Is RSS Really Simple for Syndicating Content?

RSS is a buzz-word that has become synonymous with content platforms. Yet, there is a huge gap of knowledge about what RSS really is, and why (if at all) it benefits people who use it. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why some content “goes viral” or get millions of Click Throughs / views- those successes are almost always rooted in great RSS initiatives.

In Part 1 we discussed the fundamentals of RSS:

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. RSS can be thought of as a bullhorn for your digital content. It’s essentially a software toolkit to help you distribute content easily (and automatically) across platforms.

Consider the following example: You have written content (or created a video/ podcast) that describes the impact of the China tariffs on long term bonds from internet companies such as Alibaba. You know that it is an impactful piece of content that will shed light on your winning investing thesis.

At this point you have three ways of getting to the audience you want:

Publish the content on your blog (and hope that the right people read it). T o quote Academy award winning director James Cameron “Hope is not a strategy”.
Publish content on your blog and “promote” content via digital advertising. Assuming that you know “exactly” who your target audience is- Google / Facebook/ Linkedin all have robust pay-per-click models that drive interested people to your content. With google advertising bid’s increasing in value, it’s very price intensive to get your target audience. On average- it’ll cost you between $1.5 and $3 to get one person click once on your advertisement. To actually get any reasonable traffic once, you’ll end up spending thousands of dollars. You’ll end up hoping (refer #1) that a portion of this traffic comes back to your post again.
The method we at Harvest prefer (and offer our premium page subscribers) - Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Harvest Deploys RSS on your Harvest premium page- a kit that “pulls” content automatically from your website/ blog/ any other location - and publishes it on your Harvest Premium Page. Immediately, forever!

In Part 2 we discuss how the Harvest RSS feed can help you turbocharge your marketing initiatives:

Harvest Deploys RSS on your Harvest premium page- a kit that “pulls” content automatically from your website/ blog/ any other location - and publishes it on your Harvest Premium Page. Immediately, forever!

Harvest has 140,000 Investment professionals on the platform, each of whom will get to discover your page and your content. Without any advertising costs. Once the RSS toolkit gets deployed, you’ll get 3 unique advantages:

1. Cost efficiency- For a fraction of the cost of running an advertising campaign, you’ll deliver your insights to an audience really looking for content.

2. Frequency - Content is only relevant with context. One piece of content can get a lot of your target audience excited, but continuity and consistently is what’ll get then interested in your firm. Once RSS is deployed, all your content henceforth gets pulled to the Harvest platform automatically. You may decide to have a follow up post about China, update your forecasts or inform the audience about why you were right all along. All of this gets automatically updated and shared with your audience.

3. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! Just as you have an RSS feed deployed on your Harvest Premium Page, you can have an RSS deployed on your Website / blog pulling content from your other channels. Your content unique to Harvest (written for the hvst.com community) will get automatically pulled to your website. Maybe you decide to do a set of youtube videos, and that gets pulled to your website too.

All those organic (non-paid) clicks/ hits/ views and an audience sticking to your content - will drive up your website traffic at no extra cost, increasing rankings on Search engines and engaging your audience.

This consistency and community will build your brand and credibility immensely leading to more inquiries and conversions. RSS within the right community (such as hvst.com) drives audience stickiness and increases demand.

We should know- we have consistently used this strategy to build our community and ensure that our audience engages with us - on average - 6 minutes each time they log in to Hvst.com. When was the last time you had someone engage with your website for 6 minutes on average?

RSS - Its a thing!