Pixelrage.net

Every day, I use Outlook to bring in RSS feeds from about a dozen of my favorite marketing & SEO websites. To me, it’s a great way to read up on new articles without having to visit the site (unless I really need to). This is actually standard practice with most RSS readers…it doesn’t retract from a website’s value or branding in any way! A good 98% of the sites I visit display the full RSS feed, but a couple don’t. The ones that don’t really kind of shock and annoy me.

Take for example eMarketer.com. This is one major organization in the world of internet marketing. Surely you’ve heard of them if you’re in the field. eMarketer is an authority figure that is famous for providing statistical data (with their very well known “striking red” bar charts) and case studies of current trends in internet marketing. This is no small fry. However, their RSS feeds look like total crap, and it’s a big disappointment. Rather than getting the full story, they “tease” you with a vague statement, and provide a link to the full article. eMarketer isn’t the only one guilty of this: marketing strategy giant ClickZ does it, as well. Come on, guys!!

While this sort of thing might have made sense in the 90s, the whole face of how the web works is all about quickness and ease of use. Making me click through to your site does nothing more than annoy me. Even if it’s a subject I’m interested in, I probably won’t bother with the effort. Other people might simply delete the RSS feed and get their information elsewhere (in this case, eMarketer is cross-referenced in many other internet marketing news sources as an authoritative reference).

Why Abridging RSS Sucks

Before you bash the idea of displaying a full RSS feed, think of it this way: have you ever flagged/starred or shared a post from an RSS feed in Microsoft Outlook or whatever else you’ve used? Of course you have. When you did, you advertised that site for that particular webmaster. You may have even given him/her a new regular visitor, of whom will advocate that site to their friends. It just keeps mushrooming. This is the value in presenting proper RSS feeds – they’re invaluable internet marketing tools! Those who use them will appreciate them a whole lot more when they’re not “teasers.”

Want a quick and easy way to set up your RSS feeds in their full format? Simply convert your existing RSS over to Feedburner. It’s a solid program, and it even lets you run AdSense ads and social bookmarking links directly in your RSS feeds…nice!

Chalk this one up to usability…or user courtesy!