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Saturday, 30 Aug 2008
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7 Steps To Promoting Your RSS Feeds On Your Website
by
Rok Hrastnik
RSS
gets 100% of your content delivered, but it's no good if no one
subscribes to your feeds.
So
your first order of business after planning and creating your
feeds has to be promoting them to your visitors.
The
only problem is that most Internet users still don't know what
RSS is, so you do have your work cut out for. But using the system
outlined below you shouldn't have any problems. Actually, after
implementing this system, you should be achieving better results
than the majority of publishers out there.
1.
How RSS feed are generally promoted
RSS
feeds are generally promoted using the orange XML or RSS buttons,
and often also with buttons that enable visitors to subscribe
directly to the feed with their RSS reader.
Usually,
if clicking on the RSS button, the visitor only sees a lot of
confusing XML code. They in fact need to copy & paste the
link in to their RSS reader. But since most still don't know what
RSS is, using this approach will only waste potential subscribers.
To
achieve success, you'll need a different approach following these
steps:
a) Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain:
·
What RSS is
· How the visitor will benefit from using RSS
· Where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one
yourself!)
· How they can install it (provide step-by-step instructions)
· How they can subscribe to your RSS feeds
· Why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds
Then,
on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds.
In
addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct
links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! and other relevant services,
such as Bloglines. There are about 5 RSS readers you should cover
with these buttons.
b)
Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using
all of your available channels.
2.
Location and content
It's all about location, just like with the subscription box for
your e-zine. If they don't see it, they won't subscribe. And if
you don't motivate them enough to check-it out, they'll just ignore
it.
a)
Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription
box, and always "above the fold". Promote your RSS presentation
page (telling your visitors that's where they can subscribe to
your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.
b)
If you're publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather a couple
of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics.
For instance, if you're publishing an RSS feed on E-mail Marketing,
promote the RSS feed at the top of the topic home page, and in
every E-mail Marketing article you publish. These links should
actually be direct subscriptions links to the feeds.
Use
this service to cover all of the important readers using just
one simple button: http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/
By
getting your subscribers to bookmark or Add your e-zine/RSS Feed
to their MyYahoo!, you're building a large targeted contact list.
A great way to connect instantly with your subscribers.
c)
Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages and e-zine
issues.
d)
As for the content, don't just say "Subscribe to receive
news from my site", but rather prepare compelling copy to
specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe to
your content in the first place and why they should subscribe
specifically to your RSS feeds.
3.
Enable Auto-Discovery
Some
Internet browsers, such as Firefox, make it easy for their users
to subscribe to RSS feeds. The browser actually asks the user
if he wants to subscribe to the feeds the browser finds on the
site the user is currently on.
Yes,
this is even more powerful than your e-mail subscription form,
since the browser in a way "pushes" the user with your
RSS feed subscription.
But
in order for the browser to do this, you need to help it out to
find your RSS feed.
Just
include the following piece of HTML code in the <head> section
of your webpages and you'll be all set: <link rel="alternate"
type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL">
There
are many more techniques and opportunities available to you, from
"direct subscribe" links to actually using opt-in forms,
but these 7 steps should get you started in the shortest time
possible, and help you achieve a better visitor-to-RSS-subscriber
conversion rate than the huge majority of sites are achieving
today.
Rok
Hrastnik is the author of "Unleash
the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS", acclaimed
as the best and most comprehensive guide on marketing with RSS
by top RSS industry leaders, experts, developers and top marketers.
Find out all you need to know about RSS and how to use it to get
your content delivered, win back your customers, make more sales
and increase search engine rankings.
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