Using RSS feeds for PR and SEO

Posted: June 23rd, 2006 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: PR Tactics, SEO PR Tactics | 1 Comment

There has been much debate by PR folk about how to use blogs to the benefit of our clients. In many cases, bloggers like to be “pitched” even less than jounalists, and unlike journalists they can sometimes get nasty about it in their writings. If they don’t like your company, they’ll say so in no uncertain terms on their blogs. Many of them feel that theirs is a higher calling, and that they don’t have to bow to the PR machine. This is true, but what I’m finding is that you don’t HAVE to pitch them.

Recently, I distributed a news release for my client, Shamin Hotels. It was about the company’s partnership with River’s Bend Golf Club on a golf package website. While we were hoping for news outlets to pick up the story and run with it (I did an email pitch to reporters, in the hopes that would happen) we weren’t really expecting it. However, we also weren’t expecting the response we got from the blogosphere. By writing a quality news release and posting it on a news release distribution site, you can get results these days. Most of the quality distribution services have their own RSS feeds (newsfeeds that bloggers use on their sites) and also have ways to get releases on other RSS feeds. Those RSS feeds were what helped us. If you go to Yahoo and do a search for “Shamin Hotels River’s Bend Golf Club” you’ll find SEVENTEEN PAGES full of links to sites that either posted the golf package release or linked to the version on the release distribution site! This is not only good for the visibility of my client, it’s also outstanding for their search engine ranking.

Is simply posting releases to release distribution sites going to replace strategic public relations practices like story crafting and cultivation of media contacts? Absolutely not. In fact, there are ways to pitch to the highest profile blogs that can get better results than just posting a release and walking away. However, the response you can get from a quality release, and knowing where to put it on the web, shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat!