The BIG RSS Button - You Saw It Here First!

See the BIG RSS button on the right of the page? No, that's not a typo, it really is a BIG *R*SS button!

It's BIG, blue and has RSS written on it :)

Actually, you probably didn't need a description or a location because it kind of stands out, doesn't it? 

Have you ever seen an RSS button quite that big? I haven't, and I've visited about every corner of the Web.

Mark this day down, September 6, 2004, as the birth of the BIG RSS button! (if you've seen something similar before, please let me know)

If you're interested in knowing how and why this thing came into existence, then read on...

There's a growing momentum online to familiarize the general public with the concept of 'subscribing' to RSS feeds. As a matter of fact, getting someone to subscribe to a feed has become an important aspect of most feed-providers' online marketing plan. I mean, why offer the feed unless you want people to use it?

Getting someone to subscribe to a feed is becoming equally, if not more important than getting them to sign up for an email newsletter.

Obviously, in order for user to subscribe to a feed, they have to be able to find it. That part of the process seems pretty important, doesn't it?

Unfortunately (I was initially guilty of this as well), most content publishers offering RSS feeds on their site rely on a standard little orange or blue button about the size of a Tic-Tac to indicate the existence of a feed. While most RSS-savvy geeks can usually find these buttons on a site (because they actively look for them), the general public, who is beginning to adopt RSS on a wider scale, needs something a bit more obvious and clear.

It only took 2 complaints from people not able to find my feed for me to rethink my whole feed-deployment strategy.

Here's what the design/marketing parts of my brain came up with:

• Make it Big - Those tiny little orange and blue buttons that identify most feeds out there just aren't big enough! With the growing importance of getting someone to subscribe to a feed, those tiny buttons seem really inadequate for the task of drawing attention
• RSS or XML? - What should the button say? Personally, I feel that across the Web that the general public is being introduced to site feeds as RSS feeds. Labelling the feed as XML is technically correct, but it could end up being confusing to them. They're looking for something that says RSS, but all they see is XML. They, most likely, have no idea what XML is. Sure, RSS is based on XML, but they don't know that, and they probably don't care. All they want is to see an indication of the existence of an RSS feed. What better way than a button labelled RSS. With that in mind, my site feed will be identified accordingly.
• Focus - My good friend Joel Christopher made a statement one time that continues to have an impact on many of my marketing decisions. He said, 'If you try to sell everything to everybody, you'll end up not selling anything to anybody.' His point? Achieving the absolute best results with anything comes from the focus of time, energy, and resources with a singular end-goal in mind. Since the relaunch of this site a few weeks ago I had been promoting 3 different feeds on my home page. As a result, I was getting decent subscriptions to each of the 3 feeds. However, getting visitors to subscribe to my main feed is my #1 main goal. Therefore, it is now the only feed directly promoted on the home page. My other feeds are still available, but a bit more indirectly. The goal is to draw attention to my site's main feed, hopefully with the result of getting more subscribers.

These are my initial results and reasons. If you think they make sense, feel free to follow them in your own feed-deployment strategy. You're even welcome to copy my BIG RSS button and use it yourself - for free! If you feel compelled to link back to my site somehow, that would be great, but not a requirement.

I'm going to continue experimenting, and if I discover anything else, you'll find it here, or in my RSS feed.