When I started this blog a little over two years ago most people in the PR industry didn't even know what a blog was, much less understand that blogs were of value. Today, the PR community has come to accept blogs as a new way to reach their target audience---even if they can be unpredictable at times.
In the PR industry's rush to pitch bloggers however, most PR agencies have been slow to adapt Really Simple Syndication (RSS) into their newsrooms, on their Web sites or their clients sites. The reason, I think, is because most people find it difficult to explain exactly what RSS is and how it works, much less why you should integrate it into a Web site.
In an effort to pull you onboard the RSS wagon, let me try and explain why it is of value. For those of us old enough to remember the world without the Internet, we remember the first time someone told us about the World Wide Web. At first the Internet seemed okay and most of us were able to enjoy e-mail and watching dancing monkeys on occasion.
But, as the Internet became more sophisticated, programs like Flash were invented and suddenly the new dancing monkeys movie couldn't be viewed on your computer without installing special Flash software.
This leads me back to RSS. You see, at every stage in the evolution of the Internet we have lost a certain percentage of the population. Today, there are still people that have never accessed the Internet, used e-mail, installed Flash, read a blog or downloaded an RSS news aggregator.
RSS is easy. RSS is cheap. RSS is what's next. PR people need to jump onboard. RSS is as simple as using e-mail (see image above). Take 15 minutes this weekend and readup on RSS. Then download a free RSS news aggregator here and experiment. I think you'll find it is nice to be able to look at your news aggregator and find the latest news and information posted on your favorite sites. Just think, when RSS catches on you'll be the first to know when a new dancing monkey video comes out.
Ironically, to-date the one PR agency that has an RSS feed readily available on their site has never pitched MNPR Blog. But then again, I read their RSS feed so why should they have to pitch me?
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