This is the first of a series of posts that will speak to “How to use Your Blog to Gain Exposure.” One of the suggestions will be to syndicate your blog content. You may be saying, “Syndication? Me? I can’t compete with CNN and the New York Times.”
This post is intended to help set the foundation with regard to how syndicating your blog is not only feasible, but, simply the natural response to your target audience’s evolving needs.
Let’s start by acknowledging a shift in the delivery of information. For years, people have been signing up to receive e-mail alerts whenever there is an update by their favorite news services and content providers. If you are one of those people, and very interested in knowing what is going on, you have signed up to receive several to many alerts. Add those alerts to your legitimate e-mail and the unsolicited spam, and, well, you know we are overwhelmed with the volume of e-mails that we receive daily.
Wanting to reduce the number of e-mails they receive, people have moved away from e-mail alerts to RSS feed readers. RSS readers put the subscriber (no fee) back in control. Nothing is delivered to the desktop, and the person is made aware of updates on demand – at his or her leisure. Instead of having the alerts delivered to their e-mail boxes throughout the day, they open their RSS reader when they are ready, review a list of alerts, then decide which to read and which to ignore.
Subscribers do not have to sign up to receive all of a content provider’s updates. The RSS reader allows you to pinpoint specific topics about which you want to keep current – effectively creating highly targeted opt-in lists.
The playing field has been flattened.
Imagine the possibilities…
The larger content providers will provide news and general info about all subjects, but, you are an expert in your field. If a subscriber is interested in a topic, is it likely that they will only want to hear about it from a single source? From only a well-known news source? Or is it more likely that they will want to know what the experts in the field have to say?
Wouldn’t you rather spend your time and money appealing to a target audience that has volunteered to hear what you have to say?
Coming next: “What the heck are RSS and RSS readers?”