SoKy Local Business or "SoKybiz"

Over the past weeks and months, most major news sources have been running articles about RSS feeds and how they are impacting business. Small businesses in Bowling Green KY (who are actively marketing online) would do well to hear the call. Now, if you own a business like Scrapbook Country with no online presence or interest in online marketing, then perhaps you should either, 1) consider your marketing strategy, or 2) stop reading now.

Really Simply Syndication (RSS) is coming in a big way and an easy indication of this is by observing the number of new applications, news stories and integrations of the technology. Even SoKyBiz has a RSS feed. The biggest news story in the Science and Technology section of Google this morning is about the next Windows version being RSS friendly. If you notice, there were 223 related stories too. Just run a search and see how many results for RSS you get. (Yahoo = about 310,000,000 for "RSS")

So what is the attracting to RSS? I have been telling my web customers for years that it's very important to keep your website fresh and current. This helps bring people back regularly as well as let the search engines know that your site includes recent information. Continually updating your website lets people know that the information they are reading isn't from 1996 and they can trust it. (I'm surprised at the number of pages created in 1996)

Also, RSS feeds offer a business owner a quick easy method of reading current news and information that is important to them. With all the sites and information available to the business owner, an easy method of quickly scanning recent information is useful. There are many RSS news readers out there and in a nut shell, they offer a standard method of quickly scanning only the information you're interested in. I am working on an online version of this but there are many downloadable applications out there. (I'm hesitant to offer a recommendation as I have not tried any myself.) Blogger has some recommendations though.

Blogger Answers:

Special pieces of software called Newsreaders (or Aggregators) can scan these feeds, automatically letting you know when the sites have updated. Examples are FeedDemon (Windows), Bloglines (web-based), and NetNewsWire and Shrook (Mac OS X). More are listed at AtomEnabled.org.

So with an easy way to get information, and an easy way to publish information, the time has come for people with an online presence to seriously consider an RSS feed. I will be offering this service to my key customers who have an interest and are willing to make updates to their feeds regularly. Another article idea: How to get people to eat what you're "feeding" them. (grin) No matter your opinion on the topic, the fact is that RSS is going to be important in the not so distant future. The question then is; are you going to use this to your advantage or is your competition?

This was posted by SoKy : 11:00 AM