A recent thread on a business forum discussed the need for RSS. The poster had been advised not to include an RSS feed because, ‘nobody uses it anyway’.
I disagree.
The answer to the question is actually quite simple – you should deliver your content in whatever format your potential readers and customers would use. If your readers are offline, deliver it in print. If they are online use feeds and email.
Of course that’s only part of the answer. Not every potential reader will fit neatly into a group. Some visitors to your website might never have heard of RSS – others might hate giving out their email address.
Make your content easy to engage with
So, the answer becomes make your content available in as many ways as is practical. Give your prospective readers and customers choice. Make it as easy as possible for them to engage with your content.
RSS takes a few minutes to set up and is free, therefore, if even one person chooses to subscribe by RSS it’s worth the ‘effort’.
Needless to say, if you’d like to subscribe to this blog and get free updates you can do it by RSS or email – your choice.
NB: Not sure about RSS and how it works? Check out this video from the guys at CommonCraft for a plain-English intro.
