RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Steps to Creating & Promoting an RSS Feed

You have an RSS feed and you have worked hard to get the word out. According to your logs you have subscribers! Now the hard part: how to retain the subscribers to your RSS feed. Follow these simple steps to insure that your subscriber base will grow.

13 Tips to Maintaining an RSS Feed Subscriber Base

RSS offers webmasters a unique opportunity to display fresh content on websites. While publishing an RSS feed is a great way to generate site interest and increase communication, syndicating and displaying feeds from related relevant sources can also generate interest, increase traffic and improve search engine ranking.

Displaying RSS Feeds

The best blogs and feeds are those that contain unique, fresh, compelling, content. So where do these prolific posters get their ideas? I talked to a handful of bloggers to determine where their inspiration originated for their content.

Not surprisingly, ideas for blog posts or RSS feed items originate or are influenced by other web content. The following are venues for finding your online muse:

How do you get ideas for blog posts and RSS feed posts?

The arguments continue to rage over the ambiguities in the RSS specifications. But the fact is: RSS is here to stay, and the current defined RSS 2.0 specification is likely going to be as good as it is going to get. Attempts have been made to create "best practice" documents and specification clarifications. We felt it would be helpful to provide general guidelines for those constructing an RSS 2.0 feed. In general, the following are guidelines for constructing an RSS feed. It is good to get into the habit of validating the RSS feed, either with software, or with an online validator.

Etiquette for RSS Feeds

Implementing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) can be aided by an understanding of the terms relating to RSS. Learn the ABCs of RSS....

ABCs of RSS Feeds

If you are struggling with the decision of whether to implement RSS feeds or not, consider the following pros and cons for webmasters who use RSS feeds as part of their content and communication plan...

Benefits (Pros Of Using RSS)
The benefits for a webmaster who opts to implement RSS feeds on their website are numerous:

Pros and Cons of RSS Feeds

Can You Put Pictures in an RSS Feed?

You can either use HTML to insert a picture in the Description field, or you can add the picture to the Enclosure field.

Financial institutions are reaching out to clients using RSS feeds. While banks and financial institutions are usually slow to adopt new technology, that is not the case with RSS adoption. More and more professionals are using RSS in innovative ways, to stay ahead of their competition.

Financial Companies Use RSS Feeds

There are a number of ways to track an RSS feeds popularity. Unfortunately because of the nature of syndication the tracking is not always reliable or accurate. Use the followng to track the consumption of RSS feeds.

How Do You Track an RSS Feeds Popularity

You can either use HTML to insert a picture in the Description field, or you can add the picture to the Enclosure field.

Can You Put Pictures in an RSS Feed?

Sound effects are an important part of entertainment, often comprising an integral part of vidoes, games, podcasts, movies, and animations. However, the costs and conditions associated with acquiring and using sound effects may be prohibitive for many rising creators of media. Thankfully, royalty free tracks offer an alternative to media producers on a budget.

Royalty free sound effect tracks can be used by anyone. Not only are they legal to use, but in most cases they may be edited, looped, or manipulated by overlaying additional tracks to create another sound.

Royalty Free Tracks

Daily more and more realtors are turning to RSS as a tool to market homes for sale. The growing RSS phenomenon in the realty market makes perfect sense. Unlike email RSS feeds have a 100% delivery rate. In addition the costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in circulars and weekly newspapers, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.

Realtors Employ RSS Feeds to Sell Homes

Using RSS Feeds To Locate Jobs

In addition to actually seeking a job, there are also other valid reasons to monitor the job market. Perhaps you are satisfied in your current position, but just want to keep an eye on new positions in a specific sector. Perhaps you are just curious to know what the wages are for similar positions. The job market can be monitored quite easily using RSS feeds. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in order to find specific company job openings, employment available within a specific region (i.e. by using a postal or zipcode), specific positions available, or to locate all jobs within a specific wage range.

The following are websites that have RSS feeds to help employees looking for jobs...

RSS Feeds to Locate Jobs

With all the vast amounts of information available on the web, it is becoming more and more difficult to sort through and find what you are looking for. RSS significantly lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. RSS has the unique ability to compile information and filter it, so you only see unique and relevant content. The information superhighway has become packed with content, and those familiar with technology are using RSS to filter the content, allowing them to drill down and access only the content they want, without having to wade through all the noise.

There are very few subjects or topics that do not currently have an RSS feed available.

