RSS, Newsletter, Blog, Website…with so many places you can publish your web content to, how do you choose; especially when articles and time to publish them is limited. Besides, why should you publish your content in so many different formats? If you’ve been doing business online for any amount of time you know that building a list is integral to success.
Regular website content brings search engine robots back. So do blogs. Blogs also help build your expert status and RSS is the new way for people to subscribe to your content without giving out their email address – among other things.
Ok, so you know it’s all good and they will help build your business, but how can you do several or all without piling more work on your already full to do list? It’s really quite simple.
Instead of publishing your newsletter entirely by email, publish it to a content management system or blog that will automatically create an RSS feed each time you update it. Your next step is to put that RSS feed into your mailing list manager*. Create a signup box as you would a regular newsletter and put it on your website or blog in a prominent area together with the RSS feed. It probably won’t take more than a few minutes if you already have everything at hand.
From now on, people can choose to subscribe to your newsletter by RSS or email and every time you publish the newsletter to your website or blog, RSS subscribers will see that you have new content and people who opt-in for email will receive an email notice. To top it all off, the content is also archived online permanently and all you did was type and publish one time.
You know the amazing part is, that’s not all. You can syndicate your newsletter for more exposure. Contact a few webmasters and ask them if they’d like free, automatically updating content on their websites. Create the codes for them so it’s super easy for them to add you. When they do, the next time you publish your newsletter, their website gets updated immediately. If anyone wants to read more of your content, they would be brought to your site.
RSS is truly an exciting technology. Not only does it open many doors for you to share your content, it can also help you work smarter by cutting down your work as you read above. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have an RSS feed today and if you already have one, it’s time you should milk your RSS feed for all it’s worth.
*Note: Not all mailing list managers can take your RSS feed and convert it into email updates.
