May 1st is May Day in some countries, and it's known as International Worker's Day in others.

But in the vast depths of cyberspace - May 1st is now RSS Awareness Day!

This isn't your typical Hallmark Holiday and you probably can't get a greeting card to mark the occasion at your local drug store. But you can get some blog badges and banners. I guess these are the new digital awareness ribbons.

RSS Awareness Day is an initiative of Daily Blog Tips, and blog I've recently discovered. The content on DBT looked pretty useful, so I subscribed to their RSS feed. Now I won't have to go back to their blog, and I'll get their feed (most recent posts) delivered directly to my reader. It's way easier than going back to check for new content, and that's the whole point.

Subscribing to RSS Feeds has changed my web reading habits, and I can now read more, faster.

The main Feed Reader I use is the one built right into Internet Explorer. When I'm on a blog I like, or find myself constantly returning to, or constantly being referred to... I hit the orange RSS box (top right area IE) and save the feed into one of my selected categories. Done.

Next time they have fresh content, their blog name in my Feeds panel will be bold.

And that's just from the Subscribing perspective. Flip the coin and Feeds are the most efficient way for you to distribute content and information to your clients, prospective clients and readers. They've asked for you to supply them with info. Give them what they want!

To find out exactly what RSS stands for, and other technical definitions, visit the RSS Awareness Day site, watch the Common Craft video "RSS in Plain English"(recently featured on AR!) or do some further reading on Wikipedia about Web Feeds and Really Simple Syndication(RSS).

Spread the Word with badges and banners, and have a great RSS Awareness Day! May is going to be huge! I can feel it.

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