Excerpts from
How RSS can benefit your Business

Rich Site Summary or RDF [Resource Description Framework] Site Summary (RSS) feeds are a brilliant method of keeping in touch with your clients, suppliers and website users. The beauty of RSS is that users don't have to visit your site everyday to see whether you have posted anything new. Although you'd wish they did visit your site daily, the harsh truth is that they never will. RSS feeds solve this problem by alerting your users when your site has been updated and thus prompting them to take another visit. It's all about exposure and keeping everyone in the loop and RSS feeds can do this and more.

So, how can this small Internet based technology help your business? By marketing and exposing your website to your target audience whenever you want to get their attention. As a service provider, you may wish to notify people when you post news articles or other documents on your site. If you're into project management, RSS can be utilised to let people know how their project is progressing. The ability to grab everyone's attention whenever you want without frustrating them in the process can only be an asset to your business and its overall online presence.

RSS is used a number of ways throughout varying industries to capture the attention of website users. For example, Apple's iTunes use RSS feeds to inform users of new Podcasts that have been released, YouTube use RSS feeds to inform users of new videos that have been posted and DIGG.COM allow users to keep track of news stories via this exceptional piece of technology. RSS can benefit your business by simply and unobtrusively informing your users of your business, its plans and other updates that are appropriate to your readers without the need of sending an e-newsletter to keep everyone up to date.

Applying RSS to your website is a fairly easy task depending on the Content Management System (CMS) you're using. Most modern CMS software packages should support RSS to some extent already. If they do not, you should possibly consider either purchasing one that does or have your developer design a custom RSS module for you. Either way, you may need assistance from your web designer to complete this task regardless of how straight forward the process seems to be.

Do you think RSS can help you? If you're unsure, consider what content you have on your current website and whether any of it could be dynamic. If it is dynamic and changes often, then you could definitely benefit from having an RSS-enabled website. Constant unobtrusive business exposure is critical to having a successful online presence and RSS feeds are your key to this exposure.