It seems that marketing folk are much faster to adopt this technology for corporate communication. But with the shift of audiences to the Internet it is vital that PR people also find new ways to deliver our messages.
"If [public-relations people] would start creating RSS feeds of releases, journalists and the public at large could see the material they want, and the PR industry would be able to stop blasting huge amounts of e-mail."Dan Gillmor
Monitoring our publics' attitudes and preferences is an integral part of the PR process. So when we learn that they are reading their news online, find e-mail to be spam laden and prefer to be in control of the messages they receive, it's time to wake up and smell the feeds.
"The best PR people have their heads to the ground in many ways, and RSS is a great way to monitor what's being says in the news... It automates the ability to stay on top of what journalists are writing." Steve Rubel, VP of client services at CooperKatz
While perhaps not in widespread use now, the day will come when the online location of a company's RSS feed will be just as much of a PR pro?s email signature file as his or her email address, homepage, and phone number.
Three factors are combining to drive online momentum: 1) rising usage of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) by content providers as a standard distribution platform for online content; 2) ramp in creation of blogs and other user-generated content and 3) Yahoo!?s easy-to-use integration of RSS feeds with My Yahoo!.
