Hurol Inan: Web Analytics Consultant & Author

Contributed by Jack McIntyre, Bienalto Consulting.

Since we first wrote about RSS in 2005, and called it “an emerging content delivery channel for marketers and content managers”, its time has come.

RSS readers have gone mainstream – users choose their favourite tool and love wielding the power of getting the news they want to come to them.

Helping to push RSS into the spotlight has been the enormous growth in the number of blogs. Technorati claims it is tracking 112.8 million blogs, and about 1.6 million posts per day.

Most of these blogs have RSS by default – and ‘growing your RSS list’ is the order of the day.

The benefits of RSS haven’t changed. It still offers greater anonymity to the end-user, due to its pull-nature. As a pull medium, you only send messages to those who want them, so you don’t have to worry about opt-ins and unsubscribe forms.

It still helps you with your search engine rankings. And to keep your audience loyal to your RSS feed, you still need to focus on supplying a steady stream of new content.

But what has changed? How far have we come in terms of measuring RSS marketing and its impact on site traffic?

FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google last year, provides free access to a number of metrics, such as:

• Number of subscribers

• Reach (the total number of users who take action – view or click – on the content)
• Number of views by post
• Number of clicks by post

One thing to be aware of with FeedBurner is that the user subscribes to the FeedBurner feed, not your site. That said, FeedBurner can be used to drive traffic to your site, and can automatically get your RSS feed seen in a number of places using ‘Pingshot’ (see below).

Pingshot

Others, like Pheedo, provide similar traffic stats: subscriber counts, engagement triggers, user agents, items viewed.

So, what do you do with RSS metrics once you’ve got them? Use the data derived from RSS analytics to learn about the hot topics – what your readers enjoy – and expand on these.

Bearing in mind that a subscriber to an RSS feed is almost as valuable as an email subscriber, any knowledge you gain about how many people are reading, and what they’re reading, can be used to your benefit.

While email is a more valuable online marketing medium – because of its targeting and tracking abilities – RSS makes a great stepping-stone towards engaging with your customers, particularly those who are not willing to divulge their email address.

Overcoming RSS hurdles

What RSS still can’t do is track the actions of individuals or target specific messages. Is this likely to change in the near future?

Perhaps, but don’t hold your breath. There’s no way you can use tracking codes for links (as in emails) at present, but FeedBurner and co. may well be working on it as we write.

At present, the most you can do with FeedBurner is see which country an individual viewed your post in. It is likely that this is determined via IP address. If they are capturing the IPs of readers, there is potential to track a variety of other metrics.

But whether they want to pursue tracking of users is another thing. Think about it. Most of us use our newsreader as a ‘newspaper’ – and we don’t want a newspaper full of sales pitches and marketing spiels. If my newsreader gets too ’salesy’, I’ll drop it and find a new one.

With this in mind, it pays to view RSS as a PR tool rather than a marketing tool. By getting your blog or website right, your RSS will help you build your brand by positioning you or your business as an authority in a particular area. And the best thing about it is that if a reader wants something from you, they’ll tell you about it.