bad because they are so big. What if Wal-Mart encouraged its employees to put an informative voice, a friendly face, and a nice personality to the Wal-Mart brand by maintaining weblogs? Maybe Wal-Mart wouldn’t seem so big, so bad, and so evil. Same goes for Starbucks. 531 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 15. Once you start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business? I wouldn’t measure the success of a corporate weblog by whether or not it increases sales or generates business. Instead, I would measure the success by the quality of conversation that occurs on the blog and by whether or not the corporate reputation of the company has been enhanced. 16. Could you give us advice in terms of blog content? Be truthful. Be passionate. Be personal Be timely. Be responsive. Be forthcoming. 17. What are the best ways to promote a blog? For corporate weblogs … feature the blog prominently on the homepage of your website and let the viral nature of the web take over. If you build it and make it remarkable … the online world will come. For personal weblogs … be active in posting comments on other like-minded blogs. The blogging community is very welcoming to new voices and by posting on other blogs you tap into a virtuous networking cycle that will drive visits to your blog. 532 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Laura Ries, Ries & Ries Web site: http://www.ries.com 1. Laura, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? My name is Laura Ries and with my partner and father Al Ries we run the marketing strategy firm Ries & Ries based in Atlanta, Georgia. I am co-author of four books including: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR and the recently released The Origin of Brands. 2. The first question comes quite natural for this e-book: why don't you do e-mail marketing & publishing, but you do RSS? That's easy, I hate email. I think today almost everybody out there hates email. The wonderful aspect that the internet has to offer is it interactivity. Email is more like advertising, a one-way not necessarily usually wanted form of communication. After being bombarded with daily SPAM I felt, email was not the way to communicate with our fans. I do keep an email list, but only send out an email once or twice a year when a new book or something big happens. 3. How long have you been publishing your blog? And we're especially interested in what kind of results you are achieving with it? Is it having a positive impact on your business? July 1, 2004 was the day I discovered blogging. I had been reading a lot about blogs and after finally visiting some; I realized what a phenomenal tool there were. I knew immediately bloging was something we needed to be doing. I put up my own blog that day at www.originofbrands.com (http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/) The blog is a great success. A couple of thousand people are reading it every week already after only being less than three months. 533 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Public relations is the way brands are built. And it is my job to build the Laura Ries brand. Writing a blog is one tool I am using to do that. I also do interviews with magazines, newspapers. I have appeared on television as a branding expert on CNN, Fox News, CNBC and other stations. I travel around the world making speeches. You bet it is working. Our brand name is stronger than ever. 4. Could you please give our readers, mostly marketers and entrepreneurs, advice on how to best start their own blog and why? First you need to build a brand. When you have a brand that stands for something it will be easy to start your blog. The brand will have a specific point of view that you can then write about on your blog. The most important thing about blogging and writing in general is to keep at it. Write and write and write and it will get easier and your writing will improve. 5. How about larger corporations and brands? How should they start their own blog? Blogs are just the newest form of communication. I'm not sure every large company should start a blog. But they should be looking at using the powerful bloggers out there to help promote their brand. Blogs are a form of PR. Having your brand discussed on a blog should be the goal of any brand manager. 6. So how can a blog be used as a branding tool? How can it enhance the brand? I use our blog to discuss current branding issues in the news from Toys 'R' Us, to Martha Steward, to the latest Six Flags ad. In addition I write about basic marketing principles like names and positioning strategies. As a branding tool, we can only publish a book every other year. But with a blog we can reach people with our marketing thinking on a daily basis. The blog reinforces our brand position. And the stronger our brand the more business we will have. 534 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 7. Could you recommend some blogging strategies? I am not a blogging expert at all. Just a marketing consultant and author that wanted to get her views out to the public. We were having trouble getting reviewers to discuss our controversial new book The Origin of Brands, so I decided to forget the media and publish our thoughts directly. So far it has worked well. 8. Should companies encourage their employees to publish their own blogs? What kind of rules should apply to this? Should they perhaps even control these blogs for content issues? That is a difficult question, in general the more discussion about a company the better. But a large company also needs to keep control of the brand. 