You stumble across more RSS feeds in a day than you would care to imagine, even though you might not be aware they exist. Not quite sure what an RSS feed is? Let me explain.
RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and is the current standard for distributing news and content across the web. A good analogy for how RSS works is that of the radio and the broadcast scenario. The radio (RSS feed reader) receives the latest news (broadcasts/feeds) distributed from the original source (radio station/the websites)
Think of RSS as an easy way for the latest content, news and information to be distributed easily and quickly to a single place where subscribers can consume to their hearts content. The news and information are the feeds and the single common place is the RSS feed reader of your choice. As I make use of many of their offerings I am partial to the Google Reader.
RSS is undoubtedly a powerful small business tool to use in driving growth in the 21st century but while it’s been around for a long time it is by no means used by the masses.
RSS Feeds For Small Business
You can harness the power of RSS for your small business by easily distributing:
- Video
- News
- Press Releases
- Content
- Products
- Announcements
- Speical Offers
- Support Information
What To Feed Your Feed
You can add almost any content to an RSS feed but they generally consist of text, images, audio and video. The feed will contain a short teaser description of the content and a link to the original page on your website/blog. Provided the reader is suitably interested in the header and potential content they will be encouraged to click through to get the full article.
In addition to being a super powerful medium to spread news about your company it is very well loved by search engines and plays and important part in any sound SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.
Users subscribe to your RSS feed by clicking on the easily identifiable orange feed icon located on your website/blog and adding the feed to a reader. Feed readers allow subscribers to manage, store and view endless unique feeds – granting them access to the latest news and updates from a multitude of websites all in one place. The time saving aspect alone is enough to get VERY excited by RSS.
Feed Your Brain – Become An Expert
By having all the news assimilated in one place you can easily become an expert in just about any niche or market – especially your own! Every wondered how the market leaders manage to amass so much expert knowledge in their market? Now you know – they make the latest news come to them not vice versa!
I hope you can begin to appreciate the time saving and leverage potential this will bring to your small business.
What’s your favourite RSS Reader? What other time saving tricks do you use?
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