Why RSS? Why Not Just Direct People to Your Web Site?
- We submitted our BBCG News feed (http://bocabenefits.com/rss/bbcg.xml), our BBCG Clippings feed (http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/svc/ClippingsRSS.aspx?uid=2005848&fid=15226519) and our BBCG Blog feed (http://bocabenefits.com/blog/?feed=rss2 ) to 79 RSS search engines. Of those, appprximately 70 accepted each of the feeds and will sweep them for our new posted articles several times every day. The major RSS news aggregators that you might recognize have all picked up our syndication. As we build loyalty with our feeds, we anticipate it will have the potential of reaching many more people than a mere web presence might.
- In addition to the news readers, browser technology continues to advance in the direction of direct feed access inside the browser itself. IE7 has that functionality.
- We feel RSS is indeed the future of how Americans get their news. Today, you can set up your news aggregator, browser or even some email clients in such a way that you get the dozen or so feeds you want in your own customized virtual “newspaper”. The feeds you select for your “newspaper” are only the ones that interest you.
- As print media continues to reel from reduced advertising, higher production costs and lower circulation, they will continue to increase local pricing. A well-known Tampa Bay area old-line newspaper just sent us an annual subscription renewal at 48% over last year’s cost.
- With RSS we can keep the content we send to our subscribers fresh. Once you have read our headlines in your news aggregator they will not show again unless you request to see older posts. In most readers you can go back and see those old headlines if you choose but the default is to put the feed into the background once all the current headlines have been accessed or have passed a certain time limit. You may see the name of the feed on a list but you will not be bombarded with old news.
- There is virtually no downside to subscribing to a feed. You can access it when you want or you can completely ignore it. You may only want to read about sports on weekends and then be back to business issues on Monday. RSS readers give you that flexibility
- If you are a news junky, RSS is your media-opiate. By keeping your RSS feeds coming during the day, you will see news for the specific types of feeds you selected up to two days earlier than when those same stories will hit your local print newspaper. You can receive breaking news from all the major news sources on one screen and at one time. You don’t have to chase it down across a half dozen web sites.
We would be remiss if we did not admit that there is a downside to RSS: news overload. At BBCG we subscribe to approximately 20 feeds. We cannot possibly read every breaking story from every feed. We have to pick our shots during the day. When all is said and done we have to click the button that says “mark all these stories as read and clear feed” without letting the guilt of “premature information” effect our work.