9. Once we do start publishing a blog, how can we best use it to generate more business? A blog is great marketing and communication tool. But the way to generate more business is to have a strong brand. 535 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Amy Gahran, Gahran.com Web site: http://gahran.com 1. Amy, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? I do many kinds of work related to content and communication. Lately, I've taken to thinking of myself as an “info-provocateur” -- basically, I like to find new ideas (or new ways of integrating existing ones), or intriguing perspectives, and throwing all that together for discussion and consideration. This is the big motivation behind my weblog CONTENTIOUS (http://blog.contentious.com) Professionally, I'm a journalist, editor, consultant, and writing coach. More details on the work I do: http://gahran.com 2. How do you see the impact of RSS and blogging on the business and even more importantly marketing world? Can these two make a huge difference? And if they can, what kind of difference? What will be different? How should we start preparing for that right now? First of all, I prefer to call this emerging communication medium “webfeed” -- a colloquial nickname that's more intuitive and descriptive than that geeky TLA (threeletter acronym). The term webfeed encompasses RSS, Atom, and any other standard that may emerge in the future. It's a media concept, not dependent on a specific standard. How blogging will affect business: In short, I think business blogs will have the effect of re-humanizing and re-personalizing business. I'm not sure that's what a lot of businesses really want – I think many businesspeople are fond of the sense of power, remoteness, and invulnerability associated with being “corporate” rather than human. 536 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS A lot of people think blogs are just another marketing tool for business. But once they get into it they'll inevitably be revealed publicly as human, for better or worse. Overall, I think that's an improvement over the way most business marketing and communication is handled now, it'll be more credible and realistic. But I don't doubt that it will be an awkward and uncomfortable transition for a lot of businesspeople. For webfeeds, yes I think they can help businesses communicate much more effectively and reliably, especially with specific audiences. I'm surprised most businesses aren't already issuing product/service news, press releases, investor information, supply-chain information, etc. via webfeed. That potential is not being realized yet. It should be. I'm hoping it will be. Webfeeds are fine for any type of communication, but especially to communicate time-sensitive information, prone to updates, to specialized audiences. How to start preparing? Get started, experiment with both blogs and webfeeds. This is something you only really learn by doing, and the best application will be unique to each company. The sooner the start, the sooner you'll figure out whether and how this can help your business. 3. What are your thoughts on current RSS penetration and how far do you think it can go? Where do you see the future of RSS? Right now webfeeds are still in the early adoption phase, but they're gaining momentum. I think they'll likely penetrate the business sector widely before the general audience because they've been getting a lot of coverage in the business press. The main driver behind the growth of webfeeds, I think, is the fact that they're a spam-proof communication medium. The “syndication” side of it is actually turning out to be a very minor component. They're basically a way to transmit content and updates to people who request it, instantly, without running into spam problems. A lot of organizations currently use e-mail publishing for this – and spam is totally killing e-mail publishing. Again, the potential uses for webfeeds extend far beyond how they're being used today. If you think creatively about them, the content/service/strategy options are virtually limitless. I still think feed readers have a way to go to become truly user-friendly, but the fact is they are not hard to learn and there are many options. I think the bigger issue is motivating people to learn to use feed readers. Once people are motivated, they can do anything. 