A year and-a-half ago I heard Rick Klau of Feedburner say on the eMarketing Talk Show podcast, "RSS Feed technology is the most significant thing to happen to the Internet since the browser." That was followed by hearing someone else say something about RSS Feed Readers being like TIVO for the Internet. Well, since I'm intrigued by new advances in technology, and found we can't live without TIVO...bring on this RSS Feed stuff!
What are RSS Feeds?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. I like simple, don't you? In a nutshell, an RSS Feed is a little button or link of text on a web page, blog, podcast or any other form of content on the Internet. Clicking on the RSS link allows you to
subscribe to that content and bring it in to your feed reader. Similar to the way TIVO lets you set up a Season Pass and record all future new episodes of a program - and then of course watch them when you want, RSS Feeds allow you to select the content you want to come to you (like TIVO's Now Playing List) via a Feed Reader. Anytime new content is generated from your selected source, it will automatically be fed to you in one central place.
We're all familiar with bookmarking a web page in our favorites. The problem with bookmarking is you have to first go find it in your favorites, and second, you then need to click on the link and go to each one of your favorites to see if there's anything new. With subscribing to RSS content feeds, you only have to go to your Feed Reader to see all of the Feeds you subscribe to - the ones with new content are normally in bold text. It's like subscribing to your favorite magazine. Instead of going to the store to see if a new edition is on the rack, you only need to subscribe to have the publisher mail it out to you each time a new edition comes out.
Getting Started Step One: Set up a Feed Reader
Enough talk. Try this. First select a Feed Reader you want to use. I use
Bloglines which seems to be
one of the most popular Feed Readers available. But, there are other web-based readers like the
Google Reader or
NewsGator - which are all free! Also, most of the modern browsers, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera have Feed Reader capability built in. Once you've selected and setup the Feed Reader you want to use, it's time to pull in some content from your favorite sites.
Step Two: Subscribe to some RSS Feeds
How you find content you want to subscribe to is similar to how you find websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. on the web - through a search engine - or via direct access with your browser. Just look for the orange RSS feed icon, or something similar that indicates you can subscribe to the content. One of my favorite blogs is published by
Seth Godin. Seth provides a button in the left column under RSS Feeds that says "Subscribe" and looks like this:
When you click on that button you will be able to select from a list of popular feed readers.
Obviously, you can subscribe to as many RSS Feed content sites as you want to. You can categorize your feeds in folders on your reader like: Websites, Blogs, Podcasts. Or, you can choose to do it by subject matter: Travel, News, Sports, Entertainment. The options are unlimited. You can now be in control of the content you want to come to you. And, here's another great benefit: the only content that can come to you is content you subscribe to. Feed Readers via RSS is a Spam Free type of service! No one else can send junk into your Feed Reader, and you don't have to share your email address to subscribe!
RSS Feeds can bring you traffic
One final thought. Can you see how having fresh content on your site with an RSS Feed that visitors can subscribe to can bring repeat traffic to your site? Not just any traffic. But traffic from visitors that are interested in what you've got to say or offer!
Here's some additional resources on RSS Feeds & Readers:
(Excellent overview and resource but gets a little technical)
SiteProNews Article on The Basics of RSS Feeds
My RSS Del.icio.us tags (see article below on How Stuff Works)