How to Get the Most Out of RSS Feeds

Feeds, feeds, everywhere, feeds! We hear so much about them, but what are they? A feed is simply a stream of content that originates from a designated place. Think of your parents (when you were growing up) as a feed for wisdom. Or think of your favorite television show "feeding" you entertainment every week. A feed on the Internet has a similar function, and publishers and users are infatuated with what feeds have to offer. The most popular type of feeds are called RSS feeds, or Really Simple Syndication.

An RSS feed is basically a way for you to tune into your favorite content on a daily basis. When your favorite blogger writes a new post...BOOM!...you have it right in front of you. It is best to organize all of your feeds into readers. Readers are built to hold all of your feeds so you can check in and read something when it happens. Most bloggers have feeds available, all you have to do is find the little orange icon and click it. You will then have the option of putting the feed in your reader, or into your bookmarks toolbar.

There are a few ways to get the most out of your feeds. One way is to limit the amount of feeds you actually have. You may be thinking, "Why can I not have as many feeds as I want?" Well, you can, but trust me, unless you have 20 hours to spend on the computer everyday, you will never read ALL of your feeds. I find it better to limit my feeds to a more practical number; somewhere in the 40-50 range. There is an exception to this rule, however, if you subscribe to a blog that does not produce information on a daily or ever weekly basis, then you can load up on those because you wont be forced to read there content every single day. There are bloggers that post at least once, if not two or three times a day, just imagine if you had one hundred of those in your reader everyday!

If you are a publisher, the best way to get the most out of your feed is to go through FeedBurner, or a similar service. This is a service for bloggers and content writers that allows them to blast there content all over the Internet by submitting their blogs into FeedBurner. The service has many free tools that bloggers can use to get their content to as many people as possible.

To learn more about the benefits of RSS and RSS marketing you can visit Web Business Architecture.

What is RSS? - Syndicate Your Blog Content

A Blog feed allows "Feed readers" to access a site automatically looking for new content. Syndicating your blog via an RSS feed is a great way of allowing your readership access to all new posts from your blog without them having to keep visiting your blog.

Most people today use RSS feed readers to keep up with syndicated content from their favourite blogs, so if you don't syndicate your blog via an RSS feed, you are depriving yourself of a huge proportion of readers.

What Is An RSS Feed?

An RSS feed allows easy online content distribution. RSS feeds can be read as plain text files, but they're designed to be read via an RSS Feed Reader. Numerous RSS feed readers exist. Readers vary from being standalone applications to being online based.

How To Publish Your Blog Feed?

If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform then you are in luck. WordPress has inbuilt RSS feed functionality so you are most likely already syndicating your posts via RSS without even
knowing it. If you are using some other platform which does not automatically publish an RSS feed, you will have to look for an appropriate plugin to use for this purpose.

You can view your WordPress RSS feed by navigating to yourdomainname/blog/feed or yourdomainname/feed (depending on the exact location of your blog).

What is a Feed Burner?

A Feed burner provides services that allow RSS publishers who already have an RSS feed to expand on the features provided by their basic feed by "Burning" their feed. "Burning" your feed with a Feed Burner provides the following benefits:

* Allows you to view detailed stats as your blog feed is read.
* Allows your readers to easily subscribe to your feed no matter what feed reader they are using.
* Allows you to format your RSS feed for all directories and readers and gives you options of further customizing your feed by for example adding ads to your feed.
* Allows you to easily display your Feedburner stats including your subscription count via a simple widget.

There are numerous feed burners that you can find by doing a simple search for "feed burners".

Why Burn A Feed?

That is a very logical question that you might be asking yourself right now. What's the point of burning your feed? Why not just leave it as yourdomainname/feed?

There is a very simple yet important answer to this question. When you publish a new post to your blog, it gets published to your feed. If you have many readers subscribed to your RSS feed and you have not burned your feed, your readers will be reading your feed directly from your webhost. You run a big risk of slowing your server down if a lot of readers access your feed at the same time. A feed burner takes on its shoulders the task of taking your RSS feed and serving it to the tens of thousands of people and applications that subscribe to it so that your server performance does not suffer.