537 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. What in your opinion are the best marketing and business uses for RSS? Could you perhaps give us some practical examples? • press releases and media alerts • investor information • new products and services • specials and deals • supply chain news (coordination with distributors, etc.) • RFPs • auctions • Job postings • Intranet applications (HR, training opportunities, events, etc.) • etc. 5. How about for blogging? What companies and individuals should blog, why and how? As I wrote yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/4a38b), you should choose the person who does the blogging carefully. Bloggers must be motivated, drawn to the medium, and adequately skilled in terms of writing and technology. I think it's generally a mistake to rely on a CEO, etc. To blog unless that person also has the makings of a good blogger. It's just a painful, difficult process otherwise. You might be better off having a “corporate journalist” do most of the blogging, with occasional guest items from executives. I think any company could blog. It's just a matter of defining whom you wish to reach (your target audience), and what sort of content most interests them. Would that target audience be interested in a blog? If so, what kind of blog? What style would succeed and what kinds of content? Blogs are not just one-way. With the comments function they become a public discussion. Is your company prepared to publicly handle criticism, awkward questions, etc? If so, great. If not, blogging might not be right for you. 538 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. What would you advise a small internet business, considering using RSS and blogs? As I said above, just get started. Experiment. Install the tools, learn to use them, try some pilot projects. Talk to your intended audiences, see what they want. What can your company offer which is unique? Does your target audience need assistance learning what webfeeds are and how to use them? Always consider that value you're offering them, and make that point first. Motivate your audience. 7. What do you believe are the best ways of promoting a blog and the best ways of getting people to "subscribe" to an RSS feed? For blogs: Use pingomatic.com, the easiest way to get your blog entries listed in all the major places people look for such stuff. Also, read, link to, and comment on other relevant and complementary blogs. Even those of your competitors. The blogosphere is largely about mutual support and cooperation, so drop your defensiveness and competitiveness and just be willing to be one constructive voice among many. This will encourage people to like you – especially other bloggers, who will link to you. With webfeeds, if they're public then make sure they're listed in Feedster, Blogdigger, and all the other major feed aggregators. Create a Technorati profile. With any webfeed, public or private, make sure you announce it in all the relevant media --- on your site/intranet, in press releases, annual reports, on bills and other paperwork, in marketing materials, etc. Always offer the value proposition first. Offer assistance with helping people understand what webfeeds are and how to use them. Link to my backgrounder if you like, I cover all that: http://tinyurl.com/3znqu 539 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. You offer an e-mail update service and an RSS feed for your blog. Do you have any information on how many people subscribe to each? The hard thing about webfeeds is that currently it's not possible to track subscriber numbers or identities. This is one reason why a lot of online publishers are not yet offering webfeeds, because they're control freaks about such information. However, I estimate based on traffic to my feed file that approximately 3,000-6,000 people subscribe to my webfeed directly, and an additional 4,000 people get my email alerts. Some people subscribe to both, too. About 300 people subscribe to my feed through bloglines alone. Many other people simply check my site occasionally via standard bookmarks. 9. Have you noticed any difference in the "quality" of readers you get through the e-mail update service and the e-mail service? We're especially interested in how responsive people are to each of the two delivery mediums … I can't really answer that. For my blog, “responsiveness” is a very individual matter that doesn't seem dependent on a reader's preference for content alerts. 540 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Åsk Wäppling, Adland Web site: http://ad-rag.com 1. Could you perhaps start by introducing yourself and what you do? My name is Åsk Wäppling, I'm an Art Director in Advertising who also hosts a large advertising community website with the largest Superbowl commercial collection on the web, a.k.a the Claymore project, it has 30 years worth of super bowl commercials. The community site serves advertising news and insider gossip and is meant as a meeting place for other advertising crazy professionals like myself. The ironic twist is that site aims to never be financed by any form of paid advertising on the site, and has succeeded in that. 2. How long has Adland been online and how long have you been publishing in RSS? Adland was online as a small humble page in 1996, with only very basic guestbook abilities. In early 2000 we did a massive rebuild, an entire content management system with multiple users and administrators, forums, blog-pages, private messaging system and the cherry on top - RSS! 3. How have your integrated RSS in to your web community? We carry three different feeds, RSS buttons on the front page alert visitors to the possibilities. We don't use feeds for the comments or the forums, the latter members can subscribe to via email if they wish to keep track of replies to their questions and job-classifieds. 