Many B2B businesses have a news page with an RSS feed. The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is a helpful tool developed in 1999 to syndicate blogs in a common format.
RSS spawned aggregation services that enable users to group all their RSS feeds into a single location for reading. Some RSS readers are online (Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes), while others are desktop applications (NewsGator and Toolbutton, for example).
But what proportion of businesses actually know how to set up and use an RSS reader? And how can B2B marketers harness this ‘really simple’ technology to support their marketing communication strategies?
RSS outputs
In one sense, not much is happening to RSS – the technology has not advanced; it continues to work and is installed on thousands of sites. However, there is a lot happening with the RSS output. Social networks are now linked into RSS and are themselves feeds. There are feeds of feeds, feeds of comments, feeds of ‘likes’ – you name it there’s a feed for it. Consider the tools that are actually widely used – Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Posterous and FriendFeed. They all have a large user-base and are all RSS aggregation tools.
Businesses may not realise the value that RSS can bring. So, marketers need to use services that are a step removed from what is thought of as traditional RSS. This way, feeds can be provided to subscribers in ways they already may consume but they are not aware they are consuming.
I asked Phil Hollows, managing director of Feedblitz about this transition. He says, “This is much more interesting for B2B marketers because it is the application that provides RSS-by-email – with minimal extra work by the B2B marketer thanks to the automation built from RSS. FeedBlitz also adds value to the raw RSS feed with click-through tracking and branding while using the ubiquity of email.”
The customer doesn’t have to download another application in order to consume the RSS. And even technophobes have email at work.
Hollows adds, “Email is the best media distribution channel because your newsletter can also get out to Facebook, Twitter, instant messenger, mobile phones and Skype. And the customer chooses how they want to receive it. They just get your news and it is easier for the marketer – you scale out more rapidly to reach audiences from whatever platform they want to use.”
Actions you can take:
- Check the feed on your news page has ‘subscribe by email’.
- Review Feedburner or Feedblitz to provide the service.
Data aggregation
For the B2B marketer, aggregation of feed content is a rich source of data to mine and consolidate in order to get competitive marketing intelligence and custom content for your brand and industry. You can get free market research by searching feeds.
An example of this is when The Conversation Group researched the Google Android mobile phone release by tracking comments, blogs and tweets, gaining insight into customer views.
Another example involved the review of iPhone users’ views who reported functionality issues with battery life. The review resulted in actionable insight for Apple’s R&D lab and customer services.
Actions you can take:
- Try free tools to research your brand: Backtype, Twitter Search, Technorati, Google blog search.
- Check out paid services with free trials: eCaim, Leximancer (via Thinking Insight) and Radian6.
The multiplier effect
Combining email with RSS lets the customer choose how they receive your messages. And so by delivering newsletters and email shots using RSS technology, a customer can read it on Facebook, their mobile phone, through Twitter or by email. Your brand can harness the ‘multiplier effect’ of social media because a recipient can immediately read, comment, share or forward the message to their network of contacts and thus increase your reach.
The next big move for B2B marketing is integrating electronic marcoms across several platforms. This means that you have to do less and use fewer suppliers but you reach a greater audience. Feedblitz is just one example of a paid email service that you can use for your ‘normal’ email marketing, as well as newsletters, auto-responders, surveys, forms and RSS-by- email. I am trying it out now for my blog.
Setting up your blog’s RSS so it automatically creates a Tweet every time a new post publishes using Twitterfeed or FeedBlitz is a good thing for you to try out. Alternatively, you could install Tweetdeck and publish in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Posterous is a blogging-by-email service where you send an email and it appears on your blog.
Actions you can take:
- Try out an automatic cross-posting service.
- Ensure your company and staff are listed on LinkedIn.
- If you have a Facebook page, add your blog feed to update wall posts.
- Combine tools or services into a hub of social media marketing automation.
