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RSS, or rich site syndication, is sweeping the internet as the new content provider. For blog owners, this very useful function means two things, getting your content out there for the world to see and providing content for your blog when you don’t have time to write. Most bloggers prefer to write their own content and they use their RSS feed to promote their blog, rather than filling it with content from other sites.
It can get confusing for readers to jump from blog to blog, especially if some blogs don’t update frequently. Instead of going to each individual blog, the reader can subscribe to the RSS feed for each of his favorite blogs and view them all on a reader, such as Google Reader or FeedDemon. There, the feeds will appear for all the blogs, in one place for easy reading. They can also be separated into folders for easy organization.
The average RSS feed contains the post headline, plus a summary and a link back to the article. Some feeds will provide you with the full article, however. The choice is up to the blogger to decide whether to provide a summary or a full article. The summary has the advantage of directing readers back to your blog, but many won’t bother to click on the link unless the post is very interesting. However, if you provide the full post, you may miss out on valuable advertising time.
RSS feeds are created with a language called XML, which is somewhat similar to HTML. XML is tag-based, allowing bloggers to set their tags to be easily found by readers and webmasters looking for fresh content for their websites. Many blog platforms automatically generate XML feeds that can then be subscribed to by anyone with a reader.
The majority of RSS feeds are simply the URL for the blog, with /feed/ at the end, but not all feeds are generated the same way. To find out what your feed is, if you cannot find it on your blog, go to a feed reader such as Google Reader and type in the URL. If there is a feed in existence, it will appear there.
An RSS feed is a valuable tool for any blogger. You can use it to promote your content and you will have more readers by offering a feed that they can subscribe to, saving them time and effort. The more people subscribed to your blog, the more readers and more exposure you have!
Author: Michael Copper
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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