541 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 4. But do you also publish using e-mail? What is your strategy and how do you integrate it with RSS? RSS feeds and newsletters serve different purposes, we never felt that a newsletter would be useful for the site as they are best served weekly or within a similar time frame. "Never send a newsletter unless you have something new to say" as the old advice goes. Since our news arrives 'as it happens', and commercials are posted daily, an RSS feed is a better way of keeping track of the site updates for people. Newsletters have other disadvantages as well, unsubscribing can still be a hassle for people, and people change email addresses often, not to mention a lot of mail gets lost when some ISP administrator adds yet another Spam-trap on the way, lots of offices have extremely misconfigurated spam-filters that silently drops mail, this renders mailing lists and newsletters useless as they never arrive but you as the sender never find out either. With feeds people feel more in control and can set it up regardless of what their email address happens to be at the moment. And they can access it from anywhere in a feedreader on the web, such as bloglines. We do use email, as I mentioned previously one can ask a question or post a job-ad in the forums and then subscribe to it, receiving all the responses in the mail. We also have a two-way-mailing list for discussions about advertising, an RSS feed can't replace that kind of mailing list. 5. Since you've been publishing in RSS since 2000, how has the number of people that use your feed increased during these 4 years and why? In the beginning few people (in advertising) knew about RSS readers or had a site where they could add the feed, but that soon changed. Many carried the feed in their own homepages, or read it via syndic8, or had our feed in their friends-list at Livejournal. When more and simple web-based feedreaders came along, like bloglines, even more people started reading the feeds. Now that nearly every email reader offers a feed-reader, like Gmail and Oddpost, and people no longer need a stand alone program for it the feeds are more popular than ever. 542 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 6. How would you say that your web community helped increase your success? The community has huge influence in that they can add their own news that they find interesting and they can comment on anything, the popular topics create refreshing debates and they are a large part of the voice of the site. They can also rate any ad on the site, so data reflecting what is most popular as rated by members compared to "hits" created by anyone gives a better reflection of what members versus stray surfers appreciate the most. Our "email to a friend" buttons sets on fire at times as members and visitors pass fun news on to everyone know they know. 7. What in your mind are the greatest benefits of publishing in RSS and what are the best ways of "exploiting", in a positive way, these benefits? Easy user control, close to real time updates and simplicity are great benefits you get with feeds. If your site is reporting from a convention or award show, your feed can reflect news 'as it happens', so to speak - each time you update the site it is reflected in your feed. 8. You are also publishing multiple RSS feeds? Which feeds and how is this working out for you? Could you give our readers some advice concerning running multiple feeds? We publish three feeds, the adnews alone, the commercials alone, and the whole enchilada which is both. Since the advertising news can be read by anyone, but the commercials can only be viewed by members we thought offering choice in the feeds made sense as the continuous posting of commercials can drown out the advertising news on any given day. People use the advertising headlines feeds on their sites and subscribe to the whole enchilada in their own reader to keep track of the new commercials, some members choose to subscribe to both the news and the commercials but like to keep them in separate folders of their readers. It’s all part of giving people choices. I think running multiple feeds makes a lot of sense if a site has some areas closed off to members only, or if the site has a lot of news in different but related subjects, like PR news and Advertising news. If there is enough content multiple feeds can allow readers to sort the feeds differently, concentrate on the subjects that interest them the most and never miss any of the news. 543 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 9. Have you ever measured the success of your RSS feeds? How? Do you have any idea how "active" your RSS users are? It's always interesting to log in to various feedreaders such as bloglines, kinja and the likes to see how many are subscribing there, but the real measure of how popular a particular feed is can be found in the web server traffic statistics like everything else. Since each web-page of the site reveals (to us administrators) what the referring page is, we can see feed readers clicking through to the site from their Oddpost or Gmail or what they happen to be using, 10. What in your mind are the advantages (and the negative sides) of publishing with RSS in comparison to publishing with e-mail? The two different publishing systems are useful for different things, newsletters should be either on a schedule, say every Friday or Monday, or sent out when special activities are on, competitions or any other 'big' news. Newsletters can carry longer articles and short half-paragraph