To that effect, website conversion is extremely important for any business. In this post, I highlight 7 things which you must keep in mind for website conversion.

Simple

Keep it simple. People love websites which provide a simplistic user experience. Whether it’s navigation, text or images – make a conscious effort to keep things simple. You should keep in mind that your website visitors are a mix of tech-savvy people as well as those who’re still newbies in the Internet world. Simplicity works.

Know your audience

Your customers are a key stakeholder for your website so make sure you design it keeping them in mind. If you are a business offering products and services for the teen generation, a lively and rocking website fits the bill better than a sober and dull theme. Make sure that all info that your audience needs is easily accessible.

Content

Content is King – this holds true irrespective of the kind of business are you are in. If your website lacks content which can make an impact, it’s not likely to draw large conversion numbers. Make sure you offer unique quality content on your website – it’s one of the most understated principles of successful website conversion.

Customer Experience

Customers only go back to sites which they like. The foremost objective of any website is to offer a pleasing customer experience. Strive hard to improve your website and build a customer experience – rewards will automatically follow.

Selling

While the end objective is to sell, you should take care that you sell the benefits or the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of your product/service. Don’t get too pushy with text/ images to hard sell to customers – it never works. Instead, adopt a balanced approach – educate your customers on your products and services, tell them why they should opt for it and if they oblige, make sure to treat them in a professional manner.

Action

Customers love providing feedback and they like seeing things in action. In fact, smedio.com has transformed over the years based on the feedback we’ve received from our wonderful audience. Always be prepared to take action based on customer feedback.

Competition

Know your competition – it helps. Try to understand how your competitors are using their websites to pull in more customers. Analyze what makes them successful and beware of the mistakes they make. There’s nothing like learning from your competitors’ success and failure.

What are your opinion on website conversion? Please share your tips by leaving a comment.

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A lot of business owners are surprised by how many of their visitors abandon their shopping carts before checking out. Google Analytics reveals that there are specific percentages wherein customers drop their shopping cart off. However the reasons could not be determined immediately.

Performing routine tests of your website is the first step in optimizing the visitor’s landing page experience. This approach is incremental and should be tested thoroughly before fully rolling it out.

Repetition and Persuasion

Displaying persuasive copy and special offers repeatedly on your landing page is crucial. Take advantage of the opportunity your customers are giving you by browsing your products and services; persuade them with appealing offers and carefully worded sales pitches. You may not be able to control their emotions or thoughts, but you can control your sales words. Repetition burrows an impression deep in the visitor’s mind. Just avoid sounding like a used-car salesperson.

Aim for the heart: tell customers about your product’s benefits by enumerating its main features. You could also list what your product doesn’t have, such as no artificial flavors, additives, or harsh chemicals. Repeating these benefits will convince readers of the benefits in store for them.

Begging for Information

While collecting information and website visitor profiles is important, keep in mind that overdoing it can backfire. Customers are turned off by having to fill a load of survey forms before checking out. Asking for too much information for a simple purchase could lead to a cancelled transaction.

Forms can also make a website look cluttered. Try hiding forms behind drop-down buttons using DHTML or AJAX, allowing visitors to fill them out without having to reload the page or open another tab.

Reassure the Customer

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and you will find that revealing personal information such as email addresses and telephone numbers is a major concern. Earn their confidence by reassuring them. Email marketers often append their letters with something like, “We hate SPAMMING as much as you do, and we won’t sell your information to anyone else,” along with a link to their privacy policy.

The Trust and HackSafe seals are important to have beside your forms, as are the names of credit cards that customers can use to make payments. Still, nothing beats the traditional money-back guarantee and return policy that customers can use if they are not satisfied with a product or service.

Alternative Methods of Payment

For every Internet user still clinging to a dial-up connection and Internet Explorer v6, there is someone still not comfortable using their credit card online, despite the vast improvement in online security and horde of trusted online payment websites.

Address this concern by offering alternative ways to order and make purchases, including by phone and fax. Make sure your website is friendly to the diverse ways in which customers prefer to conduct business. Sometimes merely displaying a phone number for ordering and making inquiries instills trust in the visitor, even if they never use it.

Build Value

Create an atmosphere in which customers view your product as being valuable and are comfortable making a purchase. TV infomercials for home shopping use this method to boost sales. Just as you become convinced of a product’s benefit, along comes the host to announce that, “Call now and we will double your order!” This tactic builds value for your product.

