Blogs & Rss Revealed

TimYang from www.timyang.com lists 15 things you can do with RSS

From Detroit News Technology;

Internet blog Engadget created a stir among digital game lovers when it wrote that Microsoft Corp.will give away thousands of its new Xbox video game consoles in a promotion with soda maker PepsiCo.

While neither company would respond to the report that first appeared in mid-April, dozens of gadget and video game blogs have picked up the item, speculating on everything from Microsoft’s marketing strategy to the number of sodas one would need to slurp to win in the bottle-cap contest.

The buzz about a product months before its official launch is but one example of why the world’s top advertisers and media moguls are plotting strategy for the quick-response, point-of-view world of blogs. But they may already be behind an emerging network of blogs that are building a business model from the grass roots up, industry experts said.

……

As many as 64 percent of marketers are interested in advertising on blogs, according to a Forrester Research study, though their investment would still be a fraction of the $14.7 billion expected to be spent on Internet ads this year.

Another 57 percent are looking to include marketing messages on RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds which allow a viewer to see instantly updating headlines from news, Web logs and other sites via a simple Internet browser

Read the rest of the story here:

Why would you use Blogs instead of a web site for your online business?
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All rights reserved. (C) Brandon Hong 2005
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Why would you use Blogs instead of a web site for your online business?

You can definitely continue using a website in your online business.

Combining a website and a Blog however offer a number of superior advantages in terms of traffic generation, marketing and efficiency which a stand-alone website cannot do.

(a) Automatic push-button publishing.

Blogs are the easiest and cheapest way to have an online presence. For example, if you’re using Blogger, your Blog is hosted free by Blogger. Blogs allow you to publish your website without the need to know about any technical or programming issues such as HTML, FrontPage, FTP and so on.

Blogs provide a simple editorial interface. All you need to do is write your content, and publish it just by clicking the ‘publish’ button in most cases, and you’re done.

(b) Fosters relationship building, trust and ‘stickyness’

Unlike websites, which are static, Blogs allows interaction between you and your readers. Blogs have a commenting function, and if turned on, it allows readers and visitors to post their comments, thoughts or opinions to a particular article you have written.

Constant interaction with your readers builds a feeling of community and ‘stickyness’ factor. You can then recommend products more easily to them, and they would be more ready and willing to accept your product or services.

(c) Increase search engine ranking

Almost every major search engine has a software program called a ‘bot’ that searches or ‘spiders’ websites online to find new content which it can then bring back to update the search engine databases.

Basically what this means is the more frequently you update your site, the more frequently the search engine ‘bot’ will visit your site, and this helps to boost your search engine rankings.

If you make regular postings to your Blog, you can be sure that search engines will visit your Blog again and again.

You can then place links of your other websites in your Blog and these will get indexed quickly by the search engines.

Of course you could also update your existing web site with new content, but you would have to go through a more technical process, that of using an HTML editor or FrontPage and uploading through FTP and so on.

(d) Free listing in Google, Yahoo and MSN

The traditional way of getting your website listed in these three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN is slow and inefficient.

A listing in Yahoo directory alone would cost you $299.

However, with the inclusion of RSS feeds by these search engines, you can now gain a ‘backdoor’ listing which is legal and free. If you have an RSS feed, you can have it included in Yahoo and MSN and your website will be immediately listed in these major search engines within 24 hours!

My video e-book shows you the step-by-step process on how to do this.
(e) Syndication Power

The most powerful feature of a Blog is its syndication function. Blogs can be turned into RSS feeds, and most Blogging service providers have this built-in function.

It is just a matter of turning it on from within your account.

Once it’s turned into an RSS feed, you can syndicate your Blog contents by:

• Submitting to the major RSS directories and search engines like Yahoo and MSN, gaining free exposure and free traffic
• Allow other website owners to publish your feed on their sites, again, getting free traffic you otherwise will not have
• Gain new readers, subscribers and potential clients by letting them subscribe to your RSS feed via a newsreader

Get your own Free Rebrandable “Marketing With Blogs and RSS” Special Report for Massive Viral Profits.

by Brandon Hong, www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

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