bursts of news in the same email. The negative with newsletters is that the security in place - the "reply to this if you really do want to subscribe" - designed to prevent gratuitous subscribing of third parties is making the process more complex and turning some people off. Badly implemented spam filters that silently drop emails for offending word combinations like "The pen is mightier than the sword" (pen is = penis), human interaction spam-filters, overfilled email accounts, abandoned email accounts and auto replies may make subscribers 'fall off' a mailing list without the list owner ever noticing. At the same time, many prefer email, they can forward interesting things to colleagues and save things of interest in their mailboxes. Feeds can be served on other websites that have that capability, feeds are updated as often as the site itself is rather than in weekly bursts, and interesting things in feeds can be forwarded to colleagues via email just as easily as a newsletter. When we carry articles with big images or films people interested in the subject come to the site to view the images, rather than us sending large copyrighted material out which may not fit in recipients email boxes, may cost a fortune in bandwidth for us, and may make photographers charge more for the image. Many email-lists get around this by simply linking to their site instead, then why not use RSS which does exactly that? Feeds also don't send the entire article out - like a newsletter would - you'll see what articles people want to read more on when they click through to continue their reading. The only negative I've seen in RSS so far is that it has been so unknown and can sound rather technical, which may turn people off when they aren't familiar with the idea of RSS and RSS-readers. 544 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 11. One of the questions we should start asking ourselves is how to fully integrate RSS in to our marketing and communicational mix. How do you see RSS in relation to other communicational tools and approaches? We're also especially interested in how to use RSS and e-mail together? Running ads within your RSS feed is a great way to make people unsubscribe from it. While text-ads within email newsletters have been accepted in general, a lot of readers choose RSS precisely to avoid ads, and still keep on top of the news headlines that they are interested in. If they are interested enough to read more, they'll click through to your site and see the ads there (if you have advertising on your site). For this reason I wouldn't try to advertise within someone’s feed, but look at other options like text ads, newsletter text ads and similar. I'd also try and sponsor web-based feed reader sites with text-ads, where the potential audience is. An RSS feed with headline and the lead-in, and then a link to an article is an ad in itself! Putting an ad into something like that is like adding an ad to an ad. It's quite different if the entire article, images and content is sent out via RSS; then a small text-ad might not be so out of place. 12. The number one problem RSS publishers are facing is the lack of knowledge about RSS. What in your mind are the best ways to present RSS to your existing subscribers and get them to start using it, and of course "subscribe" to their feed? The problem is that RSS is seldom explained in plain English, the pages that answer "what is RSS" tend to be technical and describe the coding process which the average person may not even be remotely interested in. If you carry an RSS feed, you could have a page explaining how people can use it, link to popular stand-alone RSS readers that you have used, list all the emailprograms that can read RSS and list the RSS-readers on the web last. The latter requires a login and may turn people off as it's a "hassle" unless they are the types who like to keep their things "on the web" for easy access from any old computer, and not just their office computer. 545 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 13. But do you think it's possible to for instance convert e-mail subscribers to RSS? How? And if it is, why should a publisher / marketer do that? If it ain't broke don't fix it, the best way to convert people is to offer them choices, if your weekly newsletter is also published on a website weekly why not keep your old newsletter and offer RSS for those who prefer it. Let the options run parallel to see how many are really interested in RSS as a replacement for the newsletter. You may gain new readers with an RSS feed that can be placed as headlines on other sites, but don't alienate those you already have in the newsletter while you are at it. Since RSS and newsletters are different, you shouldn't replace one with the other without considering the differences. Perhaps a newsletter is the best option for you, perhaps RSS could work with your website in other ways? 14. How about generating new "subscribers" on a larger scale? What are the best on-site tactics of doing that (converting visitors in to RSS "subscribers")? Again, just offer them the choice. Clearly mark your RSS feed with the by now familiar orange buttons, and perhaps a link to a page where you explain what RSS is in plain English, and point them to popular RSS readers, such as the Oddpost and GMail email, Bloglines and others on the web, and stand alone programs that you yourself have used. You can also offer bloglines buttons, where any reader who is already signed up with them can click the button to add your feed to their collection of RSS-feeds. Point them to other related feeds that they may also be interested in even the New York Times serves RSS feeds these days - and the option of getting many news-sources in one place may be what pushes those unfamiliar with it to take the plunge into RSS-reading. 