Aggregated and Filtered Content Is King

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By John Jantsch | Published 09/15/2006 | Marketing Strategy | Rating:

John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing-The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Network. His Duct Tape Marketing Blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing and is a Harvard Business School featured marketing site.

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Aggregated and Filtered Content Is King

Let's face it, no matter what your business card says, you are probably in the information business.

Want verification of this from a Pulitzer Prize winning author? Go pick up a copy of Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat. It's a big book, but by page 45 or so you will come to understand that only those who can make information more valuable will survive.

Just a few years ago the rallying cry on the web was - content is king. Not so much anymore. I can find a person with a reasonable command of the English language to crank out 50, web page length articles in a week, for about $100. And, Google's AdSense program has incentivized all the Internet marketers to create this kind of content for ad revenue sake.

The crush of content that the average person has to consume is out of control.

So, the answer? Find, create, enhance, package and distribute content - aggregate it, filter it and make it more useful. That's your job.

And for that job, RSS, and the various tools lumped into the RSS bucket provide the power.

For the self-proclaimed computer geek, the RSS tools and open APIs are an unlocked candy store. But, you know that already.

For the average small business guy or gal, the ease of implementing these once foreign applications makes using RSS beyond blog posts a simple proposition.

Here are some ways companies are using the automatic distribution features of RSS

Keep customers informed about their company, products, services and promotions
Update employees and associates about company matters and events
Aggregate and publish news headlines and stories of interest to clients
Collect and filter sales intelligence
Send daily communication to salespersons
Track changes to real estate and auction listings
Publish news and news releases to various web pages
Advertise job opening
Recommed and update books from Amazon
Republish FAQs and support forum headlines
Promote random sales and special offerings
Provide product or service updates to buyers and owners
Create and send training programs to employees
Publish calendars or events and company happenings
Research competition and competitive keywords
Send daily tips and other marketing communications

Your job is to learn about this tool and then take what your learn and find creative ways to apply it in order to make the information that your provide, the content you provide, more valuable.

Here is a list of sites to help you get started on the "uses for RSS: journey (The list below is a BlinkList - a tool you may find useful in your information business)