The RSS Advantage

Bill Flitter from Pheedo.com has a new post on the Revenews blog called 5 Tips to Ready Your Blog & RSS Feed for Big Brand Advertising. In the post he provides you with five action items to follow to prepare yourself for the impending RSS advertiser explosion… that we are all anxiously waiting for.

The only thing that he doesn’t mention is traffic - the lifeblood of any website and blog. In RSS terms this translates to the number of subscribers to your newsfeed. In other words, RSS feeds have more in common with an email list than a website because we are dealing with interested subscribers. The more targeted and active subscriber base you have for your feed, the more interested people will be to advertise in your feed.

Even if you are only in the planning stage of your RSS strategy it is worthwhile taking a look.

As everyone knows email marketing has more than its fair share of problems. The biggest of these issues facing email is message deliverability.

The SPAM issue: Email messages are continuously being chewed up and rejected email daily through every phase of the delivery process, from ISP SPAM filters through to corporate firewalls and finally even on the receiver’s desktop. Anything from 30% to 70% of messages never reach their final destination, the percentages vary from one research report to another (depending on who you believe). Another problem with that lies with email is being accused of being a spammer. The penalties for this can vary from having your domain blacklisted to financial damages paying a hefty settlement fee. Some ISP’s even hold your domain for ransom if you are accused of spam (just search Google for ’spam domain ransom’)

Reluctance: Besides the SPAM issue, Internet users are becoming more reluctant to part with their precious email address now a days than ever before. You need to bribe Internet users with a ton of gifts to compel them into signing up to your newsletter. We have the continuous influx of junk email flooding mailboxes to thank for this.

So how does an Internet marketer or website owner overcome these problems? RSS!

• RSS has a 100% delivery rate. Every single item in your RSS feed will be delivered to your subscriber’s RSS reader, guaranteed!
• Because RSS offers anonymity and an easy unsubscribe mechanism your visitor will not be reluctant to subscribe to your news feed and ‘check it out’.

Delivering your marketing message or newsletter via the RSS has never been so convenient and easy.

• Your newsletter updates are received promptly and are available in an instant.
• You no longer have to worry about mail server availability, downtime or delays.
• Your subscribers receive your latest news on products and services too.

Another advantage is that your advertising becomes targeted because the people that are subscribing to your RSS feed are those who are truly interested in your message.

If you haven’t started planning your RSS strategy or looked into implementing it into your business yet, I hope that this blog and its content will encourage you to look into it.

Technorati Tags: RSS Marketing

Hrrmmph! I’ve been scouring the web for the better part of the day looking for some decent examples of embedded advertising in feeds to tell you about… but found none! Is this good or bad news? Well, that depends on your viewpoint.

For RSS marketer’s this is good news. This means feed advertising has not quite gone mainstream yet and the doors are still open for first mover advantage. Now is a good time to get in before every RSS feed in existence is flooded with advertising messages and the masses are anaesthetized.

As an RSS end user it is great, actually… absolutely fantastic that there are no ads to be seen! You can get the content that you want - and only the content - free, without any commercial blurbs. Those text or graphic messages about “How XYZ product is going to revolutionize the way you live your life!” that have flooded most online information channels don’t exist in RSS feeds… yet.

Unfortunately (for RSS feed consumers) this is going to change. The days of the free lunch on the Internet are long gone. Companies - and people - can’t afford to give away everything for free. Someone, somewhere, has got to pay something to grease the wheels of life.

Enter the feed advertising lubricant…

For RSS feed publishers that want a return on their investment and a piece of the advertising pie. Its time to embed advertisements in your feed. Sites like Pheedo and FeedBurner already provide a service where feed publishers and advertisers can “meet” to buy and sell advertising in feeds. And Google, not wanting to be left out, is also coming to the party soon. Google AdSense for feeds is currently in closed beta testing. As soon as this is made open to the public we are going to see a swarm of little AdWords-type ads in our feeds.

Make no mistake, I don’t think that you will become stinking rich from embedded feed advertising. The worst case scenario here is that you will at least get some lunch money and add an additional revenue stream to your online enterprise.

Technorati Tags: RSS Marketing

RSS has the potential to be the most effective weapon in your marketing arsenal because of the advantages it offers over other mediums.

1. Each and every one of your newsfeed subscribers is a highly targeted prospect because they have willingly expressed an interest in receiving your news (usually without additional coaxing).
2. Every news items in your feed has a 100% message delivery rate. We do not have to concern ourselves with email spam filters and other obstacles that email marketing is confronted with.
3. You can reach an even wider audience than your original feed subscribers whenever another site syndicates your marketing message.

This is a powerful tool and you need to exercise caution when using it so that you do not dilute its strength. You should not use your RSS feed to flood your subscribers with marketing messages because it is a surefire way for you to lose your subscribers - all it take is a click of a button and you are gone forever! There is an exception to this rule if your news feed is solely about new products and services on offer.

You’ll need to be sensitive to the needs of your target audience when delivering your marketing or advertising message to them. A good technique to use is to blend it into the content offered in the feed item. By using RSS marketing correctly you will not only reap the benefits of sales, but also gain subscriber loyalty.

Technorati Tags: RSS Marketing