15. What about off-site promotion? Can you give us some tips and perhaps practical advice in this area as well? Make sure that your feed is registered with the countless web-based RSS feed readers out there, such as syndic8.com and bloglines.com and Kinja etcetera - you can find them all with a quick search in yahoos directories. There are also ways to 'ping' feed readers out there when you update, described on each the feedcollecting sites, this is a useful thing to do at the start as well to alert websites out there to your updates. 546 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Fergus Burns, Nooked.com http://www.nooked.com 1. Fergus, thank you for taking the time for this interview. As is the norm with these interviews, I would like to ask you if you can explain what you do to our readers and especially about your solution. I’m the CEO of Nooked - Nooked makes RSS publishing easy for corporate communications. Nooked's online service – www.nooked.com - enables PR and marketing professionals to manage, create and publish corporate news in RSS feeds. Simple to deploy and easy to use, Nooked eliminates technical barriers common in RSS publishing and provides accurate reporting on your efforts. 2. With most RSS publishing solutions being free, what are the additional benefits that your solution offers? Nooked provides 4 specific business benefits for our clients: • Ease of use, with particular focus on the needs of busy PR & marketing executives • Simple deployment of RSS channels • Detailed reporting on all activities on RSS channels • Extends the reach of a company’s corporate messages Nooked is a service designed for corporate communications executives – built from real market feedback and customers. 547 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 3. On your web site you say that Nooked is especially appropriate for corporate communications executives. What exactly does this mean? Nooked has been designed for corporate communications executives. We’ve paid particular attention to ease of use and simple deployment requirements that these people have – 90% of PR & Marketing people wish to implement RSS without the baggage of technical issues. Our product planning process is based on extensive dialogue with PR and marketing executives to understand their requirements for RSS and validate our solution. Also, corporate communications professionals need to know that their RSS channel is getting picked up by all the syndication services available. The measurement, or metrics, on their RSS channel is also very important because they can demonstrate to management the ROI they are achieving through the use of RSS. 4. Could you perhaps explain how corporations can, in your mind, best use RSS? Especially for internal communications? RSS is an enabling technology, which has many uses within corporations. With the growth of internal blogs and wiki’s, RSS is the main method of staying abreast of what is been said, and by whom. For internal communications, one of our clients Object Marketing, a UK pr & marketing agency, are using Nooked and RSS in an interesting way. They use RSS channels to manage the media coverage they generate for their clients – the RSS channels in effect become a form of “clip book”, which enables them to keep their clients updated via RSS. From our own experience, one of the major benefits of RSS is that it’s a clean channel – it avoids spam filters, annoying popups, and above all, if used in a corporate setting, can increase consumption of content versus traditional methods, such as email. 548 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 5. Could you perhaps share a few examples or case studies with us? One good example is a client of ours – Rococo Software. They implemented an RSS initiative back in July 2004. The implementation of RSS for Rococo Software was seamless – they created an account on Nooked, populated the channels with some existing information on press releases, media coverage and forthcoming events. The actual implementation took 2 minutes – their website administrator placed the 8 lines of HTML code that Nooked provides to place the RSS icons on their press room. Since then they have updated their RSS channels via Nooked with news items as they appear on their website. They also use the RSS channel to publish additional media coverage and company related news that does not appear on the corporate website. Through the Nooked Stats feature, they can track their RSS metrics – Rococo Software has grown their traffic via RSS by 20% per month, and their click through’s are growing at a steady pace every month. More importantly, some of their key clients and industry analysts have subscribed to their Corporate News RSS channel, which has demonstrated real ROI to their senior management. 