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Get the Internet on Your Own Terms
RSS for the Rest of Us I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a whole bunch of articles and websites telling me that I need to get into this RSS thing. Is it really time? RSS (it stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is the latest wave of internet technology designed to take advantage of the "Content is King" mentality. Imagine getting direct access to the content you want, without having to give out your personal information. Wouldn't that be nice? Here's how it works: You find a website you like and look for the little orange XML button, or a link that says "Syndicate this site". When you click that link, you get the raw feed of content from that site. An example: My Simplified Selling site allows you to syndicate my content. That means you don't have to remember to visit my site to discovers articles of interest, but instead they are fed to your preferred RSS reader (more on this in a moment) at your behest. That means you no longer have to open your browser and visit a particular website to see what's new, to find out if anything interesting has been posted. All you have to do is open your RSS reader and content from all over the web is gathered into one place and presented for your review. An RSS reader is one-stop shopping for online information. RSS Readers There are hundreds of RSS readers on the market. You can collect RSS Feeds on your "My Yahoo!" page, or your "MyMSN" page. Current, updated content from your preferred sites is presented for your reading pleasure. Check the first few lines and if you're interested, just click and you are instantly transported to that particular article. No more hunting around on a site looking for an article you like. Newsgator (www.newsgator.com) is a third-party add-in that turns your Outlook mail client into an RSS reader. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has incorporated an RSS reader into the latest release of Outlook. You can also get stand-alone RSS readers from Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) and RSSReader.com (www.rssreader.com). A quick Google search for "RSS Reader" returned over 2 million pages. You'll have no trouble finding an RSS reader that you like. But why? That's really the question. Of course we know why the internet folks want you to subscribe to their content, but why would the average websurfer want to go through the hassle of setting up and subscribing to RSS feeds? Privacy RSS feeds are more private than newsletters. Unlike when you subscribe to newsletters (where you must give your email address to the content provider so that the information can be emailed to you) when you subscribe to RSS Feeds, you don't have to give your email address (or any personal information) to the site owner, because they aren't mailing you their information. Something to consider - it is possible that content providers will start asking for personal information when subscribing to an RSS feed. It hasn't happened yet, so subscribe today before they start! Portability When I change email addresses or work on a different computer, I don't lose the content I like, because my RSS reader is keeping track of the content I want to see - without the involvement of the content provider. It's like radio stations on your Walkman. The station manager doesn't know when you change the station and if you move across town, you don't lose the stations. It's all in your Walkman. When you're using an online RSS reader (like My Yahoo! or MyMSN), your subscriptions are available from any computer, anywhere in the world. No 'Unsubscribe' Headaches When I'm tired of getting a newsletter, I am required to contact the publisher and "unsubscribe" to make the mailing stop. With RSS, you don't have to interact with the website owner to get off the list. Simply click the button in your RSS reader and it will stop collecting data from that site. You are in complete control. No More Spam Today, RSS is pure content. Because you didn't give out your email address to subscribe, you know that you won't get spammed. The internet folks have an incentive to keep the feed relatively ad-free. While you're reading their content in your RSS reader, if the content stops being interesting or becomes non-stop pitching, it is very easy for the reader (you) to disconnect. Most of these folks would rather keep you tuned in than to lose you forever. Think of it like television. If "CSI: Crime Scene Investigations" becomes a long series of commercials and no plot, people will change the channel, many never to return. So the producers see to it that they have interesting content that keeps viewers returning for more. RSS will likely follow the same route. Get yourself an RSS reader and start subscribing to feeds today. You'll get the internet on your own terms. Chris Ellington gives effective and easy to implement marketing strategies to small business owners and home business entrepreneurs. His Simplified Selling System has been a favorite of salespeople around the world. Get your free marketing strategies at http://www.simplifiedselling.com.
