Beware the Blog/RSS Hype!

by Sid Hale

With all the press that RSS and Blogs have received lately, it was inevitable that everyone and his brother would try to capitalize on the buzz by creating "how-to" products to tell you how to use these technologies to make a profit.

I can't count the number of people who've been willing to share a technique for getting my site listed on Yahoo! in just minutes - by creating an RSS feed.

I've had offers from people who just started a blog within the past couple of weeks, and one who admitted to just starting his first blog two days before!

All the hype might make you feel like you're about to miss the boat. In fact, a lot of people will tell you just that - but before you get carried away by all this, let me try to put it all into perspective for you.

First, understand that Blogging and RSS are two totally separate technologies.

They aren't interdependent.
You can use one or the other - or both.
Either can be implemented without the other.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from using these technologies (both hold a lot of promise when used right), but I do want you to approach this with your eyes wide open.

The more you understand about Blogging and RSS, the more you'll be able to read through the hype and make sound decisions about what products are worth your time (and money). I could just review each product and make some recommendations, but then you'd have to trust that my review wasn't biased - that I wasn't just promoting one or more products.

Better you should be a little more self-sufficient.

There's a lot to cover, so I'm going to give you the 30-thousand foot view for now, and get into more detail in follow-up articles over the next couple of weeks.

Blogging - what is it?

Think of a blog as a newsletter, where:

Each "article" is posted on your website as soon as you've finished it, rather than being delivered via email.
Your individual posts are automatically archived so that current readers can follow your rants, raves, and meanderings each time you post, but newcomers can go back and read prior posts to "catch up" on a topic or topics.
Your readers can post comments back to your "article" and have it appear immediately.

A blog is simply a collection of posts on a web site, much like an archive of articles, organized so that they are easily accessible. The default view of a blog shows the most recent posts first, followed by earlier posts on the same web page - but the articles are normally also available by category, or older articles can be accessed by month, week, etc.

Because your posts (articles) are collected automatically on a website, and not delivered through email, spam complaints become a thing of the past - and you don't have to worry about blacklisting, spam blockers or email filters.

Content, Content, & More Content

If there is any magic in a blog... it's in the content. Constantly updated content with fresh (and interesting) posts. With any luck, your posts will prompt reader comments, further increasing the "freshness" of your content, and all of that will add to your popularity with both your readers and with the search engines.

Since readers can make comments about your posts, it is much like the behavior of a forum or discussion board, except that the typical reader can't initiate a thread - they can only comment on the posts that the blog owner has made.

That means that the blogger has more control over the "discussion" than on a discussion forum, and can "target" those discussions in a way that is more productive and profitable.

Quick Start-Up

The blogging software makes it easy and instantaneous. You (and anyone wanting to comment on your posts) simply submit your text into a web-based form, and the backend software stores it on the web host and automatically incorporates it into your blog pages.

Whether you choose to host your blog under your own domain name (my personal recommendation) or through one of the free services, just a few minutes of set up and you're ready to go.

If you've been thinking of starting an online newsletter, a blog can be much easier way to get started. Rather than brainstorming and researching a full-fledged article every week, you might just post a paragraph or two at a time. A little snippet of information here and there, a link to an interesting article you've found, and (of course) an occasional recommendation for a new product that your market will want to have.

Reality Check

Well, I only wish it were that easy.

On the downside, this can eat up a fair amount of time. If you aren't prepared to put in the time to post fairly regularly - don't bother creating a blog in the first place. It'll just be a disappointment to you and your readers.

At the end of the day a Blog is a website, and you're faced with all of the age-old problems of getting search engine rankings, attracting repeat visitors, and converting some of those visitors into sales. Sound familiar?

I don't want to sound too negative, because there are some things about blog sites that make all that easier than for the normal website - but there is still no magic, so don't fall for the hype.

RSS Feeds

An RSS Feed is one of the tools that you'll see hyped in the same sentence with Blogs. That's because RSS Feeds allow you to automatically notify your readers every time you've posted new content to your blog.

What is an RSS Feed?

First, an RSS feed is just a very easy way to make your content available by linking to various content pages from one file on your web site. This file uses a fairly standard format, so that any news aggregator can read any RSS file and link directly to your content.

In general, each item you want your RSS feed to link to will contain a heading, a link to the full content, and a description (or excerpt). That way, anyone wishing to syndicate your RSS feed will be able to show your headlines as links to your web pages, and each link can be shown with a short description of the content.

Easy, Easy, Easy

If there's anything easier than starting a blog, it's creating an RSS feed. First, most blogging software will dynamically generate a fresh RSS feed every time someone requests it, and the feed readers will do that periodically, so that they can alert your subscriber to any updates.

The fact that this is totally automatic - requiring absolutely no additional effort - is probably why almost every discussion of blogging will also have some mention of RSS feeds.

But...
If you bother to learn the syntax (which is dead simple) you can also create your RSS feeds manually, using any plain text editor.

And...
If you don't want to bother learning the syntax, there are also a number of free and low-cost Feed Generators that let you input your headlines, urls, and excerpts and will build you a custom RSS feed.

Flexibility

Remember that I said RSS feeds weren't limited to blogs? In fact, they weren't originally developed for blogs at all.

An RSS feed can reference any online web content, so if you already have an html newsletter and you archive past issues online, you could create an RSS feed with all your archived articles and update that file each time you post a new article to your site.

At Info Syndicate, I've created a rather unique example of using RSS feeds for any web content. This RSS feed points to the latest article or blog entry for some of the top internet marketers on the web, so it syndicates content from multiple web sites. None of the articles are actually on the Info Syndicate web site - just the RSS file.

You could also put an RSS Feed to good use if you already run a successful online discussion forum. Because all of the forum posts are available online, an RSS feed can be created to notify people anytime a new post is made. Just as blogging software automatically updates its RSS feed, forum software can easily be made to do the same. In fact, there are host-based RSS generators available at no cost for some of the more popular open source forum scripts, so all that might be required is installing an add-on script to your forum hosting site.

Easy AND Flexible, but...

Remember I said that, "RSS Feeds allow you to automatically notify your readers every time you've posted new content to your blog"? This is much like you might send an email notification today to let your readers know that you've posted a new article online, but it doesn't use email to deliver the notification.

Readers still have to "subscribe" to your feed, but they don't give up their email address in the process.

That should make getting "opt-ins" a little easier - but there is a downside with this, too.

Everybody's familiar with email - many are still unfamiliar with news readers or aggregators. They just don't see any need for them. If you're lucky, your potential readers will already be using a desktop news reader or an online aggregator service (like MyYahoo!). If not, you'll have to sell them on the value. In other words, you'll have to really make them want your content!

Get the picture?

The sales hype focuses on the benefits of adopting these technologies - but doesn't tell you about some of the unique challenges that come with converting others to an unfamiliar technology.

If you don't produce regular, interesting, and informative posts - no "secret" blogging technique will be worth one red cent to you. If you can't get your readers to install some flavor of news reader or sign up for an aggregator service, no one will be reading your content.

Don't get me wrong.

I think implementing these tools is absolutely the right decision for now and for the long term - and it certainly can't hurt to get started now and stay a little ahead of the learning curve.

Your readers have always been looking for a way to receive selected content, without increasing their chances of being spammed.

Email open rates are probably going to get worse before they get better, so you have to start creating alternate ways to get your message delivered. Implement these alongside (not in place of) your existing techniques. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but don't ignore these opportunities either.

About the Author:
Sid Hale is the owner of several successful websites including ad-CLiX.com and Info-Syndicate.com, and is co-creator of jvAlert - a membership site for facilitating high-level Joint Ventures.

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