It also helps to justify the cost of the product for sale. Whether the product is $5 or $5,000, the customer needs to like the item and feel like they have landed a good deal. One way to do this is by adding up the product or service’s features and comparing the actual price to the “value” that the customer is getting.

Various elements of a website can affect customer behavior. Identifying each element and “split testing” them one by one is well worth the effort. Test often and repeatedly. Mark your progress, weed out dead elements, and aim to surpass your best conversion records.

The post How to Engage Your Customers and Make Them Take Action Online appeared first on Smedio.

While there’s no doubt that mobile marketing is a powerful tool for marketers, I strongly believe that they need to avoid these 7 don’ts.

Multiple Bulk SMS

I have no qualms in accepting that despite being a marketer, I hate receiving multiple bulk messages about any campaign – it’s irritating to say the least. While bulk SMS is an effective tool, it must be used diligently rather than flooding users with unsolicited messages.

Long Messages

Mobile users have a short attention span. Whether it’s mobile websites or texts, cell phone users typically like the information to be short, sweet and to the point. Avoid using long messages and understand that there’s no point beating about the bush.

Respect User’s Privacy

Make your mobile marketing campaign’s policy clear to the target audience and make sure you do not infringe their privacy. I, for one, would not appreciate unsolicited calls without a prior confirmation via text and/or email. Avoid calling/ texting at odd hours.

It’s all about clicks

A lot of mobile marketers are merely concerned about click rates and impressions. While clicks are important, a mobile marketing campaign needs to account for several other key metrics including location, device types etc.

One size fits all

While smartphones and tablets are used by people of all age groups, it’s unwise to target them all using a one size fits all mobile marketing campaign. Have a well-defined strategy for each segment – kids, teens, adults and even baby boomers as part of your mobile marketing strategy.

No website optimization for mobile

Unless you take care to ensure that you website is optimized for mobile access, customers and prospects are going to have a harrowing time using it. A website is your identity in the online world and if people find it difficult to use it on their mobile devices, it’s bound to leave a bad impression for your mobile marketing campaign.

Don’t overdo it

I’ve come across a number of mobile marketing campaigns go wrong because they overdid it. In fact, mobile is such an effective media that a number of marketers don’t know where to draw the line. If you over do it, it ruins your mobile marketing campaign altogether.

What’s your take on the dos and don’ts of mobile marketing? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

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In this post, I talk about the 7 most common roadblocks to successful social media campaigns and how your business can avoid these.

1. Free

I meet several clients who want to run social media campaigns because it’s ‘free’. This is a common misperception and a perfect recipe for disaster for your social media campaigns. Before you start a campaign, make sure to account for the manpower costs as well as the recurring technology costs associated with your social media campaign.

Devise a sound social media strategy, define your expenditure limits and track it on a periodic basis

2. Pitch

Social media or not, a pushy campaign always ends up as a disaster. Whether it’s your Facebook page or your Twitter feed, mind the pitch of your campaign. In fact, this is one of the biggest mistakes companies make – being too self-promotional in their posts to fans and followers. Keep your self-promotion within limits. Be mindful that self-serving posts drive your audience away, so make sure you follow a suitable pitch to keep your audience interested with valuable and useful content.

3. Content

If a social media campaign lacks original content, it’s not worth the time and effort spent. If you are simply copying your competitors, such campaigns will do no good to your business’ cause. While I agree that producing original campaign content isn’t the easiest thing in the world, you need to follow the golden rule that content is king and base your social media campaign around original content.

4. Time

Are social media campaigns quicker than traditional methods in terms out of outreach – I’d say yes! Do they drastically reduce the amount of human time needed – I’d strongly say NO! In fact, I’m amazed that a lot of businesses simply resort to social media campaigns as they consider it as an excuse to save time. I don’t think that’s the case – like a traditional campaign – you still need to create content, interact with customers and measure the ROI in a social media campaign.

Like its traditional counterparts, social media campaigns need time and perseverance – the results will follow.

5. Interactivity

As in any campaign, customer interaction is a key part of social media campaigns. The idea is to get customers interested, answer their questions and adopt a caring and proactive approach to ensure sustained customer interest in your social media campaigns. I’ve often seen Facebook campaigns falter when they’ve adopted a lax approach to responding to customer queries. If people do not get answers that they’re looking for, they’ll gradually lose interest in your social media campaigns.

