Interview Sharon Housley, FeedForAll/RecordForAll

Hello. I am Denise Purtzer and I am one of the affiliate managers here at oneNetworkDirect. I specialize in the verticals of Content and Review sites, and work with affiliates who focus on these areas. My goal is to provide you with the tools and ideas needed to expand or launch this type of site. I work closely with key partners to pair products from oneNetworkDirect. In my past 5+ years of working in the affiliate marketing world, I’ve had a great opportunity to work and learn from Sharon Housley who manages marketing for FeedForAll -software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll audio recording software. I asked Sharon some questions about RSS and the ways affiliates can utilize this great tool. Here is what I found out:

DP: What is RSS? Can you give us an overview?

SH: RSS is a way to syndicate content on the Internet. Sounds simple enough right? Well, RSS is actually much more than that. RSS is controlled by the subscribers. Subscribers choose which feeds they wish to subscribe to, and at any point has the ability to unsubscribe if the content is not up to their standards. RSS is often compared to email, as a communication medium, but the difference between the two mediums is really control. While email is still better suited for a personal two way dialogue, RSS is better suited to receiving updates of any sort. Here is how it works: Users can subscribe to an RSS feed of their choosing, add it to their feed reader, and when that feed is updated they automatically receive the new information in their reader. If the subscriber feels the content is not what they desire, they can simply unsubscribe and will no longer receive feed updates on that feed in their RSS reader.

DP: With that being said, what are the ways affiliates can use RSS on their sites?

SH: There are literally thousands of uses for RSS feeds, and while some of the uses are industry specific, others have more generic businesses uses. RSS can be used for weather alerts, lunch specials and sales coupons. There is little that RSS cannot be used for.

DP: What is needed to implement RSS?

SH: You will need an RSS Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds and a way to create an RSS feed-this can be done by hand or by using software.

DP: You have been involved in RSS for quite some time, as a developer as well as an affiliate. Could you give us a history of RSS as used in your business?

We initially began using RSS as a way to syndicate newsletters. We were finding a number of subscribers were not getting newsletter updates due to email filtering solutions that were implemented. Rather than forcing our customers to repeatedly visit the website to check to see if they had missed a newsletter, we decided to give RSS a try. We implemented RSS feeds, and customers subscribed to the feeds, and instantly knew when the newsletter was available. We provided content summaries in the RSS feed and if customers were interested in the content they clicked through to the full articles. We found that other sites with related content began syndicating our RSS feeds and displaying our content summaries. Our customer base grew as our reach expanded through the related websites.

Realizing how our web traffic surged with the implementation of RSS, we looked at how we could port our RSS feeds and newsletter success to other areas of our business. One of the areas we looked at was affiliate programs. We had two issues with our affiliate programs. One issue we struggled with was generating related web content to accompany affiliate listings. The second problem we encountered was managing the affiliate listings.

RSS was an easy fit for the first issue, for we were able to locate related topical feeds and display the feeds using a PHP script on an HTML web page. We were also able to create RSS feeds of our own, which generated traffic to our affiliate listings.

Managing affiliate listings using RSS feeds was a little bit trickier because a number of the affiliate tracking companies did not provide feeds. In some cases we created our own feeds with affiliate product listings, and in other cases we used a tool called SQL2RSS that converted database listings to RSS feeds, embedding our affiliate IDs in the link field. We then displayed the affiliate feeds using RSS2HTML.

DP: In one of your articles you talk about how blogs will eventually fade as an effective tool, and RSS will become a new marketing tool. What specific ways can affiliates use RSS to market products and monetize their efforts?

SH: Consumers love RSS because they are able to select the information they choose to receive. Once they subscribe, you have a captive audience. You only need to provide content worthy of their attention and they will stay interested in your products or services.

RSS has the added benefit of syndication, which means if your RSS feed is syndicated, you could further expand your audience. RSS feeds can be used to

1. Establish your brand
2. Communicate special offers, sales, and limited time offers including quantity discounts, and two for one deals.
3. Provide educational consumer information. For example: If you provide relevant timely content on child safety and occasionally mention a product that will help protect children.
4. Questions and answers.
5. Product reviews.
6. How to articles.
7. Product demos.
8. Interviews with software companies and manufacturers.
9. New release announcements

DP: You mention in your article that RSS can help build customer loyalty. How can a bond be created through RSS to build a relationship with a customer? What type of tracking can be used in conjunction with RSS to measure efforts to justify its use?

SH: Customers choose to receive RSS, if they are unhappy they can simply unsubscribe at any point. RSS feeds can be branded with a company or product logo, reinforcing your brand each time the feed is read. Every time you communicate with a customer or potential customer you are building on your relationship. If the customer enjoys the content communicated, they are going to have a positive impression of your brand.

Tracking is difficult and not always accurate, but you can use your web logs to track feed access. To make feed tracking more accurate, publishers will include a uniquely named 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent graphic in each item post. Through the displaying of this graphic they are able to determine the number of times the post is read. A third alternative to help tracking is to use a third party service for feed hosting, companies like FeedBurner specialize in this and offer a level of statistical information regarding feed access.

DP: Videocasting seems to come up often when discussing new ways to reach potential customers. How can RSS be used with Videocasting?

SH: A videocast and podcast are both delivered using RSS feeds. A videocast is an RSS feed that contains a video file in the enclosure field. Videocasts can contain all different types of content, white papers explaining how specific companies are using an application to improve operations, or step by step tutorials of how to use a specific application.

DP: What are other ways that RSS can be used to make an affiliate’s site more effective?

SH: RSS is great for organic search listings. As with web design search engine optimization techniques should be used when creating an RSS feed. Include important keywords or keyword phrases prominently in the feed title and use supporting language in the description. This will help the feed’s content perform in search engine results.

DP: What resources are needed to implement RSS?

SH: In order to provide RSS feeds to website visitors you will need an RSS creation tool or a way to manually create RSS feeds, an RSS reader to test feeds, RSS2HTML to display the contents of an RSS feed as an HTML web page and possibly SQL2RSS to convert database items to an RSS feed.

DP: What other things do affiliates need to know about RSS?

SH: If you do not use RSS, your competitors will. RSS helps with search engine ranking, and being a leader with RSS will serve you well.

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If you need help building out your content or review site please feel free to contact me by email I’d be happy to make recommendations for oneNetworkDirect products!

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