The Guardian reports today that only 73 of the 472 councils in the UK has an RSS Feed of their news section. This may seem like quite an insignificant fact but RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) are an incredibly simple, and free should I mention, way to communicate with your customer.
What is RSS?
RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. Having an RSS Feed on your website allows users to grab that specific stream of information and feed it into a Feed Reader or News Aggregator, such as Google Feeds.
Google Feeder
The benefit of having a RSS Feed on your website is that users can have easier access to reading your news and blog posts in their news feeder, meaning that they will probably be reading what you are saying much more than if you were relying upon them visiting the website every so often. Further to this RSS feeds syndicate your content making it available to other news outlets, websites and blogs. Other webmasters can use a RSS Feed to display your article on their website with ease and also providing a link to your website. There are also many RSS Syndication websites such as Technorati where your company blog or news is available to a very wide network of people.
Technorati
“Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time and surfaces them in seconds. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business.”
Ok, so RSS may still not appeal to webmasters; not every website has a news page or blog nor does every business owner want to rely upon a feed as a means of communication. However, in some instances a RSS feed really can play an incremental role as a marketing and communication tools.
Council websites, as already mentioned, can be using RSS feeds as a free way to communicate and keep people within their catchment area informed of any local news and announcements should they wish. Looking at Renfewshire Council News page, there is plenty of interesting information and the council are obviously using it as a means to communicate a strong message; yet there is no RSS feed to allow readers to receive regular updates even though the council has gone to the effort of setting up a Facebook page, of which there are 30 members. Similarly Glasgow City Council have gone to the effort of establishing a Twitter account which has accumulated a total of 351 followers.
Sharing content online is one of the fastest growing trends online, and although social media is an excellent tool to increase traffic to websites, having an RSS Feed is one of the easiest and pain free way to distribute your news, information and event announcements.
Tags: benefits, Rss feeds, technorati
