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12.02.08 UK Study Shows Brands Need To Open Dialogs With Customers  By Sally Falkow Brands that fail to embrace and engage in online consumer dialog are set be among those most severely affected by an economic downturn says a new study from the UK. The Online Shopping and Credit Crunch Survey Report conducted in the UK by E-consultancy found that some 64% of respondents surveyed said they would reduce their spending generally in view of the deteriorating economic climate, but 56% said that their online spending would not be affected - or would actually increase. And when they do spend online they're looking for information in search engines 
Customers want to open a dialog with companies - they're looking for best prices, reviews and advice about the products they're researching online. The importance of customer engagement is increasing yet many companies have no defined social media strategy in place. Only half of companies (51%) say that the economic crisis has caused them to place greater focus on customer engagement. Areas associated with Web 2.0 and social media such as user ratings & feedback (41%), user-generated content (37%), blogging (36%) and brand presence on social networks (36%) are expected to attract significant sums of investment. One of the most cost effective ways for a business to make product information, special deals, reviews and advice available is to RSS enable their web content. Although most people think of RSS as an inherent part of blogs, any web content can be syndicated in an RSS feed. In fact, many of the social web applications that facilitate customer dialog run on RSS. And apart from making the content easily available, RSS feeds can also boost SEO and search visibility. Google's SEO starter guide says that exclusive, fresh and relevant content is by far the most important factor in search ranking, so creating excellent content is vital to reaching people who are searching for information online. Syndicating this content in RSS feeds can reach a wider audience and build back links, another important part of search visibility. Since Google changed their search format to Universal Search every business needs to have optimized digital assets in many formats. Creating and syndicating this content makes all the difference to your RSS and SEO strategy. Feeds get seen by the search engines and signal them that there is fresh content available. RSS is being used in many industries to open a dialog and keep customers, vendors, supporters, donors and other stakeholders notified of current information. View this short video about RSS and SEO Comments About the Author: Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with their rapidly moving audiences. |
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