Everyone is talking about RSS. Blogs, newsites and the like are putting those little orange RSS link thingies all over their sites. What's all the hype about? Okay, email will always have its purpose in life. But many people are realizing that RSS is an excellent alternative to email for newsletters or other mass-distribution lists. Here are three HUGE advantages of RSS over Email: 1) RSS is totally spam-proof. It cannot be blocked by any spam filter no matter what! Because RSS is a web page, you simply cannot block it. I like to think of it like the difference between a telemarketer and a TV commercial. A telemarketer can initiate the call, just like anyone can send an email. Any unwelcome message or phone call can be filtered or screened, but there is always that chance that something important will be deleted! So the end result is that it still takes your time and effort to filter email or screen calls, and there still is no guarantee that your efforts will be 100% accurate! A TV viewer on the other hand must turn on the TV and find a channel first, just like an RSS feed must be entered into an RSS Reader. It is totally at the viewer's discretion. If you ever get sick of a TV channel, you can change it immediately, just like you can delete an RSS Feed! 2) RSS eliminates all fear of being spammed. Think of how many more subscribers you could have to your newsletter if your website visitors had NO FEAR about being spammed by you! People by nature do not trust you the first time they meet you, and on the internet it is even worse. Why would they give out their closely guarded email address to you? Of course some will, but you have to make the deal pretty sweet in order to convince them. But what about the people who are just curious, and can't make it over that hurdle to part with their address? By delivering your newsletter or mini-course content over an RSS Feed, you both win! Visitors can take a spectator approach without fear of getting spam, and you have a way to establish regular contact with your visitors in the same way email can! 3) No more clogged email servers! Sending a message to a large list can really bog down your mail server and can take a long time. If your list has 100,000 email addresses, you are basically telling your mail server to establish a connection with 100,000 different servers immediately! Some web hosts even limit the number of messages you can send. With RSS, you can avoid mail servers altogether! Downloading an RSS Feed is no different than downloading a web page. While this does place a slightly extra burden on your webserver, it is minimal since it is spread out over time and it only has to deliver a page whenever one is requested, not all at once. Spam could eventually become a thing of the past for mass-distribution lists and autoresponders. I think it's just a matter of time! Feel free to reprint this article so long as you include the resource box listed with the article. |
