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REVIEWS AS RSS
Why RSS? Because RSS Builds Traffic!
Traffic! This is probably the number one problem you face in running an online business. Or, more specifically, the lack of it. It is getting more and more difficult to attract quality traffic to your site. And once you get the traffic, you need to keep it. So what is it exactly that this traffic is looking for?
Quality content. It is that simple. Red Queen helps you create that content in the form of unique customer reviews that the Search Engines are more than happy to index. But getting visitors to your site, and then getting them to return once they have left, is a real problem for most webmasters. The saavy ones, however, have recently begun to turn their attention to RSS (Really Simple Syndication of content) as a means of Solving the Traffic Problem. How exactly is this achieved? Well, RSS feeds do two very useful things:
- they announce the existence of a source of content (you can add your RSS feeds to the various RSS feed directories), and
- they alert subscribers to the arrival of new content, bringing them back to your site repeatedly.
Let's consider a couple of examples.
Suppose you run a web site that offers downloads of audio files supplied by new bands. If you offer an RSS feed of new downloadable MP3s, possibly segmented by musical category, the user can be automatically alerted to these files if they subscribe to the feed. No email alerts are needed. Just update the feed regularly and let the user's RSS Reader do the work. As another example, let's say you run a site that offers coupons for all kinds of services and products, again segmented into categories. By offering RSS feeds of new coupons for given categories, users can subscribe to the categories of interest and be alerted to the arrival of new coupon offers each time your feed is updated. In both cases, the RSS feeds are "item feeds", likely without any associated review-related information (because the items are new and not likely to have been reviewed yet). When reviews come in, you can offer "item review feeds" too, in which the latest reviews announce the items receiving attention.
It is not hard to see that by offering RSS feeds, you are embarking on a real traffic building initiative.
Why Reviews? Because Reviews Sell!
The aim of this tutorial is to consider the mechanics of publishing reviews as RSS feeds.
There may be other applications that you can find that package reviews in the RSS format, but for the purposes of this tutorial, all specific instruction relates to the review management application known as Red Queen (the User Manual of which this tutorial happens to be one of the chapters).
But before we dive head first into the details, one question we should be asking ourselves right off the bat is this: Why should we take the trouble to syndicate reviews as RSS Feeds?
This is a reasonable question. After all, reviews are not news articles, the content for which RSS was originally designed as a technical means of syndication. But reviews do lend themselves to the syndication format. Furthermore, it is not difficult to imagine a prospective buyer subscribing to review feeds when an item needs to be purchased. By offering the "above the surface" component of a review for inspection, the consumer is able to quickly gauge whether or not the remaining content of the review (the ninety percent, like an iceberg, that lies beneath the surface) might be worth exploring. Or not. This is a real benefit to the consumer--they need NOT go in search of reviews that will help them in their purchasing decision. Instead, reviews vy for their attention and, if well-written, entice the reader back to your site. A really informative customer review can decide the mind of a prospective customer, and in doing so, help your reach your own business goals.
At present (mid 2006) the number of web sites that offer reviews in the RSS format can almost be counted on the one hand. This is somewhat surprising, given the marketing potential of customer reviews as RSS. But it is understandable. Today, RSS feeds are NOT well known to the general public. Presently, less than 5 percent of online users knowingly subscribe to RSS feeds (a larger number use RSS services, such as My Yahoo, without realizing the nature of the technology behind their news aggregation service). Therefore, if you are seriously looking at publishing reviews as RSS feeds, consider yourself a pioneer. Because these are the early days, and customer reviews as RSS represents an opportunity that lies wide open to online marketers. So stake your claim before the next fellow does, if you want to play this game!
OK, so RSS is the focus of our attention here. But to better relate what we are doing with our overall goal (which, in general, is to sell something to a visitor) we will assume that, as in Tutorial One: HOW TO CREATE AN AFFILIATE SITE, we have set up a site that either sells DVDs directly, or makes an affiliate commission off DVD referrals. If you happen to sell Surfboards, or Surround Sound Speaker Systems, mentally substitute every time you see DVD in what follows...
