You’ve seen the acronym RSS everywhere. Most blogs ask you to subscribe to their RSS feeds, but what is it?
It commonly stands for Really Simple Syndication and is another way of posting articles and website updates, particularly blogs and news sites, audio and video sites, which are updated frequently. An RSS feed can be displayed as a 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 every time something is updated on their site. Web.
Users sign up to receive your feed and receive an update every time something changes on your site. If you publish a new post on your blog, for example, the subscriber will receive a summary message informing them of the title of your post and when it was added to your site. From the abstract, they can click on the link to read the full article. Subscribers use a “feed reader” or an “aggregator” to read the updates.
Feeds benefit publishers by allowing them to automatically distribute content. A standardized XML file format creates the information only once, but allows many different programs to view it. A feed reader or aggegator can be web-based, such as the Goggle toolkit, a desktop download, or available for a mobile device.
The benefit to the subscriber is that summaries are sent to your reader automatically, without them having to go to every 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 the 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 delivered to your email address.
Possibly one of the best benefits of using RSS feeds instead of subscribing to a website by email is that you don’t use your email address. This means that you will not receive spam. Feeds can contain advertisements, but they don’t spam your inbox. We all know that some sites don’t accept requests to unsubscribe from emails or ask you to explain why you’re leaving, but RSS lets you easily unsubscribe by simply removing your reader’s feed.
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’ve updated your content when it happens. They can receive 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 on 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 or 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.
Despite the fact that RSS feeds have been around for years, many people still don’t know anything about them and don’t use them.
Using RSS
Subscribers:
If you want to start using an RSS aggregator to receive feeds, perhaps the simplest is at Google + when you sign up for a free account. It is quite easy to use and to read. It is available by clicking on the “more” tab when logged in.
When you’re on a website that you like, look for 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 can offer Google as an automatic option. That is 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, as people subscribe to your RSS feed, they indicate interest in your content. Of course, marketers can see the benefit of sending marketing messages to those who have a specific interest in your topic.
RSS is still little used, but it is a very powerful way for subscribers to easily stay up-to-date on many sites and for websites to provide real-time content updates to interested readers. If you are not using RSS as a subscriber or site owner, now is the time to get started.