SXSW Panel: Using RSS for Marketing

This morning I attended a panel that Tom (the moderator) asked me to attend. I was actually looking forward to this one since I am a marketer. Overall, I rate this session as a 7 out of 10. The discussion was very light and so I am deducting style points for that. What would have been good are examples, throw up examples of excellent ways companies are using RSS out there. When Tom asked the question about what companies are doing wrong, the panelists completely did not want to answer. Blah. Show us poor execution examples. I am also deducting a point for a participant who hogged the mic during the open question section.

Here are my notes:

This morning's panel is called "RSS for Marketing" and is made up of: Tom Markiewicz, Emily Chang, Bill Flitter, John Jantsch, and Greg Reinacker. 

Tom starts with a question – how do you go about explaining RSS to your clients?
Emily: depends on what type of client it is. RSS enables a direct information stream to your audience.
John: I have stopped talking about it as a tech thing.
Bill: What are you looking to do and then we use RSS as a tool.

Tom: Let's talk about how fast RSS is moving into the mainstream. Are users taking to this technology?
Greg: The growth rate is still accelerating. iE7 is bringing the first idea of subscribing to content to millions of users. People don't always realize they are using RSS.
John: There is a sector of our prospects that want to get information this way.
Emily: Thinks major companies are using it already like Disney.
Bill: We saw a huge spike in the automotive sector outside tech

Tom: Is RSS going to be something that the average person even needs to know what it is.
Greg: I think its about a communications medium, not just RSS.
John: It's a car part under the hood.

Tom: how are companies using RSS?
John: research, real-time search via feeds
Greg: take some of the conversation and pull it into your site
Emily: anything you want to get out to your audience, job listings, news, surveys

John: Using RSS for SEO is important with themed pages and custom googled search results  – honestly that makes no sense
Tom: You can use RSS as a simple content management system

Tom: What are publishers doing wrong and what are the mistakes you are seeing?
Bill: Being too stingy, headlines defi. don't work – users might want full feeds but it might not make sense
Greg: Don't try to be fancy
John: Make it very easy to subscribe
Emily: If your users are using a feed reader heavily — put that on the page. rss is a companion strategy
Bill: put the companyname before the title of the feed

Tom: Make sure you are consistent with your rss postings
Emily: I agree with consistency

User: can you recommend any good rss trackers?
Tom: There are 2 kinds: technology focused ones.
Bill: We look at it about how well it is working for your campaign

Bill: Key is to test, test, test

Bill: We find that impressions spike on Tuesdays.