It’s very exciting!  Our very first RSS feed... our very first article on our very first RSS feed.  Why did our Public Relations Specialists insist on a feed?  How did we do it?  What can we possibly expect to gain with it?

A considerable part of our client services is public relations, which includes a great deal of publicity seeking for them.  In 2005, while finalizing our annual client books, we noticed a decline in media coverage overall.  Gathering around the conference table to explore what was happening, IVY’s public relations team discovered that many of our loyal writers and producers were covering more beats... they had less space and time to offer... many of them were just gone!  Scary!  All of a sudden we had bigger challenges that just advising our clients about ways to make their stories more relevant to editors and producers and telling them about the wonderful exploits of our clients.

The answer to our riddle was the internet, of course.  We found some of our old favorite writers now blogging, saw photo journalist friends jockeying between video and 35 mm cameras and found this wonderfully refreshing way of sharing information directly with people via the internet.  We learned about news aggregators, these special websites that collect headlines and then send you to “the rest of the story,” wherever that may be.  Many newspapers are changing to become online news aggregators.  It may not be as much fun on Sunday morning when you want to read the newspaper, but it’s better for the environment and at least those smart newspaper people are finding a way to keep the stories flowing.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  The simple part is the way it takes changing web content and makes the information available to everyone on the internet.  The news aggregator’s collects anyone’s content, whether it is in the form of a story, a video or a podcast, available for anyone interested in seeing it.   IVY chose PRESSfeed for our RSS feed system because they make sure that over 50 news aggregators receive our content and they actually “ping” the largest ones to let them know there is new content from our site. (A “ping” is the equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention.)

Our Public Relations Specialists have learned some new rules of publicity in our transition from the endangered traditional PR practices.  Google does its job well by filtering stories that are too self-promotional or have little relevance to the common good.  Social media too has its own set of values and practices, mostly unwritten but certainly enforced. 

The world has a way of righting itself and innovation is progressing at lightning speed.  We are excited about the evolution of public relations practices and we’re excited about bringing you regular updates about what we learn in this brave new world of communication.  The number of people who subscribe to our RSS feed will let us know that we are bringing valuable information to you and that we are on the right track for our clients.  See that little orange square with the white rainbow in it? That’s the RSS feed icon.  You can subscribe to our feed that we will continually fill it with the new wonders of Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising. 

To set up your own feed, visit: www.WhatisRSS.com or contact our friends at www.Press-feed.com and they’ll do the work for you.

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