6. Management

Lack of management support is commonly perceived to be one of the most common roadblocks to launching social media campaigns. Senior management is often interested only in how the campaigns will impact their bottom line. The idea is to lay down a concrete plan for your social media campaigns and how the ROI would be measured.

7. ROI

Last but not the least, it’s crucial to be able to measure the ROI of any social media campaign. If you fail to do so, the campaign wasn’t worth the effort. Though most businesses treat the number of followers and mentions on social media platforms as a ROI metric, it can often be misleading. The idea is to know how many people is your social media campaign reaching and how many of the prospects are actually being converted into customers.

I strongly believe that any business must be prepared to face the roadblocks outlined above in order to launch a successful social media campaign. Have you experienced any other roadblocks to adoption of social media campaigns? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

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From a business perspective, content marketing is all about keeping your customers informed as well as getting them excited about your products and services. The idea is to create and publish content which will help your existing and prospect customers. As a content marketer, I believe you need to follow these 7 golden rules of Content Marketing.

Rule #1 – Be original with Your Content Marketing

The easiest thing you can do is to copy what your competitors are successfully doing. While that can lead to short term gains, I don’t think it’s the best long term marketing strategy for any business. If anything, it reflects a lack of innovation in your marketing efforts. Of course, I encourage businesses to take inspiration from others and build on those ideas to develop original content.

Rule #2 – Share Insight with Your Content Marketing

Your content should not just be original; it should also be informative, insightful and interesting. There’s no point in publishing original content which lacks appeal and offers no insights into your products/ services. If you produce a great product, make it a point to back it up with great content that offers useful insights.

Rule #3 – Show You Know your customers with Your Content Marketing

As a content marketer, it’s vital to know what your customers like and what’s likely to impress them. Quality of content is equally important as timeliness and quantity of content. As a business, you should strive to present information in an attractive format in which the reader wants to engage.

Rule #4 – Pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words – content marketing is no exception to that rule. An image can say a lot without needing any words. Therefore, make it a point to use pictures wherever appropriate. Images add a wow factor to content marketing campaigns so you shouldn’t be shy of using them. On the contrary, a content marketing campaign with an optimal mix of text and images usually appeals the most.

Rule #5 – Videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million words. Videos are a great way to present content in an intuitive manner. For example, a product demo can be best illustrated using a video rather than plain text. YouTube channels are a great way to supplement your marketing campaigns with crisp videos.

Rule #6 – Tone

I’ve seen a number of content marketing campaigns go awry simply because they chose an inappropriate tone. No one likes to read pushy and overly promotional content. Blatant sales pitches will never do any good to your campaign so be mindful of the tone used in your content.

Rule #7 – Interactivity

Content marketing is meant to establish a dialog between the customer and your business. If it’s one-way communication from your business and no response from your customer, it isn’t going to work. Engage your customers in meaningful communication in order to arouse a genuine interest in your products and services. Remember – content marketing is a two way street and if traffic gets blocked in either direction, the other lane gets choked automatically.

Would you like to add any content marketing rules to the above list? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.

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1. Thou Shall Devote a Few Minutes Each Day to Twitter

This is a hard and fast rule. It’s set in stone, hence it’s a Twitter commandment. In order to fully optimize your Twitter experience, you’ve got to be around to pay attention to it. Take a few minutes each day and tweet a couple of things your followers will find valuable in your niche. The more, the better, but if you’re pressed for a time, a few minutes each day is good enough. It’s important that you don’t let a day pass without at least checking in and seeing if anyone has mentioned you in a tweet.

2. Thou Shall not Spam Thy Neighbor

It’s not 1995 anymore, and I think we’ve all figured out that spam is really annoying. Don’t do it on Twitter, please. It’s one of the quickest ways to lose followers. Your Twitter account is a great way to promote your blog or your product, but if you’re too forceful, people will back away. Go ahead and promote, but walk the line between promotion and spamming very carefully.

3. Thou Shall Pay Attention to Mentions of Thy Brand

People are talking about your business, your industry or your niche on Twitter right now. Why are you not involved in the conversation? Twitter search is a great way to find out what people are saying about things that are important to you. Use it as if your Twitter success depended on it, because it does. The more conversations you’re able to contribute to, the more people will take notice. When that happens, you’re more likely to build a strong following.

