The Power of RSS Feeds in Your Business

Don’t feel bad if you don’t fully understand The Power of RSS Feeds, neither did I.

I was online for more than a year before realizing RSS Feeds even existed, and to say I knew the purpose or the meaning of RSS Feeds would be quite an understatement.

So, exactly what are RSS Feeds?

RSS (also known as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a web feed format used for delivering regularly updated web content to subscribers.  It’s a really simple way to view and share information from other sites.

And, the actual feed contains the full or summarized text that’s to be delivered to the subscriber.

What does all this mean?

For starters, subscribing to a RSS Feed can be a huge time saver; once registered you will no longer have to visit the blog on a regular basis to receive new content.

The feed is automatically updated when the author publishes something new.

Also, it aides in keeping your email private by allowing you to stay plugged-in with your favorite authors or websites without signing up for their newsletters.

Another great idea is to sign up for an aggregator to save even more time.

A feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, allows you to grab content from different RSS Feeds and place them in one single location for viewing.

There are plenty of feed aggregator sites, however I use google reader due to ease of use.

As with most of Google Services — google reader is web based and free — meaning you don’t store anything on your hard drive, you’re able to view and share information with other viewers, and Google keeps you up-to-date with what’s popular in your community.

Plus, Google reader keeps up with the information you’ve read by marking it with a dark blue border.

Signing up for Google reader is extremely simple; all you need is a gmail account to log-in and get started.

In addition, most RSS Feeds contain a Google reader sign-up button which streamlines the process even more.

Sometimes, RSS Feeds appear in XML format; if this happens Google reader has a subscriber link that allows you to copy the URL of the feed and paste it into Google reader.

Here’s an example of a page in XML format.

Remember, RSS Feeds are extremely powerful, and play an important role in your online business.  So, be sure to add one to your site ASAP.