Traffic generation and drawing a prospective clientele is a key focus of online business owners. And an effective was to communicate news to potential customers is by circulating up to date product information. An easy approach to distribute your product news is via an RSS news feed. Otherwise known as Really Simple Syndication, RSS is an XML formatted file that contains the necessary information to share site headlines and top stories. To begin using RSS all that you need is the content you wish to broadcast, and the relevant RSS text file. Sometimes referred to as Rich Site Summary, RSS is a convenient way to deliver the Whats New on your site, and are often used by news sites, blogs to communicate new posts, and by other publishers who regularly add fresh data.



Now for the key question, why is RSS the preferred way to share news? What advantage does RSS hold over similar marketing methods? For webmasters, RSS solves the myriad problems that site owners commonly face, including managing and keeping the site traffic easily updated, by easily gathering and distributing news. For users, RSS allows a way conveniently access and retrieve the latest from top sites that they have subscribed to. This means that viewers are updated without having to visit individual sites, with a single interface displaying the top news, via a platform called RSS Readers or News Aggregators. The Aggregator varies by the operating system installed, and there are a number of Readers to choose from, most of which are user friendly and best of all free. The popular tools include software to be installed such as FeedReader and NewsGator, and web based Readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines. Since users access the feeds via a third party application, it secures user privacy by removing the need to share email information.

Creating the RSS file for the feed is an easily learned technicality that means applying some basic XML rules to create a proper syntax, and then incorporating the static content to identify the site and the dynamic site updations. A typical RSS channel can hold up to 15 items, and on generation and validation it needs to be registered with the various aggregators. With RSS the options are quite endless and publishing a basic RSS feed opens the door to several marketing strategies. RSS feeds can be delivered to your readers not just via PC but even on smart phones or as voice feeds. Automating email newsletters is also particularly hassle free when you use RSS. Clearly RSS has transformed the way in which news is shared online. RSS has impacted the way in which webmasters distribute news, and has also modified user experience by easing the way in which surfers discover the latest.