Using your RSS feed is particularly important as the role and the profile of RSS is going to grow enormously over the coming few months particularly when Microsoft releases the version 7 of its Internet Explorer which will include an RSS reader and so will make it quick and simple for anyone to save and use RSS feeds to keep up to date with news and information.

Feedburner offers a number of paid services which you can progress on to as the need arises, but their free services are well worth taking the time to examine and incorporate in your Blog. There are ones which I particularly recommend because I feel that they help in utilising and developing your Blog’s RSS Feed in important ways.

The elements I would highlight are:

Subscriber information: by channeling your RSS Feed subscriptions through Feedburner, you can obtain additional information about those subscribing. Specifically, it allows you to identify the number of people that are actively subscribed to your feed, as well as providing information on the type of reader they are using and the articles that have been visited directly from the feed itself.

User friendly RSS feed: through Feedburner, you can make certain changes to the look and feel of your RSS feed which will help personalise them and use them more fully to market your business. These include giving you the opportunity to add your logo, which in itself reinforces the branding aspect, and changing the description of the feed. To do this directly to the feed yourself requires additional technical knowledge, but Feedburner makes it simple for everyone as is well worth doing.

Feed Reader Chicklets: the chicklets are the little RSS logos with “Newsgator”, “Bloglines”, “My Yahoo” etc which appear on many blogs. Feedburner provides the code and images required to create these quickly and, while not necessary to allow people to use your feed, any method such as this which increases the visibility of your feed on your Blog can only be beneficial to your promotional activities.

RSS Feed via email: for those people who don’t use RSS readers but still want to know when you have updated your blog, there is the option of an email subscription service. Feedburner provides you with the code to create a basic sign up form on your blog and then visitors can use to subscribe to receiving your blog updates automatically via email. A similar service is provided by Feedblitz.

Headline Animator: this is a small image using an animated gif file, which automatically displays the titles of the last 5 posts from your Blog and allows people to click through a sign up for the feed. It appears in the form of a box (2 formats available) which can be used either in emails or perhaps in online forums etc.

PingShot: this is an ideal companion to the concept of “Post and Ping”, where PingShot notifies a number of servers at once that you have published new content on your Blog . No real difference from the other services available at Pingomatic and Pingoat (indeed it works through Pingomatic) but a good extra service.

How do you do this? Well, just head along to the Feedburner site, sign up for an account and then “burn” a Feed using your current feed, follow the instructions and away you go! There are some useful services there and with RSS destined to become more widespread as the year progresses, set up in the best way you can in readiness.

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1. What is RSS? A Beginners Guide
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So what is RSS and what does it mean?

There are two commonly held views of what RSS stands for – Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Each of these touches on one of the key uses of RSS. It provides the publisher with a way for other sites to use and hence “syndicate” news and content that has been created and, for the reader, it gives a summary of the updated contents of a favourite site.

If you want to subscribe to and read an RSS feed, then you will need to have an RSS reader (also known as an RSS aggregator) which will either be one that you have installed on your PC or one which you access online. (More info on RSS Readers here) Then, when you wish to subscribe to an RSS feed, you simply copy the relevant URL of the feed into the reader and everything else is done for you. Couldn’t be simpler!

Publishing your own RSS Feed

If you want to publish your own RSS feed so that visitors to your blog can receive an automatic update when you add new posts, then you are in luck. Most blog software creates the feed automatically for you, so all that you have to do is tell people where they can find it – the best way is with the new orange icon which is now becoming the standard as it gets included in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. You will also find branded buttons from Newsgator, Yahoo and the like (as you will see on this site) for people using those RSS readers – however, they all supply the same information so you are just making it easier for your readers to subscribe.

So, should I use RSS?

I would certainly advise using RSS feeds, both from teh point of view of a reader and also a publisher. RSS feeds are a great way to provide easy access to information and create a sense of community among your readers. From the reader’s point of view, using RSS feeds can save hours of work looking for new information or keeping up with developments in your marketplace or areas of interest.

And from a Business Blog’s perspective, they provide a simple way of promoting your blog by sharing the great information directly with the people who want to receive it. A match made in heaven!

Related posts:

1. Feedburner: making RSS work for you
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