It's getting increasingly difficult to reach your targeted audience these days by simply using email. Even if you have a large ezine list there's no guarantee your message will be read. This is because today’s' spam filters and firewalls may block or delete your email before it even reaches your intended audience. A great alternative solution is to use RSS.

In this series of articles I will discuss:

1. What is RSS?
2. Benefits of RSS Marketing
3. What are RSS Feeds and Why You Need a RSS Reader?
4. RSS Tools You Need
5. How to Get Started With RSS
6. How to Create an RSS Feed for Your Web Site
7. How to Syndicate Your RSS Feed

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's a new way for people to publish and distribute their content ie news, headlines, newsletters, articles etc. It's a Web content syndication format. An RSS file is written in a simple language called XML. It is a lot like HTML, only simpler. An XML file contains the information (Title, Description and Link URL) that your audience will receive through a RSS reader.

Here's an example:

<.item>
<.title>Web Site Design | Hosting | Marketing<./title>
<.link>http://www.isitebuild.com<./link>
<.description>Affordable Web Design in Maryland<./description> <./item>

(Please remove the period after the < to get the correct code.)

Syndication means you don't have to visit each site individually to see what's new -- you simply scan headlines or brief article summaries and click to read the full text Benefits of RSS Marketing

1. RSS is dynamic. When a publisher changes content, consumers know it instantly.

2. Review a large number of sites in a very short time ie you can review 20 headlines then choose which one to read.

3. Distributes content to consumers who might be too afraid to subscribe to your ezine - they can remain anonymous and don't need to subscribe or unsubscribe.

4. Bypass spam filters, firewalls, and avoid getting viruses. Consumers opt-in to receive RSS feeds.

5. Can replace or be an additional channel to distribute content besides using email to send your newsletter or ezine.

6. Allows consumers to see some of the producer's content without needing to visit the site.

7. Provides fresh content for your web site - by adding RSS to your web site you can automatically publish other people's content.

8. Increase search engine rankings - search engines love web sites that provide fresh content on a continuous basis. ie adding an article feed will provide that fresh content.

9. Save time - instead of browsing multiple sites to find information of interest, syndicated content can be delivered directly through your RSS Reader. You scan the headline that interests you, then click to go directly to the source.

Read Part 2 of this article:

What are RSS Feeds and Why You Need a RSS Reader (RSS Aggregator)?

http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/what-are-rss-feeds.htm

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com.
Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting.
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

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