RSS and Content Syndication Part Four: Categorizing Content
How to categorize your content Now that you have a strategy for your RSS feeds, let's take a look at what content you might like to syndicate. First look at the audiences you want to reach. Start by listing the target audiences you want to deliver your content to via RSS. Each of your audiences has different content needs, resulting in different groups of RSS feeds that need to be created. For example, there will be one group for media, another for your employees, one for the general public, one for your existing customers and so on. You can even go further and divide your master groups into sub-groups, based on their prevailing interests. Here are some examples of how this could be done. The Media: 1. Company News release, segmented by topic. 2. Breaking news that you'd like to go to a restricted audience of preferred journalists and bloggers 3. News and expert commentary about your industry 4. The latest product news 5. Interviews with corporate officers, developers, analysts and other interesting people the media would want to hear from. Do this in both text and pod cast format 6. Case studies 7. Other press mentions Customer and Prospects 1. Customer service updates 2. New ideas and uses for the product 3. New inventory (cars, houses, retail) 4. Questions from customers with answers from your in-house experts 5. How-to articles with data that actually helps your readers improve their lives. 6. Peer product reviews 7. Customer product reviews published on other websites than your own 8. Whitepapers 9. Case Studies 10. In the News press mentions Owners and investors: 1. Annual reports 2. Internal reports 3. Press mentions about the company 4. Latest comments from customers Break your content down only as far as it makes sense. It's all about giving your subscribers a choice - let them subscribe to the content they need and want. And it all depends on your business. You might find that you have only a few audiences and you need to deliver just one or two content types and topics to them. But the benefit of RSS feeds is that you can offer the exact content they are looking for in a way that they want it -clean, guaranteed delivery of the content they really want to receive. Next week: Incorporating social media into RSS Feeds
Sally Falkow is founder and co developer of PRESSfeed, an RSS service for marketing and PR use. She is co-author of The Power of Online Syndication in Public Relations. For more information on RSS visit http://www.press-feed.com.
