Steve Rubel notes that Google now offers a atom format feed of its press releases. His comment says it all: “It’s more efficient for journalists when PR professionals post press releases themselves in a timely matter and simultaneously generate opt-in RSS alerts.”
Danny Sullivan lists additional notes along with the feeds offered by Yahoo and MSN.
This is one of the most efficient applications of RSS and I think we’ll see a lot more on this topic over the rest of the year. In fact, I just posted about using press release RSS feeds last week with a list of applications outside the distribution of the feed itself.
As a distribution format, RSS feeds are perfect for press releases, newsletters and article marketing. Benefits range from unfiltered and near real time updates to subscribers as well as a method of improving link popularity and search engine rankings.