You’ve seen the acronym RSS everywhere. Most blogs ask you to subscribe to their RSS feeds, but what is it?
It usually stands for Really Simple Syndication and is another way of publishing articles and updates from websites, particularly blogs and news sites, audio and video sites, which update frequently. An RSS feed can be displayed as full text or as a summary.
Websites can greatly benefit from using RSS feeds on their sites, because a web author can distribute their content completely automatically, using a service like Feedburner or software that creates the feeds automatically whenever something on their site is updated. Web.
Users sign up for your feed and receive an update whenever something changes on your site. If you publish a new post to your blog, for example, the subscriber will receive a summary message telling them the title of your post and when it was added to your site. From the abstract, they can click the link to read the full article. Subscribers use a ‘feed reader’ or ‘aggregator’ to read updates.
Feeds benefit publishers by allowing them to distribute content automatically. A standardized XML file format creates the information only once, but allows many different programs to view it. A feed reader or aggregator can be web-based, such as in the Goggle toolkit, a desktop download, or available for a mobile device.
The benefit to the subscriber is that the summaries are sent to your reader automatically, without having to go to each website of interest to check for updates.
Benefits for subscribers:
As a subscriber, you are kept up to date on topics of interest without having to go to each website. You can get information on anything from news headlines and weather, to your favorite music releases and favorite blogs. You can discover the latest details almost as they happen and it saves you a lot of time. As a subscriber, you are in control of what you receive, when and from whom. This leads to a cleaner inbox as RSS feeds are not sent to your email address.
Possibly one of the best advantages of using RSS feeds instead of subscribing to a website via email is that you don’t use your email address. This means that you will not receive spam. Feeds may contain ads, but they don’t send spam to your inbox. We all know that some sites don’t honor requests to unsubscribe from emails or ask you to explain why you’re leaving, but RSS allows you to easily unsubscribe by simply removing the feed from your reader.
Benefits for publishers:
For website owners, RSS feeds are great marketing tools.
When someone subscribes to your website via RSS, they are interested in what is happening on your site. They want to know when you have updated your content when it happens. They can get the latest news about your products and services without the hassle of their email ending up in their spam box.
If you are using Feedburner or similar to publish your feeds, you can get details about how many subscribers you have. Other services do not provide that information. You can’t see who is reading your feeds and who is ignoring them or who is unsubscribing and why. Finding out why people leave mailing lists is often critical information that can help improve the design or content of a website.
Even though RSS feeds have been around for years, many people still don’t know anything about them and don’t use them.
Use of RSS
Subscribers:
If you want to start using an RSS aggregator for receiving feeds, perhaps the simplest is at Google+ when you sign up for a free account. It is quite easy to use and easy to read. It is available by clicking the “more” tab when you are logged in.
When you’re on a website you like, look for the subscription options and you’ll usually find an RSS feed button. There is an RSS feed code that you can enter into your reader, or the site may offer Google as an automatic option. That’s all. The site feed will now start reaching your reader in real time.
Editors:
When RSS was created, the idea of internet marketing was not considered. However, when people subscribe to your RSS feed, they indicate an interest in your content. Of course, marketers can see the benefit of sending marketing messages to those who have a specific interest in their topic.
RSS is still little used, but it is a very powerful way for subscribers to easily keep up to date on many sites and for websites to provide real-time content updates to interested readers. If you’re not using RSS as a subscriber or site owner, now is the time to start.