I had a conversation today that revolved around how to build a marketing strategy that leveraged social media, email marketing, and new technologies – without driving yourself crazy.And there are ways to do this.
One way is through RSS, commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication.
What is RSS?
RSS is a type of “feed” used to publish blogs and other content into full or summarized text. RSS benefits publishers by letting them syndicate – or share – content automatically. They benefit readers who want to compile many feeds into one place – such as Google Reader.
So let’s see how this might look as part of a marketing cycle.
Marketing Foundation: My Blog
My business blog is the foundation of my online marketing. It’s where I provide lots of useful information – like this article – for my readers to consume and hopefully share. It also provides the search engines with fodder to figure out what my site is about and see that I provide frequent updates – all helping my placement in search results.
Push Marketing: Sending My Message
Now that I have a blog which I’m posting to regularly, I want to share my wonderful, useful information with my list of prospects and clients. I can do this by creating an RSS campaign. This campaign will automatically cull my latest posts and send them to my distribution list. After I set up the campaign, I don’t need to do anything further; a thing of beauty.
In this scenario, I am “pushing” my message to my audience.
Pull Marketing: Being There When They Want Me
Those who haven’t joined my mailing list may still want to read my articles and can do so by subscribing to my RSS feed. This will send my posts directly to an “aggregator” which basically collects blog posts from any site the reader wants and puts them all in one place – sort of like a do-it-yourself newspaper publisher, except its online.
In this scenario, my audience is “pulling” my message to themselves.
Social Media
While social media doesn’t really rely on RSS, my posts can – and should – also be shared via social media sites. In this way, people who perhaps have not joined my distribution list, for whatever reason, can still connect with me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn etc.
The idea is to allow readers to get my relevant, useful content in a manner that is comfortable for THEM.