4 Ways RSS Feeds Can Increase the Mileage of Your Content

4 Ways RSS Feeds Can Increase the Mileage of Your Content

Using Real Simple Syndication (RSS) to repackage and recycle content is a great way to increase your audience reach and leads, since recent research shows that “10 percent of leads generated by B2B content marketing have come from syndicated content [RSS].” In addition to producing leads, repurposing content saves both money and time spent generating new content. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the content worth redistributing needs to be good content, as in it provides value to your readers. Yes, it’s critical that you consistently publish in order to be seen (out of sight/out of mind), but it’s more important to become a trusted source of quality information; otherwise you risk losing subscribers.

 

#1: Ask Influencers to Implement Your RSS Feed

Whether your company is well-known or just getting started, being seen with thought-leaders is good for business and an easy way to build credibility. As all sales are ultimately relational, it’s a good idea to encourage the top people in your company to build mutually rewarding relationships with a short list of targeted industry leaders, including customers. Why? People like to follow (subscribe to) other people more than they like to follow companies/brands. In short, influencers get you noticed according to new research:

• One influential person sharing your content results in 31.8% more social shares
• Three influential people sharing your content doubles the number of social shares
• Five influential people sharing your content almost quadruples the total number of social shares

 

Of course, asking other leaders in your industry to endorse your content is a conversation that may lead to hesitation from them, but if you are producing quality content on a regular basis, it’s not as tough as you may think. For example, let’s say you have a post that did well with your current subscribers, and you’d like to repurpose it for your customer to publish. With a few minor tweaks to the article you can offer to quote them in your content or mention their company. You could also simply ask them to endorse your post, which requires no tweaks to the content on your part, but still allows them to be viewed as an expert on your post’s topic. Finally, be aware that courting thought leaders to implement your feed is accomplished most easily when you reciprocate by featuring their RSS feeds with your posts.

 

#2: Create a Newsletter of Greatest Hits

Rebecca Caroe, the Founder of Creative Agency Secrets maintains that a smart way to give good content a second chance to engage readers is to feature it as part of a newsletter. This method is especially ideal for capturing the attention of infrequent readers who prefer a well-curated list of posts to a daily barrage of individual posts. Newsletters can be arranged by topic in order to highlight a certain post you want to feature again in a fresh way. You can also use aggregated blogs from other sources to help flesh out your newsletter or add posts from partners, which can help meet any partner “content-sharing” obligations you have established, and deepen that relationship.

 

#3: Repurpose Compelling Content Statistics as a List

People love lists. A good list is numbered, short, direct and informative. If you have a long format article, think about distilling it into a smaller package and repurposing it as a list. Then, you can alert feed readers that your popular whitepaper is now available in a bite-size edition. The BBC reports that there are several psychological reasons why lists compel people to click-through every time:

• People love mental shortcuts, i.e. knowing exactly what they’re getting
• It feels less taxing, more doable (readable), and reduces stress from multi-tasking
• Lists are easy to scan, and in a world where attention spans are nine seconds on average this is essential
• Lists feel definitive and people love certainty on a topic because it allows them to “know” a matter is settled

 

#4: Visualize Your Content

Second only to lists in content popularity are pictures. When you transform the stats from long copy into the bright, bold visuals of an infographic, people generally won’t mind seeing it again (or for the first time). The great thing about presenting information visually is that the brain processes it quickly and for those subscribers who are visual learners, your content can have an indelible impact on how they perceive and recall the important points you want them to take away. According to research revealed by article analysts, the formats most people prefer for sharing and receiving information are (in order of importance):

• Lists
• Infographics
• How-To Posts
• Why Posts
• Videos

 

#5: Increase Engagement – At SureShot, we provide tools that help marketers increase customer engagment. Our RSS integrations enable you to equip customers with valuable information such as news, special offers, blogs, events, account history, etc. To see our RSS integration in action, sign up for a demo.