January 28th, 2009
by Amber Wallace
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So you’ve pimped your blog, you’re ready to go… and now what? We know that content is King (I prefer Queen, personally), and we want to supply readers with valuable information that keeps them coming back. As an authority on a subject, share your knowledge and experience! There are many ways to drive traffic to your blog, and as you keep people coming back for great content, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to access it. Enter RSS.
Ready to get your geek on? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), and it’s a web feed format. Often it’s used to describe different formats (such as an Atom format), or any web feed. (It’s similar to how someone might say they have rollerblades, but that doesn’t mean that they have capital-R Rollerblades…) If you’re used to visiting blogs (like this one!), and have your blog set, you will be used to seeing the familiar orange icon that we have here. Many blogging platforms include this functionality, including WordPress and Blogger.
Why should you care? As a blogger, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to read your posts, and having an RSS feed is a simple way to allow users to subscribe to your blog. Users don’t have to remember to check in with your blog daily, but instead have content delivered straight to their reader of choice (Google Reader and My Yahoo are popular web-based choices). Does this mean there’s less traffic to your blog? Yes and no. You’re developing a community of followers who will consistently read your posts, and often click through to visit the blog and comment. Those readers are seeing your content and links, and are likely to stick with you and recommend your blog to others. Even if they aren’t going out on the world wide web every morning to click on your blog, they’re still there. You’ll find a lot of blogs like to boast about their number of subscribers, as it shows not just their popularity but that their content is valuable. Of course that brings us back to content, and full circle. Provide great content, a nice presentation of that content, and an easy way to subscribe.
Check back in for future posts about FeedBurner, how to further integrate RSS and Atom feeds, and how to easily check on your subscribers! For more information about the history of RSS and the geeky side of things, check out RSS on Wikipedia and peruse more info about Atom feeds on Wikipedia.
Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:
- Blog Marketing Tip – Raise the RSS!
- Spread the Love…Link Love, that is!
- Retweet Buttons for Your Blog: Help Your Content Spread Virally on Twitter and Boost Your Visibility and Traffic
- Ask The Marketing Therapist – When Is The Best Day To Blog?
