Why RSS Matters (In Less Than 2 Minutes)

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Here is a quick and dirty post today. Sometimes I like it quick, and sometimes I like it dirty and guess what? Today, you get the best of both worlds. (I have no idea what that means either) One question that I get pretty consistently is: “How do can I start to drive traffic to my site?” And one of my consistent answers is usually: “Start a blog!”

Today I want to go more in depth with this and talk about how you can drive traffic to your blog by taking advantage of a pretty cool tool called an RSS Feed. This info is crucial for both individuals as well as businesses so pay attention and most of all APPLY what you learn.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” The magic of RSS is not so much in what it is but in what it does. It allows for content to be distributed from one person (you) to many people (peeps interested in your content) in an extremely simple way.

Before RSS, when you found a website with lots of great info and you wanted to stay informed on the latest updates you would have to bookmark the site and keep checking in periodically to see if there was anything new. (boooooooring. AND an inefficient use of precious time).

RSS technology solves this by allowing people to subscribe to your website or blog. How is this helpful you ask? Well, it sends out an update to your subscribers EACH time you make a change on your website or update your blog. These notifications are called “RSS Feeds.”

How Does this Help to Drive Traffic?

Good freaking question! The real trick with RSS is to get people to subscribe to your RSS Feed.  You can have either a form or a link that is located in an easy to find location on the front page of your site or blog. Check mine out (and you might as well subscribe while your thinking about it):

When anyone put their email address in and hits “subscribe,” they will receive all of my latest blog post updates.

The more people that subscribe to you RSS Feed, the better. Do you think you can get some eyeballs to you site with a subscription base of 100? How ’bout 1000? 10,000? I think you get the point.

How To Read an RSS Feed

There are a number of ways to read an RSS feed. The easiest is to have them sent you your email address. You can also use “RSS Aggregators” like Google Reader to view a feed. Most websites and blogs have clearly distinguished sections where you can subscribe to their feeds.

Setting a Feed for Your Site or Blog

If you use on of the more popular blogging services like Blogger or WordPress, you have and RSS or ATOM feed (another feed syndication format) already built in to them. Other servicesm, such as Feedburner, are also good choices to syndicate your feeds.

I like Feedburner. It offers lots of cool stats and useful analytics on top of just subscriber counts.

Conclusion

RSS is a powerful tool to have in your “traffic driving” arsenal. Take advantage of it TODAY.

Did I leave out something? If you have any other cool tips to share about RSS, please leave them in the comments section below!

photo credit