Bruce Allen at Marketing Catalyst, referencing to my article earlier this day, has an interesting point to make about how companies can use RSS to differentiate themselves from their competitors. And it's not what you'd think.

For a while at least RSS Feeds were a blessing. The ability to have news and information come to me without being forced to view every billboard, banner, and popup was just too good to be left alone. As outlined by Rok Hrastnik at Marketing Studies.net the feeds spilling into my aggregator will carry everyone else's idea of what I should buy, and I'll have to begin again to puzzle out where the real content is hiding.

As he puts it, companies can differentiate by saying no to advertising in their RSS feeds:

The opportunity for professional services firms is to NOT use their own RSS feeds to push "advertising", but to continue to use the feeds for their designed purpose; keeping an interested audience informed.

Professional services firms live and die by their ability to create and sustain face-to-face relationships. The marketing of professional services needs to create an aura of care that would suggest to people that you would treat them like a person that matters.

I can certain agree with that from the viewpoint of service companies. RSS advertising has no place in their feeds, since their primary object should be communicating with their prospects and slowly turning them in to clients; through education, thought leadership and real solutions to their problems. And of course, as Bruce puts it, by keeping their readers "informed".

But now here comes the twist ...

All content intended to eventually make a sale or facilitate profits, is in a way advertising content.

It is simply something that companies, whether they want to or not, cannot survive without.

Consequently, every article, no matter how educational, published through a corporate RSS feed, is in itself an advertising message. The question is, of course, whether it is perceived as such.