We have compiled a series of feature articles to help our news and blog post clients promote their content and to attract more readers.
Once upon a time, the usual route was to set up a website and hope that people would come visit. This, and the search engine optimization techniques that go with it, remains an important element in supplying news or blog content. But, as we explain in our articles, it is no longer the only means. The rise of RSS feeds means that news suppliers no longer have to rely on people venturing out to their websites; fresh content can be sent in the other direction, from the site to the consumer.
RSS feed technology simplifies the consumer’s experience – all the updated content he or she is interested in (from multiple sites) can be sent to one convenient location on a PC or mobile. More and more people are opting for RSS feeds to keep abreast of the latest developments on the sites that they have developed a loyalty to. Browsing through freshly updated content in one place, tidily aggregated by a feed reader, spares consumers the labor of manually visiting each and every site individually to check for fresh updates (see our feature “How to set up an RSS feed”).
The net result is that more new posts are read by more consumers; the need to drop by a website is removed. Effectively, this means that news suppliers and bloggers gain readers, because they will read each post as it’s launched, rather than relying on visiting the site when they have the time.
In addition, with great Content Management Services (CMSs) like the open source software “WordPress”, RSS feeds can be set up effortlessly to excellent effect. Two key growth points arise from good CMSs – the blog or news content website can be included in major search engine news searches, including Google News and Bing News, potentially multiplying consumption by a huge factor. Check our features on how to submit a news or blog site URL to both of these search leviathans.
But CMSs also permit the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace via RSS, as well as micro-blogging sites like Twitter. Our feature article on “How to automatically post on social networks” covers the steps involved, but the process is easy to set up and the results exceptionally attractive. This is how new posts get to be read by people well beyond the normal readership group – social networking leads to benign social gossiping, and the word about great content can spread amongst an account-holder’s list of friends very easily.
More people will accept an RSS feed through this route than content suppliers could hope to attract through random visits to the main website. Not only that, a short summary of the post on a social networking site, along with a tempting link, will often encourage new readers to check it out even without a word of mouth recommendation. When readers start using a content supplier’s RSS icons freely on their own social pages to receive new posts, the impact is likely to be much more powerful than when it simply comes from the supplier’s own social network account.
We referred to WordPress just a moment ago: there are more features to this service that content suppliers should know about. Not only does it automatically encourage robot indexing by search engine giants like Google, it will also repeat this process a few weeks later to re-promote the website content. Statistics are unambiguous: the second wave of indexing can generate as much interest as the first. It is also possible to send a weekly email to everyone on your client list, summarizing all the posts made over the previous seven days.
At Purecontent we know exactly what the big search engines like Google News and Bing News are seeking. We know that content has to be engaging and literate, based on the tried and tested rules of the most effective news journalism, and entirely free of anything that could be construed by Bing or Google as spam or promotional material. If they catch the faintest whiff of the latter, they will drop the site like a hot brick.
We supply top quality news content from our team of professional writers, enhancing the positive effects of platforms like WordPress with an additional human approach to search engine optimization and tailor-made content.
Begin by reading the four feature articles we have put together on how to promote news and blog content using RSS feeds, social networking sites and search engine news services. Success is only partly related to chance; the rest is down to cutting-edge promotion techniques and great content.
How to post your news or blog on social media
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