What is an RSS Aggregator or RSS Reader?

I keep hearing about RSS, XML and RSS feeds. I just barely have a clue what they
are,
but when people then start talking about RSS aggregators, what are they talking
about and why would I want one? Do you use an aggregator, and if so, which one?

Ain't jargon fun? RSS is Really Simple Syndication and it's a simple data-only version
of a Web page or, in the case of a weblog, Web site. Why is that interesting? Because
it's then easy to write programs that track this XML formatted data stream and let
you know when there's new material added to the site.

For example, if you were tracking the Ask Dave Taylor RSS data stream then when
this article "went live" on my site, you'd receive notification and be able to read it
within minutes of it arriving. Maybe not so critical for my tech and business Q&A, I
admit, but I also track a number of different business newswires and was reading
about the Proctor & Gamble acquisition of Gillette at least a day prior to my
colleagues. How do I know that? Because they've told me that it was my own article
on the subject (P&G buys Gillette for $57 billion, but how much is that in human
terms?) that alerted them to the $54 billion transaction).

Helpful Hint: If you'd like to track an RSS feed and you have a browser with RSS
support, you can click on the cute little XML button you find on many different Web
sites. If your browser doesn't know what to do with that and instead shows you a
cryptic page of text, you'll need an RSS reader or aggregator. Keep reading, but
remember that you can also "right click" (or Ctrl-click for you Mac folks) and copy
the link address to your buffer, then paste it into a 'subscribe' field in your reader.

The problem is, I don't want to check 100 RSS feeds any more than I want to visit
100 Web sites every day, and that's where aggregators come in. Whether they're
standalone programs, plug-ins for your favorite Web browser or email program, or
Web-based services, RSS aggregators remember your subscription list, check each
site on a periodic basis, and alert you to any new articles that have been published.

If you're not thinking "wow, very cool" then you are spending too much time visiting
Web sites! To scan the headlines of just a dozen sites on an hourly basis would
probably be a full time job and if you need to keep abreast of your industry, as I do,
then you wouldn't have any time to actually do anything, which would obviously be
deleterious to your career long-term! :-)

So there are programs you can download that are RSS aggregators (or RSS readers,
basically synonymous) for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix systems. A few of the most
popular are BlogExpress and FeedReader for Windows, NetNewsWire and NewsFire
for Macintosh and Lifera for Linux.

Don't like having yet another application running? You can graft RSS capabilities into
your Web browser (or run Firefox or Safari / Tiger, both of which have elegant built-
in RSS capabilities) or your email program. Notable entries in this category are
NewsGator (grafts into Microsoft Outlook on Windows), Pluck (grafts into Microsoft
Internet Explorer on Windows) and Safari Menu (add-on for Apple's Safari browser
that includes some RSS support).

Finally, you can subscribe to an RSS aggregator Web service which gives you a
custom Web page that includes the newest information from your hand-picked RSS
feeds. The highest profile solution to this is My Yahoo, which recently announced
support for RSS feeds as additional personal home page information sources,
though it just shows you a rolling 'latest five articles' from each source, so it doesn't
work for me because I'd still be left trying to remember which I'd read or not. Other
possibilities include AmphetaDesk, Bloglines, and Feedster.

Instead of those, however, I use a great Web-based product called NewsGator
Online, which gives me the ability to track as many feeds as I like (fellow blogger
Robert Scoble tracks over 1200 in his NewsGator Online account) along with the
flexibility of keeping in sync at home, in my office and on the road.

Whichever solution you choose, I promise you that once you start traveling down the
road of RSS feeds and RSS aggregators, you won't turn back. In fact, you'll find that
every time you go to a Web site that you like, you'll immediately start hunting for
the "syndicate" or "rss" or "xml" button. i certainly do, and I'm more plugged in now
than I could ever have been in the past.

It's a rolling sea of information out there, and an RSS aggregator gives you a sail and
GPS navigation system. It might just save your life out there!

