Taming The RSS Beast: Or at least selling it.

Des Walsh is a business blogging evangelist who often finds himself fighting the tendency to throw jargon at questions.

RSS is just that kind of monster, especially as the very definition of RSS stands for about three things (Really Simple Syndication), (Real Simple Synchronization), and a host of other, less professional terms.

Wikipedia defines RSS. But Des needs a simple, non-technical way to explain what RSS is and how it affects businesses. He wants the benefits, not the features.

For one aspect in particular - the use and importance of syndication/RSS/newsfeeds - it was impossible not to use some jargon and also challenging to translate the jargon into plain English. But a basic understanding of the role of RSS and how to use it is crucial for having an effective business blog. So it was essential that I find a way to explain it so that it made sense to a business person who could well be totally uninterested in how it works, as distinct from what it does and what it can deliver.

There might be a problem with that. RSS, like blogs and other forms of CGM, suffer from a perception of difficulty. In explaining the features, users and potential users often get lost in the technical jargon like Des suggests. But pitching benefits is a problem as well. Just because a technology can accomplish a task doesn't mean it will accomplish a task.

An example:
RSS feeds from your company blog can be used to deliver content to the newsreaders of your clients. This allows your clients to read your message without having to make the effort to click to your website. RSS thus allows you to be the first person in front of your prospective clients.

The last line is the benefit. The problem is the steps one has to take to deliver that benefit are far more complex the just creating a feed. Claiming that RSS delivers messages to your clients is not true - your information has to be of a certain content, your customer has to have a newsreader, and they have to feel compelled to subscribe to your feed.

If you sell the benefit without describing how to generate that benefit, you're going to be stuck with a lot of dissatisfied customers. Don't get me wrong, I agree with Des that benefit selling has its advantages, but when it comes to blogs, I'm coming around to the principle that full projects with the right customers is the only way to deliver results.

A successful sale of a blog marketing campaign won't ever include the words RSS, precisely because it is a technical issue. RSS is useful only as part of a larger strategy, so why would you sell it as a feature or a benefit? It's like the people who sell the latest software language and pitch it as a reason to buy.

Most of all, RSS is really, truly simple. It has not been widely adopted (less than 2%), and many RSS fans have abandoned their feedreaders after a short infatuation. Rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts of blogging, we should be focused on the benefits or Consumer Generated Media as a whole.