A goal that marketers have when building their websites is to keep customers and prospects informed with the latest news about their business and keep them coming back for more. One online tool that helps is an RSS feed. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever is interested.

RSS feeds solve problems for people who regularly use the web by allowing them to easily stay informed by having the latest content get taken from the sites they are interested in. People save time by not having to visit each site individually. An RSS feed is a great addition to blogs for people on the go and many blogging tools have built-in RSS feed features. Users can subscribe to a feed by clicking on the ‘Subscribe’ link on the feed’s page. To view the subscribed feeds, users can choose to use their browser’s ‘Favorites’ tab or their iGoogle or My Yahoo accounts.

The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing. RSS feeds provide many features and benefits for both the publishers and viewers of the feed including.

• Individuals opt-in to feeds for sites of interest and control the flow of information that they receive.
• RSS does not burden the publisher with maintaining opt-in lists or following strict privacy guidelines.

• You have direct access to your subscribers and guaranteed delivery of your content
• RSS feeds can improve your internal content syndication for corporate communications and provide information to remote employees and sales teams
• Publishers are able to create keyword-rich content. Syndicating your content builds up inbound links and positively affects your search engine rankings

For more information on RSS feeds and how Marion can help you with them and other internet marketing tools, please email or call 713-623-6444.