Setting up RSS feeds from your site

In our last class, the question came up about how to set up others to subscribe to an RSS feed from your site. I have prepared a short presentation that outlines a few steps for enabling someone to establish your feed on three different portal pages, MyYahoo, Google and Start. Click on the title link above to go to the presentation (a PDF file, which may load slowly!)

This presentation does not address how to create the feed, which is covered elsewhere in our class materials, but assumes that you are starting with some kind of blogging software that sets up the feed for you automatically.

Here is a link to the Yahoo instructions for setting up the feed on someon's MyYahoo page, which they will have to have created prior to using this process. In similar fashion, Google instructions will enable someone to pull your feed into their Google Portal page.

Other portals will have similar arrangements that you should be able to find by going to those sites and searching them for something like "add to ...", where they will show you the setup like this.

These instructions all presume that the persons pulling in the feeds will have established the pages that they want to pull the feed to in advance of utilizing these buttons. That will require (in the case of Yahoo or Google) setting up accounts with them first, but those are free accounts.

For a presentation on how to set up the RSS feed from your site (not from your blog, which will have its own process built-in to the blogging software, we have a class presentation (another PDF file) on "Setting up an RSS Feed".

How to Use RSS on Your Site

RSS, accoding to this author, is "... this decade's answer to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-mail; ..."

There are various creative ways to utilize RSS feeds on your site. A few suggestions from this article make the point. They include:

• Blog and article comments.
• Errata sheets.
• Shipment tracking.
• Newly released and sale items.
• Updated user agreements, policies, and practices.

In our clinic, we have discussed use of RSS primarily in the contextof the first item only. As with any marketing on the web, it pays to be thinking of the client and what the client needs, wants, or can use. Each of these suggestions points to a different kind of value that RSS can provide for the users.

Remember the lesson: "If you help your clients, they will help your business!"

"Add to My Yahoo" now available!

The "My Yahoo" button is for the use of our customers who have established their own access to MyYahoo by creating a Yahoo account and setting up their portal page on that service. Look for these buttons on the header of any page on our site and use them to ensure that you always know immediately of the latest announcement of tips concerning Internet Marketing that we have made available.

Technorati Profile

89 percent of companies currently blog or plan to start in the near future.

"Over half the respondents have launched one or more blogs within the last year, and 10 percent have blogged for over three years. The study finds a higher adoption rate among smaller companies. Fifty-eight percent of corporate blogs represent companies with less than 100 employees, while companies with over 1,000 employees take up 16 percent of the blogosphere's corporate segment. The same trend rings true from a revenue standpoint; companies with under $100 million in revenues account for 45 percent of corporate blogs. "

Here is a trend that is really amazing. Blogs have caught on so fast it is stunning!

It must be that the technology is so easy that it encourages people to adopt it who would otherwise shy away. Since these blogs are generally easily syndicated, this makes a very easy means of spreading information across the web, allowing users to keep in touch with information sources who provide content of interest to them.

The message for your business is three-fold. First, you better get on board this trend, or you will be left behind. Second, you need to make sure that your blog is RSS-ready. And, third, as always, you must pay attention to the quality of what you put up on the web, as your content must be enticing enough to attract its proper audience. If you do this successfully, the rewards will accrue to your site and to your business!

Adding RSS to your site & getting it out to the public!

One of the most powerful techniques you, as a site owner, can use to distribute your content to your readers is to set up an RSS feed on your web site. We address the questions you have to answer to be able to do this in our Wednesday evening Internet Marketing class on September 14, 2005.

After the class has been presented, information about the class can be found in our Internet Marketing class archive.

To stay in touch with the latest tips for improving your web site marketing, follow the instructions from our class and pull our feed into your own personal MyYahoo page, or pick it up in your favorite newsreader program. We will be posting more detailed information about how to do this in the near future.