Content syndication and distribution online is getting a shot in the arm from RSS feeds and social bookmarking. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.
Syndication, enabled by RSS, is the process of making your online content available for republication by other websites and actively distributing that content to any website of relevance for your business. It makes your content more visible online, and at the same time helps you conduct your business intelligence activities to quickly adapt to new market situations.
"Online visibility and online traffic are, quite naturally, of paramount importance to everyone and anyone marketing or conducting business online, period. While RSS may not be the key tool to improve your online visibility and traffic, its importance in helping you do this cannot be disputed," says Rok Hrastnik author of Unleash the Marketing Power of RSS.
Heidi Cohen, who teaches in New York University's Masters Program in Direct and Interactive Marketing, says in her Click Z column that what makes social bookmarking important to marketers is that it's another cost-effective way to augment search marketing efforts, distribute content, and aid branding.
Savvy marketers who want to take advantage of this new trend are often held back by the tech

nical nature of social bookmarks. If you are a big corporation with a highly trained IT department, it should be no problem. But what if you are a small to medium business? Can you still apply these new social media tools to your web content?
Luckily the explosion of consumer generated media has brought with it a slew of easy to use tools that make it really simple to add content yourself and encourage your readers to add and share content too.
Some of these tools, like RSS feeds and blog platforms, have the social bookmarkiong links built in. But as Cohen points out, in her article, bookmarking is not just for bloggers. You should also add the bookmarking links to your press releases and other good web content, such as articles and destination information or product specials and updates.
One way to make the most of all these social media tools is to find a system like PRESSfeed that allows you to: add the content to your site, syndicate it in an RSS feed, tag it for Technorati, create a tag cloud, offer social bookmarking links so that your readers can tag and share the content.
And it's all as simple as working in Word.
Remember that the success of social bookmarking depends on the quality of your content. People won't use save and share boring content. It has to be well researched and well-written. And it has to meet the needs of your audience and be something of value they want to pass along to a friend.