Dave Taylor has been involved with the blogging community for years and is widely
respected as an expert on business
blogging, among other areas.

What Is RSS?

Recently I did an interview with a well known email Internet Marketer. He wanted to share with his readers a viewpoint on what RSS is from someone who is using it in place of traditional email marketing. Of course this interview was geared towards other Internet marketers so they all somewhat "get" what RSS is, at least in theory.

So, what IS RSS? Again, I find myself laughing, as I did in that interview because I'm fairly new to this RSS business myself. RSS is really an acronym for REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION - well at least that's ONE definition and the one I tend to use. Many people have heard the word syndication tossed around in other media venues, but not when it comes to the Internet until recently. Although RSS has been around for quite some time, it is finally coming into the mainstream like a snowball rolling downhill growing and gathering momentum.

Why? And really, what is RSS? First of all everyone who uses the Internet either in business, personal use, or both, have all come into contact with spam, viruses, spam laws, and heard a lot about it in the media. This whole mess has been extremely frustrating to those who make a living using the Internet, especially by direct email marketing methods. A lot of "fixes" have been tried and are being implemented to try and combat the ever growing frustration and hassle associated with delivering email newsletters to subscribers. This is where the "why" comes into play with RSS. Before I tell you what RSS is, let me explain a bit about email newsletter marketing.

Normally an email newsletter is sent out to a "list" by those who have supposedly opted in, or requested, to receive that newsletter. In fact, most list managers now require double opt-in. "Double opt-in" is just a way of saying you signed up for the newsletter, then received an email asking you to "verify" your subscription - the sender wants to make doubly certain you are the one who signed up for that newsletter. You were sent the verification email by an "autoresponder". An autoresponder is an automatic email sent to you by a service the sender uses and pays for to handle verification and other responses to subscribers. That is done to alleviate having to send out a personal email to every single subscriber which could become extremely tedious and time-consuming otherwise.

Still problems persist, because after all of that many subscribers still "forget" they signed up and file spam complaints, which can lead to investigations, IP bans and even shutdown and confiscation of all related lists, websites and software. Granted, there are some mass-mailers out there who deserve this, but the typical newsletter publisher is trying to deliver helpful, desired content and guards their list very carefully. If you're fortunate enough to get your newsletter through to your subscribers, what happens then? Well, typically, once a subscriber receives your newsletter, they read it and then naturally delete it once they're done reading it. So, you, the email marketer and publisher have gone to all the trouble to put together a newsletter, comply with the spam laws, etc., only to have your hard work deleted all the while dealing with spam issues, paying for list management services and/or paying for autoresponder service.

A much better, more viral method of online marketing can be done with an RSS feed. Let me explain that in terms that we can all understand (me included!):

Whenever we watch a television series, that series is called syndicated programming. The series is produced once, filmed once, and then put out to all the subsidiary stations across the country airing on the same day at the same time according to each time zone. So, the work is done once but duplicated all across the nation on hundreds of affiliate television stations.

RSS on the Internet works on the same concept. You input the "work" once, and every single website that carries your syndication code then receives the information you just input once. As you update your feeds those feeds are automatically updated on every single website that has your syndication code. Another upside to this is that your news does not get deleted by the reader - only you can delete it! Another plus is every website that carries your code gets regular content provided whenever you update your feed automatically. This all keeps those hungry search engines happy too.

So, you provide the content you want to market to your subscribers by providing them the links to your RSS feed from your website, meaning you don't have to send that out by email either. You can have your code posted on your website for anyone to read, and also offer it to webmasters to input into the websites they manage. No link swapping is necessary in this case either as links are not viral like syndication code. It's the difference between offering someone a Lear jet in place of a horse. It's much better to offer your syndication code in a "swap".

So, now you've avoided the spam hassle because anyone reading your feed is doing so willingly and you have not sent them anything by email so no subscription is necessary. You are providing content so not only are your readers happy, your website is happy, other webmasters are happy because you're providing consistent content without them doing a thing, and you've only done the work ONCE! No one is deleting any of your work, except you if you choose. Your work is also staying on the Internet forever. The search engines are way happy too!

