Greetings!
The holiday season is in full swing! After a weekend of braving the malls and dodging shoppers, I was actually ready to come into the office, hunker down, and plan the rest of the year. While the prospect may seen a bit late, there actually is no such thing as too late to plan. 2009 is just a couple of weeks away, and you are going to want to hit the floor running.
Today we are going to talk a bit about e-Marketing, and how you relay information to your clients. If I were to say RSS, or podcast, would you have any idea what I was talking about? f you're a gadget person like me, you most definitely would. If not, we'll break it down for you.
RSS is the acronym that can mean either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Summary, depending on who you ask. Used to describe the de facto standard for the syndication of Web content, RSS is an XML-based format and while it can be used in different ways for content distribution, its most widespread usage is in distributing news headlines on the Web. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content can include data such as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.
The beauty of an RSS feed is that information provided to it is almost instantaneous. Subscribers to your RSS feeds receive a notification that there is new information available to hear, and can direct them immediately to the download area of your site. It's great because it's a simple, fast and economical way to relay important information to your client base.
Southwest Airlines use of RSS is a great example. Their program is simply called "Ding!" because it does just that. When there is a fare sale or special deal available, subscribers received an audible tone through their computer letting them know that there is an update available. For a frequent business or leisure traveller, this is a must have tool! The service is free, but at any cost it would more than pay for itself by the business it generates for Southwest. Go to their website and sign up for the service just to see how it works. I am certain you will be sold.
If you clients have been worried about giving their name and email address to subscribe to any newsletter, the RSS feed has come to the rescue. Subscribing to an RSS feed does not require your clients to provide any information they don't feel comfortable providing. Your clients privacy is assured, and as we mentioned they will get updates automatically on the blogs that they have chosen to subscribe to. Not sure about that "Blog" thing? That's okay, we'll talk about that in our next entry!
So check back for our next entry, and we'll talk about how RSS ties in to you becoming part of the Blog Generation.
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