5 easy steps to use and understand RSS

Depending on whom you ask, RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.”

Either way, it’s just a way to organize, publish and distribute your site’s content.

The content you publish is your “feed.” In order for people to see your feed, they must use a news aggregator or “feed reader.”

The best way to understand this, and ultimately harness its huge power, is to set up your own feed reader. Think of a feed reader as your own customized newspaper.

Create you own customized newspaper

Imagine if every day you could get up, grab some coffee and sit down to a newspaper customized completely to your own interests. You can of course — that is exactly what a feed reader does.

Let’s say for example that you live in Los Angeles, work in renewable energy and are a huge Lakers fan. Let’s also say that maybe you own two standard poodles, and enjoy documentaries and rebuilding Volkswagen engines.

There are all kinds feeds out there with up-to-the-minute news and info on these topics and almost any other, and your reader acts as your own customized news source that shows you all the posts/videos/articles/etc from whatever sources you want.

There are just four steps involved

1. Sign up for Google Reader. There are many others, but Google Reader is definitely one of the best.

2. Bookmark your feed reader so you can find it.

3. Surf to your favorite sites and look for “RSS” or “Subscribe” and click to see the feed.

4. Copy the address of the feed. Now go back to your bookmarked feed reader, and paste it into the “add a feed” box.

If you really are a green-living/Lakers/poodle/documentary/Volkswagen fan, then here are some feeds you may want to paste in and follow.

feed://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/rss/
feed://lakersblog.latimes.com/lakersblog/atom.xml
feed://www.standardpoodlesusa.com/Standard-Poodles.xml
feed://feeds2.feedburner.com/thedocumentaryblog
feed://www.gotengines.com/blog/feed

Or maybe you want to follow our feed. We highly recommended it.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AltaPeterson/

Each time there is new info published, it will automatically update to your reader. So grab that cup of coffee and sit down to your own up-to-the-minute, customized, eco-friendly, 21st-Century newspaper.

Oh yes, one more step

5. Try to think of how you could contribute useful info that would build recognition for yourself and your brand. When you are ready, add “Subscribe to RSS” to your own site and start publishing to the world.

For a more detailed crash course, check out Feed 101 from Google.