John Motson runs a domain name forum, domain name blog and has authored the popular domain name book Domaining Manifesto.

Home Business Marketing - Using an RSS Aggregator, Web Based Or Desktop?

In home business marketing efforts many people use RSS feeds online to help them get postings from their favorite websites or to get traffic to their own business online. RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication and is becoming very popular all over the internet. Most people know what an RSS feed is but do you know what an RSS aggregator is? Most people don't have a clue what this but if you are going to be using RSS then you need to know about this.

There are two different types of aggregators that you need to know about. The first RSS aggregator is a downloadable program that you can put on your desktop. The second type is web based or on the internet. The downloadable type will usually requires a small fee for you to use it. This type is the most popular because you will get regular updates such as upgrades or patches for the original version, plus it allows more customization for your RSS feeds, page format or design. The web based type doesn't allow this, though with the web based ones you won't have the fee either.

To use the web based RSS aggregator you will only need to register with them to start using their services. You can do a little bit of customization with some of the web based programs but it is limited most times. Some of these services won't allow any customization. So, you need to take all of this into consideration when you are trying to figure out the best one for you to use.

Now, that you know what an RSS aggregator is and how it works, you need to take some time to look at the two different types so you can decide what to use. There are many different aggregators that you can use to read your RSS feed but you have to take time to research them to make sure you are using the one that is the best for you in your home business marketing plan.

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David Ogden is an established online marketer who specializes in practical website resources and advice.

RSS For Beginners

If information overload isn't a concern and you are finding surfing all your sites slow and laborious, then RSS may be what you need. I don't know about you, but my Favourites list is extensive. Even with fine tuning, it can take quite a while to get my information fix. When time or patience is limited then RSS can save the day. RSS is popularly believed to stand for Really Simple Syndication. It is an XML protocol that can publish frequently updated web content to a reader or aggregator.

According to Wikipedia; 'RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.' The web content that RSS collects is called a feed. This feed is advertised by the website that published it and RSS readers pick it up and display it to the user. Once a website has been updated, an XML file is created which contains the main URL and a set of links for the newly published content. Each link will contain a title, the link, and a brief description. The RSS reader downloads this file and shows it in the reader to the user to browse. It will display the information contained in the brief description and a link to the actual page.

The RSS reader continually scans the websites for changes in this XML file and updates appropriately. I use Netvibes to show all my RSS Feeds, but there are plenty of other readers to choose from such as Bloglines or GoogleReader. There are desktop versions such as FeedReader or FeedDemon. Personally I prefer to use web based readers, so I can access them anywhere, but the choice is yours... I will briefly cover using Bloglines and FeedReader to give you an idea of how they work. Bloglines Bloglines is the web based reader that I used to use before consolidating into NetVibes. It is a clean and easy application to use, and reading and adding feeds is easy. Once you set up an account and sorted your preferences you are ready to go. The site will suggest some feeds to get you started, feel free to ignore them if they don't interest you. A feed URL is slightly different to a normal one.

The format will be something like; http://yoursite.com/?feed=rss2. You can click on the RSS icon and Bloglines should pick up the request and ask you if you want to subscribe to the feed using it. Once subscribed, it will appear on the left of the screen under the Feeds tab. The feeds themselves will appear on the right. Clicking on the headline will take you to the site hosting the page. FeedReader This is a desktop application that does a similar thing to Bloglines. The main difference being that this one is hosted on your machine. It's free and open source and is easy and intuitive to use. Once installed it looks like a simplified version of Bloglines. Your feeds are displayed on the left and the posts on the right. The unread ones are shown in bold. Once you click on a post it will bring up the description text and the link to the site. There is a big 'Add Feed' button that should really speak for itself. Click on it and add the feed address and let it go and update. The program will run in the background and update each hour so you will always be up to date.

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What Does RSS Stand For and What is RSS?

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. This involves republishing articles that are on another blog or website. It is an excellent way to notify others of updates to a web site or blog. RSS feeds sometimes show a post title and link back to the post. You simply select the title, click the link and are sent to the web page containing the article you want to view.