Aren't There Enough Reviews Already?
Another question that might have occurred to you is this one: Do we really need to publish reviews? Aren't there enough review sites out there already?
This one is really easy to answer. Yes and No. Sure, there is always Amazon.com to visit if we want to find reviews on DVDs. But that does not mean there is no room for a specialized DVD review site. Amazon.com reviews are very general. If we wanted to find out how customers saw a movie, broken down into 4 particular measures of interest that we think are important, well it would be up to us to gather that information, because it would not be found on Amazon.com, nor Epinions.com, nor likely anywhere else. Moreover, there are a lot of things in the world that people want to know about, and you simply will not find the information on such generalized storefronts as Amazon and Epinions. Want to know about the best stockbrokers on the East Coast rated according to accessibility, breadth of knowledge, and success of picks? Well, you'd be out of luck. No one has collected that information. But if they had, you can bet people would be interested in the results. The moral of the story here: there is no limit to the kind of information that could be gathered and presented to people in the form of reviews. Syndicating that information represents an opportunity for every saavy online marketer.
What Will Our RSS Feeds Look Like?
In case you are wondering what customer reviews formatted as RSS might look like to an end user:
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Of course, because intelligently-formatted RSS feeds will allow access to the individual elements that make up each <item> in the feed, we are free to entirely reformat the look and feel of a feed. We could even present a graphical rating image for each of multiple rating attributes if we wanted--for example, for storyline, special effects, and so on, although we'd need to be careful not to overload the reader with information (remember that the purpose of an RSS feed is to present just enough information to entice the reader to come back to our site for more information). This ability to perform custom formatting of a quality feed means that there is no threat of seeing cookie-cutter RSS feed formats everywhere on the web. This is one of the many advantages that RSS offers--particulary if we are dealing with a flexible format like RSS 2.0, which is assumed throughout the course of this tutorial.
Plan Of Attack
In other tutorials in this series we have seen how Red Queen can be used to gather customer reviews for your business. The remainder of the current tutorial will focus on how to generate RSS feeds of these reviews. Red Queen can also publish feeds of the review items themselves, which include the average customer rating when one is available. For the most part, however, we will concentrate on review feeds, as these actually conform rather closely to the original concept of a regular RSS feed (see reasons below). Both review feeds, and item feeds with an average customer rating, can be used to market your items. Which is the preferred feed type will depend on your circumstance. A significant advantage to review feeds is that each new review that comes in represents a completely new feed <item>, in contrast to plain product feeds in which possibly the only changing information is the value of the associated average customer rating. Because of this, review feeds are most appropriate for RSS Readers (more news-like), while Review Item feeds (more static information) are better presented on websites.
We will see that once we have our items and item reviews gathered in our Red Queen database, creating RSS feeds is very straight forward. We will be able to create a feed, specifying the manner in which items, or reviews, are to be included (such as by a keyword initiated search). Once created, a feed can be activated or deactivated, meaning that it can be made publicly available to potential subscribers, or withdrawn. A public feed is said to be syndicated, and RSS reader applications will periodically attempt to retrieve the feed and present the information to subscribers.
Now back to the Table of Contents for the next section in this tutorial, which will explain how we go about creating an RSS Feed using the built-in machinery of Red Queen.
Documentation
Documentation for Red Queen, which is entirely separate from these tutorial pages, is an ongoing project (as is this tutorial). You should find that there is sufficient information in the Red Queen User Manual to answer most of your technical needs. Suggestions for improvement to both the User Manual and this tutorial are always welcomed. As more users gain experience with Red Queen, and issues are resolved for its application in different areas, information gained from that experience will make its way into these pages.
Note: If you cannot find the information you are looking for in this tutorial, try the Red Queen User Manual which you should find far more comprehensive than the instructional dialog found here.
Next Section: CREATING RSS FEEDS
Copyright © 2004 Random Mouse Software. All Rights Reserved.