There are two reasons why you would want to use RSS as a webmaster and that is for publishing and syndicating your content. If you publish your content via an RSS channel then you can keep your subscribers notified of changes to your site, announcements and news. Publishing an RSS feed for syndication means that your are offering your content for others to republish.

RSS feed publishing is fast becoming the popular option for website owners to keep in contact with their visitors. With your own feed available you are making an information channel for your visitors to tune into. In my opinion an RSS subscriber is more valuable than an email subscriber. The reason for this is that the subscriber is in control and they can just as easily unsubscribe to your feed as subscribe to it, this makes the visitor more comfortable. With a feed, readers tend to prefer daily or even multiple updates a day. If you tried that with email you would soon be labelled a spammer.

Creating a feed for syndication purposes you are targeting a different audience, that audience is other webmasters. Where as a feed for visitors is more of a news channel or update channel a feed for syndication purposes is a content channel. By this I mean that the content of your RSS feed is designed to be republished so the feed acts as a delivery mechanism.

If you want to create an RSS feed for syndication then you should concentrate on providing content that is more verbose such as articles and press releases. Webmasters will thank you for creating a channel where they can gather much needed for their sites. You will benefit by your site and your name reaching a wider audience. If you have not considered an RSS syndication feed and you already produce articles then you are missing an opportunity to increase your presence in your chosen field.

RSS can be used for many purposes and creating a feed in not that difficult. There is a whole new method of content delivery which is very good at delivering your content to readers. Whether you decide to publish for news or syndication purposes it is a good idea to create an RSS landing page to explain the purpose of your feed.

Allan is the webmaster at NewsNiche an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.