So, before you start that email newsletter campaign, why not consider an RSS feed instead? It can be a much more dynamic option for you!

Kim Bloomer publishes several RSS channels using the Quikonnex system. She partners with another Quikonnex publisher, Cathy Carlton, in their Kick the Email Habit channel, where they offer syndicated online marketing services, channel building and management services, and recently opened a new RSS article bank to help others take advantage of the ease of syndicating and sharing RSS based content. Kim and Cathy built and manage the International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce (IVWCC) RSS channel. For more details on what she does and to subscribe to her RSS channels go to http://KimBloomer.com

Marketing with Blogs and RSS Feeds.

Perhaps you still don't realize or fully understand the power of RSS Feeds as a marketing tool.

After all, email works fine, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, the truth is:

1. It's getting harder to send e-mails to the prospect's inbox because of SPAM filters

2. People are getting numbed by the amount of e-mails they receive everyday

3. People are not reading their e-mails

4. It's getting harder to get people to opt-in or subscribe to your newsletter or content.

With RSS feeds, this changes the playing field:

1. RSS feeds can bypasses email - Eat your hearts out! Rss feeds can be read by desktop software
and delivered right to your prospect everytime they turn on their PC

2. RSS feeds allow you to syndicate content rich news in your niche market and attract targeted
prospects

3. People who subscribe to newsfeeds are generally in the higher income bracket and educated.
They want to find news and information to solve their problems. Can that person be YOU?

4. E-mail doesn't allow yourself to be branded all over the Net. With RSS feeds, your content gets
circulated/sydnicated and you can brand yourself as an expert.

5. RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS feeds directories, which will list your site within 24 hours
which measn more traffic for you

These are just some of the few examples of the use of RSS feeds you can use in your marketing.

What are you waiting for? My multimedia e-book cuts to the chase and shows you in VIDEO how to start a blog, create a feed, track it, list it in Yahoo, submit it and mORE..

Get a copy of "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" NOW!
www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com
and learn the $299 Secret - How to get listed in Yahoo for FREE

Brandon Hong (Infopreneur, Author, Online Marketer)
brandon @ brandon-hong.com
http://www.Marketing-Rampage-With-Blogs-And-Rss.com

How Can RSS Feeds Help Your Online Business?

So who should I use RSS Feeds? How can it help with my online business?

1. RSS Feeds allow you to deliver your newsletter/message directly to the desktop of your subscribers and readers, BYPASSING email. As you might have read or heard, email is not getting through to a lot of people, especially now with CAN SPAM law in place, ISPs are filtering a lot of emails with certain subject lines in them.

Imagine if you have a 10,000 list and 20% of your emails doesn't get through.

That means 2,000 mails are not being delivered.

How much sales are you losing from this alone?

It is also costly to hire services that help you do the monitoring and ensure your autoresponders/emails get through.

Your readers and subscribers themselves are getting numb to the constant bombardment of emails from other parties, bear in mind they are not just subscribing to your newsletter.

With RSS Feeds, you can get your readers to subscribe to your news feed using a newsreader software or online web service for reading rss feeds).

This way you can bypass all the email SPAM and reach 100% your readers.

And with some good headlines, you can bet your message gets read.

2. Get your site listed by YAHOO within 24 hours and save $299

With RSS Feeds, you can get your site listed in Yahoo within 24 hours and save $299. Yahoo is currently building an RSS directory and as such has inadvertently opened a "back door", allowing people to list their website with RSS feeds.

This secret is revealed in my multimedia ebook, with video tutorials showing you how to do it. Each day more people are discovering this secret, and I'm not sure when Yahoo will pull the plug.

3. Dominate niche market with RSS feeds

You can create multiple RSS feeds centered around targeted keywords and submit them to RSS directories. There are people who are actually looking for good content online and wants to read and subscribe to news feeds.