This is an excellent alternative to email. Spamming is avoided and you receive the latest updates from sources you have subscribed to. This cuts down on the amount of time you have to surf the net searching for information. The information is delivered to you instead.

If you work online, or have an online business, RSS feed are an excellent tool to help market your products or services. There is no need to risk being accused of sending spam emails because of the way people subscribe to RSS feeds. The fact that people subscribe to RSS feeds also means they are highly targeted visitors, who are interested in what your blog or web site offers. Each time your blog or website gets updates, subscribers are sent this update.

To get more information and different opinions, its a good idea to subscribe to a number of RSS feeds from different sources for a particular topic, This can give a better idea of what the current developments are for a particular area of interest. RSS feed technology was not initially developed as a marketing tool, but it is now being used as an effective and efficient way to attract and communicate with online visitors.

To your success,

Shane Connolly

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Home Based Business Marketing - How Can an RSS Blog Help You Get More Traffic to Your Business?

Anyone involved in home based business marketing has heard of a blog and an RSS feed because these two things are becoming more popular all the time. Both of these things can help you get traffic to your business, which will help you make money. So, do you know how an RSS blog can help you get that traffic? This is very important to know, especially if you have an online business.

When you make a post on your blog, your RSS feed will automatically be updated. This will allow the people that are subscribed to your RSS blog see your new posts right after they are added. This is a good way to get many people to revisit your blog. Many people will find a blog that they like and will subscribe to the RSS feed so they will be alerted when you have added a new post. This is a powerful tool to get repeat customers.

Another way that an RSS blog can help you in your home based business marketing is because there are times that other people don't have their own feed so they will look for someone else's that they can use on their site for informational purposes. This will help you because if someone chooses your RSS feed then you will be getting traffic from this other person's website.

When you have a blog and you add a new post, you will be able to ping different directories to let them know that there is new information. At the same time you can also do this with your RSS feed. You want to add your feed to different directories that are just for RSS. This will definitely help you get more traffic to your website. You just need to spend some time looking for these directories and start a list so you can use it whenever you need to.

These are just a few of the different ways that an RSS blog can help you get traffic for your home based business marketing. There are others that you need to learn about and you can easily do this with just a little bit of research. If you are a business owner than you need to definitely learn all you can about RSS feed and blogs because this can be a very powerful business tool for any internet business owner. Plus, with it rising in popularity you will definitely be able to use it to get traffic to your business, which will help you make money also.

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David Ogden is an established online marketer who specializes in practical website resources and advice.

How Does an RSS Reader Work?

RSS feeds are an excellent way to keep up to date on the latest information from other bloggers and website owners. Thanks to the technology available through really simple syndication you can now keep current on what's going on from some of your favorite websites. This is made possible because of an RSS reader and we are going to look a little closer at how this technology works.

First of all you should have an RSS subscribe button on your blog where people can quickly find it. This makes it very easy for them to be notified whenever you make an update to your blog.

The way you are able to read blog updates is through a software tool called an RSS reader. It's also referred to as all an RSS aggregator, and it scans the web looking for the latest postings based on RSS code.

Depending on the type of reader that you are using whenever it finds a new posting, or some sort of an update it will publish the RSS feed on your home page where you can click on it to read more.

There are two types of RSS readers. There is the online web based type and there is a downloadable program for your desktop. With the desktop version you are usually charged a certain amount to use this service.

Most web based aggregators do not charge anything. You just register and create an account with them so you can start using their services. As with anything that is free there is not a lot of customization that you can do with it.

As a blogger or Internet marketer RSS feeds are a great way for you to build up a subscriber base of readers. As a matter of fact they offer many benefits that you cannot traditionally get with email marketing.

For one thing, with RSS feeds you do not have to worry about deliverability problems due to spamming. Depending on the autoresponder that you have been using for your email marketing campaigns getting your message through to your subscriber base is hard to do.

That problem goes away for people who subscribe to your feed and use an RSS reader. They will be notified instantly whenever you make a blog post update, which allows you to not worry about whether people are being kept up to date on your business or not.

Of course for this to work you need to blog a consistent basis and offer useful information so people will want to read what you have to say.

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