Blog marketing goes beyond RSS publishing, great content and Google analytics. It also encompasses becoming well acquainted with your online neighborhood. A builder is always looking at possible land to develop, keeping an eye on what land is being bought, and by whom, in the neighborhoods and towns that their brands compete in.

And so should you scout out the territory that your market occupies online.The landscape you build on in e-commerce will always be in a state of flux, and as it gets “built out”, brief windows of opportunities open.

Take the baby niche for the smaller retailer. It can be a tough market to penetrate, especially against the big children’s brands. But what if you could hitch a ride with a big brand? If you have made it your business to know what’s going on in “the neighborhood” that your online customers shop in, you might have noticed just such a window of opportunity open. If new mothers are your target market, Johnson & Johnson has an opportunity for you to leverage your brand of “family friendly” counsel,wisdom or products.

“Do you have a blog with an established audience and 50,000+ pageviews a month that BabyCenter readers would love? Or do you have a small business website featuring your own family-friendly products? Contact us! We want to feature you in our BabyCenter Network. BabyCenter can help you increase your audience, and you’ll benefit from ad revenue sharing, get promoted in our newsletters, and more. Contact us to find out all the details!”
(Source)

And here is incentive to examine your site and or blog and see if it has what it takes to take advantage of this window before it closes.

“DoubleClick Performics recently released data resulting from a usage study targeting “moms,”…which showed that of the nearly 1,000 moms surveyed, 89 percent use the Internet at least twice/day, and 90 percent have been using it for more than seven years. 86 percent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information.

The data illustrates heavy search engine usage in support of online purchases, offline purchases, coordinating travel and many other planning activities among moms.”

70% use search engines to gather information before making any online purchase
57 percent use search engines to gather information before making any offline purchase
64% use search engines to find out where to purchase products offline.
With regard to purchases made in the eight product categories under study, 92% of respondents say search engines were helpful in providing valuable information prior to purchasing, and 79% say the same for the offline purchases they made.
“… we gained a much better understanding of just how much moms rely on search engines to accomplish a wide range of tasks, literally on a daily basis.”
(Source)

Now, what is going on in your neighborhood?

RSS publishing is duly noted for it’s efficacy in disseminating your content,enhancing brand recognition, increasing traffic and elevating a site’s search engine visibility. But is that content there to serve your reader first, or to serve your marketing objectives at the expense of the reader?

The subject comes up in a discussion at MediaPost about Freakonomics’ recent partnership with the NYT. In particular,it brings attention to the debate over Freakonomics’ decision to reduce what had been a full RSS feed to a summary. That Freakonomics is so highly regarded, is, in part, due to the passionate and articulate community that they serve and a portion of that community is clearly communicating their discontent.

“…roughly six hours after Dubner published his announcement, roughly 100 of the 120 comments were in protest of Freaknomics’ move from full to partial RSS subscription feeds, forcing feed subscribers to begin their flow and then abruptly transfer attention to the NYTimes site via a separate browser window!

A sampling of the comments in Dubner’s post underscores the dilemma that online publishers face as they adapt to a more open Web, heightened competition, attention scarcity, savvier readers, rising expectations and RSS syndication…”

Attention and engagement are the coin of the realm and are quickly withdrawn if inconvenience is introduced. I far prefer and value full content, daily updated, and soon remove a feed that fails in both. It seems to be a common practice. But much, as well, depends on the site. I get my political fixes directly from the source because the comments are where all the treasure is found. People will click through according to what serves them best. It doesn’t seem too difficult a decision to provide a choice, unless traffic trumps community expectations.

“So the million-dollar question is: How should the Freakonomics authors and NYTimes — and publishers in general — interpret and act on such community feedback?
[…]
Audiences are no longer just about aggregating lifeless content consumers. Today, we must now consider reader participation, a powerful proxy of engagement. Participation now is content itself, and the glue that binds audience into meaningful community.”
(Source)

RSS publishing’s intrinsic facility makes it an effective means of content distribution for both mobile and video.

