No, it doesn’t stand for Rallye Sport Speciale, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. “What’s that?” you ask. Well, it starts with that little orange icon that you can see on lots and lots of websites. And it’s very clever. And it can be really good for websites. It’s all about getting interesting information to come to you rather than you having to go and find it from many different sources and not knowing when that information is fresh or old.
RSS represents a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works in a standardised format. So now with RSS, websites and blogs send out an alert to you when new content is published. It can be web-based, desktop-based or mobile device-based.
But not everyone wants to be inundated with email alerts clogging their in-box do they? So, some clever people came up with software called an ‘RSS newsreader’ that enables you to read all your new and favourite content in a standardised XML file format. The reader regularly monitors the user’s subscribed feeds for new work, downloads any updates, and provides a user interface to track and read the feeds. This saves a considerable amount of time and effort trawling the web for your favourite information. You can receive headlines, articles, podcasts, photos and even video.
So how can this help your website? It represents an easy way for your audiences – investors, employees and customers – to keep up to date with regular information you want them to have, as soon as you release it. For business analysts and journalists it means they can follow your company on their desktop and not have to rely on traditional newswires. It can serve as an effective reminder of upcoming events or important dates in the company calendar.
There are some key differences between RSS and email you need to be aware of.
> There are no spam filters, and it is opt-in only, therefore no blockages. Whereas many emails and e-newsletters do get blocked, RSS will not and should achieve a 100% delivery rate.
> It means your audience will receive not only a written message the instant you release it, but you can also deliver them audio and video for the full experience.
> You can track through server logs how often the RSS feed was accessed.
Be aware that RSS feeds are already popular among many stakeholder groups – roughly 25% of top tier companies are responding to this. So, don’t get left out, put some performance into your company’s online communications with RSS. Mine’s a Turbo.
Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au
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