4. Thou Shall Respond to @ Mentions in a Reasonable Time

This goes hand-in-hand with the first commandment, but it deserves a separate space. When other Twitter users tweet at you using the @ reply, you shouldn’t let their words go unheard. These are potential customers or followers, and they’re important. Get back to them. If you’re unsure of how to answer their question, send them a reply and let them know that you got their tweet and that you’ll get back to them. Being on top of your mentions shows that you care about your Twitter presence and the folks who could potentially become customers.

5. Thou Shall Tweet Valuable Information and Steer Away from Fluff

I love a good quote as much as the next guy. I really do. But lately, I’ve noticed that my Twitter stream is filled with so many quotes that I’m noticing some are starting to contradict each other. It’s confusing. Quotes are great, but they should be used sparingly. Be original with your tweets and provide value — that is, something that I can’t get anywhere else. Be the person I need to come to in order to get the type of information you can provide. Inspiring me with a quote from someone else is nice, but teach me something I didn’t know before. That’s how you achieve value.

6. Thou Shall not Send Automatic Direct Messages When I Follow You

I realize there are some people reading this that use the auto DM function on some third-party Twitter application. I appreciate the sentiment. It’s always nice to be thanked for something. But automating the system takes all the human interaction out of it. When I follow you and I get a DM a few hours later that asks me what I’m working on and then links to your blog, I don’t exactly feel all warm and fuzzy about it. If you want to thank your followers for following, do it personally. Sure, it takes more time, but make a connection. It’ll go a lot further for you and for me.

7. Thou Shall Ditch Your Logo and Be a Human

Your company’s logo is nice. Really, it is. But I don’t want to talk to a logo, and neither does anyone else on Twitter. Humans, not logos, create connections. Show me who you are. Don’t show me what your graphic artist created. Be real and create authenticity. It doesn’t matter how cool or edgy your logo is if you can’t create a connection with other Twitter users.

8. Thou Shall Manage Crises with Grace and Understanding

You’re not always going to hear what you want about your business or industry. When negative comments arise, do you handle them with wrath and vengeance? Absolutely not. Kindness rules all, even if you receive comments that are less than amicable. If there was a mistake on your part, acknowledge it and apologize for it. Do what you can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If it’s a difference of opinion, be open to hearing the other side. Never resort to harsh words or indifference toward negative comments.

9. Thou Shall Retweet and Share the Message of Others

We all want to be retweeted, but in order to heighten our chances of that happening, we need to share the content and message of others first. If you retweet someone often enough, they’ll remember you and likely follow you. That’s when they’ll probably return the favor by retweeting your content. Sharing is an important part of building Twitter relationships.

10. Thou Shall not Over-commit to Twitter

Twitter is great for networking, promotion and interaction, but it’s not a savior in and of itself. It’s simply a tool. Treat it as such. Spread your attention around different social media platforms, but don’t neglect traditional ways of spreading your message. It’s important to recognize that, while social media is showing its true potential in the business world, it’s not going replace other forms of promotion. The best plan is a plan that includes a healthy mix of both new and traditional channels of promotion.

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Apple has just released an outstanding video online tutorials for the iPad. Enjoy!

Join the Smedio Facebook fan page for a chance to win an iPad!

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1. A personal touch. The best proposals, pitches, emails, or what have you, reflect that you’re addressing a particular individual and their specific needs. Failure to personalize is a deal-breaker in the eyes of many people from whom you’re trying to get a contract or sale. You can’t, of course, do this on your website, but it’s important to keep in mind when otherwise pursuing someone’s business. Where possible, use their name and show that you’re familiar with their specific needs and offer just the right solution.

2. Currency. Showing a long history of excellence is one thing; showing no recent success examples is quite another. You may rarely be asked in what year you were involved with a particular past account, company or client, but if most of your work seems dated, so will your skill set. If necessary, date your material to show that you’re up-to-date and in demand right now.

3.  Website Links. Many of us have websites, and on most of our sites, we drop the names of our previous clients or showcase their glowing testimonials. Sometimes we don’t provide access – an associated link – for potential clients to follow as a semblance of proof. Note: there are prospects who will Google you and your clients, in search of evidence you’ve done what your website says. So where appropriate, notify those contacts that you’d like to showcase your work for them. Also ask if they’d mind occasionally receiving an email from an important stranger who might want feedback about your services.

