New Information and Wasted Time
The old way of finding new information from favorite websites was for you, the user, to go to that website and dig in. For example, just this afternoon, many Bluetenters continually went back to ESPN.com to see if Tiger or Rocco was winning and what hole they had just completed. If you went back too soon, you were disappointed with no news, resulting in wasted time.
Is there a better way?
RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) are the answer. I’m sure you’ve seen the symbol, but do you know what it does or how you can use it? An RSS feed pushes new information to you from a page or site that interests you. Once set up, you’ll be automatically notified through an RSS reader.Google, Yahoo, Live and Bloglines are examples of web based readers and your subscribed-to feeds can be accessed from anywhere. What I find more helpful is that RSS readers have been built into many client software applications such as Opera, Sage, Safari, Internet Explorer and even Outlook 2007!
I live in the email world during the day, and always have Outlook open on its own screen. The Blue Tent Blog, Seth’s Blog, Forbes.com and SEO Book are a few of the RSS feeds that I subscribe to. Throughout the day, whenever something new is posted or something changes, I’m automatically notified just like I’ve received a new email. I can then decide to read it immediately or later, depending on its importance and relativity to what I’m doing at the moment. I no longer waste time digging through any of those sites to find new information: it gets sent to me automatically.
So what’s in it for you, and why should you care?
If you’ve taken the time to build a great site and genuinely believe in producing new content, blog posts or announcements, wouldn’t it be great to have subscribers automatically notified? It’s very helpful for them, and it’s also a great way to leverage the permission they’ve given you to contact them. RSS is perfect for delivering content because it empowers subscribers, protects their privacy and allows for no-hassle unsubscribing.
– Andrew
Director of Sales & Marketing