How To Explain RSS In a Simple Way

By Samo Yanezic

When someone asks you to explain how RSS feeds work, how do you respond? Perhaps you fumble about, unsure, you may even try to flub it a bit to look like you understand ti completely. Maybe you just go directly to a web site that will give you the definition. Whatever the case, if you find it difficult to explain RSS feeds easily, you may not be able to explain it thoroughly.

If you are like many people out there, you are trying to get attention online and you are not going to do that unless you have an RSS feed set up. Take some time and consider what an RSS feed can do for you. Once you do, you'll find that it is an extremely simple and very basic way to get the readers that you do.

The first step that should come to mind when you want to explain RSS feeds is that you should know what they stand for. It is nothing very complicated; RSS is just short for Really Simple Syndication.

In this case, syndication refers to making your media more accessible. When you create your media and make it available through a variety of avenues, you can reach many more people. While the method of making it more accessible does not necessarily mandate a change in the media, that can occur. Think about comics in the newspaper. Comics that are published by several papers are generally thought to be syndicated. This is the same principle upon which you can publish your work.

Now that the term RSS feed has been defined, the next logical question would pertain to its relevance. Actually, RSS feeds have only gained importance over the last few years. As the internet has grown and matured, more and more people have created blogs and media sites. These sites are updated and checked on a regular basis, often daily. Many people have several sites that they manage, so webmasters are seeking ways to attract traffic to their sites, with as little pointing and clicking as possible.

Ideally, they would prefer to have the ability to visit just one site and get all the products that they need, such as news, content, articles and other media. This is the importance of explaining RSS, particularly to web marketing newbies.

When you start using an RSS feed, it means that the content that you produce is going to be going straight to someone's morning (or afternoon or evening!) reading list. Rather than needing to remember that they should click to your site or your blog to see what is up, they are simply going to find your material delivered right to their door, so to speak.

What happens next is that your feed will become meshed with their daily activities and interests. In short, you will become a part of their daily routine. Your next move is to consider just how you can capitalize on this and make the most of it.

When you are looking at getting your own RSS feed set up, you'll find that it is quite easy. For instance, are you in a place where you already post to an online blog like MySpace or Blogspot? If you do, this there is probably an automatic way to set up an RSS feed.

Take some time and make sure that you know what RSS is, and why it is important for you to take advantage of it.

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