You may have noticed recently that many websites now contain little graphical buttons with the word XML on them. When you click on the button, all you see is some jumbled text and computer code [ed: unless you have a newer web browser or an aggregator]. What's this all about? It's an RSS feed, and it's changing the way people access the Internet.
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. It's commonly used for distributing headlines on news websites. Bloggers use it to distribute summaries of their blog entries as well. RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML, which is why you see RSS buttons labeled that way.
If a website publishes an RSS page, commonly known as an RSS "feed," this feed will contain summaries of all the recent articles posted on that site. For example, Yahoo News publishes news related to world headlines, national news, sports, etc, which you can read by going to the Yahoo website. They also publish RSS feeds for each of these subjects. Each RSS feed contains a summary of the most recent news stories posted.
RSS allows you to see updated content in news aggregators or web browsers (new ones have integrated this feature). It solves the What's New problem for websites by allowing content consumers to subscribe to content that they find relevant. That means its a great way to communicate with a market that has already defined itself as interested in your content by having taken the first step of subscribing to the feed. It also solves the SPAM problem, because your market has already agreed to be targeted. Its permission marketing done right, and with no SPAM filter headaches.
RSS also solves another problem by allowing content to be syndicated (or republished) on other websites. This is how tools like Yahoo or Google News work. They collect RSS feeds from across the internet and then publish the relevant ones on their site. Imagine the traffic you would generate by getting a story published on one of those news portals. This opens up an entire new way to drive traffic to your site.
RSS is probably the most powerful marketing tool emerging in internet publishing today.
For more information on RSS and Podcasting please contact us at 512.912.8200 or info@bmdtechnologyconsulting.com
|