They might be searching for news on the keyword "cooking" for example. When someone performs a keyword search and you have your feeds built around that keyword, it will turn up and you get to have more subscribers when they subscribe to your news feeds.

4. More subscribers, more leads, more sales.
RSS feeds give you a wider reach and gain more subscribers you otherwise would not have gotten.

More subscribers mean more leads, and more sales!

RSS allows your newsletter, messages, ads to be syndicated all over the web, giving you a wider reach you otherwise would not have.

Imagine a giant octopus with unlimited tentacles stretching all over the sea searching, looking...well, with RSS feeds, basically you're doint the same thing.

You have to submit your rss feeds though, to the relevant directories, otherwise noboby knows about it.

5. Podcasting

Podcast is the latest application of RSS feeds. Have you heard of webcast?

With Webcast, you have to go to the website where the audio file (mp3 file) is stored.

Podcast take it one step further. It allows you to syndicate your mp3 audio files (such as a web cast or tele-seminar) all over the web and even allows you to download to Apple Ipod.

Your potential customer and readers can listen to your message even without being at the PC. Isn't that fantastic?

Ride the RSS Wave TODAY! Learn more at
www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

Brandon is Author of Multimedia Ebook "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS". Unleash the power of blogs and rss feeds to drive more FREE targeted traffic, gain more leads and sales. List in Google and Yahoo for Free and save $299. Dominate niche markets with RSS Feeds

brandon @ brandon-hong.com

http://www.Marketing-Rampage-With-Blogs-And-Rss.com

http://www.brandon-hong.com

Using Feedburner to Add Statistics to Your RSS Feed.

Out of many of the free RSS and blogging services that I have tried one of the most useful has been Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to publish your RSS feed and provides circulation statistics about your RSS feed. It also allows you to make your feed more friendly by using Feedburners Smartfeed system and can also make your feed browser friendly.

The most useful service provided by Feedburner are it's circulation statistics. These statistics are not only useful for yourself to see how popular your feed is but also to provide circulation statistics to potential advertisers. Feedburner can tell you which RSS readers are being used to read your feed, how many readers you have and which posts readers are clicking through back to your website.

Feedburners Smartfeed system can supply the most valid feed by detecting which
RSS reader the user is using. This irons out any potential compatibility problems there may be between your feed and the readers feed reading software. If your visitor click on your RSS feed subscription link Feedburner will provide your visitor with a web friendly version of the feed rather than an unformatted XML file. This is great for educating the reader about RSS feeds.

To use Feedburners services first you need to go to Feedburner and enter your feed link. Your feed link is the address you give your readers to add your feed to their feed readers. Take a look at my RSS sign up page at Newsniche to get a better idea of how this works.

Once you have your feed address enter it into text box on the Feedburner page. Clicking on ok will bring up a page with all of the options for your feed, you will need to decide for yourself which services you need. At the bottom of the page will be your new feed address which you will now offer to your readers instead of your original feed address. Follow the rest of the instructions to complete the process and then you will have an improved feed with statistics.

There is one final point before we finish and it is something optional you may wish to choose. You may wish to keep your existing feed address if you have existing subscribers and to future proof your feed. To do this you will need to use an HTTP redirect in your htaccess file. If this means nothing to you I would suggest further research before doing this.

You will need to add a new line to your htaccess file.

redirect temp /rssfeed.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburnerFeed

You will need to change /rssfeed.xml to the name of your current feed and the Feedburner path to the new feed address you will be given by Feedburner. You will need to point Feedburner to a copy of your feed that only Feedburner will see. You will then offer the /rssfeed.xml feed address you created in your htaccess file to you visitors to subscribe to your feed.

This is how it should work. Feedburner will periodically check your address you gave to Feedburner for new posts. Your visitors will subscribe using the address you used in your htaccess file and get redirected to the feed that Feedburner has created for you. This will mean that in the future if you wish to stop using the Feedburner service all you need to do is remove the line from your htaccess file and your readers will not notice any difference.

Allan is the webmaster at Newsniche an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

RSS more effective than email.

