RSS stands for “really simple syndication” – and yet is doesn’t seem very simple to most of us! Are you making the most of your RSS or is it something you haven’t yet figured out how to use?
What is RSS?
Let’s focus on the word syndication. This basically means to reuse, distribute and integrate. So on the internet we are talking about reusing content, distributing content and integrating content – all over the internet! Wow!
And RSS enables us to do that! When you see it in these terms you realize why it was called really simple! What an easy way to get your content all over the internet!
It is a way for a website to share it’s content. You can customize your RSS icon on your website if you like but the most popular icon is this one opposite.
When you see that icon you know that the content on that site can be shared and you can sign up to the RSS feed.
What are the benefits?
- Share your content around the internet easily.
- Keep people up to date with your content by using your RSS feeds. This is simply your RSS file.
- Stay up to date yourself by getting related niche content from other authority site RSS feeds.
So not only do you benefit from getting your own content shared around the internet, you can also benefit by easily obtaining content yourself from other related sites in your particular niche. This means that you can be the first to know what is happening within your niche and then share it with your subscribers.
You will find that many experts use this method to quickly stay up to date with what’s going on within their niche and business area.
RSS Feeder
Google reader is no longer available for use so if you want to use a RSS feeder then you can use Feedly.
This is one of the best free options to use if you want your feeds all in one place. It doesn’t have such a clean layout as Google reader did and works more like a newspaper but it is well designed and works well.
Having all your related feeds in one place means that you can easily scan through and pinpoint important news items or announcements that you need to know about.
Your Own RSS Feeds To Use
There are places on the internet that you add content to and you can use that content to share around the internet using the RSS feeds. Here are some examples:
- Facebook fan page
- Blog
- Autoresponder emails
- You Tube channel
- Ezine articles
Are you using those feeds? If not then you should seriously think about how to get your content from these sites around the internet. There are plenty of automation tools that will do this for you and I have listed some later on.
Finding RSS Feeds
If you are looking to find relevant RSS feeds for your niche then the 2 sites below will help you to do that.
This will help you to find the best sites for your niche area to create a specific a news feed for you to keep tracks on. It will also provide you with content that you might want to add to your own site for discussion. The You Tube feed is particularly useful for that.
Automating Social Media Updates
These following tools will help you to automate posting of your RSS feeds to social media sites. Just connect your feed to the appropriate social media site e.g. Facebook page, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and they will be updated with your recent content.
When you do this just make sure that you won’t be duplicating any updates. For example, if you are updating your Facebook page and twitter accounts with your blog updates then there is no point in updating twitter with your Facebook page updates – since it will just be a duplicate of your blog updates.
Some of these sites are completely free to use and others provide paid versions.
What About Duplicate Content?
If you are wondering if sharing your RSS feeds around the internet will create a whole load of duplicate content then there is no need to worry.
You see an RSS feed has been developed for the specific purpose of syndicating content. Providing snippets of information. Therefore the whole of the content is not blasted around the internet, just snippets that people can then click on the link to read more. This is why it is a good idea for using RSS feeds for updating social media sites as only snippets are relevant on these sites.
Out of Your Control
One thing to note is that the sites that you use for automatic updates are not under your control. And like anything online if you don’t have control yourself you do risk losing that site at some point if the owner decides to take it down or even decide to remove your account (if they don’t like automatic updates). Just something to bear in mind!
One Comment on “Are You Making The Most of RSS Feeds?”
Thanks for this useful and informative article. I am maintaining a blog and after one months of of my blog, I did not know what is RSS feed and how to use this feature. But now I understand after reading your article.