There’s no magical formula guaranteed to land you new accounts, clients, or customers. But the first screen that many of your prospects use to weed out the weak are the most innocuous little tics you could imagine. These may be are minor details to you, but you’d be surprised by what turns people off, what seemingly offbeat rules they embrace as part of their hiring process.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. So, when it comes to your proposal, prospectus, presentation, portfolio, brochure or website, the more attention you pay to removing even the slightest reason to doubt your professionalism, the more swiftly ahead in preference you’ll move.

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What could it all mean to your business? For one thing, it’s important to know that people are increasingly using social media sites as they would a search engine. Imagine that … If someone vacationing in Miami seeks a day spa, they’re likely to search Facebook or MySpace for ideas. If an ad agency in San Diego needs a Toronto-based publicist, they’re apt to start with a Twitter or LinkedIn, and now, G-buzz search.

How visible you are on a few of the most-visited social sites is becoming increasingly important. That YouTube is now more searched than Yahoo! is a new media trend that shouldn’t be ignored. That Facebook has just celebrated its 400 millionth member is phenomena that you’d be nuts not to properly leverage it.

So the question is, How discoverable are you? We can’t have a high-quality presence on every social networking site, but solid brand marketing on perhaps one or two is increasingly important.

• You can’t just set up profiles on social networking sites and disappear. A consistent presence says something important about your leadership style that you’re to be taken seriously. Having long-ago entries as your most recent leads potential customers to make assumptions about you that aren’t beneficial to your business goals. Visit frequency and “face-time” matter.

• Do your homework on these sites; set up shop where your best prospects congregate. Keep the 80/20 Principle in mind when it comes to social marketing. Don’t waste as much as 80% of your social networking time and energy interacting in groups that don’t have the juice to impact your revenues. Concentrate on building relations with the 20% of targeted, qualified connections in whom you see evidence of meaningful business coming your way.

• Join sizable groups that are relevant; get in there and participate in the discussions. Engage, participate and put forth an informed point-of-view. Give up your knowledge; impress people if you want them to click your way. Let them see how knowledgeable you are, and how what you know can move their financial interests forward. Serve as an excellent resource, contributing good ideas without pitching.

• There must be value in interacting with you. Use your social space to converse, to solve a problem or to educate people, versus using it to talk solely about your products or services. Treat them as if they’re already your best customer. Focus on delivering actionable tips and trend information that people can use for growth or other benefits.

This is how to build a community and position yourself as a leader in your field. The more solid the information you consistently impart in cyberspace, the more discoverable your footprint on Google and those increasingly important search engines within social networking sites, which now include Google Buzz.

Remember: all of these sites are keyword sensitive for search engines. Every message you post, tweet, or buzz has the potential of attracting targeted prospects far beyond your social networking circle.

Image by Frank Da Silva

The post Spidering the Social Web and Building Your Online Social Currency appeared first on Smedio.

1. Blog Post Images. There’s a staggering amount of quality photography and graphic design images, and the owners of many of these works welcome bloggers and others to publish it, free of charge. Many bloggers find these images a refreshing change over formulaic stock photo, which you generally must pay to use. Another benefit is that the Google Images bots tend to index Flickr images in a post, potentially giving your site extra SEO juice.

To discover free images, use Flickr’s search box, entering “Attribution-NonCommercial License” + YOUR KEYWORD. You’ll likely see numerous images the owner doesn’t mind anyone copying, distributing or displaying – as long as you give them credit wherever you use it. The creator of the work will appreciate your linking to their Flickr photo stream, too.

2. Build Blog Traffic Using Flickr. There are a couple of ways to do this, depending on how much time you want to put into it.

• Create a profile and upload images relative to your products, services or business activities. Join related groups and get your images seen by those who share your interest. Put a link to your site on your profile page, but Flickr prohibits putting links to commercial sites under your various individual photos. You can, however, tag all of your images with your name, blog’s title, and SEO search terms that Google and other search engines will index.
• Start a photo group relative to your products, services or niche. You can join Flickr for free, or you can pay $24 per year for a Pro Account. With a Pro Account, you can create a group and build a community of likeminded Flickr photographers. If you do this, Flickr would allow your URL to appear on your group’s front page. Many museums, newspaper publishers, artists, artisans, and social groups do this and attract plenty of click-through traffic. Share the best, related works on your site.

3. Brand-build with Photo Merchandise. Once you’ve uploaded your photos on Flickr, you can use their partner services to showcase your brand and images on different items. Order prints, canvases, photo books, business cards or postcards. Click the shopping cart link to use Snapfish, which will create coffee mugs, t-shirts, canvas bags and more. You might use these to promote your business, online and offline. Your images immortalized might make great contest prizes or gifts for preferred customers.

