Internet Marketing Toolbox

I’ve been a fan of RSS feeds for some time now. I can see the benefits from being able to reproduce content from other sites using their RSS feed - in fact, I often use material from some of my sites, on my other sites.

So from a web designer’s perspective, RSS is a pretty cool content creation and distribution mechanism!

But to date, as far as the general consumer goes, it’s been pretty ho hum!

If you were a consumer interested in keeping up to date with RSS feeds, you had to get a separate piece of software (a feed-reader) and learn how to use it…

And it wasn’t so dead simple and integrated that you would use it everyday… like you do your web browser.

Sure, the Firefox web browser for ages has been able to show feeds, and Apple’s new Safari browser can do a little bit more with feeds… but yesterday I discovered that Internet Explorer v7 is king of the roost as far as RSS feed integration goes!

And kudos to Microsoft for the features they have packed into the RSS reader component of IE7.

So if you run on IE7, go ahead and click on those little RSS icons you see on RSS-enabled web sites - just like the one at the bottom of the RH column on this page.

You’ll get an up to date list of the most recent items posted on the site - usually 10 or so… (But seriously if you have your own feed - why limit it to 10 items. What’s wrong with 50? Or even more?)

If you like the feed and want to stay in touch with that site, click the subscribe link.

IE7 will store the feed link in a “Feeds” folder - which can be found on the VIEW menu / EXPLORER BAR - or click on that bright ORANGE star on the left of screen… just next to where the page title shows.

To the “features” Microsoft have included… these are what really got me!

The ability for you to SEARCH through the feed for a keyword!

You can sort by date/reverse date of item, and alphabetically by title (and reverse).

The CATEGORIES for all the items are shown… it’s so easy to filter/switch (and sort and search) through each category as well!

And click on the Feed Properties link and you can adjust all sorts of settings like how often you want the feed updated, and how many updates you want to archive.

Microsoft have brought boring old RSS feeds to life with these enhancements, and have made XML sexy and useful to the average Joe!

If you want to see what I’m raving about here… have a look at this feed (if you are using IE7). It’s the “latest products” feed from a new site I’m fiddling with. Compare it with the same page in Safari or Firefox.

Maybe now we’ll start to see some marketers actually being creative with the use of RSS on their web sites, because this is going to put a helluva lot more people in touch with content!

BTW… the site feed above is from a turnkey ebook store which is currently doing the rounds - a large download of mostly oldish MRR stuff. The source code did NOT come with the rss feed - I had to do that myself - and a LOT of the code needs work to fix up and customise. In other words… it ain’t that turnkey!

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