Guest Post by Lynette Chandler
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. I’ve created a custom feed for my affiliates, which contains 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, you can save a feed like the one from Deal.com 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: https://yourblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2 or https://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, you can find a free report at TechBasedMarketing.com that explains RSS in simple every day English.
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