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Part Five: Social Media, Content Syndication and RSS Feeds |
Content syndication means getting your message out in as many ways, to as many qualified audiences as possible. Social Media is a term used to describe websites that let users contribute to the content, and tag and rate content that is posted there. You can add social media elements to the articles you want to syndicate in RSS feeds. 1.To get more visibility for your content in a feed make sure you have the ability to add Technorati tags to the articles. This means that Technorati, one of the top content aggregators, will be alerted the moment you add new content to your feed. It also lets them know what your new content is about. Technorati rates new posts in blogs and feeds and tags help your content to show up sooner, and higher, in the Technorati rankings. 2.Make it easy for readers to share your content. They can post and tag your content on social media sites like del.icio.us and digg. These sites allow users to create a page of their favorite sites on a subject - a virtual library. Because these pages are so focused on a subject, they are showing up high in search rankings. If your content makes it onto these well indexed and ranked pages it can bring you lots of traffic. 3.Offer other ways to share content. Many people are not yet social media savvy. Add a Tell a Friend button that allows them to email the article to others. 4.Creating a feed is not enough. You have to make it easy for the people to find and subscribe to your feeds. Include the auto-discovery code in your feed set up, so that any browser will see there is a feed on your site. Place RSS icons on your homepage and every content page that has a feed. Offer the easy-subscribe buttons so that someone who uses a well known RSS reader or a MyYahoo or Google personalized page can subscribe with one click. Here are some examples of websites that are using these ideas: SkinMD Natural Paradise by Marriott Mouse over the RSS icon for a drop down menu of easy subscribe buttons. At the end of each article there are Technorati tags and the options for posting to the social media sites. Content syndication pays off in search results. And when readers like your content enough to bookmark it and share it with others, you'll see the results in your traffic.
Sally Falkow is founder and co developer of PRESSfeed, an RSS service for marketing and PR use. She is co-author of The Power of Online Syndication in Public Relations. For more information on RSS visit http://www.press-feed.com.
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