What RSS Can Do For Your Business
Did you know there are lots of ways RSS can be used for your business? Here are some example uses that you may not know about. Quick note: Some can be easily abused so… use them wisely, if you use it.
Twitter: Automatically create a new tweet when you have new posts. There are many ways to do this, a popular and free tool to use is Twitterfeed.
Facebook: Create updates when you make new posts. There are applications you can use to do this. I’ve found Facebook apps to be very flaky but one that seems to work is My Blogs.
Widgets: Make a widget of your latest blog content so others can display it on their blogs or on their desktop. You can do this easily at Google Gadgets or Spring Widgets.
Deliver files to your audience: If have a podcast, you’re already doing this but you can deliver other files too from PDF’s to video.
Create affiliate branded RSS feeds: Let affiliates display your blog content and let them be rewarded for it. This is an example of what I’ve done for my affiliates. It generates a custom feed with the affiliate’s ID.
Find deals for your business: Who doesn’t like to save money? Save on your next business purchase. There are lots of ways you can track sales and deals from stores like Amazon. For Internet Marketing related purchases, save this feed to your RSS reader.
Track packages: Track your own packages with SimpleTracking.com or let your customers know if you sell a physical product.
Track latest questions on Yahoo Answers: Answering questions on Yahoo Answers can be very effective to promote your business. Subscribe to the RSS feed of the category you’re interested in so you’ll be notified when a new question you can answer comes in.
Track your own or other blogs’ comments: Sometimes email notifications quit working. But the RSS always does. If you are using a WordPress blog, your comment feed is usually: http://yourblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2 or http://yourblog.com/comments/feed/
Competitor watch: Find out what competitors or other marketers are doing on social networks, blogs, video and more using FriendFeed.
Track what’s going on in your industry: Do a search on Yahoo or MSN for a keyword or phrase you’d like to watch. Using Firefox or IE 7, an RSS feed icon will appear. Click to subscribe.
Advertise: While I personally have not done any RSS advertising, I have displayed ads in RSS feeds. The click through ratios for that one site performed better compared to web site click through. You can advertise on RSS feeds through Text-Link-Ads, Pheedo and FeedBurner.
Notify clients of service status: This works well for businesses who offer a service like web hosting, online shopping carts. Publish a system status feed and let customers know they can be alerted of status changes immediately.
What if you don’t even understand RSS that well? Can you take advantage of these suggestions? Absolutely. But if you prefer to better understand RSS, here’s a short free report that explains RSS in simple every day English.
NOTE: If you need more help with making the most of your blog, sign up for our Internet Marketing Blogging Bootcamp. We have a few spots left and registration ends Sunday.
About: Lynette
Passionate about blogging, Lynette Chandler enjoys helping business owners get their blogs started. She also holds their hand through the process, assisting them to cut through all the noise so business owners can stay focused enough to harness the quality of their blogs at Blogging Starter Pack.Freebies
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Alice
That’s a lot of stuff, Lynette…thanks!
Kelly and I were discussing the Twitter feeds and I think you really do need to be careful with it…or at least that’s my opinion. I think when you use automation in a social setting, it’s often very obvious. And frankly, if I see people who are just posting their automatic blog updates, I personally disregard them. However, I’m just one human being and may hold others to higher standards.
I am not a big social networker, but I do use Twitter and I always manually post my blog entries because frankly…posting once a day (sometimes less and sometimes a little bit more) isn’t a big deal. Plus, I can craft my own text that will get my Twitter friends’ interest because I’m speaking directly to them.
Of course I’m not saying don’t do it and these are all very cool suggestions that I bet a lot of people don’t think about. Just offering a different perspective.
Kelly
Twitter: kellymccausey
Great list!
Alice, I was actually thinking about blogging about what we talked about yesterday – I’m glad you brought it up here.
You know I 100% agree with you. I don’t like automated society in any form. You are as busy and have as full a life as anyone, if you can keep up with telling your Twitter friends about your blog posts – I think just about anyone can.
Kelly
Twitter: kellymccausey
By the way Lynette – I never thought of tracking Yahoo Answers with RSS. Thanks for that tip!!
Carrie Lauth
I agree with you both on the Twitter/RSS thing but I just added the MyBlog app to Facebook. To me, that’s different. Thoughts on that?
kristen
I tried the auto blog post to twitter once and it backfired and was posting link to twitter every minute and I didn’t know until I logged on to Tweet again. What an easy way to tick followers off without knowing it. I deleted that plug-in.
Luv all the other ways to use RSS, great resource list. I think RSS is way under-utilized
Alice
What is Facebook, Carrie? LOL.
(I don’t actually use it, but I’m sure many readers here do, so I hope they’ll have an opinion on it)
Yes, Kristen…I’ve seen that happen a few times to people. Kind of funny.
Kelly
Twitter: kellymccausey
Carrie, I do think it’s different with Facebook since it’s your profile page and people come to view it as opposed to seeing it stream by them in a twitter reader.
Linda Moore Kurth
I can see why an RSS feed from my blog would be helpful, and after reading your article, I added it to my blog. But my burning question is, would it be a good or bad idea to add it to my Ecommerce site? I am selling toys and I want to appear as professional as the big guys. I do have a monthly column. Would I benefit by putt an RSS feed on that page?
Thanks!
Alicia
I think this is very helpful information. I do have a question though. I’ve tried answering questions about online business’s and giving a link to my site on yahoo answers and someone keeps removing them. How are you able to promote your business on yahoo answers? By the way I am not just leaving a link to my site I am actually giving good information and then saying to take a look at my site.
Alice
Linda – if you’re offering a newsletter on those pages, you can also offer a little RSS icon for those tech-savvy that might want information delivered that way as well.
Alicia – I am not 100% sure as it’s not a technique that I personally use, but I’d say that if you identify the link as your own site, your comments are likely to be deleted.
Alicia
Thanks Alice for the feedback. I am putting a feed of your blog on my blog page. If you want to see it, it’s at http://www.aliciabeautynmore.blogspot.com I like the information that you give and I think that it will be helpful to other peolpe like us. Keep up the good work Alice & Lynette!
Lynette Chandler
@Alice & Kelly: About RSS to Twitter, actually we (me and Kelly) talked about that once too. You know I do use it. What I remember telling Kelly was, the ratio of the auto posts to my actual tweets are low.
I tweet more than the auto poster tweets and to me that kinda balances it out. If the only thing you do on your profile is RSS posts then it may not be such a good thing.
However… there is nothing that says you cannot setup a twitter stream just for your business. Many sites like Cnet blogs have their own twitter streams that are nothing but updates from their blogs.
Some people do actually use Twitter as an RSS reader. I have some twitter friends who only use TwitterFeed, they don’t normally tweet much but I do sometimes click through mostly because my RSS reader has grown into a thick scary jungle that I don’t dare go into anymore
but I still want to know what they are up to.
Yes, you will almost always get blasted for using RSS in your Twitter stream but I think it’s how you balance it and the goal of your twitter stream.
@Linda: Since you are offering a newsletter, I don’t see why you shouldn’t offer a feed for your newsletter. You may pick up a few subscribers that way too.
@Alicia: I don’t know exactly, I would try not to put my links in the answer itself unless it is totally relevant. Even that I’d keep it to a minimum. However, definitely make sure the link to the site is in my profile.
Legitimate home based business.
Thanks for this incredible information on RSS and boosting online business. Can you guide me in the whole process to use RSS effectively to get more online profits?