Ad Storm #7 - Fun with RSS feeds

Hey Guys,

Public Relations, Advertising, these are things we know and for the most part the way to use them most effectively have been for the most part become routine. Although the internet has become a new playground for marketing think tanks and visionaries. While Search Engine Optimization seems to have all the glory of online marketing, capitalizing on RSS feeds and content delivery to me is the true key to online marketing success.

Before most social networks tried to create walled gardens where everything had to be done within the network, but as competition began to open their walls the pressure to create content portability has increased. While many feared this would kill the competitive edge of a closed community this actually became a boon to then upcoming networks Twitter and Ning as they capitalized of the use of cell phones and widgets on other networks to get the word out.

So that kinda is the situation from a historical context, but I'm here to talk about RSS feeds and how to use them. RSS feeds is way of syndicating content, when content is formatted into an RSS feed it can be read by any RSS feed reader. Every blog and major news source has an RSS feed, so what how does that benefit content delivery.

One way to think about it is this, all major email services now have built in RSS readers, so if I could add the feed to all my favorite news sources to my email reader and read them in one place I'd be willing to read it more often, right? If I read it more often it means any advertisements in the content will get more consistent views, right? Which means monetization. This is one way to look at it.

When creating your product website you can seamlessly incorporate RSS feeds into you page, so what are some clever ways to use this? Let's say I have a product website, but my marketing department head doesn't have time to be at a PC typing up updates and uploading photos, how can I keep him connected.

1. updates answer - I can register my marketing rep with Twitter in which he can update news and promotions via his cellphone. I then will incorporate the RSS feed from his twitter profile seamlessly into my page using standard web design techniques and you get constant content without a need to chain your marketing guy to a chair.

2. Photos Answer - While Ning.com's purpose is to let brand build their own social network, Ning has some useful features for content distribution since all content is syndicated in RSS feeds. So register your guy again with an account on any Ning network, he is then giving an email with which he can email photos and video to with his phone.

So your marketing guy, armed with a good camera phone now has the ability to update your website via his phone with text, photos, and videos. This is only the tip of the iceberg of what you can do RSS feeds. Then you can recycle the the feeds into widgets for your consumers to paste on their myspace profiles and such for further content exposure.

See the value?

- Alex Merced

Ad Storm #6 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Hey Guys,

In todays marketing climate if your not at least somewhat familiar with the ins and outs of SEO your in danger of losing a lot of potential traffic to your site. I won't lie, while I'm pretty knowledgeable about marketing especially using web technologies my practical use of SEO is limited enough that I won't call myself an authority. Although for all of you who aren't the most web savvy or never really red on SEO here a few quick tips for on-page optimization.

- Make sure your brands tagline is not only something people remember, but also something that uses words people would look for. The key to SEO is using popular search terms in the most natural way possible. You tagline will be put in the most vital places by your web designer naturally, don't assume they are SEO experts so make sure wording is right.

- testimonials are a classy way of getting certain terms on your page over and over again without going overboard. Go out and ask your current consumers questions that might get them to use your target words naturally, it shouldn't be hard if the search terms your targeting are worth anything.

- make sure your site has some sort of blog that way it is crawled whenever there is new content and make sure to use your terms in any content added if it goes into it naturally of course.

Those are some quick tips for on-page optimization, otherwise email press releases to key blogs and newsletters which not only serves your PR goals but also helps SEO, got to love the online marketing karma.

- Alex Merced

P.S. go SEOFAQ and SEOmoz and don't forget about your link karma when making content.