Today I receive an email from Max. He ask me my opinion about an idea he had while reading my recent posts on feeds. There is the idea he shared with’ me in his email message:
Lately you’re writing good stuff about RSS feeds and their capabilities. So, I decided to express to you an idea I had about it. […] I’d like to know your opinion. […]
Some days ago I wrote that I don’t care if someone read my blog via browser, feed or whatsoever. Well, I changed my mind: RSS readers are special. They’re not casual readers; they decide to subscribe your site because they want to follow it. So, why don’t give ’em more? This could be a way to promote RSS feeds use. […]
Here’s my idea: why don’t add to ordinary blog feeds another one, as a supplement? Many newspapers have a Sunday supplement, or similar. After all, a weblog is a kind of newspaper, for some aspects. The supplement should be strictly related to the blog, but not necessarily with the same arguments. It could be a monothematic dissertation, or simply something you don’t want to publish on the blog because not coherent enough.
The following could be the main goals of this concept:
****Only supplement feed subscribers could read those extra contents. –> Promotion of RSS feeds use, special treatment to those. ****
****Extra feed subscribers could be invited to contribute to this “magazine” via email or maybe by co-author account –> Interaction. ****
Technically I think it’s easy to do: just open a new blog, modify the template to not show the posts, then publish, promote the extra-feed, and it’s done.
Do you know if somebody has already done this?
Anyway, let me know what you think about it […]
Many interesting ideas are presents in this email. This (new?) idea is, at my sense, a really good way to promote your feed. Personally I think that feeds are more important then blogs. Why? Because they create the more direct link between you and your readers. In this sense, it’s always a good idea to promote it. This added value to your feed will certainly help to insist your blog’s visitors to subscribe to it. But there are two rules that you need to take into account: (1) you need to promote the fact that there are an added value to your feed’s content and (2) you need to basically have a good content to make this added value a real one at the eyes of your readers.
This said, I have an interrogation about this idea. As beautiful as it is, there is no archive of this feed only content. The added content will only be archived by your readers and possibly online services like Bloglines and NewsGator. It’s why blogs are interesting: everyone(thing) can keep an archive of it; Google cache, MSNSeach cache, etc, etc, etc. This is not a real problem in itself; it’s more a personal question that the bloggers will need to ask to him: do I need to put a part of the content I create available to only some subscribed readers or to all the Internet users? Depending of your goals you’ll answer differently to this question and finally find the whole idea more or less interesting.
There would be some technical problems to create such a feed, especially if you are using services like Radio, MovableType, Blogger, MSNSpaces, etc. The idea is to aggregate new content to existing feeds when users request the feed’s new posts. The only service I know that do this sort of thing is Feedburner. They give you the possibility to add things to you feed’s content. By example, they give you the opportunity to add a Del.icio.us feed to your blog’s feed. If you would like to implement this idea you’ll need to create such a service. This is not really complicated in itself but its works and times.
Finally, depending of your goals, you’ll find this idea really interesting or just another way to market your feed. The idea is really good; the only question is how it can be useful in your case.
Technoratie: [marketing] [feed] [rss] [promote] [idea]