Free Mobile Media Marketing via Apple iOS ?

As many of you may know, the smartphone and tablet industry is rocketing past the age-old stand desktops. One of your primary concerns when constructing a new website is to ensure mobile media marketing capability and test how your website performs on your mobile devices. Streamlining your images and response times for mobile media is paramount.

Is RSS Dead?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is the format with which blog updates can be subscribed to by readers or email notification. While not used as much as it was in the past, it is still a considerable traffic magnet in the right arenas. Well, Apple has recently announced an iNews Publishing platform to incorporate RSS feeds that they deem newsworthy. This new platform is touted to be available within the next release iOS 9. And, in preparation for this new news journaling ability, they have opened the doors for Beta testing - submissions of RSS feeds from blogs.

ESPN has signed up for the service as has Vanity Fair, Wired, Vogue and GQ. 30 free articles will be available to readers via the new News app.

Will it pan out for Apple?

Maybe, maybe not. But, if you want to get a jump on the submission process, here's how it works as I just submitted mine and eagerly wait to see if it gets the Apple blessing:

1. If you don't already have an AppleID/iCloud account, you can get one free, even if you don't have an iPhone. Do that first and then proceed to:

www.icloud.com/newspublisher

Sign in with your iCloud login credentials

2. Read the End User License Agreement (uh huh, sure) and click the box the Agree to the Terms and Submit to proceed to the next screen.

3. A brief announcement about the new Apple News Format is displayed, Click Next to Continue.

4. Enter your publisher information - name, location of business or home, phone number:

5. Then, Enter your Website information and URL as shown below:

5a: The very next screen will allow you to enter your RSS URL so that Apple iOS owners can choose your website to access to your blog updates.

(sorry, somehow missed that screenshot and it won't allow me back in)

6. You will be presented with a Thank You for Signing up screen and then given the opportunity to submit your RSS feed for review:

Click Add RSS Feeds

7. Then, before RSS feed URL submit, you'll get an opportunity to upload a logo as such: (Required: PNG transparent background image no larger than 2 MB)8.

8. There will be a Submit button below this to proceed to the next screen....

9. More Terms & Conditions to "carefully" read through and then Check the box to Agree to the Terms and Click Submit

And you're done. The final screen will allow you to read up more on this upcoming News App and check it out. With the aforementioned news agencies and even Bloomberg, CNN and several others onboard, I have a feeling there is a strong possibility of this going through. Again, I don't know what there criteria is for site submission, but it doesn't hurt to try!

cheers!

pj