AutomatedBuildings.com Interview

RSS feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favorite websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Mandrusiak: We’ve been talking about Social Media on your website for a while now and one thing that has continually amazed me is simply the number of tools in the “Social Media Tool” box. I’ve said before that people need to select the tools that work for them, and how they want to conduct themselves online. You have used RSS for a long time Ken, can you tell us about how it is working for you?

Sinclair: Thanks for asking and by the way a special thanks to you for all the input and guidance you have provided about social media. For any of our readers that would like to see that all in one place go to Manny’s contributing Editor page
http://www.automatedbuildings.com/editors/mmandrusiak.htm

Back to RSS, yes I am a great fan and it has been a strong part of AutomatedBuildings.com growth. Our RSS feeds are picked up by Google and many industry Robots. Lately I am finding that the smart phone folks are finding this to be the best way to view and manage our site. By using RSS feed readers and other products like Pulse http://www.pulse.me/ they can easily navigate the site and manage our content better with the small screened devices. BTW we RSS every piece of content.

Mandrusiak: So you leverage RSS feeds to not only increase the awareness of your new monthly articles, but also to attract industry robots?

Sinclair: Of course! We don’t only want to bring new robots to the website; we want to bring in new readers. The same as any business wants to bring new customers to their website; we are looking for new readers of our magazine.

Mandrusiak: It is the age of the smart phone and the tablet. I know that RSS feeds don’t always get the same kind of value placed on them as say “Tweets” or Facebook posts, but they are a powerful tool that any company can use to help market to their customers. Have you found anything surprising about using RSS?

Sinclair: I find our links embedded in blogs and web sites I had never imagined. It seems busy people and robots, (yes robots always read RSS), both regenerate or actually copy RSS feeds to their blog web sites or RSS amalgamation. My first clue of this is when an article has a higher that usual reads / downloads. I then search the internet for the article and find the RSS posted somewhere I had never imagined. As we converge our boring old automated information is becoming of interest to a larger group of folks. I think that this is a trend to share information from focused groups like ours with a wider audience when it fits.

Mandrusiak: The other social media platform that you use is LinkedIn. How does RSS work with social media such as LinkedIn?

Sinclair: Very well, we just point our online LinkedIn group to the RSS feed and it updates when the RSS is updated. This keeps group information fresh and provides good fodder for discussion.

Mandrusiak: I think that it is very progressive of you to continually be looking at making your site as accessible as possible for people using smart phones. They are the primary source for information these days. You were talking about the RSS Feed Reader –Pulse. I assume that there are a lot of these products on the market?

Sinclair: There are a lot of Feed Readers available for download on the internet. Most smart phones have their own already on the phone. I prefer Pulse because it is the only reader that it truly cross-platform. It works with the Windows Phone, the Apple iOS, Android smartphones and a couple of e-readers. In a world of “push” information, a product like Pulse lets me organize my feeds and take them with me wherever I go.

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