Since 2005 eBay customers have submitted their bids over their mobiles via UnWired Nation’s trial voice platform, the development of which resulted from the desire to get around the complexities of sending data to mobile users by, instead, offering voice as a channel.

“The UnWired Nation Voice Publishing Platform allows virtually any business– from e-commerce services, to news and information sites, to social networks –to reach and interact with mobile users, over the most widespread and accepted communications medium–the telephone.”

In addition to ebay, UnWired Nation announced 5 new companies deploying the platform,including Pheedo, who will give your RSS Publishing feeds a voice.

“Pheedo… will leverage the Voice Publishing Platform to vocalize RSS feeds and address the largest possible market for mobile information delivery: connecting RSS to the mobile phone via voice.”

Moving away from mobile to the video side of marketing, RSS Publishing may be the means of distribution for “Insider Guides”, Condé Nast Publications video series being offered on Concierge.com.

“It starts with getting the video on Concierge.com,” said Bradley J. Inman, TurnHere’s co-founder and CEO. “But video is so transportable, so we’re working with [CondéNet] in terms of syndicating and distributing their content.”

One distribution method may be via RSS, as TurnHere recently announced a partnership with Pheedo to track and deliver its video modules through RSS feeds.

“We’re actively in a handful of discussions to have video travel off our site,” said Richard Glosser, executive director of emerging media, CondéNet. “Condé Nast has affiliates around the world, and we’ll translate and serve video content wherever our partners have the ability to embed it. We’ll even work to have advertisers follow the content to other sites.”
(source)

Though you may have not, as yet, considered using video or mobile marketing, by taking the first step away from the traditional web site by implementing blog marketing technology, you have opened the door to exploiting the powerful brand exposure they offer for future campaigns.

RSS publishing strategies that target the ‘X’, ‘Y’ and Millennial generations present the online marketer with a myriad of powerful methods of pushing their brand to the forefront. Text messaging can easily become a powerful element to integrate into your blog marketing campaigns. These are the generations that have been internet savvy since childhood. If this is your target market you will find that your business blogging opportunities are only as limited as your imagination.

Take, for instance, Reacttee.com. They will put your message on a T-shirt, complete with unique text code, providing a powerful way to either launch your business blog or initiate a new blog promotion campaign.

“A new T-shirt innovation that spreads messages via mobile SMS is piquing the interest of many marketers.

Reactee is a T-shirt on which companies and organisations can print a message including a unique text code.

When a passer-by sends a message to the code after seeing the message on a wearer’s chest, a text alert service responds with further information.

Shirts can be designed at the reactee.com website, which allows customers to pick colours, slogans and trigger keywords.”

Or, if you prefer not to relegate you brand’s message to a T-shirt, USA Today has adopted direct to consumer (d2c) marketing by promoting it’s mobile news service in print editions. You can be a part of that message.

“Put simply, users find a number in certain sections of the newspaper they can text if they want more information – replies to these text messages feature a sponsored interactive ad. “It’s basically a mobile search platform and what it allows us to do is take a non-interactive platform, a newspaper, and make the print product interactive through the use of text messaging and short codes…”
(Source)

Blog site platforms, when well designed, are flexible, responsive to your varying marketing requirements. It’s one of the many advantages that business blogging provides over and above a static website. Robert, a methodical, well established book store owner was sold particularly on this flexibility and range of options.

Robert has taken a slow, well considered course in building his online presence. He has been able to carry his pre-internet “brand” and reputation as a rare book specialist over to his e-commerce site by a well calculated pre-blog launch incorporating a snail and email campaign. Now his blog is well populated with regular commentors and a substantial archive of content and Robert wants to further enhance his RSS marketing strategies to expand his customer base.

