To the novice Internet surfer, RSS Feeds are often misunderstood and rarely used. Most bloggers don’t see the advantage of subscribing to potentially hundreds of site, but instead see just a waste of time. The truth is, if you use it right, RSS Feeds can save you time, keep you informed, and help you on your quest to becoming a Social Media Maven.
How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed
Before being able to subscribe to RSS Feeds you need to sign up to an RSS Reader. This is a site, desktop application, or plugin that tracks all your feeds and keeps them in one place.
I use Google Reader, because it offers a host of features on top of the ability to aggregate feeds. From my Google Reader page, I can share items, start them to read later, and discover other feeds I might find interesting.
Now that you have a reader all you have to do is find feeds that interest you. Look for the RSS Icon on your favorite sites to find the Feed URL.
If they use FeedBurner (and they should be) subscribing is easy. Once you click the RSS button you’ll see a number of different readers. All you have to do is click on the button that corresponds to the Feed Reader you use.
You’re all set now, just navigate to your Feed Reader to see the latest updates from all the site you’ve subscribed to. Be sure to check it often, otherwise the updates can quickly become overwhelming.
Using RSS Feeds as a Tool
Understanding the basics of RSS is just the first step. Using them to create an advantage is the next step.
Social Media
Sites like digg and reddit reward new content. Being the first to submit a story can be the difference between getting to the front page or not submitting at all. By subscribing to sites that publish posts known to do well on Social Media, you’ve put new content at your finger tips.
Want to find articles that usually go hot? Subscribe to the feed of sites often seen on the front page of digg.
Blogging About What’s Hot
If you want to stay in the know, it’s good practice to subscribe to bloggers in the same field. You’ll see what topics are being written about, and you might see posts you want to respond to on your own blog.
Integrating with FriendFeed
FriendFeed is a site that takes RSS feeds from all your favorite sites (digg, reddit, youtube, twitter, etc. etc.) and makes them public to your friends. This way they can see what stories you just dugg or the latest youtube video you just added as a favorite.
The nice thing about FriendFeed is that it also integrated with Google Reader, allowing you to not only share interesting articles with your Google friends, but also your FriendFeed followers.
Have another tip or trick? I’d love to hear them, please feel free to leave a comment!
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