Long have I been proclaiming the effectiveness of RSS as a communications channel for non personal communications over that of email. The protection and anonymity that RSS can offer over email means that it is fast becoming the preferred medium for many users. It seems visitors to your site now put more trust in RSS as they are five times more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed as they are to the equivalent information via email.

A recent article from Rok Hrastnik at Marketing Studies shows that there is greater trust in RSS over email as well as RSS being more effective at attracting visitors back to your site. Over a 48 hour period it was shown that the average CTR from feed to site was 23 percent. That means that nearly a quarter of the readers of your RSS message click through back to your main site.

Rok's report also shows that there is a 6.8 percent average CTR from a content item in your feed to the web page that the content item points to. Better still is the results that show a 150 percent CTR from your feed to the site within a 30 day period. That means on average each subscriber of your RSS feed clicks through to your site one and a half times each month.

The report also points from data obtained from Lockergnome where it is shown that RSS subscribers out number email subscribers by 5 to 1. This clearly shows the increased take up of RSS, particularly among the more tech savvy internet audience.

At http://newsniche.com/ I have often argued that one of the major benefits of RSS over email is that it does not have the flaws that makes it susceptible to spam and control over the subscription to the information you provide is totally in the hands of the subscriber. This makes RSS subscribers more confident than email subscribers that they can unsubscribe knowing they will no longer receive communications from that source.

I have seen numbers banded about that show there are as few as 5 percent of the browsing public use RSS. The reason for this is that it is not yet as ubiquitous as email, but email has had a lot longer to be established. I truly believe that these results will encourage more webmasters to offer RSS feeds to their readers and help educate the browsing public to the benefits of this form of communication.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.newsniche.com/ an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business?

It's been a long day at work and you're in no mood to cook dinner or go out. Time to count on the reliable pizza delivery guy. The order is called in and he promptly arrives with smokin' hot pizza within 30 minutes as promised. If it were only that easy with a picky family where no one can agree on the same restaurant for dinner. One wants Mexican, another wants Chinese, and another wants a burger and Mexican. Instead of running to three different places, you call a delivery service that goes to all of them and brings it to you. What could be easier in getting a meal without cooking it or fetching it?

RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom are the food delivery guy of the Internet. The content they deliver is mixed and cooked elsewhere on the Internet just like the meal isn't made on your door step and the acronym fellows bring the content to you via software or an online application. Instead of trying to remember all the places where you like to go to get the latest news, it all comes to you once you order your food.

Click on any of those orange or blue RSS, XML, or RDF buttons and you see unreadable text. Some of it is readable, but reading between the is slow and difficult. In this case, you've got the raw ingredients of the content known as a feed. To make it easily readable, download a feed reader that can interpret (aggregate) the ingredients or sign up for an online service that can do the same.

When the software or application is ready to go, click on the orange or blue button (or "Syndicate This Page," or whatever is along these lines) and copy the resulting URL from the address box. Paste it into the application to cook the ingredients where it's delivered to you ready for your enjoyment.

Syndication is a not a new concept on the Internet, but it's growing in popularity as more Web sites and newsletters are churning content to turn it into syndicated files, which are fed into an aggregator. Think of it as the content that's ready to travel anywhere it needs to go. Grab the feed and feed it to the aggregator, another way of bookmarking (or creating a favorite) a site because you wish to come back again another time. But how often did you go back to the site through your bookmarks / favorites?

Instead of schlepping from site to site in search of information, I have it all in front of me via the aggregator. The feeds are sorted in folders by topic for easy finding. If I'm writing about the latest virus or worm, then I open the security folder with the security-related feeds and scan them. Scanning content through aggregators is easier than on a Web site because it's in one folder with headlines and maybe a short summary. On a Web site, you're only getting the benefit of that site's news and no where else. The folder has news from over ten resources including blogs, news sites, and newsletters.

