If you are a blogger or podcaster, you depend on your outgoing RSS feeds to notify folks of your work. But that’s not all. There are many reasons to set up outgoing RSS feeds on your organization or client's web site. At a minimum, RSS feeds can notify folk when you’ve changed your web site content. Here are some other uses.
Use RSS feeds to distribute news releases rather than distributing by e-mail. E-mail releases have lots of trouble getting past spam filters and standing out from the crowd. But with RSS, the reporter knows he or she has asked for your information.
Use RSS feeds in place of e-mail newsletters. Many experts are predicting that e-mail newsletters are on their way out. It’ll take a year or two as people become more accustomed to using RSS feeds. But when that happens, no one will want newsletters cluttering their inboxes. I’m so glad, because finding software or services for distributing e-mail newsletters that won’t get caught up in spam filters is a huge pain.
Create relevant resource information for your web site visitors and send it out regularly through RSS feed. You can provide a dependable service, while at the same time keeping your name in front of potential clients. Plus, you’ll drive additional relevant traffic to your site.
Use RSS to reach publics through new means like cell phones, PDAs and mp3 players. If these are the primary tools your publics use, then RSS helps you reach them.
4 comments:
Great advice! And tag, tag, tag your feeds. The more tags you add the more likely the person that cares about what you are saying actually hears it.
And you can publish a lot more than press releases with RSS - you can publish your shared Calendar (like Google Calendar, iCal, etc).
You can also use RSS readers like Google Reader and publish an RSS feed of the blog articles you find interesting, or useful to your clients (shared feeds).
But the most important thing to know about RSS is that it isn't going away. It' going to get much more important, and you won't be able to ignore it. You might as well start embracing it now.
Rob
Thanks for your comment. Your suggestions demonstrate that the possibilities are endless. There's so much room for creativity. Wow!
BTW, we'll be tagging our feeds soon when we change blogging platforms. (We're having trouble with this one. For example, this is my third attempt to respond to your comment.)
Christie
This site is a wonderful way to learn about social media. Thanks! My organization is anxious to start sending feeds. Is there a way to add this capability to an exisiting Web site?
It is just a matter of being open minded to other oportunities and then people would know you are there to help.
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