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Notice those little orange or blue buttons of your favorite websites? You know, the ones that say RSS or XML. Those little images mean some big changes for marketers. Content development and deployment strategies become critical as more tools emerge to aid in the distribution and screening of content. The result: greater demand for more relevant content from marketers.

Think of RSS like broadcasting on the web. When people tell you RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication it is important to understand what syndication is. In case of web media, syndication refers to the propagation of content. With RSS, content gets to consumers faster than ever.

It's not just speed alone--RSS is growing because:

• It's spamless--nothing comes unsolicited.
• It's (for the most part) anonymous for recipients (no salesman will call).
• It makes staying up to date easier (no fruitless searching of favorite sites).
• It puts its users in charge of the flow of information (pull) while it makes content consumption more efficient.

These are big customer benefits. They are benefits to marketers too.

Strategically, RSS adoption means:

• How customers choose to hear from you reflects their fondness and interests, as well as the effectiveness of your communication in different online channels.
• As content get easier for publishers to distribute AND for consumers to filter demand for it grows.
• Content needs to be further tailored to specific channels.
• Marketers can leverage and control the flow of information with more precision.
• Waiting to deploy content via RSS could mean a loss in share of voice
• Customers may want to reconfigure their relationship to your content.

Like anything else that's new, however, there are issues with RSS. At this point, only the cool kids are using it. Essentially, that means if you market to, or publish for, the cool kids, you need it; if you don't, you still have more time to learn about it.

Here's why:

• Some of the aggregators are still tweaking their offering. In the past, some have hammered sites with searches for content that look a lot like Denial Of Service attacks.
• Further, there are a huge number of RSS software readers and clients to choose from and install. Those not on the bleeding edge of technology adoption are typically not motivated to install more software.

Still, when the great browser migration (driven by Explorer's terminal flaws) to Opera and Firefox begins, the RSS adoption surge will have started with it, as those browsers have, or are integrating RSS readers (that means no new software to install beyond the browser itself). Safari's next iteration will integrate RSS as well. Don't think pokey Microsoft loyalists will be left out either. Longhorn promises to be the final alarm (in 2006) for techno--phobic or dubious marketers waiting to see if RSS is a fad or not.

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