Any content can be syndicated. It's a matter of having the backend process in place, which is dependent on the application used for managing the content. If a site doesn't have such resources, then there is software for entering content to create a file with the feed for posting on the site.

Most aggregators have exporting capabilities so the feed can be shared with others interested in the same topic. If you're interested in my security feeds, I can export them into, in most cases, an OPML file and you can import it into your aggregator.

Spam filters are preventing readers from getting newsletters or they get lost in the spam pool. Offering a feed for the newsletter is a compromise. Readers can get the content, only instead of it coming to the emailbox, it comes through the aggregator. It's a way around spam. Like everything else, it has its advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• Filters can't stop the newsletter from reaching its destination.


• The recipient will get it - if the server is down, it'll download next time and email can get lost.


• The feed can be syndicated providing more exposure for your content.
  

Disadvantages:

• Rely on readers to open aggregators like they open email client, but some aggregators are built-in with an email client like NewsGator and there are online aggregators like Bloglines, which can be your home page.


• Metrics won't be as complete, but it's still there through the links.


• Not as pretty as HTML-based newsletters.

If the feed is automatically created, what have you got to lose? You're providing another way for your readers to get your content just like you can get pizza in different ways: go to the restaurant, have it delivered, or make it at home. More applications are adding syndication capabilities, which make the process effortless. Some have said they won't read something unless it has a feed.

Syndication works better than bookmarks. With bookmarks, you click on a site that might have the security information and arrive there to find it doesn't. So, back to the bookmarks to click on another site. Lather, rinse, repeat. With aggregators, there is no jumping from site to site. Scan the headlines right there until you find what you need.

There was a time when we didn't have the option to have pizza delivered to our doorstep. When we're too tired, we know we can rely on the delivery guy. In term of content, expect to see it show up at your doorstep more often than the pizza guy plus it's cheaper with the cost only coming from the software though there are many free options available. Syndication is here to stay and should be added to a company's communication toolbox rather than as a replacement. Witness it by watching for RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom out there.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net who increases conversion rates by writing and editing content so organization can focus on their core business. She is the editor-in-chief of the eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik's The Remediator Security Digest. Visit her Web site at http://www.meryl.net/blog/

What Are RSS Feeds.

RSS Feeds.

RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.

Benefit to the Webmaster:
As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.

RSS allows webmasters to:

1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

3.) Automate content delivery.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.

Benefit to Web Surfers:
The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.

RSS allows for users to:
1.) Easily locate information.

2.) Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.

I highly recommend FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com by BradSoft as a newsreader. FeedDemon is extremely easy to use and allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics. FeedDemon allows users to quickly scan, sort and scroll through headline and article summaries, while viewing the actual content in a split screen web browser.

Finding Topic Specific Relevant Feeds
In order to find feeds that provide niche information users can search Feedster. Feedster http://www.feedster.com is a rapidly growing news search engine that indexes information contained within RSS feeds. Searches for topic specific feeds can be conducted and feeds can be retrieved for syndication.

Benefit to Content Developer
While the benefits to users and webmasters are clear the distribution opportunities made available to content developers should not be overlooked. Information contained in the RSS feed can be easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach.

RSS allows for content developers to:

1.) Increase exposure in niche markets.

2.) Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.

3.) Disseminate relevant information.

4.) Define themselves as an industry expert.

5.) Automate content delivery.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

The distribution potential, while albeit difficult to measure, is still attractive to all parties making the likelihood that RSS popularity will only continue to grow.

RSS Feeds to Try
Feeds exist for almost any topic consider trying these feeds out by entering the url in your feed reader:

Small Business Feed - small business tips and news
http://www.small-business-software.net/blog-feed.xml

Software Marketing Blog Summary - software marketing and online news
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml

SMS, Wireless Messaging Related News. - news related to telecom, wireless industry and NotePage's software
http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml

Free Content Articles - collection of free content articles, updates when new article is released.
http://www.small-business-software.net/article-feed.xml

Software Marketing News - news related to software conferences, awards, software development and marketing
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/feed.xml

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net