RSS Feeds & Widgets - Web 2.0 Marketing Tool

The primary purpose of these two Web 2.0 Marketing tools is to drive traffic to your blog and/or your website. RSS feeds and widgets are very easy to use, cost very little, if anything, and after set-up require no time to maintain. In other words, they work for you in the background while you are doing other things. What could better than this?

RSS Feeds

RSS is an acronym for the term “Really Simple Syndication.” When a visitor subscribes to your RSS feed it pushes new content to them when something is changed or added rather than them having to remember to keep coming back to your blog or website to check to see if there is anything new.

As we all know, if visitors have to rely on memory to come back to your site, chances are that it will never happen. Therefore, the more people that subscribe to your RSS feeds the more traffic you will have to your site. And because they keep coming back, little by little you are building a relationship with them even if you do not know who they are. These are all good things.

RSS feeds are far more common on blogs than conventional websites. The major reason for this is that new content is usually added to a blog several times a week, while content on a conventional website does not change that much. Therefore, my commentary on RSS feeds is directed primarily to blogs.

Most blogs come with two RSS feeds; one for when a new article is posted and a second if you wish to notified when someone leaves a comment. Both of these are delivered via a “RSS Reader” (the subscriber can choose from many that are available). Through experimentation with my own blog, I have learned a couple of things:

Most of your blog visitors do not know what an RSS feed is and even if they click to subscribe, they have no idea where to look for updates; and Visitors only care about reading the comments posted by others on posts where they have commented.

You can use third party RSS feeds like Feedburner (free from Google) that allow the subscriber to receive updates via a reader or by email. My experience is that about 70% of those subscribing to my RSS feed choose to receive updates by email. You can do the math to determine how it will affect you if you do not offer updates by email. When I added the choice of receiving updates by email, my growth in RSS subscribers more than doubled.

You can also install a plug-in on your blog that will email updates to those leaving comments when others add to the comments. This may bring previous visitors back and a discussion incurs. Comments help your article to rank higher on the search engines.

TIP: Most blog software gives you a choice of posting the entire article in the feed or only a summary. I prefer only a short summary. If you send them the entire article there is no need to come back to your blog. If you can get them back to your blog, there are other features you can use to get them to read some of your other articles.

Finally, RSS feeds are also used for other purposes as well. Using RSS feeds you can automatically import your blog headlines into your LinkedIn profile and other social networking sites.

Widgets

Widgets are small software applications or “apps” that work on smart phones (e.g. iPhone), iPods, websites and computers. There are many websites where you can build a widget for free or a very low cost. Of course, more complex widgets will cost more.

Allow me to share with you a widget I was reading about the other day. A pet supply company created a widget that resides on your computer desktop. It is a puppy that frolics back and forth across your desktop. Every 90 days the puppy stops it’s frolicking to scratch to remind you to order a new flea collar. Click on the puppy and you are taken to the website where you can order the replacement flea collar. I think this is clever and no doubt dramatically increases traffic to their website.

There are widgets you can create with different types of calculators, calendars with reminders, for RSS feeds, puzzles, clocks, games and just about anything you can imagine. Creating a widget that people will actually use will increase traffic to your blog or website.

A couple of the websites where you can build your own widgets are KickApps.com and WidgetBox.com. You can find several others by searching the web.

As we continue our series on Web 2.0 Marketing covering the tools listed in the graphic above, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed by reader or by email so you don’t miss a single article.

Online Adspend Enjoying the Position and Trend

Advertising expenditure levels in the UK will continue to fall until mid-2010 at the earliest, while the internet will overtake television in terms of ad revenues generated this year, a forecast from Warc and the Advertising Association predicts.

The first two quarters of 2009 yielded year-on-year reductions in adspend of 18.8% and 19.0% respectively in the UK at constant prices, with totals set to slide by 13.5% in Q3, and 9.7% in Q4.

Similarly, the opening six months of next year will witness media budgets decrease by a further 3.5%, with the market returning to growth in the period from July to September 2010.

Overall, UK adspend will diminish by 15.3% this year, from £14.13 billion in 2008 to £11.97bn in 2009, and by a further 1.1%, to £11.83bn, in 2010.

Television will post a decline of 16.2% this year, and follow this up with a significantly smaller contraction, of 1.3%, over the following 12 months, to a total of £2.71bn.

National newspapers will also be down by 17.4% this year and 3.3% next, to £1.28bn, with consumer magazines' ad sales plummeting 18.3% in 2009, and slipping 1.4% in 2010, to £509 million.

Radio will post successive decreases of 16.1% and 0.8%, while outdoor will see revenues tumble 17.2% in 2009, but increase by 1.4% in 2010.

The internet, including paid-for search, will enjoy a modest improvement of 0.7% this year, and expand by 4.7% at the end of the decade, to a value of £3.03 billion, seeing the medium overtake television.

By sector, financial services will make the largest cut backs in 2009, at 23.8%, with consumables down 11.9%, durables by 17.4%, and retail by 3%.

Web Video Marketing Mistakes

YouTube Video Marketing

Two of the biggest mistakes people make with Web Video Marketing on the Internet are:

1. Not communicating what the video is about during the first 7 – 10 seconds
It’s so typical to start watching a video on YouTube without having any idea what the video is about.

Most people today are very busy so you need to communicate extremely well both WHAT your video is about and WHY they should watch it. There’s so much distraction and people get lots of spam.

How to avoid this: start your video by communicating what your video is all about and why the viewer should watch it until the end. This is a great way to set you apart from your competition.

2. Putting the focus on yourself rather than on the viewer (your target market)

Most companies who make videos for YouTube tend to talk about themselves. They use sentences like this,for example:

“Our last year was amazing…. ““We have just moved to new office facilities….”

Some entrepreneurs and small business owners use these kinds of sentences
“I just joined a great business opportunity.. you need to hear about it…”

“My business is going great, life is perfect now..”
These are all very boring from the point of the viewer since the focus is on the speaker and not on the listeners…

How to avoid this: To become a great video marketer you need to develop the skill of learning everything you can about your target market and more specifically, try to find out that kind of problems or challenges your target market has.