PART 1 –Why does marketing with business blogs and RSS deserve your attention?

If you’re a business owner who’s marketing with business blogs, you’ve probably realized that automated options for measuring the marketing effectiveness of RSS feeds are slim to none. Compared to static web sites tracking, traffic analysis, and metrics related to RSS is still in it’s infancy. There’s not much help out there in the form of software or ASP solutions (unless you’ve got deep pockets and an internal marketing research team.)

The good news

If you’re a business owner who’s serious about optimizing your online marketing with business blogs (and it’s underlying RSS feeds,) there are some simple steps you can take . Although it may take a little more effort gathering measurements on your “live content” (RSS-based) than tracking and metrics on your regular static web site — you can get the measurements you need to tweak your business blog and maximize your RSS marketing results.

In PART 2 of this article, we’ll share five methods that have proven effective with tracking our own business blogs as well as helping dozens of our coaching clients who’ve completed the Marketing With Business Blogs course and are aggressive about getting results.

But before we get to those steps, I’d be remiss if I didn’t coach you on a few important points regarding the importance of RSS, business blogs, and other live content. Like any other area of business, having the right mindset and motivation will have a lot to do with your level of success. So let’s take a moment and look at the reasons why you must give RSS the attention it deserves — IF you’re going to market effectively in today’s online marketplace.

Why RSS deserves your attention

It’s a common excuse I hear from the business owners we coach when it comes to making the effort to gather metrics on their business blogs.

“I don’t know who is subscribing to my feed, and I can’t tell how many people are actually reading a new post. So why put in the extra effort to gather metrics right now.”

Although you can’t tell who has actually read your RSS feeds (as you can with e-mail,) they’re still a crucial part of marketing in today’s online environment. Today you can’t predict how consumers are going to gather information. They can find you, your products, or your services in dozens of different ways online. Organic search engine results are one of the top ways.

And one thing you can be sure of — the “World Live Web” and all it’s content is getting substantial boosts in weighting for inclusion in top search engine results. If you doubt that fact, just take Yahoo’s recent addition of top-rated “news bloggers” to their search results in their news engine as evidence. Or Google’s investment (a publicly traded company answering to shareholders) in a blog specific search engine.

Search engine placement is essential for small business owners and professionals who want to market effectively online, and it’s growing more critical day by day.

Again, let’s just look at the facts:

- A recent study by Forrester shows that 80% of all Internet users use search engines to find web sites.

- Enquiro discovered in their research that 64% of business users go first to a search engine to research a B2B purchase decision.

- Studies by Outsell reveal that 79% of ALL business research begins with a search engine.

I could keep going on for pages, but you get the point. Looking at these statistics alone it’s pretty clear — you’re either there when your prospects are looking for you, or you’re dead in the water. All recent reliable data points to a major shift in the marketing impact live content is having on search engine positioning.

And even when we look at RSS feeds stand-alone, you can see it’s important to be part of the World Live Web. It’s your chance to be heard as more and more consumers come to rely on the convenience of content delivered via RSS. Some RSS readers, like FeedDemon and NewsGator, allow users to set up custom searches to continually monitor important key words. Those can be things like your company name, the profession or industry you’re in, the type of service you provide, or the products you offer.

Whether it’s in the organic search results of the major search engines, or the personal RSS readers of consumers — wouldn’t you like to be there when the time is right?

Well in PART 2 of this article, we’ll share with you five simple (and nearly free) ways you can start monitoring your RSS feeds to help maximize your marketing with business blogs.

Learn how to unleash the maximum marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (in any industry, profession, or niche) with Marketing With Business Blogs™.

John-Paul Micek is a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He’s known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™.


The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Next in series