RSS opens up a whole new channel of communication between you and the browsing public. If at the moment you do not have an RSS feed then there is a whole community of people who do not know about you. Isn't it time you started to publish an RSS feed; here are a few reasons to get started right now.

If you do not have a feed then you can't submit it to the many RSS directories that are out there. That means you can start to publish to a whole new group of people. A list of directories and tools to get you started can be found at http://www.newsniche.com/.

The good news is that it is not going to take up much more of your time to publish an RSS feed. There are many software products, maybe even the one you use now, can automatically generate an RSS feed for you. Why don't you go and check. If not then there are plenty of other free and low cost products that make it very easy to publish a feed. You won't need to learn any new skills to do this.

Did you know that content in an RSS feed makes it easy for other webmasters to publish your content too? Just imagine you content on other sites linking back to you. And all this happens without you having to do anything else, all you need is an RSS feed.

If you are not yet convinced then what about if I tell you that the major players on the internet such as Yahoo, MSN and Google are paying serious attention to RSS. At the moment it's almost an RSS arms race to be the number one RSS player. You can bet that your competition is using RSS.

Unlike email, RSS is guaranteed to be delivered to your readers. Your RSS feed is contained in an XML file on your server so it is fetched by the users RSS reader or feed aggregator. That means there are no spam filters of other servers between you and your visitors.

The greatest feature of RSS is that the user is always in control. That means they are confident and comfortable with using RSS. They can unsubscribe with one click and be totally confident that they will be unsubscribed. If the user is reading your feed then they must really be interested with what you are publishing.

RSS is a big buzz word right now, and this question has been popping up all over the place.

Will RSS ever replace email?

In short, the answer is no.

RSS will never totally replace email because they each do totally different things.

RSS was designed for a totally different purpose than email, and technologically speaking, it would be impossible for RSS to do everything email can. Consider this analogy: RSS and Email are like TV and telephone.

If you want to reach a broad audience of spectators, you use the TV or RSS. Consumers like TV because they hold the remote and can change the channel at will. They have total control. Likewise they can an RSS feed at any time if they so choose, and instantly the source of information is totally gone, never to return against the person's will.

Email is like the telephone: You can email or call anyone based on their phone number or email address, and they can call you or email you back. Consumers like email and the telephone because of the two-way communication. But with the two-way communication comes the possibility of having annoying telemarketers and spammers along with it. And boy do they come!

One is not better than the other because they both serve two totally different purposes.

In my opinion, RSS is better for reaching a large list of subscribers because it is 100% spam proof and puts the control into the hands of the consumer.

Why fight the spam filters when you can avoid them altogether?

Internet marketers that think they are "more in control" by using email instead of RSS are somewhat disillusioned. Consumers can unsubscribe to your email list any time they want to. If they try to unsubscribe from your list but can't, then you are spamming them.

If you truly offer valuable content, consumers will look forward to getting your messages whether they come by email or RSS.

Considering the fact that a good number of emails are getting blocked by spam filters, you have a better chance of reaching more of your subscribers via RSS.

With that said, email will always be necessary on an individual basis so you can have two-way communication. RSS was never made for that, and will never fill that role. But RSS can reach a large group of spectators with a 100% delivery guarantee. And that is something email just can't match!

Now you can bypass the spam filters altogether by delivering your newsletter via personalized RSS feed!

A commercial website really costing itself money if it does not utilize the myriad advantages of implementing RSS feeds. RSS provides near real-time delivery of information your website visitors are interested in, it provides constantly updated content that search engines crave, and it is quite simple to implement.

RSS is a great way to increase relevant content to your website that your visitors will find quite helpful. For instance, if you have a website which covers "search engine optimizing", you can search for that term in major news outlets such as Yahoo, and then apply that search to an RSS feed which will provide constantly updated keyword-rich news and information to your site! We all know that a site that is updated frequently looks more important to a search engine than one that is static. Most news providers allow you to use RSS feeds from their site for free-And why not, since it gives them more exposure and links.

Because the feeds must be handled on the server-side, a piece of software must be utilized to display the feed that is usually in the form of an ".XML" file on your web page. There are a few out there that handle this task for you quite nicely, I recommend Carp. It's free, it works on PHP servers, and it is easy to setup and use. Once it's installed all you have to do to put it on your page is put code where you'd like the headlines for that feed to appear. The Carp documentation does a great job detailing the procedure on their website.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technology that has seen its popularity skyrocket in recent months that allows news items, forum posts, etc. to be delivered to your desktop using a newsreader called an aggregator. The Firefox browser allows for RSS feeds to be "bookmarked", and that bookmark folder shows the latest feeds from that site. You've probably seen the links to RSS feeds (identified as little rectangles with usually the letters "RSS" or "XML" appearing on them) appearing on more and more websites, but didn't know what it was all about. You maybe even clicked on one and saw a page of computer "code". The reason it shows the code instead of easy to read information is because most browsers are not aggregators. That link is useless in your browser (aside from the Firefox bookmark technique mentioned previously), but its pure gold in your aggregator! The aggregator I use is another Mozilla product, Firefox's cousin, the Thunderbird e-mail client that does a nice job as an aggregator. I use it to keep up on the posts of my favorite search engine optimization (SEO) forum at Seochat.com.

RSS is a great new technology that benefits website visitors as well as webmasters. When visitors are kept happy with more fresh relevant content, and search engines are excited to crawl your site and give it more weight, it results in more sales for you!