Free Website Content - Do I Need a Feed?
Do I Need an RSS Feed?
RSS has been around for more than 10 years but has only
recently become popular. RSS provides headlines and summaries
of information in a concise and standardized way.
Benefits for Publishers
1.) Avoid Spam Filters
Statisticians estimate that 70% of the email transferred
each day is spam (unsolicited email). With that statistic,
even opt-in users risk losing valuable messages in the cesspool
of spam. RSS feeds effectively nullify spam as an issue.
Requesting feeds allow users to maintain complete control
over the content they view. Users can easily opt-in and
out of feeds that provide content of interest or importance.
2.) Expanded Reach
RSS allows publishers to reach a number of new and different
markets that typically are less crowded with competition.
Many small businesses are often slow to adopt or learn new
technologies, giving businesses that lead the way a competitive
advantage.
3.) Content Syndication
Syndication of feeds increases exposure.
4.) Repeat Visitors
RSS is all about repeat visitors. Users who have previously
visited a site often have a stronger connection to the site
and are more likely to purchase or trust the information
on the site.
5.) Free web traffic
As the internet has evolved, many webmasters have found
that what was once free traffic must now be paid for in
order to sustain decent visitor statistics. RSS is in a
unique position to bring free traffic because they are content-driven,
and if they include interesting or valuable information,
will pique the curiosity of web-surfers and entice them
to visit a particular site.
6.) Less Effort
Newsletters and E-zines undeniably bring visitors, but the
effort involved in creating, distributing and maintaining
a newsletter can be a burden. Maintaining the list, ensuring
the list is clean, growing the subscriber base, updating
and removing bad e-mail addresses, all take time. RSS feeds
are not burdened with those issues. There are easy-to-use
RSS feed creation tools that require little effort, allowing
publishers to recycle content, often simply cutting and
pasting into RSS feed creation software.
FeedForAll RSS feed creation - http://www.feedforall.com
Consider supplementing existing communication
venues with RSS. Place the contents of newsletters into
feeds and measure the results. You might be surprised at
the added traffic.
Examples of various feeds with different
intended purposes -
RSS feed - http://www.rss-specifications.com/blog-feed.xml
Establishing expertise in a specific field.
Business Feed - http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml
Contains product and industry information.
Marketing Feed - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml
Builds relationships, endorses products in industry sector.
RSS has potential to help companies develop
strong relationships with consumers and creating brand loyalty
with customers. While the world will not end tomorrow, nor
will business come to a screeching halt if you don't use
an RSS feed, there are a number of reasons online businesses
should consider using RSS feeds.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net
and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
, and http://www.small-business-software.net
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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource box
is included and the links are active. A courtesy copy of
the issue or a link to any online posting would be greatly
appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
Additional articles available for publication available
at http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm
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