A Simple Explanation Of RSS

by Brett Sidonia

When you are called upon for an explanation of RSS feeds, what do you say? You may stumble around and hem and haw, or you may go directly to a site that will define it for you, but consider the ramifications of doing so. Unless you can explain RSS easily, you'll find that you are missing out.

If you are like many of the people on the net today, you are trying to attract attention to get hits, visitors or sales. The fact of the matter is, you are not going to attract that attention unless you have set up an RSS feed. Let's take a moment and review what an RSS feed can actually do for you. Once you realize it's benefits, you till see that it is a very easy and basic method of drawing visitors to your site.

When explaining RSS feeds, the first thing is to understand what the acronym means. The name itself is very telling: Really Simple Syndication. Once you have a grasp on that, you can begin to use it to your advantage.

Syndication, in this case, refers to taking media that you have made and making it more accessible in various different avenues. This doesn't necessarily mean a change in media, though it can. One example of syndication is what happens to comics in the paper; comics that are run by more than one paper are thought to be syndicated, and with that in mind, you'll find that your work can be as well.

Now that you know what it is, you may wonder what it is so important. The truth of the matter is that just a handful of years ago, it wasn't important. Times do change, however, and now just about everyone has blogs and media sites that they check on a daily basis. With that in mind, you'll find that they are looking for ways to reduce the amount of pointing and clicking that they do.

Many people prefer the simple, the easy. They want one stop shopping and they really want it delivered to their doorstep. It is this desire that should be conveyed to new web marketers when touting the benefits of RSS feeds.

When you make your products available via RSS feeds, that means that you have given your readers instant access to every new product that you create. Those products are traveling straight to their reading list where they can check it out over their morning coffee if they like. Forget sending them reminders to click on your site, they just have to open their page and, bam! There it is, ready for them. It couldn't be much easier.

They will get it mixed up with other things that they are interested in, and essentially, you are going to be a part of their morning routine. Take some time and really consider what your options are going to be and what you need to know to make the most of this.

When you are looking at getting your own RSS feed set up, you'll find that it is quite easy. For instance, are you in a place where you already post to an online blog like MySpace or Blogspot? If you do, this there is probably an automatic way to set up an RSS feed.

Take some time and make sure that you know what RSS is, and why it is important for you to take advantage of it.