If you, like Robert, are presently exploring the myriad  uses for which you can employ RSS marketing, Rok Hrastnik’s article at MarketingStudies.net is thoroughly instructive.It goes over much of the material Robert will need to consider as he plots how to calculate the number of feeds he will want to employ and how to break them into individual personalized feeds.

“The right way to go, even if you’re only starting out with a simple RSS strategy, is to provide individual RSS feeds for:

• your individual target audiences,
• your different types of content and
• even your different content topics.

The more and more complex you get with the different feeds you’re offering, the more difficult it is for your visitors to select what exactly they want…

In this case the best way to go is to also offer your visitors the opportunity to customize your RSS feed…they decide exactly what content type and content topics they want to receive in one or a few RSS feeds they’ll be subscribing from you.

The opportunities here are quite endless, as you can allow them to customize their feeds based on topics, content types, authors and more.
(Source)

This especially will benefit Robert’s market audience. His customers can now subscribe to feeds that are specific to their reading interests. A perfect solution for satisfying a customer base that represents so many diverse interests.

RSS Marketing Strategies point to RSS as a superior way of getting your “transactional” (i.e. “buy this”) messages out than e-mail does.

That wise perspective is offered by Rok Hrastnik, author of the new e-book entitled Unleash The Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS.

Rob writes that, “it’s time to take on e-retailers, online service providers and basically anyone that does transactional messaging.”

Here’s what else he has to say about RSS Marketing Strategies vs. email marketing:

Let’s take a look at my inbox. Today I received …

• A transactional e-mail “from PayPal”
• A transactional e-mail “from eBay”
• A transactional e-mail “from Amazon”
• And some other brand names as well

Of course, none of these e-mails were actually from PayPal, eBay or Amazon. Simply spam, as every other day, intended to capture my private data.

Even if PayPal really sent me an e-mail, I would never read it or respond to it, simply because I would consider it spam and would never believe that it’s actually from PayPal.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed as well, transactional e-mail messages have become a horror story for the big brands, with spammers constantly trying to take advantage of their well-known brand names.

But here’s the catch …

• There is no SPAM with RSS, at least not in this form
• When you receive content from an RSS feed that you proactively subscribed to, you can be 100% certain that the message is legitimate and from the publisher to whom you subscribed
• RSS is perfectly capable of delivering personalized transactional information
• RSS is perfectly capable of delivering protected personalized transactional information, granting access only to those with the required username/password combination
• RSS transactional capabilities are easy to implement, if your user database is in order

So why aren’t any of these guys using RSS to deliver transactional information?

PayPal, eBay, Amazon … I really want my transactional messages from you. But when I receive them, I don’t believe them. Please start delivering them via RSS and make me a happy customer … a happy customer that actually trusts messages from PayPal, eBay and Amazon.

(marketingstudies.net)

RSS Marketing Strategies should be a fully integrated component of your Internet marketing efforts. This is because of RSS’ capacity to coordinate diverse marketing functions into a unified and potent whole, resulting in the creation of optimum results.

Now, let us examine some of our RSS Markjeting Strategies Tips:

Act as an end user and start using RSS- This is the first step of RSS marketing strategy in which you get your own RSS aggregator, subscribe to other RSS feeds. Now observe and understand how it all works.

Have a Plan-Planning your RSS feeds serves as a key factor that is pivotal in determining your RSS marketing success or failure. Research and identify different target audiences that you may want to reach with RSS, keeping in mind which interests, prospects and products they are looking for. You might have a broad audience base that includes:

• Existing clients
• Business partners
• Internal audiences, such as employees
• The media
• Search engines and directories
• Web site syndication partners, segmented by their existing content

Depending on the complexity of your business and online content strategies, you might need to plan different RSS feeds for each individual target audience, i.e., updates, product or podcast feeds to existing clients, article and news feeds to syndicated websites, etc.

Make A List of RSS Planning Requirments- This list must answer all critical questions, such as your choice of existing CMS (content management system) with which to integrate RSS publishing, budget, RSS metrics ( number of readers, clicks, individual content popularity), feed personalization, providing users the ability of RSS feed customization, etc.

