The term “RSS feed” is a bit of tech jargon, often thrown around by web designers, marketers, and tech-savvy people. And if you’re sitting there thinking, “What is an RSS feed?” don’t worry, you’re not alone.

An RSS feed, in its simplest form, is a string of code that communicates between platforms, pulling and pushing data in a way that keeps things in sync without you lifting a finger. Think of it as your silent assistant – working in the background to keep your website, blog, or online store connected to various other platforms. 

And the best part? It’s a huge time-saver.

Automating Marketing with RSS Feeds

As business owners, one of the smartest things we can do is use RSS feeds to automate communication. Whether it’s notifying your customers about new blog posts or product updates, the RSS feed can handle it. And trust me, I’ve been using these for ages, and it’s like magic.

For instance, RSS feeds can be used within reader platforms like Feedly, where you can gather articles, tips, and updates from your industry, helping you stay on top of trends.

But let’s dig deeper into how RSS feeds play a role in your marketing efforts.

Creating RSS Based Campaigns

One of my favorite uses for RSS feeds, especially for clients in e-commerce or those publishing a lot of content, is creating RSS based campaigns. These campaigns can automatically pull updates from your blog or website and send them out to your audience via email.

For example, if you’ve got a shop and you’re constantly adding new products, you can set up an RSS feed that sends out an update every time something new arrives. If you’re using platforms like MailerLite, these tools allow you to set up a campaign where, on a certain day each week, new products or blog posts are automatically emailed to your subscribers.

It’s effortless and your audience stays updated with what’s new in your store or on your website without you having to remember to send it out yourself. You can even personalise these campaigns by category, allowing for more tailored content distribution.

Connecting RSS Feeds to Social Media

Another fantastic way to use RSS feeds is to automate your social media posts. For example, you’ve just added a new blog post or product, and instead of having to manually announce it on your social channels, you can use a tool like Zapier to send out an automated post saying, “Hey, check out this new blog!” or “Look at what just arrived!”

This level of automation ensures that your social media channels stay active and up-to-date, without you spending hours on scheduling posts.

Scheduling Social Posts Using RSS Feeds

If you’re not already using social media scheduling tools like Meet Edgar, Metricool, or MissingLettr, I highly recommend you do. These platforms can take your RSS feed, whether from your blog, shop, or event calendar, and automatically turn them into social posts.

What’s great about these tools is that they also help you create variations from your original content, ensuring that your audience sees fresh updates without feeling like you’re repeating yourself. Plus, if you have a post or product with an expiry date, you can set the campaign to stop promoting it after that time, keeping your messaging relevant.

Incorporating RSS Feeds in Newsletters

Lastly, we love using RSS feeds in newsletters. When we build out newsletter templates whether for ourselves or for clients, we often pull in RSS feeds from different categories. So, for instance, when we’re sending a newsletter via MailerLite, we might include RSS feeds that automatically add new podcast episodes, recent blog posts, or course creation tips.

This process ensures that we never forget to include the latest content, and it saves us a heap of time. It’s efficient and guarantees that we’re always delivering fresh, relevant information to our subscribers.

Why Use an RSS Feed

In summary, an RSS feed is a powerful tool that you can use to automate many aspects of your business from email campaigns to social posts, and even newsletters. It’s an information pipeline that ensures your content is always being distributed, saving you time and keeping your marketing strategy consistent.

If you’re curious about how you can further incorporate RSS feeds into your marketing strategy, I’d love to help. Come and join me in the Marketing Circle, where we dive deep into all these tools and techniques, helping you automate and optimise your business.

Highlights 

• [00:00] Introduction to RSS Feeds
• [00:52] Using RSS Feeds in Marketing
• [00:55] Creating RSS-Based Campaigns
• [01:48] Automating Social Posts with RSS
• [02:07] RSS Feeds for Social Scheduling
• [02:50] Incorporating RSS in Newsletters
• [03:23] Conclusion and Further Learning

Resources Mentioned

• Marketing Circle
• Mailerlite 
• Meet Edgar
• Zapier 
• Metricool 
• Missinglettr