Explain RSS and how do you use an RSS feed reader?

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and although it does exactly what it says on the tin, you’re probably still none the wiser.

To explain RSS is simple. RSS is a bit of software that records all new information posted on a website or blog and makes it available to …well anyone that wants it via an ‘RSS feed reader’.

Can’t I just go straight to the website itself and have a look?

Good question and the answer is of course that you can. But to explain RSS a little further, let’s suppose you had 10 websites that you visited regularly to see if anything new had been posted. That’s 10 URLs to type in, 10 websites to hunt around looking for new stuff and then possibly 10 or more new articles to either read all at once or to manually bookmark to read later. That’s hard work.

But what about if it wasn’t 10 websites but 20 or 30 or even 100? You would have to put your small business on hold whilst you worked your way through them every day.

RSS feed reader to the rescue.

By subscribing to the RSS feed (or sometimes ‘Atom’ feed) of your favourite websites (free of course) you can have all new content for those sites delivered to your RSS feed reader the instant that they are published. How cool is that? A bit like having your daily newspaper on standy at any time of day with live content.

You can see that this fantastic RSS feed reader tool has more than one implication for your small business.

Firstly, you can keep up to date with all industry news and see what your competitors are up to in real time without spending hours searching. The flip side is that by making an RSS feed available on your own small business blog, you are making live information available to your customers and prospects in an easy to obtain format.

Many people prefer using an RSS feed reader to, say, an email subscription because they don’t have to give away their email address. So RSS feeds will potentially attract more prospects as well.  However, don’t spend hours trying to explain RSS to customers if they’ve not heard of them, email subscriptions would be better.

Great! So how do you use an RSS feed reader?

Step 1: You need to select your RSS feed reader (sometimes called an ‘Aggregator’). Plenty to choose from. I use Google Reader because it’s integrated into my googlemail setup. However, you could also try Newsgator, Bloglines, My Yahoo, NetVibes and many others. They all do more or less the same thing and are free so just pick one and get on with it.

You will also find an RSS feed reader on most web browsers, ie Internet Explorer, Firefox and so on. The downside of these is that the information is stored on your local computer so you won’t be able to access them on the move. Google Reader and the others mentioned above are web based so you can. Just follow the very simple instructions for sign up.

Step 2. Go hunting subscriptions. You already have some favourite websites so start off by going to one of them. Once you’re on the home page, look for the little orange icon shown above or something similar. RSS feed icons can vary. Sometimes you have to look quite hard (poor design). Sometimes you will see the word ‘Atom’ or ‘Atom feed’ (competitor to RSS but does the same thing). Sometimes you won’t find anything at all since not all websites or blogs have RSS feeds (incredible).

Tip: The most common web browsers now detect RSS feeds for you. So for instance Firefox shows a little RSS icon in the address bar, Internet Explorer shows the RSS status of a webpage in the toolbar and so on.

Step 3: Subscribe. Click on the RSS icon and you will be taken through a couple of steps which will differ depending on which website you are on and what RSS feed reader you are using. You will be asked to identify your chosen RSS feed reader.

Your RSS feed reader will now be showing your first subscription with articles waiting to be read.

Step 4: Go and find some more. It’s that simple. There’s no limit to how many subscriptions you can have. I have about 120 subscriptions so far.

You now have an electronic newspaper, updated in real time and ready to read, free of charge.

Finally, in terms of utilising your RSS feeds for your small business blog to share with everyone else, the good news is that the software is usually built into most blogging platforms. So if you use WordPress for instance, most themes will automatically create an RSS feed for you.

You can therefore spend your time not learning how to get up and running but how to best promote RSS feeds to your customers and prospects. If you’re not using blogging software then you’ll need to refer to your webmaster.

I’ve been able to explain RSS and ‘how do you use an RSS feed reader ?’ but there are other elements to consider when using RSS feeds. For instance, if you have over 100 RSS subscriptions as I do, you will need to consider systemising the way you manage your subscriptions efficiently.  Also, if you are running RSS feeds off your own website or blog you will want to maximise the promotional opportunity that they present.

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