Decide on appropriate RSS marketing tools and start generating feeds- Once you complete the list of requirements, find the appropriate tool. It may be a desktop application, a hosted online RSS publishing solution or high-end email integrated solutions.

Check back with us on Thursday for more insight on RSS Marketing Strategies.

RSS publishing frees up man power. Who is responsible for emailing your company newsletter? How much time does it take for them to format, write and send it out? How much time is wasted keeping the email list up to date? How many of your company emails end up deleted or consigned to spam?

Wouldn’t you rather that your customer knocks on your door rather than you pecking on his email door? That is what RSS publishing allows. If you have a company blog, the case can be made that you can streamline all of your communication efforts and free up man hours wasted on newsletters that provide very little in the way of feedback.

“RSS is a great supplemental communication method that does not burden the publisher with maintaining lists or following strict privacy guidelines. RSS feeds are compiled according to the user’s choices, removing any burden that is placed on publishers of email newsletters. Publishers no longer need to be concerned with spam, privacy policies, and age guidelines.”
RSS Specifications

RSS publishing frees up time spent communicating in numerous ways. The ultimate result is that you have an immediate connection with your customer/readers that they have sought out, as opposed to email that they are annoyed with.

Carol keeps up with new entries into the real estate market by subscribing to various realtor feeds via RSS. She’s also able to keep up with stock market news from her broker, as well as keep an eye on new sales from various retailers she has subscribed to.

Bob is a financial advisor who delivers his popular advice via podcast marketing via RSS feeds. Jack runs a local cycle shop and promises his RSS subscribers a one day advance notice on sales before advertising to the general public.

RSS feeds provides non-intrusive,instant communication to your target audience as soon as you update your site. Having subscribers is the most sincerest form of flattery on the internet as well as one of the most effective methods of keeping your client base up to date.

Within the first 60 seconds after responding to a press release inviting me to visit a new business blog launch I was lost, irritated and disappointed.

I chose to go directly to the retail site first. Irritated by a musical greeting that I have to mute, I forgo looking at inventory and am amazed to find that there is no link referring to their blog. In one fell swoop they invited me to a launch, gave me bad directions to get there and had nothing for me when I finally arrived.

I was promised blog content that would provide - “unbiased reviews with competitive products, industry news, and online resource information…” -but was actually greeted by two meager introductory posts.

There are many lessons to be garnered by this example but a quick summation will suffice for now.

• Lesson #1.
  Integrate your blog platform with your website for seamless navigation. It is integral to you business site, not an extra appendage.
• Lesson #2.
  Do not launch a new blog until you are ready. Do a pre-launch. Have employees, associates, customers navigate your new site and make recommendations.
• Lesson #3
  This lesson can be summed up with this excerpt from our RSS Publishing Guide offered with our blog training course. Have a feast of content ready, not a few trays of hors d’oeuvres.

“Bloggers or visitors always look for mass and variety in content. It’s not sensible at all to publish your articles if you have just recently enabled your RSS feed. Don’t expect your potential readers to be happy with just one article to view. Active bloggers and potential link partners will not be attracted until they see a pipeline of relevant information. Imagine searching on Google for the word “car” and one result pops up. This is a clear example of why you should not publish until you have written and archived at least a dozen articles.

You can download a PDF of our RSS Publishing Guide here.

Richard Hearne writes for WebProNews about optimizing Blogspot for SEO purposes. Your ability to alter and optimize Blogspot is somewhat limited by their hosting and restrictions, but you are not hopeless in your endeavor.

Suggestions include:

• getting your own domain
• setting blog titles and META tags
• Making use of the header tag
• using blog categories to theme your site
• linking to other blogs and content
• keep comments on the same page
• run site-specific topics

The suggestions are all explained in full and, in particular, there are many examples to follow.

Read more here.