6. And how about other RSS uses? There are many great services that use RSS – Newsgator, technorati, Feedster, Flickr, Moreover, etc. Two services I really like, which are dependent on RSS, are Bloglines and PubSub. With Bloglines, you get great RSS reading experience, but you also get extra goodies including information about how many readers subscribe to these channels, who those people are, etc. You also get great search capability. 549 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS PubSub enables Nooked to keep our finger on the “blogosphere” – I get notified via an RSS channel when we are mentioned on the “blogosphere” – it’s simple to use, and it’s really powerful. 7. One of the things I found especially interesting is that you are also providing RSS metrics. Exactly what kind of RSS metrics does your solution provide? Nooked provides the following real-time metrics on RSS • Number of hits on your RSS channel o RSS channels will get hits because we notify all available syndication services o This is measured on a daily, weekly and monthly basis • Number of click-throughs o This is a key measurement – it measures who has clicked through on your content to actually read it o We also measure the click throughs on a per item basis, so you can track what type of content is gaining most interest – Press releases or Media Coverage or events, etc. • Sources o We provide a full listing on the IP addresses of where the hits and click throughs originated from o We will have this resolved to company names in our next version of the Nooked service, which our clients have requested. • Other areas of work o We are also working on how we can integrate with services such as Pub Sub, Technorati, Bloglines, etc, which would give our clients a richer picture on the RSS metrics around their channels. 550 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 8. Where do you see the future of RSS metrics? We are only at the early stages of RSS metrics – people want the Holy Grail which is similar to what they get with email metrics. Given the relative anonymous nature of RSS, this presents many challenges to all the service providers within the industry. From a Nooked perspective, we are fortunate that our clients are providing us with their business requirements on RSS metrics, which they use to determine ROI. This ranges from identifying people & companies who are reading their RSS channel, through to growth in click through rates over a series of press releases they have released, etc. Ultimately the answer comes from the publishers, aggregators and search engines – from these 3 sources, where allowed, you can build a very accurate picture of RSS metrics. Nooked continues to make significant R+D investment into the area of “RSS Metrics” 9. How about of RSS as a whole? How is it going to impact the business world, most especially marketing? What new developments can we expect in the future? RSS has impacted the business world considerably over the past 18 months. More and more web publishers, both traditional and new, are using RSS as a distribution channel. The blogosphere is also becoming an area where companies need to monitor their reputation – the speed with which either positive or negative news circulates the web has grown exponential over the past 12 months. Other market influencers, such as Analysts, Journalists, and Fortune 1000 executives are all now consuming content via RSS aggregators. 551 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS The main development is “where will RSS reach tipping point” – this ultimately comes from the consumption side. When we have RSS reading capability within the software that controls the majority of desktops today – Windows, Office, Explorer – then I expect to see RSS become part of every average Joe and Mary’s day. 10. Do you have any plans to offer RSS customization with your solution as well? Our goal is simple – make it easy to manage, create, publish and measure your news with RSS. Our business model is a subscription model – we are not in the business of putting advertisements into client channels. The only customization in relation to RSS is that Nooked supports all the different flavors of RSS and Atom. 11. And for the last question, what in your experience are the best RSS strategies for small businesses, and then for larger corporations? I spoke to Matthew Podboy of Voce Communications last week and he put it better that I can. “Step 1 – put your company news into RSS” + “Step 2 – start talking in your own words via a blog” 552 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Views and Experience From Other Marketers Eric Ward, EricWard.com Web site: http://www.ericward.com 1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why? I added an option to receive my content as an RSS feed about a year ago, however I have not discontinued using email and the web for delivery of that same content. The RSS feed now accounts for 55% of my site traffic. 2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why? I have already implemented RSS, mainly because it is so remarkably easy to set up RSS feeds, as well as for users of RSS readers to subscribe to those feeds. And since it is still so early in the adoption phase for this type of content delivery, you don't have as many competing feeds. 