There are many ways you can use of RSS feeds to expand your business. Below are some examples that are commonly used ( be wary though, RSS can sometimes be exploited, so do diligence is advised).



Twitter: Automatically create a new tweet when you have new posts. There are many ways to do this, a popular and free tool to use is Twitterfeed.

Facebook - like twitter, Facebook can also be updated automatically when you post. One recommended application to use is "My Blogs", as using Facebook app's can sometimes be unreliable.

Widgets: design a special widget related to your blog. The widget could then be displayed on their own blogs or even on their desktop. This can easily be done with Spring Widgets or Google Gadgets.

Offer downloads - compile a PDF document, or offer a video. Publishing a podcast, radio or other media is also a good idea.

Affiliates RSS feeds: Allow your affiliates to display your content wherever they wish. Give them the incentive by branding any links with their affiliate ID. This will credit them with any purchases made from your sites.

Search for special deals in your niche - this can offer your readers some good money-saving deals. Sales can be tracked via a private affiliate account from major online retail outlets like Amazon.com. For deals related to Internet marketing, find a feed like deal.com, and add it to your RSS reader.

Package tracking - your packages can be tracked with simpletracking.com, or broadcast it to your viewers if you sells physical stock.

Track latest questions on Yahoo Answers: Answering questions on Yahoo Answers can be very effective to promote your business. Subscribe to the RSS feed of the category you're interested in so you'll be notified when a new question you can answer comes in.

Comment tracking: some times e-mail delivery can be notoriously unreliable, especially with free accounts. This is where using RSS can be very useful as an alternative. If using WordPress blogging technology, the comment feed will usually be displayed at: http://yourblog.com/comments/feed/ or http://yourblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2

Competition - keep an eye on your competitors, and find out their activities on social networks videos and blogs. A good option for this is FriendFeed.

Stay updated with your industry: a nifty little option when using MSN or Yahoo, is the ability to subscribe to feeds based on the keyword you submit to the search engine. The icon usually appears in the browser bar with IE7 and Firefox.

Advertisements: I've never tried RSS advertising, but I have displayed the odd advertisement in an RSS feed. Surprisingly this CTR for the sites I used out performed click throughs' from the website itself. Pheedo, FeedBurner and Text-Link-Ads make RSS advertising possible.

Notify clients of service status: This works well for businesses who offer a service like web hosting, online shopping carts. Publish a system status feed and let customers know they can be alerted of status changes immediately.