The MoPR Blog

At MoPR, we’re veracious readers of the news. We read the trades relevant to our clients and look for opportunities; we read daily newspapers and monthly magazines to stay informed on trends and issues related to the industry; we read magazines and newsletters about public relations, marketing and branding. We read – a lot.

Back in the day [way back in 2003] reading all this news usually involved multiple subscriptions to newspapers, magazines and journals, some that tended to pile up in the corner office. Stacks and stacks of dusty magazines were the norm and so was slogging through websites marked as favorites in our bookmarks.

Nowadays, MoPR HQ still subscribes to the important magazines and gets them – gasp – delivered through the postal service.

But instead of hundreds of subscriptions we have dozens, confining our reading to a few key magazines.

And like the rest of the world, much of our information and reading comes from online sources, most notably the trades we read.

Most newspapers and magazines have a good grasp of how to utilize the web to make money by adding content online, offering original content and making the content searchable. [What did we do before the now nearly ubiquitous search box?!]

Where many traditional publications fail though is with the delivery of the content. And that’s where Really Simple Syndication (RSS) comes in.

By subscribing to RSS feeds we can quickly scan more than 100 publications every morning looking for news that interests us or MoPR clients. In other words, RSS lets us “subscribe” to blogs and websites – and even drill down to receive only our favorite sections of a publication or a specific reporter’s articles.

We don’t have to scroll through hundreds of websites; we merely read the headlines and decide whether we want to click it and read it. It takes about 10-30 minutes to do this, depending of course on how many sources you are wading through. Ten-30 minutes is nothing when you consider that opening and reading each web site would take all day.

For our daily reading we only read blogs and publications that have an RSS feed, period.

In order to read RSS feeds, you need a feed reader. There are many feed readers on the market (more than 2,000 according to Google) but we prefer the NewsGator FeedDemon client.

To use FeedDemon, we merely cut and paste the RSS URL into the FeedDemon “browser” and click subscribe, which adds the RSS feed to our list. FeedDemon is also available as an iPhone application and browser-based client – which all sync up.

Google Reader is another good RSS reader. It’s web-based and lets users read their feeds easily on any browser. In fact, most new versions of browsers have RSS reading functionality built right in.

With the ease of gathering and reading feeds from online newspapers and magazines it’s surprising that many of the old-guard newspapers and magazines don’t offer RSS feeds to their readers. And they wonder why they’re losing money and are shutting doors? Being an active blogger without an RSS feed is unforgivable (and not very savvy).

If you don’t offer an RSS feed you are limiting the number of regular readers you will get, period. You can’t just expect readers to find and read your posts daily on their own. Bookmarks you say? Bookmarking is only as effective as the person willing to scroll through them without the guarantee of new content. People today don’t have that kind of time.

If you are a blogger or someone who wants to disperse information and attract more readers, you need to employ RSS feeds on your site.

Adding RSS to your site
So, is adding an RSS feed to your blog easy? These days it certainly is. No worries about understanding XML or complex coding.

There are numerous programs on the market that will generate the code needed, provide you with that code, which you can then add to your HTML, ultimately letting readers use it to subscribe to your feeds.

Most blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger automatically include RSS functionality with their software- so users don’t need to do a thing. Readers can merely click on the button provided in the template and subscribe.

I’ve used FeedBurner (owned by Google) and can verify it’s very easy to use. Bloggers simply add the URL to the appropriate box and it automatically spits out a feed URL for you. Once you have the feed URL and the code you simply add it to the HTML code, or in Blogger’s case (also owned by Google) it automatically gets added via a couple of clicks.

Here is a screenshot that illustrates the ease of adding an RSS feed using FeedBurner:

FeedBurner also lets users add the universally accepted orange subscribe button to the site.

Still not convinced that your readers want RSS or will use it if you add it? FeedBurner provides stats on how many people subscribe to your feed and what feeds they read.

Here is a short very basic video with a simplified overview of RSS for you if you’re still unsure of RSS:

RSS dos and don’ts

Don’t hide the link or RSS widget and make readers search for it. Add it to the right-hand top corner.
Do offer readers RSS feeds for the whole site as well as different sections of the site. This is also a great way to see what parts of the site get read more than others.
Do offer the comments on posts as RSS feeds – people love to follow the conversation.
Do use the universally known orange button.

