Let broadcast power market you.

The RSS symbol

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is literally a format of publishing web content. What makes it powerful is that it can be used to display information in many places in the digital world. In essence, it allows you to broadcast your emerging information (whatever information that is) to any place online that allows RSS feeds. That means your marketing message can be distributed, or ’syndicated’ to various points online. It allows…

• A publisher (that’s You) to ‘push’ or distribute information to various points online
• A syndicator to ‘allow publishing’ of that content on any platform, whether their blog, or Facebook, etc.
• A reader to view that information within specialized tools someone’s news reader, like Google Reader
• A reader to change the layout of how that information is displayed, on the fly. This is especially important if the reader is viewing it on a mobile device, since they have small screens and sometimes require specialized viewing.

Real simple syndication allows viewers to 'follow' you through. This is at the user's discretion, so write creatively!

If you’re getting the point, you’re probably seeing the power of it by now.

Why it’s so important.

The more people see you, the more likely you are of bringing in sales or leads. Sometimes information cannot be found any other way, making RSS an exclusive channel of marketing for some. Certainly, those who do not use RSS as a tool will lose business, especially to those to do use RSS.

What’s more, vote can basically vote on your information, and that means more ‘warm leads’. We all know the value of warm vs. cold leads.

Pitfalls of RSS.

RSS has one caveat; the content that you do publish must be valuable. It could be merely entertaining, or it could be a health alert, but whatever the case, if you publish useless or off-topic information, you can put off your subscribers and at the very least lose them, or in some cases, generate negative press.

What strategies RSS fits into.

• Helps you get noticed: Broadcast your marketing message. Through ‘real simply syndication you can ‘be everywhere your customer is’, like social sites and authority sites. Plus, RSS allows customers to ’subscribe’ to you, thereby being alerted to new content when available directly.
• Helps make your website sticky: Allow others to subscribe and syndicate your content. That gets the word out there, draws more traffic, and allows visitors to find you more easily to return to your website.
• Helps you build trust: Broadcast and retrieval power builds trust. Make it easy for people to come back to your website, shout out to the world that you’re an authority. RSS does this.
• Helps you stay in touch: Allow your customer to choose their commitment level. RSS has made it easy to keep in touch with your favorite writers, merchants, gurus. Without using RSS, you won’t attract a significant portion of consumers or readers. What’s more, RSS, if setup correctly, allows customers to select the level of ‘following’ they do of you. Do they want to know of every product you introduce, a particular produce line, or only Product X? RSS also allows far more efficient viral marketing, they ability for customers to tell other customers where and how good you are. This will be talked about more in Building Referrals, the 7th step successful websites must take.
• Helps you generate sales / leads: Notifications are a godsend. You can tie RSS to a particular product, and then that product goes on sale, you customer can be alerted via email or RSS aggregator.
• Helps you build referrals: Multiply word of mouth power by a factor of 10. RSS allows you to keep in touch with interested parties, whom are more likely to refer.

A final word.

RSS is the new way to distribute information efficiently and with great success. Most important, your information must be valuable. RSS magnifies the power of word of mouth.