3. Do you perhaps have any statistics of your feed you would like to share? Certainly. In 2002, before I created the rss version of my headlines page, my the .html version of my headlines page was responsible for 90% of my site's traffic. As of 9/2004, the rss version of the headlines page was generating 40% of my site traffic, and the .html version was generating 45%. 553 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Pretty amazing considering I never announced or submitted the rss feed to any feed engines. I just quietly created it and uploaded it. Nowadays it is much harder to get attention for a new rss feed. I conduct submission campaigns for many clients for their rss feed URLs, making surwe they are included in all the key rss search engines and directories. Most content publishers don't even know these rss search engines exist :) 4. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog? I also publish a blog version of my content. I have found that by simply making sure the blog is included in all major blog search engines, and by indicating on my site that it is available, and linking directly to it, the blog gets plenty of traffic. 5. How do you see the future of e-mail? Would not be surprised at all to see a new protocol other than SMTP developed that can be installed on ISP and corporate servers, and made available for an additional fee. This new protocol would be far less "open" than the original SMTP protocol, which was developed long ago and at a time when spam wasn't even a consideration. I'd also like to see a more evolved challenge/response system where an email marketer has to include a fee sent via PayPal for any email a recipient opens. Kevin Bidwell, All-In-One-Business.com Web site: http://www.All-In-One-Business.com 1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why? We are adding RSS as an addition to email marketing. We do not plan to replace email for a number of reasons, most importantly that email continues to be a great way to get our messages out quickly and effectively--we currently have a 60% open rate on our main emailing list. 554 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS 2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why? We will be implementing RSS within the next few weeks for people who are interested in using RSS as opposed to email delivery. We see RSS as being a great new resource for reaching people who are opposed to email as a reception channel. 3. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog? While we have looked at blogs, we have not yet adopted one. 4. How do you see the future of e-mail? Email will evolve, but email is here to stay. Email has become such a fixture of people's lives that it is unlikely to be removed. Imagine... Any time I can get my newsletter or marketing piece in someone's inbox wedged between a email from Aunt Mabel and their Kiwanis meeting announcemet, I know I can be effective. The real key is showing respect for my readers, rewarding them often and not insulting them with off-topic or irrelevant content. A newsletter needs to be a newsletter, not simply a marketing piece. People will appreciate and respond to the marketing when it is accompanied by revelvant content and frequent subscriber rewards. People resent the marketing when it pounds at them again and again with no real thought, plan or benefit. Growing, unique content is key. I need to provide my readers with ideas and rewards they can't get anywhere else. I have summarized some of these ideas in a special report on profitable email marketing. Free copies are available here: http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/emailreport 555 Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS Doug Hudiburg, The Daily Marketing Ace Web site: http://www.dailymarketingace.com 1. Have you ever considered using RSS as a content delivery medium in addition or to replace e-mail content delivery? Why? Yes I have seriously considered it because I like the idea of being able to efficiently deliver content without the use of email. Email, while still supremely useful as a marketing tool, requires a lot of management. The 'pull' versus 'push' concept behind RSS eliminates most of the issues. 2. Do you have any plans to implement RSS in your marketing activities in the next year? How and why? Yes. I am building a new marketing resource site for small businesses and will implement a blog as part of the site. I will offer RSS syndication of the blog. I would like to offer an RSS feed of my daily eZine (The Daily Marketing Ace) but the way I have it set up requires personalization to each subscriber which, to my knowledge, is not possible with RSS. 3. What in your experience are the best ways of promoting a blog? I have not promoted a blog personally, but the most effective ones I've seen are an extension of the personal promotion a subject matter expert has done. For instance, a business consultant writes articles for several publications and websites on a regular basis. The articles drive traffic to his website where his blog provides a way for him to build a relationship and credibility with his visitors. 4. How do you see the future of e-mail? Email is here to stay as a general communications medium. I see RSS displacing email to some degree for one-to-many communications. I have found that peer to peer colloboration (Groove) has completely eliminated email as a communication tool for the distributed teams that I manage. 556