It’s not breaking news that print media is suffering. With the lousy economy, skyrocketing operating costs and readers defecting and getting their information online, publishers are aggressively looking for ways to leverage the web to make a profit or to merely stay alive.

One recent study, “Vertical Search Report 2008,” from E-consultancy conducted in association with Convera suggests though, that publishers can retain existing readers and even grab new ones by offering a very specific search functionally within their market or niche. By delivering a specific search niche publishers can position themselves as the go-to expert source on the topic in their industry.

Publishers have an opportunity to gain this “search market share” by establishing themselves as the definitive search engine within their particular niche or sector.

A great example of a publisher that has done this with success is TechTarget. Though not originally started by TechTarget [they bought the site back in 2002] the publisher’s Whatis.com website has positioned TechTarget as the go-to site for IT tech term definitions. It certainly has helped strengthen TechTarget’s brand as well.

The challenge of course is that publishers will be up against hugely popular generic search engines such as Google. The way to overcome this competition is to produce a search tool which is perceived to be a better way to find information on a very specific topic – like IT tech term definitions - than generic search engines can offer.

The report backs up its claims with a statistic of 93% of media and internet B2B professionals saying, “they would be “very likely or quite likely to use a search engine that focused on serving their specific business or work needs.”

Granted, these are early adopters and people who feel comfortable using technology.

Even so, more than half of the respondents claimed that faster access to desired information was a major benefit of vertical search, with 50% saying the focus on their business interests and workflow would be a major advantage.

According to the study, the three biggest advantages of having a vertical search feature on an existing website is the ability to “improve brand by becoming an authority website,” the potential to “keep users on-site” and the “potential to monetize through advertising.”

Vertical search also helps advertisers connect to their customers and “increase the publisher’s revenue stream.”

That’s key.

It’s one thing to have a killer search engine, strengthen the brand and be positioned as the prime landing spot for your industry, but if this search engine drives customers to a site, keeps them there and lets publishers increase ad revenue, then it’s a win/win.

Feed the reader
Another interesting point from this study was the increasing use of RSS feeds and advice on how publishers should be utilizing them.

The research notes the impact that the underutilized RSS technology could have on the print world and how using RSS feeds to push and offer content to readers can increase readership.

By employing RSS, print publishers can extend the life of their content, gain readers and gain more ad dollars. For the reader, RSS feeds offer the convenience of reading their favorite columnist, breaking news, industry news or sports scores, anytime, anywhere.

According to the report, many professionals are already receiving content electronically - a whopping 80% of internet professionals surveyed as part of the research were already using industry or sector-specific RSS feeds.

Trends in digital marketing are leading towards a fragmentation of the online landscape and “atomization” of content, or the breaking down of content into bite size bits of information – very drilled-down and hyper-focused to a specific audience.

Content owners have a great opportunity to increase visibility for their content through the effective use of feeds, widgets and toolbars, according to the report:

“The level of uptake for feeds and customized homepages is very high among this early-adopter audience, but this kind of online behavior will soon become more widespread among knowledge workers across a wider range of industries,” said Linus Gregoriadis, head of research at E-consultancy.

As communication professionals working with numerous early adopters and their ahead-of-the-curve customers, we sometimes tend to forget that not everyone understands the technology behind RSS or are even using it without knowing how it works to read their daily content.

Like E-consultancy, we also believe that usage of RSS technology, both on the desktop and on smartphones, will increase with the “less-techie” audience over the next 12 months.

We understand that the average newspaper reader wants to open their front door, reach down and grab the Sunday paper. They don’t care how the paper was printed, how it was distributed to the delivery center, and then sent to the paper carrier’s home where it was folded, bagged and thrown onto their front porch. They just want to read their newspaper.

The same goes for online and mobile content – people with smartphones don’t care about RSS technology, XML, or feeds. [Next time you’re at a BBQ or party, ask your friends if they know what RSS is.]

Like the newspaper reader, smartphone users just want their content delivered to their device so they can read it.

Struggling print media need all the help they can get. Using new media and technology such as focused, niche search engines and setting up easy to subscribe to RSS feeds is a great start for publishers to help add value to their content, keep readers – even gain readers – and more importantly nab ad revenue. As someone who comes from the print world, still relies on a healthy print industry and continually follows it, I’ll definitely be watching this trend. - John “JC” Chilson