webterpreter

You have mostly likely seen the RSS buttons on various websites and wondered what it was for and how to use it. You may even be a subscriber to such a site and yet are still not all that certain of what RSS is all about.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and all that means is that instead of you having to trawl the web, remembering to return to your favourites sites for the latest news, you can sit back and be notified regularly of instant news updates on a particular subject or site. If you choose an email alert when you subscribe to a website through their RSS feed button, you will be sent an email every time the website updates their content (i.e. their “feed”).

Here is an example: Say you signed up to the RSS feed of a site on Hollywood movies. Every time the site is updated on the latest movie release, you would be sent an alert. This alert will likely give you the name of the movie and a link back to the site so you can immediately see the new item.

As well as via email, RSS can notify you through your browser or in a folder in your email program (e.g. Microsoft Outlook). The beauty of this is that you can see a summary of all the latest news from all your favourite sites without having to go to any of them. Simply browse through the list, and visit the items that interest you.

As a business, RSS can be extrememly useful from both a user and distribution perspective.

For the business, the website manager simply adds the new information and the RSS feed organizes it for easy viewing. The customer can then read it on site and get a quick overview of all the latest company news. Alternately, the customer can install one of the RSS readers available and set it up to search for updates as per the customer desired schedule.

As a business owner, RSS is a method of communication that makes it possible to reach your target audience instantly and with very little effort on your part. Best of all, because those getting this information subscribed to it themselves, it’s not considered spam or intrusive.

Upon visiting your website they know at a glance what is new since the last update.

In the business marketplace, RSS feeds can keep clients and customers updated on the latest financial news, corporate news and even local news and weather if they wish.

With RSS feeds you can existing customers in the loop on what is going on with your business. It’s fast, easy and cost effective.