What Can be Published Using RSS Feeds?

Academia has embraced RSS as a means to educate, but scrutinizing how educational institutions are using RSS feeds in their daily routines show RSS is utilized can vary across different industries.

1. Share Resources
Academics are using social bookmarking websites to share quality websites that relate to their area of expertise with colleagues and students.

Academia Adds RSS Feeds to Their Teaching Tool Kit

Lawyers have never been known as a technical bunch, but more and more often you see a lawyer with a palm pilot making appointments and a blackberry for those urgent messages. Electronic gadgets are now common in the courthouses across the US. Lawyers have increased productivity by utilizing technology so it should come as no surprise that lawyers are using RSS feeds as a means to grow and manage their practices.

Lawyers are using RSS feeds a number of different ways to increase efficiency and productivity. Common RSS feed usage in the legal field include:

Lawyers Use RSS Feeds

Daily more and more realtors are turning to RSS as a tool to market homes for sale. The growing RSS phenomenon in the realty market makes perfect sense. Unlike email RSS feeds have a 100% delivery rate. In addition the costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in circulars and weekly newspapers, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.

Realtors Employ RSS Feeds to Sell Homes

Sound effects are an important part of entertainment, often comprising an integral part of vidoes, games, podcasts, movies, and animations. However, the costs and conditions associated with acquiring and using sound effects may be prohibitive for many rising creators of media. Thankfully, royalty free tracks offer an alternative to media producers on a budget.

Royalty Free Tracks

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Steps to Creating & Promoting an RSS Feed

RSS feeds are a great communication medium, and when properly managed, web feeds can bring in significant Internet traffic. RSS feeds should contain compelling themed content with episodic titles that are united in common broad theme. Use RSS feeds as an online marketing and search engine optimization tool. Just as optimizing an HTML web page will increase exposure, so too will an RSS feed that is properly optimized and promoted. Use these simple tips to improve your web feed exposure.

RSS Feed Tips to Help Search Engine Optimization

There is little argument from webmasters and publishers that RSS brings in traffic. So once you've made the leap and created a feed, how do you tell your visitors about the feed?

1. Submit Your RSS Feed to RSS Directories.
This will not only increase the number of sites linking to your website and increasing your link popularity, it will also increase the RSS feeds profile. A number of RSS search engines and RSS directories exist that allow you to freely submit RSS feeds. Feeds are generally categorized and grouped together by subject. Web surfers looking for RSS feeds about a specific subject will often search the RSS directories, to locate a feed that matches their specific criteria. Topic specific RSS feed and podcasting directories are also emerging. Choose a web feed's category carefully and only submit relevant feeds to topic specific directories.

Publicize Your RSS Feed

Just as the second generation of search engines and directories evolved into niche topic specific portals we are seeing the same occur in the area of RSS feed directories and search engines. While some directories are admittedly more niche than others the trend is obvious.

Why Niche RSS Feeds Matter

You have an RSS feed and you have worked hard to get the word out. According to your logs you have subscribers! Now the hard part: how to retain the subscribers to your RSS feed. Follow these simple steps to insure that your subscriber base will grow.

13 Tips to Maintaining an RSS Feed Subscriber Base

Growing subscribers of your RSS feed will expand your reach. Put the appropriate effort into marketing your RSS feed, so you can increase adoption and spread the message contained in the RSS feed.

Increase Your RSS Feed Subscribers

Citizen journalists and writers have become common place on the web. Perhaps you are considering blogging, but are unsure of how to enter the world of online journaling. As the medium has grown, I thought it might be a good idea to put together some general guidelines for new bloggers and reminders to veteran bloggers about blogging practices.

There is no Emily Post in blogging that offers etiquette advice, or a Miss Manners that details appropriate behavior. That does not mean there are not acceptable and unacceptable actions that bloggers should take. In order to efficiently communicate as a blogger on the Internet, it is critical to understand the unwritten rules of blogging etiquette.

RSS Feed Etiquette

The best blogs and feeds are those that contain unique, fresh, compelling, content. So where do these prolific posters get their ideas? I talked to a handful of bloggers to determine where their inspiration originated for their content.

How do you get ideas for blog posts and RSS feed posts?

Here are some general guidelines for creating RSS Feeds:

1. Enclosures

Include only one enclosure per item for maximum compatibility. The RSS 2.0 specification does not clearly state whether multiple enclosures are allowed or not, but most RSS readers will only support a single enclosure. Therefore, it is best to conform to the readers, and only include a single enclosure in each RSS feed item.

