Social Web Channels and Features - RSS Feeders

Millions of people all over the world have been discovering the pleasure of logging into the internet and connecting with friends from all over the world. Hours are spent blogging, chatting or SMSing as well as sharing photos, videos etc.

People are discovering the power of communication and community discussions on blogs. No wonder the number of blogs on the internet is increasing by the day and has crossed over 175 million. This phenomenon is not going to slow down anytime soon.

Using internet to search for information on various websites as well as checking out the blogs and asking questions to know all about any topic or product of interest has become the most common way for people to gather information.

When it comes to any business area, the social web consists of participants who have been customers and are able to offer their opinion and experience to the ‘would be’ prospective customers. Therefore the social web becomes important for every Business Organization for this is where their customers are listening and discussing, to make up their mind to go ahead with the purchase they intend to make.

Marketing Managers and other media persons have got to have a detailed understanding of how Social Media Networks work and are evolving. They need to know the pulse of the bloggers and other users of internet channels to be able to build an effective communication strategy on social web. Social Media Network consists of several channels including blogs, forums, wikis, podcasts, audio, video and photo sharing as well as SMS and chatting, Emails etc.

In this section we shall briefly cover an introduction to RSS.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Every time you see any executive checking his blackberry or a lady checking out her smartphone, you should know that they are reading the RSS update that they have received recently.

Normally those who browse the net will have interest in various areas and visit several websites regularly. Some websites may not be viewed daily and one would wish to go to the website to check out any new content or updates only. Earlier on the websites had begun to send an email update to the subscribers intimating them of the news update on the website and providing a link to the website.

However now everybody uses the RSS feeder which works faster and is simpler. RSS is a feeder and information program that sends the updates, headlines and very small messages to the subscribers.

As people are in the habit of following news, political updates, weather, sports, movies as well as some of the favorite stars and many subject oriented websites, blogs etc., it helps them to subscribe to RSS feeds from each of these website and receive update alerts on to their smart phones and computers. Thus it saves them from the effort and time of having to check out each of the websites for new content.

Check out any of the latest websites including BBC, CNN etc and you will find a feature called ‘RSS Subscribe’ inviting you to subscribe to the RSS notifications on that particular website.

Following are some of the popular RSS Feed icons:

RSS Aggregators

RSS aggregator programs go one step further to syndicate all the RSS that one is interested in and subscribes to and provides the new content updates from amongst the RSS list that has been fed into the aggregator or RSS Reader software.

By subscribing to RSS Aggregator, the viewers gets to save a lot of time having to go through each of the RSS updates and gets to view only the updated RSS feed and thereby access the particular website.

How Does Marketing Company Benefit by Using RSS Feed ?

RSS Feeds can be used to intimate the customers as well as the prospective buyers about any updates on product, services, introduction of new brands, technology or any update relating to the Company, business or products and services etc. This can be the fastest way of reaching the customers and getting their attention.

News of any discount sale announced or schemes announced can be circulated to thousands of customers using RSS feed in a matter of few minutes.

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