Where do you start with your RSS strategy?

According to the Jupiter Research study “Feed Marketing: Use of RSS as an Alternate Messaging Medium”, 30% of marketers surveyed said that they have implemented RSS feeds because of customer demand.

“Marketers must begin to plan their RSS strategies now,” says the report’s lead author, Jupiter analyst David Daniels

RSS feeds by themselves won’t do much for you or your marketing. Feeds are a delivery and distribution system for content. And the world is fast moving from a push-based information delivery (where you send information via emails) to a pull-based information delivery (where the subscriber accesses your information, as and when he wants). Customers want good content – and they are demanding it in feeds.

The success of your RSS strategy depends on the quality of your content and the availability of that content in feeds.

Take a look at the types of content you are currently, or could be, delivering to your audiences and stakeholders. Establish top-level messaging that will be used in all areas of your search engine optimisation and online marketing

Where are you now?

• Are you maximising the reach of your current content and online PR initiatives?
  
• Are you distributing your content via RSS channels?
  
• Do you own your natural search real-estate with all related content pointing back to yourbrand.com?
  
• Are you leveraging your content to maximise your overall SEO strategy?

What do you want to achieve?

• Set goals for the RSS feed strategy
  
• Set up metrics to track the results

Identify opportunities

• What audiences/verticals should you be communicating with?
  
• How can you reach to the people you currently communicate with and educate them on RSS
  
• Identify resources and topics for RSS article content

Setting up the feeds

• Identify what method of implementation will best integrate with your current web system
  
• Do you need content management with your feeds?
  
• SEO elements included in the feed templates
  
• Ongoing support and technical assistance

Promote your feeds

• Ensure the RSS system you use has automatic notification to RSS search engines and news aggregation sites of updates to the feeds
  
• Create a linking strategy to and from your feed content.
  
• Submit the feeds to top RSS search engines and news aggregator directories
  
• Choose a system that has social media features such as tagging and bookmarking, like ‘add to del.icio.us’ buttons
  
• Set up monthly reporting on search engine visibility and feed usage

“The simple moral here is that even if you don’t want to go ‘full RSS’ just yet, you need to set up your RSS feeds. Results will follow. People are in fact in need of the content consumption solution offered by RSS ... you just need to present it appropriately.” Rok Hrastnik, Marketing Studies and the RSS Diary (www.marketingstudies.net)