A now "deceased" website on RSS marketing and RSS publishing - a look at the history of internet marketing

Rok Hrastnik

A Note from the Author: The RSS Diary is Closed

rssdiary.marketingstudies.net was built to help marketers get the most from RSS. However, much has changed since the site was last updated in 2007 - and it's pretty fair to say that it's now completely outdated.

Since I've moved on to other interests in internet marketing years ago, the site is now officially closed, and only remains online as an archive of a part of internet marketing's past. This is how we used to see RSS between 2004 - 2007. We don't, anymore, but there's no harm in having a small part of our past available online.

With that, I'm also making the e-book that started all of this, Unleas the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS, available for free download.

Rok Hrastnik [to contact and/or follow me: LinkedIn l Facebook]

The Custom Reader Branded RSS Aggregator in Action: Branded for MarketingStudies.net

 
 

If you read the post on branded RSS aggregators you already know the many business benefits of providing your own aggregator to your visitors.

One of the recent players to enter this market, Custom Reader, just launched the beta version of their branded desktop aggregator, and gave me a shot at doing my own branded edition.

From the end-user's point of view, Custom Reader is a lean client with key RSS "reading" features and an intuitive user interface that quickly grows on you.

From the brand's point of view, Custom Reader presents some unique features that help enforce the brand, facilitate customer relationships and facilitate sales:

a] The brand/publisher can add their own RSS feeds, which the user cannot unsubscribe from, and place them in prominent positions within the reader. These feeds can include anything from company blog updates, corporate news, product updates, customer service updates, podcasts to product announcements. The unique feature is that the publisher can actually change these as he likes, and the changes are then implemented across all installed versions of his reader.

b] Sales facilitation, product placement or other advertisements are possible through the "Notice" feature, giving the publisher the opportunity to "burn" an unobtrusive visual/text ad for his products or other things he would like to promote.

c] The reader can be further branded with the publisher's logo, URL and e-mail address. Future Custom Reader releases are expected to introduce branded reader skins as well.

d] The most unique feature of the reader is the "Feed Rank", which allows the publisher to keep track of the feeds his users are subscribing to, unsubscribing from and importing, and the views and clickthroughs for his own pre-set feeds and notices; all of this on the aggregate level without any personally identifiable information. The tracking is completely transparent for the end-users, who can easily enable or disable it.

To get a better impression of the reader, download and install the MarketingStudies.net branded version, which currently has two pre-set feeds (MarketingStudies.net RSS Diary and Lockergnome RSS & Atom Tips) and an unobtrusive advertisement.

Much recommended to all internet publishers who are putting some faith in RSS.

Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS
Rok Hrastnik Avtor: Rok Hrastnik

Rok Hrastnik is an experienced international internet marketer and manager in Central & Eastern Europe, lead by the conviction that marketers should first be driven by measurable business outcomes: sales and profits.

He is currently serving as the International Internet Director at Studio Moderna, the leading CEE direct response TV & multi-channel retailer, managing their internet operations across 22 countries (Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Romania, the Baltics and others).