RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an amazing tool. Through it, people can subscribe to your blog or other feed and get updates from your website, without having to take the extra step of seeking you out.
Most people who are writing and/or reading blogs already know about and are using RSS. You may be doing so yourself. But did you know that you don’t have to have a blog to use RSS? And that there are several creative ways to integrate RSS into your business to increase sales, enhance organizational needs and increase productivity? Here’s how:
1. Set up a feed for your press releases and other news.
This way, people who are interested in your business can keep up without having to visit your news page. Potential subscribers include editors of industry publications, news outlets, franchises and so on. Keep the feed up to date and frequently stocked with useful, newsworthy items (and not just marketing fluff), so subscribers have a reason to stay subscribed.
2. Set up a feed to announce sales.
It’s a common marketing conundrum: Your customers shouldn’t have to make the effort to visit your site to learn of new sales; on the other hand, because of “inbox overload” your sales emails are likely as not to go directly into the Trash bin unopened. So how to get around this paradox? Create a feed for sales and let interested customers subscribe. Offer incentives such as exclusive RSS-only sales and discounts, put all sales announcements on the feed before they’re made public and run contests for RSS subscribers to ensure that your core customers are amply rewarded for subscribing.
3. Use your feed to keep your staff connected and up to date.
Set up an in-house feed (or one per department, if necessary) that all emails, memos and other updates go through. This ensures that everyone has access to announcements, important information and other content, eliminating issues caused by lost or missed emails, incomplete mailing lists and so on. And if you set up an account through FeedBurner or a similar service, you can format your feed to be easily read online from any computer, in case tech troubles or other issues leaves someone without access to their reader software.
4. Create a “games and contests” feed.
People love to play games and enter contests, especially when there are really cool prizes at the end. If your business is suited for this sort of marketing, set up a feed that offers games, contests and other fun, interactive activities. The best way to do might be to set up a blog for this and use the feed that comes with that, since it’s good to have all the game info easily available to the players in a space where they can interact. (Just be sure that the games are fun and the prizes worthwhile. Remember the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring scene from A Christmas Story - disappointed customers won’t bother coming back, and they’ll tell their friends as well.)
5. Recruit online with a job feed.
If your business has a strong, ongoing need for new hires, it might pay to create a job feed. This way, all listings can be aggregated into one source, which can then be streamed to interested parties. By “marketing” this feed to a carefully chosen group of colleges, trade schools, job boards and so on, you can create a steady supply of interested, qualified applicants - without spending a lot of money.
Not sure what RSS is or how it works? For a fun and informative video on what RSS is and how it works, click here. For a slightly more tech-intensive tutorial on creating a feed, go here.
- Dina at Wordfeeder.com Copywriting and Marketing
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