Etiquette for RSS Feeds

More and more companies are using RSS as a means to communicate, so having an RSS feed that is professional and well polished will help differentiate your company from your competition. What makes an RSS feed professional? Follow these simple steps to polish your RSS feed and take it to the next level...

Create Professional RSS Feeds

As publishers have moved towards monetizing RSS feeds, their have been vibrant discussions as to whether advertisements in feeds are viable or whether they will drive subscribers away. At the end of the day while it appears that many are discussing the philosophical approaches to ads in RSS feeds few are taking the time to examine the options available for inserting advertisements in feeds. Ultimately the advertisements served are going to determine the success of RSS as an advertising medium. The ads served must be related to the content contained in the feed. If the RSS feed contains quality content, the ads are relevant, and the volume of ads is in balance with the volume of content served, advertising in RSS feeds will succeed. Take a closer look at some of the ad serving options currently available for RSS feeds.

Advertising in RSS Feeds

Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy. It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.

Measuring RSS Feeds

You have an RSS feed and you have worked hard to get the word out. According to your logs you have subscribers! Now the hard part: how to retain the subscribers to your RSS feed. Follow these simple steps to insure that your subscriber base will grow.

13 Tips to Maintaining an RSS Feed Subscriber Base

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Steps to Creating & Promoting an RSS Feed

More and more companies are using RSS as a means to communicate, so having an RSS feed that is professional and well polished will help differentiate your company from your competition. What makes an RSS feed professional? Follow these simple steps to polish your RSS feed and take it to the next level...

Create Professional RSS Feeds

If you are struggling with the decision of whether to implement RSS feeds or not, consider the following pros and cons for webmasters who use RSS feeds as part of their content and communication plan...

Pros and Cons of RSS Feeds

The following articles may be used freely in opt-in publications and websites, provided that the resource box is included and the links are active.

RSS Articles, Podcasting Articles and FeedForAll Newsletters

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Steps to Creating & Promoting an RSS Feed

There is little argument from webmasters and publishers that RSS brings in traffic. So once you've made the leap and created a feed, how do you tell your visitors about the feed?

Publicize your RSS feed

Growing subscribers of your RSS feed will expand your reach. Put the appropriate effort into marketing your RSS feed, so you can increase adoption and spread the message contained in the RSS feed.
Feed Validation

Make sure that the feed is properly formed. Some RSS readers and aggregators will be unable to compensate or read an RSS feed that is not correctly formed. There are both web-based and desktop feed validation tools available that can help determine whether an RSS feed is properly formatted or not. After you edit the feed, be sure to spend a few minutes validating the feed.

Increase Your RSS Feed Subscribers

The best blogs and feeds are those that contain unique, fresh, compelling, content. So where do these prolific posters get their ideas? I talked to a handful of bloggers to determine where their inspiration originated for their content.

Not surprisingly, ideas for blog posts or RSS feed items originate or are influenced by other web content. The following are venues for finding your online muse:

1.Google News
Monitor Google News for keywords related to your industry. If you find a story you disagree with or wholeheartedly agree with write about it. Add your thoughts, and editorialize the content. This does not mean you should just repost Google news summaries. The value is not only in the news aggregation, but in the commentary that you provide. Tie news items to specific events, conditions, or the impact of specific news on the industry. Adding a view point or reference to a news article adds genuine value.

How do you get ideas for blog posts and RSS feed posts?

RSS is a standard for syndicating content on the Internet. RSS feeds are used in a variety of ways to distribute all types of content via the Internet. The benefits for individuals subscribing to RSS feeds have resulted in a rapid growth and adoption rate. Software and tools have made RSS feed creation and management easy, even for non-technical individuals, which has also fueled the growth of RSS feeds.

Create RSS | Make RSS Feeds

RSS offers webmasters a unique opportunity to display fresh content on websites. While publishing an RSS feed is a great way to generate site interest and increase communication, syndicating and displaying feeds from related relevant sources can also generate interest, increase traffic and improve search engine ranking.