The post 3 Great Ways to Leverage Flickr In Your Business appeared first on Smedio.

Facebook started rolling out its new design to users this week. This new design is not currently available to all users yet; it’s a great improvement over Facebook 1.0. The new design is targeted more toward updates than any thing else.

Updates to the To Menu

The Home, Profile, Find Friends links, and Account menu, which include your Edit Friends, Account Settings, Privacy Settings, Application Settings, Credit Balance (this is an interesting one), Help Center, and Log Out options, are now relocated to the top-right corner. Notifications updates such as someone writing on your wall or tagging you in a photo, requests and messages are now placed in a bubble near the search bar on the top left menu. This notifications are wrapped in a drop-down menu with your recent notifications appearing at the top.

Content Navigation

For easier communication and access to content from friends, messages and other essential features like events, photos – which contains the video, recent albums, mobile uploads, and my uploads drop-downs, have now been organized to the left of the news feed.

The Chat bar is still located at the bottom right corner of your browser but it has been made more prominent by showing some of your online friends. To see all your friends online, you just click “See All” or expand the Chart bar.

A couple of changes have been made around Games and Applications as well.

What do you think of the new Facebook design?

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Really Simple Syndication (or RSS) is a method of news distribution that circumvents the whole problem of spam and email viruses. Vendors and blogs use it to alert users to new content. Email, of course, has its place on the Internet and would never be replaced by RSS. But for certain types of content, RSS is a superior communication medium.

RSS feeds are secure because they are selected by the end user, making spam a non-issue. Subscribers choose only the feeds they wish to read, and content providers provide only the feeds their audiences would find useful. RSS users are also able to repost content from other websites.

What Exactly Is an RSS Feed?

RSS is a file format created in a simple markup language called Extensible Markup Language (XML). It consists of directories of web pages containing news and information. The content is periodically accessed at set intervals and then consumed by users at their convenience.

The format itself is simple. The feed is enclosed in the XML file and contains the title, the URL, and a description of the web page, as well as the content itself in HTML. Content providers should authenticate their feeds before submitting them to engines to ensure they do not contain invalid characters. RSS feed subscribers then view the feeds either by aggregating them on their own website or by downloading a standalone RSS feed reader.

Make the Most of Your RSS Reader

RSS feeds exist for almost every type of content, including news, job listings, blogs, personals, show biz, and classifieds. They allow you to receive hourly or daily updates without actually checking the websites themselves. When a headline catches your attention, just click it to read the full content on the original website.

Get an RSS Reader

Many free downloadable RSS readers are readily available on the Internet. Google the term to find one you like. Paid RSS applications range in price from about $20 to $30 and vary in the features that they offer, but most offer tools not available in free RSS readers.

There are two types of RSS readers: standalone and plug-in. Each has unique capabilities and mainly differ in how they are accessed. The standalone RSS reader resides on your desktop, while the plug-in is incorporated in existing applications such as Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. One disadvantage of plug-ins is that repopulating your feeds can overload your browser if a lot of folders emails, bookmarks, and toolbars are open at once.

Set Up a Standalone Reader

Launching a standalone RSS reader on your desktop gives you a toolbar and window panes to work in, similar to Microsoft Outlook. The left side of the window displays the channels or RSS feeds you are subscribed to, which can be organized into categories and folders.

The right side is where you browse titles and read some or all of the content. If not all of an article’s content is displayed, you will see a link that takes you to the full page. Alerts to fresh content are sent either by email or pop-up windows.

Add Channels

Upon setting up your standalone RSS reader, you will notice that some channels are pre-loaded. You will like some of them but not all. To add your own channels, simply copy the URL of the website you want to add. Once you have several that you like, you can start organizing them into categories.

Customize Your Feeds

When you first install your standalone reader, spend some time poking around and familiarizing yourself with its features. Different standalone apps have different features. For example, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds, you can quickly get buried in content and lose track of articles you want to read. However, most feed readers have search functionality and labeling tools that help you find the articles that interest you.

As blogging becomes more dynamic, RSS feeds will become more flexible. Humans naturally want to consume information, which is why RSS readers will continue to be valuable as long as they evolve.

One more thing, remember to subscribe to our RSS feed on the top right-hand corner of this page.

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