When you are hiring a techie to develop your website or another online marketing tool on your behalf, they have a tendency to use a lot of jargon that will make very little sense without a background in computer science (or Star Trek). One of the first of these terms that you will hear often is “RSS Feeds.”
No, they are not photon generators from the Klingons. An RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication), is format used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video. Blogs, online publications, and status updates from social networks generally all have RSS Feeds. Where do these feeds go? That depends on where you want them to go.
Feeds can be used in an aggregator to show several feeds in one location. Sounds technical, but it really is simple. For instance, you can make your homepage an aggregator of three sources: your best friend’s blog, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal. In this regard, RSS Feeds are a time saver, as you can get up-to-the-minute updates in one place rather than three (or 20).
But RSS Feeds can also be utilized as a tool for your online marketing campaign. For instance, you can have your company blog automatically update your Facebook Notes, Your Twitter status, and even have an aggregator on your homepage of your website, so viewers can see new content, making your online presence consistently fresh. Setting up an RSS has become increasingly easy, up to the point where now many aggregators and social networks accept RSS in the form of a URL (web address).
The Takeaway:
Not only can RSS Feeds save you time as an information consumer, but they can increase your reach as a content provider online. By posting content in places that contain RSS feeds, you can invite your target audience to subscribe to your content updates. Furthermore, you can utilize RSS feeds to update your content across platforms, such as blogs, social networks, and more.
