Blog Activity 2 - Companies using RSS feeds to inform employees/customers.

In this assignment, we were told to find an article about companies using RSS feeds to inform customers and/or employees on various topics. After a while of browsing, trying a number of search terms, I found a great article on the topic. It was short, organized, and easy to understand. You can find the article here.

Summary

This article focused on creative and modern ways that companies may use RSS feeds to spread information to customers/employees. Where in the past, RSS feeds were used mostly to spread news and headlines across websites and readers, companies have now begun using them domestically to spread information and data amongst clients. After a brief rundown of how beneficial using RSS feeds within the company can be, the article becomes more detailed listing specific uses of the RSS feeds and how they can be beneficial. One simple, yet extremely useful benefit listed is using the RSS feeds to spread PDF documents. These documents can hold information that would normally be sent through hundreds or thousands of emails containing business memo's, meeting details, holiday schedules, or any kind of information of the like. If this information was instead put into a PDF and displayed through an RSS feed, all employees (who would be subscribers) would get an instant notification and all be able to view the information off of one RSS feed update. This could save time, and create a more simplistic and efficient way to communicate on a large scale. Another great benefit would be allowing RSS feeds to spread downloads of either software or powerpoint presentations, allowing all employees to view the information update, and decide whether the download is or is not beneficial to them and there work progress. This would be more well rounded and distributed more widely then picking and choosing who to email. Finally, on the customer end, RSS feeds could be used to display photos or videos. This could display content to customers/potential customers on new product available, video tours (real estate) and more.

This article was very appealing to me as it was simple, yet to the point, and very informative. The list method of breaking down a number of benefits and describing them is blatant and easy to understand. This article would be important to any kind of business owner to become more educated on the benefits of using RSS feeds among customers/employees.