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The 7 Steps to Promoting Your RSS Feeds on Your Website

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

RSS gets 100% of your content delivered, but its no good
if no one subscribes to your feeds.

So your first order of business after planning and creating
your feeds has to be promoting them to your visitors.

The only problem is that most internet users still dont
know what RSS is, so you do have your work cut out for. But
using the system outlined below you shouldnt have any
problems. Actually, after implementing this system, you
should be achieving better results than the majority of
publishers out there.

1. HOW RSS FEEDS ARE GENERALLY PROMOTED

RSS feeds are generally promoted using the orange XML or
RSS buttons, and often also with buttons that enable
visitors to subscribe directly to the feed with their RSS
reader.

Usually, if clicking on the RSS button, the visitor only
sees a lot of confusing XML code. They in fact need to copy
& paste the link in to their RSS reader. But since most
still dont know what RSS is, using this approach will only
waste potential subscribers.

To achieve success, youll need a different approach.

A] Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain:
- What RSS is
- How the visitor will benefit from using RSS
- Where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one
yourself!)
- How they can install it (provide step-by-step
instructions)
- How they can subscribe to your RSS feeds
- Why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds

Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your
RSS feeds.

In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include
direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here
http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant
services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com).
There are about 5 RSS readers you should cover with these
buttons.

B] Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you
can using all of your available channels.

2. LOCATION AND CONTENT

Its all about location, just like with the subscription
box for your e-zine. If they dont see it, they wont
subscribe. And if you dont motivate them enough to
check-it out, theyll just ignore it.

A] Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine
subscription box, and always above the fold. Promote your
RSS presentation page (telling your visitors thats where
they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent
locations of your site.

B] If youre publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather
a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next
to their topics. For instance, if youre publishing an RSS
feed on E-mail Marketing, promote the RSS feed at the top
of the topic home page, and in every E-mail Marketing
article you publish. These links should actually be direct
subscriptions links to the feeds.

Use this service to cover all of the important readers
using just one simple button:
http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

C] Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages
and e-zine issues.

D] As for the content, dont just say Subscribe to receive
news from my site, but rather prepare compelling copy to
specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe
to your content in the first place and why they should
subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.

3. ENABLE AUTO-DISCOVERY

Some internet browsers, such as Firefox, make it easy for
their users to subscribe to RSS feeds. The browser actually
asks the user if he wants to subscribe to the feeds the
browser finds on the site the user is currently on.

Yes, this is even more powerful than your e-mail
subscription form, since the browser in a way pushes the
user with your RSS feed subscription.

But in order for the browser to do this, you need to help
it out to find your RSS feed.

Just include the following piece of HTML code in the head
section of your webpages and youll be all set:

link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL"

There are many more techniques and opportunities available
to you, from direct subscribe links to actually using
opt-in forms, but these 7 steps should get you started in
the shortest time possible, and help you achieve a better
visitor-to-RSS-subscriber conversion rate than the huge
majority of sites are achieving today.

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

Rok Hrastnik is the author of Unleash the Marketing &
Publishing Power of RSS, acclaimed as the best and most
comprehensive guide on marketing with RSS by top RSS
industry leaders, experts, developers and top marketers.
Find out all you need to know about RSS and how to use it
to get your content delivered, win back your customers,
make more sales and increase search engine rankings
http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa6

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

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