TamTamy Blog

We have already seen how RSS feeds can be very effective if you want to find news about your company, understand who is talking about it and, above all, keep informed on the evolution of the market.

This presentation highlights how the combined use of RSS feeds and social media can be a perfect mix. Monitoring the conversations on a specific subject and being “social” are easily performed activities that, with the least effort, can help companies widen their horizons and make themselves known among customers and partners.

Paul Bradshaw, journalist and blogger for Online Journalism Blog, lays stress on the new types of information and journalist, which are no more connected only to press and websites, but are rather extended over different media and different characteristics of these media, which should not be overlooked if we want to have a more complete view of what is happening around us, in real time.

As we have seen in the previous post, a very effective way for companies to keep informed on what happens on the market is the use of RSS feeds.
Once companies have learned to monitor what is around them, they will have to remember to keep an eye also on the opinion that the consumers and the Net in general have of them. Just as looking for news on a daily basis is a long and tiring job that can be made easier with news aggregators, there exist other tools which make it possible to automatically receive information on one or more chosen keywords. One of these is the activation of Google alerts.
To access it you need to have a Google account, but compared to the service offered it is a possible obstacle that can be easily overcome.
For every account, you can activate a variable number of notifications, starting for example from the name of your company, so that it can detect any post, news, site, comment, and in general everything that is published on the web concerning your brand. The report for every research will be sent to your email or through feed with the required frequency.
When matched with a research carried out directly by the companies, Google Alert is a valid tool to get to know not only what is being said on a specific brand, but also to identify those who speak about it, and thus analyze which sectors have raised the highest interest or curiosity. Consequently, companies can concentrate or modify the core of their business and the related marketing campaigns in a more effective way.
On the other hand, the research can be concentrated on the name of a competitor, on one or more main keywords for the market of your interest, on a specific product that has just been launched.
As I have already said, it is good to keep on monitoring the contents on the Net also with other tools or methods because, as useful as Google Alert can be, it is not infallible.

RSS feeds are maybe the simplest and most useful tool that companies can employ to be always informed on the market and on how it is evolving.
As we all know, the word RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. To give a very simple definition, we can say that RSS feeds are pieces of news which are automatically updated and directly go into the PC, Mac or email box of the user who has decided to subscribe to one or more of them.
There exist several RSS feed aggregators which make it possible to read and filter the pieces of news as they are inserted into the net on the sites or blogs of our interest. Two of the most popular and functional are Google Reader and Bloglines.
In the case of companies, even more than for consumers, it really makes sense to employ some minutes to create your own list within one of these (or other) aggregators. And this time is regained when compared to the energies and the hours that every company would otherwise have to invest every day to run after all the sources it usually draws on.
We have already mentioned that information and awareness of what happens on the market have a central role for all companies. The new trends, the evolution of technology, the analysis of competitors and – let’s not forget about it – the study of blogs or of the sites of influencers and experts will be this way monitored daily and with the least effort.
The use of RSS feeds can be fostered at any level within a company. Every employee should be always informed and updated on what happens outside in his/her sector, be he/she a programmer, an accountant, a marketing person or a PM.