+ aus dem untenstehenden Interview
"The RSS business opportunities range from general marketing communications, direct marketing, PR, advertising, customer relationship management, online publishing, e-commerce to internal enterprise communications and internal knowledge management.
The greatest appeal to RSS is that it's really an all-encompassing marketing/publishing/communications channel, which can be used to power most of your online marketing activities. "
Interview with Rok Hrastnik about the joys of RSS
von:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/newsfeatures/newsletter/2117/e-business-briefing-on-rss-with-rok-hrastnik.html
Rok Hrastnik is the author of the Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS report, critically acclaimed as “the best and most comprehensive” guide on RSS for marketers by leading RSS practitioners, marketers, vendors, developers and thought-leaders. More information about the report is available here ((http://rss.marketingstudies.net)
http://rss.marketingstudies.net).
For weekly RSS updates, news and advice take a look at Rok's RSS Marketing Diary blog at (http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net)
http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net. Rok is currently also serving as the E-commerce Manager for Studio Moderna ((http://www.studio-moderna.com)
http://www.studio-moderna.com), the largest direct marketing network in Central and Eastern Europe.
INTERVIEW
1. You are a huge enthusiast of RSS. What are the basics?
RSS is a technology that has the potential of overcoming many of the internet marketing challenges we are facing today and becoming a strong, if not preferred, content delivery vehicle.
The simple RSS explanation from the marketing point of view is that RSS is a simple to use content delivery tool for marketers and publishers, which allows them to easily get their content delivered to end-users, without it being stopped by any spam filters or similar problems along the way.
In addition, RSS content can be delivered to other websites; such as search engines, specialized RSS directories, special content aggregation sites and other site types. All of this using just one technology: RSS content is delivered through RSS feeds, simple files structured in a specific way [xml].
These files include some basic information about the RSS feed (such as RSS feed title, logo, description, URL etc.) and the actual content in the form of individual content items. These content items are individual stories or articles (usually just descriptions of articles actually published on the internet publisher’s web site), presented in a linear list.
2. Can you sum up the opportunities for businesses?
The RSS business opportunities range from general marketing communications, direct marketing, PR, advertising, customer relationship management, online publishing, e-commerce to internal enterprise communications and internal knowledge management.
The greatest appeal to RSS is that it’s really an all-encompassing marketing/publishing/communications channel, which can be used to power most of your online marketing activities.
If you’re wondering more about the broad and more generic tactical opportunities, this might be well explained by my “Full-circle of RSS Strength” model:
a] RSS as a content delivery channel for communicating with subscribers, customers, prospects and partners gets your content delivered and provides you with multiple new content delivery & business development opportunities. RSS gets all content delivered, as opposed to e-mail, which is currently burdened by spam, phishing and many other troubles.
b] RSS as a promotional/visibility tool increases your traffic by improving your search engine rankings, generating traffic from new RSS specific sites and getting your content published on other sites. Each of these activities brings new visitors to your site, who are now ready to be converted into new subscribers with whom you can communicate (via RSS and/or email) in the long-term. In addition, the improved visibility enforces your brand and generates more credibility for your company.
c] Content delivery to end-users and content syndication form the basis of RSS conversations, which together work to spread your reach throughout the internet and serve as a strong PR platform.
d] Once you have access to more prospective subscribers, to whom you want to deliver content via RSS, you can provide them with your own branded RSS aggregator to make the switch to RSS easier for them, as well as establishing a constant connection with them, enforcing your brand and developing brand experience. Your branded aggregator also serves as a sales platform for your own products and an advertising platform to generate advertising income.
e] As a publisher, your goal is to better satisfy the needs of your visitors, establish yourself as a key content source in your industry and make your visitors come back more often. Providing access to additional information is one of the elements to make this possible. Use RSS to syndicate content from other websites and, as an upgrade, to target their most focused content needs, create RSS radars for your key phrases.
f] All of the above will create advertising revenue and create a new source of income.
g] In addition, using RSS advertising as an advertiser yourself you can increase the reach of all of the above activities.
3. How big is RSS at the moment? Can you help separate hype from reality by giving us an overview of RSS usage / adoption (by consumers / businesses)?
On the consumer side, the latest Jupiter Research report (Jupiter RSS Consumption March 2005 Report) shows that RSS is currently being consumed by 12% of the American online population.
According to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, based on two nationwide phone surveys conducted in the U.S. (1,861 internet users), 5% (or 6 million) Americans online consumed RSS feeds in November 2004.
While both of these studies were conducted differently, they do show that RSS is growing at a huge rate, and will continue to grow, especially considering Microsoft’s latest official announcement that RSS will be integrated in the next Internet Explorer edition, as well as tightly integrated in their Longhorn operating system. This will open the door for mass-market RSS penetration in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately there are no European or other statistics we can share at this time.
On the business side, RSS is becoming a widely adopted internet publishing and marketing channel. For example, the International Federation of the Periodical Press group has just revealed the results of their consumer media study, which shows that 30% of all consumer media sites are already providing their content via RSS.
While there are no such statistics available for the mainstream newspaper media on the internet and for online only media, our internal research shows that most of these companies are already providing their content via RSS as well.