Displaying RSS Feeds

With the Corona virus not far from everyones minds and the precautions that individuals took to protect their health. It is not a far stretch to consider the possible germs and bacteria that have potentially taken up residence on our cell phones. Mobile devices are never far from most individuals. They are constantly being touched, placed down, picked up and placed near the face. A study published in 2017 found that cell phone screens were host to multiple viruses and bacteria including: E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus.  Depending on the temperature and relative humidity, cold and flu viruses can survive from a few hours to up to 9 days.

How to Clean Cell Phone Screens

In general, the following are guidelines for constructing an RSS feed. It is good to get into the habit of validating the RSS feed, either with software, or with an online validator.

Here are some general guidelines for creating RSS Feeds:

1. Enclosures

Include only one enclosure per item for maximum compatibility. The RSS 2.0 specification does not clearly state whether multiple enclosures are allowed or not, but most RSS readers will only support a single enclosure. Therefore, it is best to conform to the readers, and only include a single enclosure in each RSS feed item.
2. Date Formats

Date formats can be very tricky; be sure that all dates are properly formatted.

Etiquette for RSS Feeds

With all the vast amounts of information available on the web, it is becoming more and more difficult to sort through and find what you are looking for. RSS significantly lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. RSS has the unique ability to compile information and filter it, so you only see unique and relevant content. The information superhighway has become packed with content, and those familiar with technology are using RSS to filter the content, allowing them to drill down and access only the content they want, without having to wade through all the noise.

There are very few subjects or topics that do not currently have an RSS feed available. Perhaps it might be easier to ask what can not be published using RSS? RSS is a standard format to syndicate Internet content, not just blogs or podcasts, but any type of content. Podcasting clearly shows that feeds can be media-rich, and while podcasting is generally considered a medium for entertainment, the educational value of podcasting has not been lost on many educational institutions. The business community has been a little slower to embrace the power and importance of RSS as a communication medium, but industry leaders are gradually adopting it as a new and powerful method of communication. But back to the original point... RSS can deliver virtually any type of content, including spreadsheets, power point applications, database updates, video tutorial, and much more. The true value of RSS feeds is that the subscriber can review and evaluate the information at a time and place of their own choosing.

What Can be Published Using RSS Feeds?

Citizen journalists and writers have become common place on the web. Perhaps you are considering blogging, but are unsure of how to enter the world of online journaling. As the medium has grown, I thought it might be a good idea to put together some general guidelines for new bloggers and reminders to veteran bloggers about blogging practices.

There is no Emily Post in blogging that offers etiquette advice, or a Miss Manners that details appropriate behavior. That does not mean there are not acceptable and unacceptable actions that bloggers should take. In order to efficiently communicate as a blogger on the Internet, it is critical to understand the unwritten rules of blogging etiquette.

RSS Feed Etiquette

More and more companies are using RSS as a means to communicate, so having an RSS feed that is professional and well polished will help differentiate your company from your competition. What makes an RSS feed professional? Follow these simple steps to polish your RSS feed and take it to the next level...

1. Feed Image
Add an image to your RSS feed. The image will be displayed by many feed readers each time your feed is displayed. This will help build and reinforce your brand or image in the minds of people who read your RSS feed. Adding an image to an RSS feed is relatively easy, and adds a level of professionalism.

Create Professional RSS Feeds

If you are struggling with the decision of whether to implement RSS feeds or not, consider the following pros and cons for webmasters who use RSS feeds as part of their content and communication plan...

Benefits (Pros Of Using RSS)
The benefits for a webmaster who opts to implement RSS feeds on their website are numerous:

1. Saves Time
RSS feeds save time. RSS subscribers can quickly scan RSS feeds, without having to visit each and every website. Subscribers can then click on any items they are interested in, to get additional information.

2. Timely
RSS feeds are timely. RSS feeds will automatically update themselves any time new information is posted, so the information your subscribers receive via their RSS reader or news aggregator is timely.

Pros and Cons of RSS Feeds

Academia has embraced RSS as a means to educate, but scrutinizing how educational institutions are using RSS feeds in their daily routines show RSS is utilized can vary across different industries.

1. Share Resources
Academics are using social bookmarking websites to share quality websites that relate to their area of expertise with colleagues and students.

Academia Adds RSS Feeds to Their Teaching Tool Kit

Daily more and more realtors are turning to RSS as a tool to market homes for sale. The growing RSS phenomenon in the realty market makes perfect sense. Unlike email RSS feeds have a 100% delivery rate. In addition the costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in circulars and weekly newspapers, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.

Realtors Employ RSS Feeds to Sell Homes