Anyone who has a blog should know the importance of their site feed. This wonderful feature allows readers to subscribe to a blog, without signing up for anything, or joining a mailing list. Every time one posts to their blog, the site feed is updated, as well.
I absolutely love RSS. It allows me to know at a glance, which sites have updates and whether they look interesting enough to visit. This saves me the trouble of visiting sites that may not have been updated recently.
To have a successful blog, it is important to post regularly, write interesting headlines, and make it easy for visitors to subscribe to the site feed. Then those visitors need an easy way to read these feeds.
There are a number of services that allow one to organize and subscribe to various site feeds, but they require the user to create an account, and then take the time to visit that site to see updates. It’s an extra step, an extra password to remember, and a waste of time. I think a better option is a customized home page like Google personalized, or My Yahoo that allows the viewer to load the page with their favorite RSS feeds. If this page is the user’s start page, then they see their favorite blog updates each time they launch their browser. The new Google Reader is looking very promising, as well.
My favorite RSS reader is included in Thunderbird. Thunderbird is an open source email and newsgroup client that includes a built in RSS reader. This is perfect solution. All one has to do is add the feeds to their News & Blogs section, and then they can get updates every time they check their email. There is nothing to sign up for, nothing to buy, and one can monitor as many blogs as they would like. I highly recommend Thunderbird to anyone who needs a robust email client.
What is your favorite RSS reader?
I just discovered my comments posted on the Affiliate Tip Blog, and I had to share.
Affiliate Program Brand Risks includes my response to the survey question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?
Basically, I think we need higher standards for publishers, and merchants need more involved affiliate managers. Personally, I will work with companies that not only offer a good value to my visitors, but that make it easy for me to do my job.
Two easy things that affiliate managers can do are staying in touch with affiliates, and keeping their offers updated.
For anyone who missed the eComXpo last week, Shawn Collins has made the powerpoint of his eComXpo presentation, Blogging to Recruit and Retain Affiliates available online.
This is a very good read and helpful for affiliate managers, merchants, and anyone new to blogging.
The Yahoo! Search Blog announced that Yahoo! News Search is integrating blogs in their results pages.
This is just further evidence of the importance of blogs, for both business and personal use, and as a form of expression. I firmly beleive that everyone needs a blog.
In the same announcement, Yahoo! also mentioned that they are will be including ncluding flickr photos and links from their My Web service. I love flickr, and I was thrilled to see my photos show up in a search on ferrets.
What do you think?
|
