Are You A Syndicated Columnist? How To Make Your Newsletter Work
Without You

The latest trend in e-publishing is that more and more
publishers start using RSS in order to enhance deliverability of
their email newsletters or readership of their web sites
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (someone will say Rich
Site Summary) In plain words it is technology that enables
publishers to deliver their content more effectively to their
visitors or members of their email newsletters Today, RSS is
still a “buzz” word and not mainstream like blogs in 2002 RSS
is introduced with blogs because many blog services
automatically offer ability to syndicate content using RSS or
Atom
Here are some interesting facts about RSS usage
- Forrester Research announced in September 2005 that six
percent of consumers use RSS feeds once a week or more, compared
with 2 percent in 2004 – Only 9% of Americans have a good idea
and 65% are not sure what RSS feed is – according to a research
made by Pew Internet American Life Project published in July
2005 – 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them
through RSS aggregators – according to Pew Internet American
Life Project research announced in January 2005
More and more email publishers start implementing RSS in their
Internet marketing mix because they are aware of the fact that
average deliverability and open rates are not as good as several
years ago because of spam problems and email overload
Deliverability is very much affected by your email marketing
software However, even with email marketing software that has
high deliverability ratio you can be quite sure that your
deliverability is never 100% Many legitimate publishers are
faced with problems that their emails can be blocked by ISP
filters and this won’t happen using RSS to deliver your content
You can use RSS not only if you publish your email newsletter
You can use it if you have a web site, as well For example, if
you have a section with Internet marketing articles you can make
a RSS feed so anyone who subscribes to your feed will be
automatically notified when you add new articles This way you
will have repeat visits
There are some debates on email vs RSS It can’t be viewed that
way Internet marketers have to use all available tools,
technologies and channels to deliver their content So they
should use email, web site and RSS to deliver their content and
communicate with their target audience
Process of RSS content delivery is simple You have to create a
RSS feed RSS is actually a XML file You can see its structure
if you enter it in your browser Good thing is that you don’t
even have to know to make an RSS feed “by hand” because there
are several tools that will do that for you
As with any other software and services you can choose whether
you want to use desktop RSS generation software or hosted online
RSS generation software
If you want a desktop feed service good choice is FeedForAll at
http://wwwfeedforallcom (fee-based, one-time fee) while if you
prefer hosted web-based services you can check services like
http://wwwnookedcom (free and fee-based options),
http://wwwmyrsscreatorcom and http://wwwpress-feedcom (free
and company subscription)
Also, you can try free services at http://www2rsscom and
WebReferencecom:
http://wwwwebreferencecom/cgi-bin/perl/makersspl
http://wwwwebreferencecom/cgi-bin/perl/rsseditpl
As we have mentioned above, RSS is usually standard feature of
all blog services so you won’t need additional tools for RSS in
case you are a blogger One of the free blog services that have
good RSS support is b2 Evolution http://wwwb2evolutionnet If
your RSS feed isn’t online you will have to upload to your web
server first If you visit web sites that offer option to
subscribe to RSS feed you will probably see RSS feed address
that looks similar to http://wwwyourdomaincom/rssxml
After that anyone who wants to get your content via RSS will
have to copy this address to their RSS/News reader The most
popular RSS readers are http://wwwnewsgatorcom,
http://wwwfeeddemoncom, http://wwwrssreadercom
http://wwwattensacom
So this way people who want to get your content won’t have to
give you their email addresses RSS is pull-based technology so
that means that visitors need to get the content and you can’t
send them That’s why they can’t get unwanted messages, same way
when you use double opt-in for email subscriptions with a
difference that using email newsletter you *send* your content
and using RSS technology your members *retrieve* your content
When you want to add new content you will upload it on your web
site and add a new description to your RSS feed Usually,
publishers include only a brief description in your RSS feed
with the appropriate link on their web site However, you can
include complete articles in your RSS feeds This way you can
publish your email newsletter on your web site and place the
RSS This way your subscribers will be automatically notified
when you publish a new issue
If you are email marketer it is recommended that you place a RSS
button (orange is standard colour for RSS button) below your
subscription form so that your visitors be aware that they can
get your email newsletter in RSS format, too Anyway, if you
offer RSS, your orange button has to be highly visible on your
web site, to be “above the fold” You can also include where you
will give a brief explanation about RSS
RSS technology evolves so that now you can measure how many RSS
subscribers you have, you can get a click-thru ratio of each RSS
feed you have, popularity of each RSS, to personalize your RSS,
you can place ads like Google AdSense or Pheedo in your feeds
and etc
When you have your own RSS feeds you should promote them We can
recommend you to make a My Yahoo! and My MSN account and to list
your feed URL there When you place Yahoo! and MSN buttons (with
links below) on your web site you can expect to be indexed much
faster than usual
To list RSS feed on My Yahoo!, after you have created your
account click on “Add Content” After that you will see large
“Find Content” field and on the right an option “Add RSS by
URL” Enter your RSS feed URL and click on “Add To My Yahoo!”
button In order to enable your readers to place your feed in
their My Yahoo! you have to place Yahoo! button (you can put
that “Add To My Yahoo!” button but in smaller format) and link
it to
http://addmyyahoocom/content?url=http://wwwyourdomainnamecom
/yourrssnamexml
If you want to add MSN button on your web site, place a MSN
button with this link:
http://mymsncom/addtomymsnarmx?id=rssut=http://wwwyourdomain
namecom/yourrssnamexml
You can also use useful services like Syndic8, Pingomatic,
Pingoat, FeedShot to promote your web site and RSS feeds to the
most popular blog and RSS search engines Also, useful site if
you publish blogs or RSS feeds is FeedBurner

Tags | aggregators, articles, content, deliverability, forrester, interesting, internet, legitimate, marketing, newsletter, readership, research, result, syndication