If you've picked up the buzz and are considering adding RSS feeds to your site, Amanda Watlington has some pointers on how to approach it, which I've summarized:

1. Add new content to your site
   
   You need to be providing a steady flow of new information to readers who have subscribed to your feed. Without it, your subscribers will lose interest. Areas to update on your website may be news or press releases, and/or careers information. Do not offer RSS feeds until you are able to provide regularly updated content.
2. Offer multiple feeds
   
   Most websites have multiple audiences. Content that interests reporters will be different to that of interest to job seekers. If you are releasing new products or service updates, consider having a separate feed for each. There is no limit to how many feeds you should offer. Look at it from a marketing standpoint.
3. Frequency and recency
   
   Consider how often you update your website. This will dictate how often you update your feeds. Since the success of your RSS campaign depends on a regular flow of information, you may want to create a schedule that plans for regular updates.
4. RSS format for your feeds
   
   What format or version of RSS you will use? Typically, the choices include RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. A third choice is Atom, which performs the same basic functions as RSS. Decide if your feed format is to support enclosures such as image and audio files, an important functionality that RSS 2.0 feeds provide.
5. How much will you syndicate in your feed
   
   Decide how much content you will offer subscribers. Will it be a headline, a teaser, or more? If you are a content provider, you may want to offer headlines only, then readers will come to your site to read the entire article. Remember, however, that partial or headline-only feeds can be annoying to readers who expect to receive the entire article in their RSS reader. Know your audience and clarify your goals before deciding how much content to provide.
6. Encourage others to syndicate your content onto their site
   
   Expand your readership dramatically by offering a feed syndication tool that enables other site owners to create a customized feed of your headlines on their site. Properly constructed, these feeds will drive traffic to your site and add valuable links for search marketing.
7. Yes or no to advertising
   
   There are several schools of thought on this one, with arguments both in favor of carrying advertising and for creating feeds that are completely advertising free. You will want to take a stance on this during the planning process.
8. Measuring success
   
   The three key metrics of circulation, readership and clickthrough rates apply here. Circulation measures the number of subscribers your feed has. Readership measures the number of readers who viewed your feed in their RSS aggregator. Clickthroughs measure the number of readers who click from the feed to your site. Determine how aggressively you want to measure feed performance, set benchmarks and put tools in place to enable you to gather the data you need to measure success.
9. Advising your audience about RSS
   
   Letting readers know they can easily subscribe to your feeds may be as simple as putting an orange XML or RSS button prominently on your site, or providing extensive explanations and assistance to your readers. A press announcement about the availability of feeds on your site may be an option.
10. Monitor the rapidly changing RSS landscape
    
    As uses for RSS expand and new tools arrive to make it easier to implement RSS on sites, be sure that someone in your organization is monitoring the landscape regularly to ensure that you are as up to date on this evolving technology as possible.

Great advice, Amanda! Amanda also says: "Just remember that RSS is a marketing solution, not a technical problem. If you approach getting started in RSS from this perspective, you will find RSS an exciting new marketing communications medium."

You can also download her white paper, "The RSS Advertising Debate: Is It Just Commerce vs. Credibility?" at www.searchingforprofit.com/rssads.html.

Granted, RSS technology lacks the ease of use when compared to email. It's not that straightforward for the uninitiated to subscribe to and follow RSS feeds. It's hard enough explaining to an RSS newbie what an RSS feed is, let alone walking him/her through the installation and use of a newsreader program or a web-based aggregator.

And there are other problems too. "There’s the issue of recipient identity," said Neil Squillante, president of Landing Page Interactive at the MarketingProfs' Thought Leaders Summit on email marketing. "Currently most RSS feeds are just one feed for everyone to use, which means you lack the identity of email. Whereas with an email list of, say, 10,000 people, each email goes to just one person, and you can feel pretty confident that you have 10,000 people on your list."

Rok Hrastnik, owner of MarketingStudies.net and author of Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS highlighted ways within RSS to create a unique, trackable URL per subscriber, which do not have to be through HTTP authentication. There are also certain solutions in the market now that generally feed per user and even allow for data capture, e.g. the user can now register and receive a unique URL.

"One of the problems, however, is that if a user incorporates that into Bloglines and shares it with the world, you may have a situation where that one unique URL is actually being subscribed to by a bunch of people," says Rok. "That’s one situation where HTTP authentication can help, because that usually limits that particular feed to just one person."

Rok also added that email and RSS are often appropriate for different content types. "For instance, email is the top channel for delivery, whereas RSS is more useful for high-frequency content updates. It’s not only about getting your content delivered to end users, but about improving your online visibility, search engine rankings, driving new traffic through RSS search engine directories, syndicating your content on other web media and so on."

All good points. And in my view none of these are reasons to avoid or delay publishing your content via RSS. If you're not already offering RSS feeds, get on the stick! RSS augments your existing email and web marketing. It's a distinct channel that complements the email channel rather than cannibalizes it. And it's a channel that a non-negligible percentage of Internet users have come to love.

I'll be speaking on the topic of RSS at the New Communications Forum early next month, on a panel titled RSS as an Advertising Platform. Should be interesting. Hope to see you there!