A year later - RSS & Belgian PR websites.
Friday, November 24, 2006 at 17:11 In September of 2005 I checked the websites of the top 26 PR agencies who are present on the Belgian market to see if they were using RSS for their online news syndication. I just finished checking their websites again and guess what...? Status quo, nothing changed !
Check out the list of agencies on my project wiki.
So again... why not ? Several websites offered loads of regular updates of reports, insights and of course press releases. Why not use RSS so that your readers can stay up to date automatically ? Some websites offered a subscription method but most of the time it was nothing more than a simple "mailto:" link which then forces your email program to open.
Once you have an RSS feed for each content type you offer you give your readers the choice to either read the feed in their feedreader or subscribe by email through the use of RSS2mail tools like Zookoda. It will make your live easier as well as that of the people who want to be updated with your information.
And what's with the PDF press releases ? Why not offer (next to RSS and email updates) a simple "print" function ? If my blog platform offers this option then I can't see why it would be difficult to integrate this into your websites.
I'll end my rant here by saying that Flash is not the end of all things on the web...
While it does give you a sleek online presence it is definitely not the tool to create complete websites with. Several sites loaded very slowly and had too many bells and whistles on them to be clear. I do think that clear communications is one of the objectives of a PR agency's website.
Now I can hear some people say "why use RSS while most people do not know what it is ?". Well, I still believe that we, PR professionals, should lead the way when it comes down to communications - and if it takes using the latest technology and explaining it to our public, then so be it !
Good, got that off my chest... Have a great week end everyone.
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Reader Comments (5)
I'm sorry to say that a few factual errors have run into your story.
1. Here above, you say 'top 25 PR agencies that are present in the Belgian market'. That is not what it said on your initial posting, nor on your wiki. There you are talking about PR agencies based in Brussels.
2. Talking about agencies in Brussels, I had a look at your list and this is what I find on the website of the BPRC:
• Creative Stategies is located in 1780 Wemmel
• NewsEngine is located in 2000 Antwerp
• Anthonissen & Associates is located in 2600 Antwerp
• Quadrant is located in 9000 Gent
• Outsource is located in 1780 Wemmel
• Luna is located in 1560 Hoeilaert
• Group C & Slangen is located in 3500 Hasselt
I can understand you’d take Wemmel and Hoeilaert for Brussels, but the mayors of Antwerp, Hasselt, and Ghent would not appreciate this.
3. I could not find the qualifications for picking exact these 25 agencies. That makes it hard to accept these as list of the top 25 of Belgian PR agencies.
4. Times change. A top 25 of Belgian PR agencies in 2005 does not necessarily reflect today’s situation.
This said, may I propose that you ask some Managing Directors of PR agencies for their opinion on this topic? And no need to stick to this list of 25...
You know where to find us ;)
You are completely right.
I have updated the wiki to reflect the Belgian character of the list and not the Brussels one.
I can't remember how I came to that specific list last year but if I am not mistaken this came from the BPRC site or another professional organization.
In this list you can find the better known names of agencies in Belgium + some international brands who have offices here. I forgot to list Leads United, the agency you work for and true, you should have been on the list so I added Leads.
The fact remains that only 2 use RSS on their website wherever they are located and I think that if I would list all agencies in Belgium, the results wouldn't change much.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thx for adding us. Glad to see that you put deeds to your words. (Cfr the explanation on the blogging seminar on commenting).
That issue out of the way, I agree to the fact that RSS is a great extra tool to communicate. Let's hope that all the agencies listed on your wiki can make some (possitive !) announcements soon.
One other thing I've been thinking of was RSS2mail. As we need to get our messages out, I think we'll still be sending out press releases over e-mail for quite some time.
People who want to use RSS wil be kindly invited take it from our websites. But RRS to mail? It's worth thinking about, but I'm quite sure that people who want to receive the product or corporate news of our clients can just ask to be added to our press lists. This was something we did in the past, we do it now, and I guess agencies will not change this policy when they add RSS to their websites...
You see, RSS is great, but it offers an agency no control over who receives the messages. As long as that is an issue, e-mail will stick around, and RSS wil just be an extra tool.
It would be a bit crazy training people and then not applying these concepts to my own blog...
I think you misunderstood with what I mean with RSS2mail.
I was suggesting that if you first create an automated way to syndicate your content = an RSS feed or feeds - it then becomes easy to republish the same information in different formats automatically. One of these formats being email.
Check out Zookoda and you'll see what I mean. I have full control of who receives my email updates (through my RSS feed) in this system. Great for newsletters, tutorials, updates, etc...