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02/23/2005

So what’s all this about RSS anyway

Lots of talk about Robert Scoble’s comment last week about RSS and marketing and I quote (emphasis his):

"Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don't have an RSS feed today you should be fired.

I'll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed."

Tom Murphy, on his PR Opinions blog, more or less agrees that RSS is a good, perhaps necessary thing, but he is not as vehement as Scoble: it isn’t a fire-able offense: Fired for no RSS.... don't be silly. One thing I like about Murphy’s posts, he often adds links to additional resources. Check them out.

Of course, Scoble himself checks in to provide additional perspective on his opinion and reports on two Jupiter analysts (Eric Peterson and Michael Gartenberg) who disagreed with him.

I agree with Scoble: they are missing the point. It isn’t about RSS. It is about making websites more active and relevant to your customers and prospects. If you DON’T have something to tell your customers at least once or twice a week, ask yourself WHY. Maybe they have things they’d like to tell each other?

For me, RSS, like weblogs, is just a way to communicate. And if your audience is reading blogs and sites in RSS aggregators, you had better be providing SOMETHING in an RSS feed. It doesn’t have to be your whole site, but at a minimum, publish an RSS feed of your latest news.

Personally, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am when I visit a new blog or website and find it DOESN’T publish an RSS feed. The only way I can stay on top of everything I read is my aggregator, and I know I am missing good stuff!

Think about it.