Using RSS Feeds for your Visitors and Followers

Using RSS Feeds for your Visitors and Followers

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a new way to broadcast your organizational news and information. The RSS contents are published as a feed for customers, vendors, partners and other interested parties providing your lasts news and posting. The RSS feeds are read using a tool referred to as a news aggregator, or an RSS reader. The aggregator occasionally checks to see if your feed has been updated. When a feed has been updated, new information will automatically appear in the RSS reader for any interested party that has selected to receive such notifications.

RSS feeds started out as a way to offer news headlines to your website visitors but has quickly become a tool for disseminating many different types of information. With the adaptation of the enclosure tag feature, the feed publisher can include a link to a file which may contain just about anything. Now your organization has the opportunity to utilize this option for tutorials, streaming audio lectures, PDF documents, proposals, presentations, and podcasts of meetings, events, or lectures.

Consider some of the following RSS uses for businesses:
Audio - Audio content does not always refer to your favorite songs on your iPod. Podcasting is the term for any audio content that is contained within in a feed and can include lectures, instructions, talk/radio shows, informational guides, etc.

Documents - Consider placing meeting agendas, minutes, documents, and presentations provided as a PDF within a feed and offering interested individuals to access without having to send out a single with e-mail with all the attachments.

Presentations - Presentations can easily be distributed within a feed offering traveling staff and presenters the ability to manage the presentation from an iPod or similar handheld application that reads RSS feeds instead of traveling with their laptop/notebook.

Videos - Video or streaming video can both be utilized via the enclosure field creating more dynamic and engaging discussion panels, lectures and tutorial sessions with the addition of video.

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