Marketers in turn have been slower at adopting RSS, with only a few e-commerce sites for example, such as Amazon, providing their own RSS feeds. Interestingly, research from UK based Market Sentinel published in May 2005 cites that only one of the 100 UK blue chip companies delivers their content via RSS.
The good news for marketers is that there is still little RSS competition from other marketers, leaving the field still open for stronger marketing initiatives, especially as their understanding of RSS broadens.
4. Are there any early success stories to share?
I will give you two important examples.
(http://www.Lockergnome.com) Lockergnome.com is one of the most popular tech sites on the internet and although it is serving a more tech savvy audience, it serves as an excellent example of the results you can ultimately hope to achieve using RSS.
First of all, they are seeing a 5:1 ratio of RSS subscribers to e-mail subscribers, and even more interestingly, a 500% better click-through ratio with RSS than with e-mail.
And on the search engine optimization side, an interesting example comes from the (http://blog.btigroup.com/) BTI Group, which is a smaller VoIP provider and, through their high ranking blogsite, the proof that RSS works for search engine positioning.
A] Using RSS and blogs, they achieved 120 page-one search results on important industry search terms.
B] A 75% increase in traffic to the corporate website.
C] BTI’s link popularity jumped from 164 in June 2003 to 1,312 in December 2004 to 1,405 in February 2005.
Metrics from other sources on an aggregated level also show that RSS is a viable marketing tool. For example, (http://www.simplefeed.com) SimpleFeed, an advanced RSS solutions provider, is seeing a 6.8% average CTR from feed content item to site. These stats are based on a 10,000 end-user sample, 30 day average and 4 months of data.
5. Many online publishers will be used to sending out newsletters or alerts by email, but how can RSS be used in conjunction with email?
RSS and e-mail are in no way mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they can work together to provide for a better user experience, or at least provide the users with a choice of how they want to receive their content. Furthermore, since e-mail delivery rates are falling and there is always some fear of legal prosecution, implementing RSS as a supplementary content delivery channel might in fact save your delivery efforts in the long run.
The first opportunity is to provide an RSS feed that carries the same content as your regular e-mail e-zine or newsletter, with each RSS content item representing one e-zine issue. Subscribers can choose which content consumption channel they prefer, and get the same content via both channels. At the same time, the e-zine RSS feed needs to be promoted directly below the e-mail subscription box, as well as in the e-zine itself.
Remember, if you’re not seeing good e-mail delivery rates, getting your e-mail subscribers to subscribe to your RSS feeds will improve your results.
An additional service that makes sense is creating an RSS feed that carries the same content that the e-mail newsletter does, only that it makes that content available to the subscriber as soon as it’s published online, with each news item or article representing one content item in the feed, without the subscriber having to wait to receive that content in a regular weekly or monthly e-mail e-zine.
So, as a general rule of thumb, first start by creating RSS feeds that duplicate your existing e-mail initiatives, simply providing your subscribers with a choice of channel. Then, think of how you can improve the service you are providing by making more content available as soon as possible via RSS, such as your news section content, content from your message boards and so on.
6. How do you track RSS usage? What sort of metrics are there? Any suggested tools to help people do this?
RSS metrics, contrary to general belief, can in fact be measured to the same extent as your e-mail marketing activities. Some RSS solutions, such as (http://www.nooked.com)
http://www.nooked.com and (http://www.simplefeed.com)
http://www.simplefeed.com, already come with RSS metrics features. And then there are some specialized services that focus especially on RSS metrics:
(http://www.feedburner.com) FeedBurner is a mass-market RSS metrics solution (the basic version is free), which will give you circulation, readership and click-through data.
(http://www.syndicateiq.com) Syndicate IQ is a specialized RSS metrics company, which can help you track your RSS usage on a per subscriber basis.
7. Can RSS be used as an advertising medium? Should it be used in this way?
I’m a strong believer in RSS advertising and certainly believe that it should be used in this way, as long as it’s kept civil. Basically, RSS is a marketing channel, and as such will be used by marketers, and that includes advertising purposes.
In the end it all comes to the question of whether end-users would rather pay to receive content or put up with some advertising. History teaches us that they usually prefer the advertising …
Furthermore, hard-data from FeedBurner, based on the 80,000+ RSS feeds they are serving, shows that RSS feeds with advertising are in fact not losing subscribers.
But the thing to keep in mind is to not over-saturate your subscribers with ads (certainly not more than one per content item), do not allow the ads to interrupt the content flow, precisely target the ads to your audience and make them unobtrusive (multi-media ads or large graphical ads are certainly a no-no).
Another company to pay attention to in this arena is: (http://www.pheedo.com)
http://www.pheedo.com.
8. Which companies do you think are leading the way in the deployment of RSS?
Well, I can’t name names, but you can find them among the links in this interview : )
Rok was interviewed by (chris@e-consultancy.com?subject=feedback%20from%20the%20e-business%20briefing%20%28RSS/Rok%29) Chris Lake, editor, E-consultancy. Questions, comments, concerns? Then visit our (http://www.e-consultancy.com/forum) forum to discuss.
