HOW TO "PROMOTE" A NEWS FEED
Once you have a news feed, you need to tell others about it and take advantage of it for improving visibility of your website on the internet so that you can bring more visitors to your site. This is what promoting your news feed is about.
Here's an exploration of the challenges and solutions -- all made easy with Enfeedia.
PROBLEMS / NEEDS
The vast majority of people do not know what that graphic RSS icon is or even now what news feeds are.
Even if they click that icon out of curiosity, most people will see garbage because they are not using a current version browser (i.e., one that "understands" news feeds).
And if they actually do see the news feed displayed by the browser, they will not know what they can do with your news feed other than read it (specifically, how to subscribe to it and/or be alerted when new items are posted).
SOLUTIONS1. Add a page to your website
Although this is more work than solution 2 or 3 below, you could design and add a page to your website to teach about RSS news feeds. (Virtually all sites offering news feeds do this today). Then on your home page, provide a link somewhere to take visitors to that new page. This link ought to be near the RSS Icon so people will make the connection between that icon and the explanation page. But you can achieve the same results by choosing solution 2 and/or 3.
2. Install a NewsPage Link near your RSS Icon
Better yet (and easier!), install a link to your "NewsPage" that Enfeedia generates and hosts automatically for you. Why?
(1) The NewsPage reads and displays your news feed regardless of browser support for news feeds,
(2) the NewsPage provides a link to a page that explains news feeds including how to subscribe to them, and
(3) the NewsPage provides subscription tools for Yahoo and Google, to make it ultra-easy for one to subscribe to your feed.
Click here to see a sample NewsPage; notice the subscription tools and "how to subscribe" links at top-right.
There are two ways to do a link to your NewsPage:
(1) Make a "text link". For example: "See My NewsPage" ... and link that to an Enfeedia-supplied address for your NewsPage.
(2) Install the Enfeedia-supplied NewsPage icon
that links to your NewsPage.
Click here to go to the page on Enfeedia where you specify how you want your news to be displayed on site and get the corresponding code to do that.
3. Display some news items from your feed directly on your website
Best of all, insert an Enfeedia-supplied code snippet onto your website to display news items from your feed directly on your site and provide one-click access to your full NewsPage with instructions and tools for subscribing. You choose how many items, how much of each item to be displayed, and the appearance of the display (to blend in with your web site design). Beside the obvious advantage that the visitor to your site doesn't have to click anything or go anywhere to see your news, they can elect to click a NewsPage icon to see the full NewsPage and get the benefits outlined under (2) above.
For samples of news displayed on site, click NewsOnSite™ Samples. Scan down about 20% of the page; find the Santa Fe Restaurants and Santa Fe Real Estate headings. You will see the latest news item from the Chocolate Maven Cafe and Emily Garcia Real Estate news feeds. Directly to the right, in the middle column, you will see a news feed being used to present travel information, using a "no date" gallery format. And further to the right, you will find another news feed for travel and vacation news displayed on site. Towards the top of the page, two more news feeds. (In all cases, only one or a few items are shown; you can choose how many news items to show on your web page.) You can even build up an entire web page using news feeds without even having a web site or owning a domain name; see Santa Fe Gazette.
PROBLEMS / NEEDS
Assuming you care about people finding your website when doing internet searches, you can use your feed to significantly improve that possibility.
Two reasons for this:
(1) News feed can add relevant content the search engines will value and match to earch terms,
(2) search engines give higher value to website sites with fresh content posted from time to time (say every two weeks).
The combination of these two factors will cause your website to be placed much higher up in search engine results placement (SERP) so people will be more likely to encounter your listing. It's like having a retail store at the entrance to the mall, not buried somewhere in the back away from foot traffic.
SOLUTIONDo solution 3 in the left column. This will cause your news items to be displayed (as many as you want). Search engines will see that content on your site and treat it as if it is "hard-coded" into your site. If you write news items that are relevant to your site theme, and do so every few weeks, you will experience magic regarding your SERP.
People pay Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies thousands of dollars to gain such advantages. You can get that for free using news feeds.
Moreover, you can add content to your website by simply filling out a brief form for your news feed on Enfeedia. No need to do any website coding, any file uploading. No need to call up your web master to have them do some work for you (and send an invoice!). So you can easily and quickly add content to your site for human visitors and for search engines, any time you want, as often as you want, giving you advantages to both "audiences".
Where do you get that code snippet? Click here to go to the page on Enfeedia where you specify how you want your news to be displayed on site and get the corresponding code to do that. Submit your account name, then submit the news feed name using the drop-down list, to get to the page for setting up your NewsPage (top section) and for getting your code snippet for what we call 'NewsOnSite' (bottom section).
About that RSS Icon
The standard that the industry is driving to is
. The standard in wide-spread use today is
(sometimes in blue, and sometime with letters XML instead of RSS). Enfeedia adopts the New York Times and Reuters approach combining both to bridge the past and the future:
Click New York TImes or Reuters to see examples of the old/new combination graphic.
Click CBS News to see use of a different old/new combination graphic (and also notice the subscription buttons for three 'news readers').
Click ABC News to see use of the emerging standard.
Click National Public Radio, USA Today or Apple to see examples of various older version graphics.
Check this out! For an example of "news" displayed on site from a news feed, click Dilbert. Yes, the comic strip is available as an RSS news feed. WIth Enfeedia, you can easily include images with your news feed also.
In all cases, notice how pervasive news feeds are becoming in disseminating information, and notice how they all do some amount of teaching about news feeds. Click News Feed Explanation to see how Enfeedia explains this powerful technology.
Did you know that Apple has integrated RSS News Feeds into their 'Mail' email application? Evidence indeed that RSS News Feeds are becoming a mainstream online communication tool. Start publishing your RSS news feed today to take full advantage of this exciting technology.
Questions or help? Contact Enfeedia.