Start by identifying the different target audiences that you might want to reach with RSS, especially these:

• Prospects, segmented by prevailing interest
  
  
• Existing clients, segmented by prevailing interest, business topic or existing products
  
  
• Business partners, segmented by partner type, such as suppliers
  
  
• Internal audiences, such as employees, owners and investors
  
  
• The media
  
  
• Web site syndication partners, segmented by their existing content
  
  
• Search engines and directories

Depending on how complex your business and online content strategies are, you might need to plan for different feeds for each of the target audiences you identify. Of course, this also depends on your marketing goals with each.

After identifying the key target audiences for RSS content delivery, the next step involves actually planning what content type and topics you are going to deliver. These might include the following:

• Product feeds
• Podcast feeds
• News feeds
• Articles feeds
• Direct communication feeds
• E-zine publishing
• Autoresponder content
• Forum content
• Latest downloads
• Product support information & updates

3. Create a list of RSS marketing/publishing requirements

Then create a list of requirements for the RSS marketing/publishing solution you will obtain to publish your feeds. The list should answer the basic questions, such as these:

• Do you want to integrate RSS publishing with your existing content management system?
  
  
• What RSS metrics you'll want to watch? For example, are you satisfied with just a rough idea of how many people are reading your RSS feed, or are you interested in more precise subscriber counts, clicks and even individual content-item popularity?
  
  
• Do you need feed personalization, such as personalizing your RSS content with the recipient's name and other details?
  
  
• Do you want to provide your subscribers with the ability to precisely select the content they want to receive in your RSS feed (customization), such as by content topic, keywords, authors and so on?
  
  
• Do you want the RSS feeds to be hosted on your own server?
  
  
• Do you need the ability to target promotional messages or other content to your individual RSS feed subscribers, for example based on their previous clicks and reading habits, or even their subscription data?
  
  
• What's your budget?

4. Choose an RSS marketing/publishing tool and start generating feeds

After you've prepared a list of requirements, start searching for the appropriate tool. These come in a few general categories:

• Desktop feed generation tools. Desktop software you can use to inexpensively, quickly and easily generate RSS feeds, but that doesn't allow for more advanced features such as content targeting.
  
  
• Basic hosted online RSS publishing solutions. These work quite similar to desktop tools, but generally allow for a more streamlined publishing experience. Their key problem is that they usually require the publisher to host the feeds on the vendor's server, thus decreasing the SEO impact of RSS.
  
  
• Advanced RSS marketing solutions. These will cover more advanced RSS marketing capabilities, such as metrics, scheduled autoresponder messages, database building capabilities and similar features.
  
  
• High-end email integrated solutions. Email integrated solutions are the most recent newcomer to the RSS industry, being provided by some of the best reputable email vendors, and providing marketers with full integration with their existing email marketing solutions.
  
  
• Other options. There are other options as well—for example, using your existing content management system to publish RSS feeds, or using a blog publishing solution, which allows for some basic RSS publishing features but not much in terms of RSS marketing.

5. Promote your RSS feeds through your own channels

• Create an RSS presentation page to explain to your visitors what RSS is; how the visitor will benefit from using RSS; where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!); how they can subscribe to your RSS feeds; and why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds.
  
  Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds. In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via My Yahoo and other relevant services, such as Bloglines.
  
  
• Promote the RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.
  
  
• Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always "above the fold." Promote your RSS presentation page (telling your visitors that's where they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.
  
  
• If you're publishing more than one RSS feed, or a couple of focused-topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics on the site.
  
  
• Promote your RSS feeds in all of your email messages and e-zine issues.
  
  
• As for the content, don't just say "Subscribe to receive news from my site." Instead, prepare compelling copy to show your visitors why they need to subscribe to your content in the first place, and why they should subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.
  
  
• Enable auto-discovery to allow browsers with integrated features to easily discover your feed upon visit, and help search engines locate it on your site.

6. Promote your RSS feed through external channels

• Submit your feeds to the appropriate search engines and directories.
  
  
• Ping the RSS aggregation sites each time you update your online content, letting them know that new content is available to be indexed.

7. Other key RSS activities

• Measure and optimize your feeds.
  
  
• Syndicate your feed content to other Web media.
  
  
• Display third-party RSS feeds on your site.

Note: Rok Hrastnik leads a MarketingProfs 90-minute virtual seminar, "Better Than Email Marketing? RSS Demystified" on Thursday November 17, 2005. Get more information or sign up.