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5 New Internet Marketing Opportunities Through RSS

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

When it comes to new internet marketing opportunities for
your business, RSS just might be the answer you were
looking for. Here are just some of the new opportunities it
can provide you with

1. PODCASTING AND VIDEOCASTING

Podcasting (delivering internet audio content) and
Videocasting (delivering internet video content) allow you
to communicate via rich media messages, not only making
your content more attractive and powerful, but also
enabling a more personal conversation with your
audiences.

Up until know, the internet was predominantly a textual
channel. Adding audio and video to the mix, delivering both
via RSS, goes beyond the basic capabilities provided by
traditional internet content delivery channels.
Rich media personalizes the internet experience and gives
your company a distinguishable face, while at the same time
providing you with a media platform to convey your message
so that it is easier to understand, see and feel.

Think about ...

-- Delivering press releases in audio or video

-- Sending your customers a personal video message from
the CEO

-- Doing audio interviews to expand your reach and provide
more content to your visitors

-- Delivering video demonstrations of your products

-- Using video and audio to demonstrate how your customers
and readers can easily resolve various issues that you are
helping them with

-- Delivering important messages to your readers,
customers and business partners via a more personal audio
experience, instead of using impersonal e-mail
communications

-- And so on ...

In addition, Podcasting and Videocasting form the basis of
new business models, giving you the opportunity to expand
your product base to include these formats with higher
perceived value.

Customer education & support are improved as well, since
you can now demonstrate key product usage points via online
video  providing customer support content in a
format, which can easily demonstrate everything you need to
convey to your customers.

2. HIGH FREQUENCY CONTENT UPDATES

High frequency content updates, even on a daily or hourly
basis, are now finally possible with RSS. No more need to
hold on your important messages, news and other content for
a week or even a month to include it in your e-zine ---
with RSS you can update your content as often as you
want/need, and your subscribers won't mind.

3. APPCASTING

Appcasting goes one step further, giving you the ability to
deliver critical software updates and patches to your
existing clients, without them having to visit your web
site every week to see if the much needed update is already
available or not.

4. PRODUCT NEWS, RELEASES AND UPDATES

Product news, releases and updates are now finally possible
in an easy-to-consume way. Using RSS, you can provide your
customers or prospects with simple tools to create their
own product feeds, through which they'll be immediately
notified when new products that precisely match their
interests are available.

As soon as your product portfolio changes, so does the
content in the RSS feeds that your customers are subscribed
to.

Just think of the following possibilities ...

-- The search tool is one of the most often used in larger
web stores, giving your visitors an easy way to find the
products they are interested. But the same search results
can be delivered via RSS as well. Imagine your customer
doing a search for one of your product categories, and then
also receiving a link to the RSS feed for those very same
search results, to find out immediately when a new product
matching his terms is released or available for order.

-- This works for complex searches as well. If your
customers are in the habit of searching for specific
product categories, but only in a specific price range, you
can deliver those very same results to them via RSS, but
with a small twist  as soon as a new product
matching their terms, including the desired price, is
launched, they are notified about it via RSS instantly. No
need to visit your site again to do the time-consuming
search; the release comes directly to them.

-- Of course, the same approach that many are already
using for e-mail alerts can be used for RSS. Give your
visitors a simple form using which they enter their
criteria, and then give them access to an RSS feed bringing
them product updates based exactly on their criteria. Why
not just use e-mail? Because no one really wants more
e-mail messages in their inboxes and no one wants to give
away their personal information, while RSS is anonymous,
doesn't require an e-mail address and is read when the
customer decides he has the time.

5. PERSONALIZED CONTENT SERVICES

Personalized/customized database listings are quite similar
to product updates, but relate to any kind of complex
information you provide to your visitors, such as

-- Job listings

-- Dating

-- Real estate

-- Etc.

Using RSS, your visitors can decide exactly what kind of
content (in this case, an individual content item could
be a new job listing) they are looking for and then have
that content delivered directly to them, via their own
personalized RSS feed.

And yet, all of these are just some examples of what you
can do with RSS. The possibilities for new content delivery
& business development models are quite endless.

For example, some companies are already giving their
visitors the opportunity to track their FedEx, UPS and
other packages via RSS feeds. Yet others are creating new
services that allow you to receive critical information
from an RSS feed to your mobile phone via SMS (such as
getting an SMS notifying you that a new job matching your
criteria is available). Yet again other sites enable you to
keep track of when you need to return your library
material, and even when your holds are ready and when they
are about to expire, all this using RSS.

All of these are new business opportunities made possible
with RSS, and each of them in a way improves lives of
end-users, without placing a larger burden (more e-mail
messages) on them.

------------------------------

Rok Hrastnik is the author of Unleash the Marketing &
Publishing Power of RSS, acclaimed as the best and most
comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS
experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers:
http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa8

More articles by Rok Hrastnik - http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Rok-Hrastnik-279/

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