The how turns out to be less important that the why.
Receiving Information
RSS is key in monitoring the buzz about your brand and your business. Most people probably have a good handle on that already. By setting up a search in Technorati for DoRealTime and then subscribing to that RSS feed in my aggregator, I can be alerted any time anyone blogs about DoRealTime.
What kind of information do you want to know about?
- Buzz about your competitors
- Buzz about your industry in general
- Buzz about technology you might be interested in
Providing Information
This is where RSS gets really powerful. Use RSS feeds to deliver information directly to those individuals who need it in a steady stream of information.- Send Tech Bulletins to your sales and customer service staff
- Send supply chain alerts to your customers - or receive them from your vendors
- Send training, whether text, audio or video to your staff and customers
- Track team projects - Management can review project feeds to monitor progress or be instantly aware of problems.
- Build a shared vision by supplying information to your workforce
The Sticking Point
Currently, the real problem with widespread adoption of RSS is that feed aggregators - the applications that take those feeds and allow you to read them - aren't that great yet.So the question I have for you is - what do you want to see in a killer RSS aggregator app?
