Colom Newbie

When someone asks you to explain how RSS feeds work, how do you respond? Perhaps you fumble about, unsure, you may even try to flub it a bit to look like you understand ti completely. Maybe you just go directly to a web site that will give you the definition. Whatever the case, if you find it difficult to explain RSS feeds easily, you may not be able to explain it thoroughly.

If you are like many people out there, you are trying to get attention online and you are not going to do that unless you have an RSS feed set up. Take some time and consider what an RSS feed can do for you. Once you do, you'll find that it is an extremely simple and very basic way to get the readers that you do.

The first step that should come to mind when you want to explain RSS feeds is that you should know what they stand for. It is nothing very complicated; RSS is just short for Really Simple Syndication.

In this case, syndication refers to making your media more accessible. When you create your media and make it available through a variety of avenues, you can reach many more people. While the method of making it more accessible does not necessarily mandate a change in the media, that can occur. Think about comics in the newspaper. Comics that are published by several papers are generally thought to be syndicated. This is the same principle upon which you can publish your work.

While you may now have a better understanding of what RSS is, you may still be wondering why it is so important. Actually, its importance has only risen over the past few years. It wasn't long ago that there was little or no need for this type of syndication because people weren't blogging or setting up media sites. As the internet has grown, however, so has the need for better and more efficient methods of disseminating information. Now nearly everyone blogs or has media sites and these are all updated pretty regularly, if not on a daily basis. Your job is to help your readers find the information that they want with minimal pointing and clicking.

Ideally, they would prefer to have the ability to visit just one site and get all the products that they need, such as news, content, articles and other media. This is the importance of explaining RSS, particularly to web marketing newbies.

Once you begin using an RSS feed, you should understand what that means. Simply speaking, it means that the products you create will be zipped directly to someone's personal reading list. Instead of being burdened with remembering that they must click on your site or visit your blog to see updates and new content, all they have to do is go to their reading list. Essentially, your material is delivered directly to them.

What happens next is that your feed will become meshed with their daily activities and interests. In short, you will become a part of their daily routine. Your next move is to consider just how you can capitalize on this and make the most of it.

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.

Now it is time to do your homework. Do some research and make sure that you know exactly what RSS is, but more importantly, learn why it is important to you and your site. Then just on the opportunity.