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Marketing With Blogs and RSS - The Hot New Tools of 2005 In case you haven't heard, the net is buzzing with talk of blogging and RSS. Once the province strictly of people who got a kick out of publishing online diaries, and later of political and social commentarists, blogs and RSS are being adopted by the internet marketing community. RSS is a Life Raft, Saving Us from a Sea of Useless Information One of the main problems with the Internet these days is the fact that there is so much information out there; it can be quite hard to find the particular knowledge that you're looking for. It can often feel like you're surfing waves of thick chocolate fudge sauce and your honeycomb board has a crack that's getting wider by the second. Over stimulus is the issue here; you wanted to read opinions from music enthusiasts about music, and every second blog article had to do with new punk hairdo trends and which band has the coolest tattoos. How can we find only the content we're looking for without getting bogged down in miscellaneous information that erodes both time and patience? The answer is in context. There's now a way to sift through the cacophony of babble and wisdom to find exactly what you're looking for. Instead of having to join clubs and organizations and receive their newsletters via email at their convenience you can now have control over what you receive. Having to search through millions of blogs to find the few you like has now become an obsolete task. The new system is called an RSS Reader: 'Rich site summary' or 'really simple syndication' are the common definitions of this software. The process begins by signing up to receive automatic updates from blogs and other Web sites that distribute summaries of their latest postings to your reader. You then find which ones you like and delete the rest. You can keep adding new sites until you have literally hundreds of informative connections in your areas of specific interest. Another great aspect of the RSS Reader program is the fact that you can put in key words of interest and the computer will surf the Web for you and add new blogs and web sites to your list, rating them according to the terms you have selected. You then scan over these and add the ones you feel are relevant, deleting the detritus. Eventually you will have an email-style formatted file where you can search through all your favourite writers, news, and topics' latest information. Then you also have functions such as 'comment' so you can automatically share your input with your fellow humans. Or, you can reply to the 'messages' and actually communicate with the producers of the ideas. This will really help to decentralise the information sharing processes of the current top-down mass communication systems like the media. We can hear multiple opinions on an issue and give our own views, instead of being told one story that is heavily affected by the company's personal perspective of the situation. So, you can see this has the potential for something quite big. Less time wasted, finding all the knowledge you're looking for, and sharing your opinion and meeting others similar to yourself has never been so easy. The RSS Reader is a knife cutting away all the useless packaging, revealing the true content of the gift of the Internet. Who Would Use RSS My previous two articles "What is RSS and Why use RSS" focused on how we can give our customers a better online experience while lessening the hassles for the online marketer. In this article I'm going to offer you another way to look at RSS ? from the standpoint of a new emerging profession: the channelmaster or newsmaster as Robin Good calls it. These are going to be the "Who's Who" of RSS in the coming months and years. I remember when email was the new thing for the average person; everyone was excited about the "new" technology. It had been around for awhile in the tech world but not with the average person. When we all started using email, it was so fascinating to be able to send out a message anywhere and get an answer back the same day! Make Money with Your Own Blog Well, basically, setting up a blog means that you are creating a little space of your own on the Internet where you can make posts about anything that interests you. Of course, if you are going to be blogging on a variety of topics, the best way to make money with it would be to have different blogs for different topics otherwise your blog will be just one big jumbled mess that nobody would want to read about. The RSS Promise for Internet Users The RSS promise for end-users is simple: What Is A Blog? - A Beginners Guide to Understanding Blogs A blog is short for weblog, which simply means a website that is updated frequently with new information and is organized by date and submission. Blogs are typically a way of journalizing information whether it be personal, business, or what have you. It's like an editorial and a journal all mixed together and available online for constant updates and submissions. To Blog or Not to Blog: Are Blogs Becoming More Popular than Forums, Newsletters and E-zines? Blogging is hot, and seems to be becoming hotter each month. Although blogging originally was dismissed, by many successful publishers and other online "gurus", the truth is that now, a few years after the "blogging trend" began, there are actually more blogs and more bloggers online than ever before. Blogging, obviously, is "here to stay"! Easy RSS for Bloggers Do you need help adding RSS feeds to your blogger? It's really easy and here is how you can do it: RSS Feeds Can Increase Your Sales RSS feeds are reshaping how we access information online. In the past, when you wanted to know when your favorite information site had some new information on it, you had to go visit the website, wait for it to load, get distracted, etc. With the growing popularity of RSS feeds however, this is no longer necessary. RSS & How to Use It (part 1) Have you ever read an article, intended to explain RSS in simple terms that, begins well, but soon descends into confusing jargon or information overload? 24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right and Get Everybody to Read By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. "Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is." - Pew Internet & American Life Project RSS as a Change Agent To better understand how RSS is changing the way companies and individuals deliver and consume content on the macro scale, let us first remember how content is traditionally delivered and consumed. Are You Thinking of Republishing RSS Feeds? There is lively debate about the republishing of RSS feeds on other sites. The argument surrounds the use of RSS feeds from the feed publisher being used in an unfair manner. This includes republishing the entire articles and not displaying sufficient credit to the original source. Before we go into the details you may want to brush up on your understanding of RSS. This will help you fully appreciate and fully understand the issues involved. I am glad this conversation is happening now as it needs to be made clear what fair use of RSS feeds actually means. There may be webmasters who are republishing RSS feeds in all innocence at the moment not realising the furore that is going on around them with regards to their republishing activities. I would like to help clear up any misunderstandings that surround RSS republishing. Being an RSS publisher myself who is considering republishing other authors RSS feeds I would like to make sure I am not treading on any toes. I am basing the following RSS republishing etiquette on the good practice that Rok Hrastnik has enthused. If you wish to republish an RSS feed then you should first consult the publisher with your intentions. This would be an email to the author stating how you wish to reuse their feed and the page or pages the feed will be republished on and the attributions you will make. You will need to clarify some points. If the authors feed contains ads then will they be republished? Will you be monetizing the authors work by placing ads on your republished page? To avoid conflict these issues need to be sorted out. The general guidelines Rok Hrastrnik has provided state that the article title must link back to the original article. If the RSS feeds contains a complete article only an excerpt, Rok suggests 100 to 200 words, can be republished. A link should be provided to the article source, the website of the original publisher. Further to this it is suggested that no archives are kept on the republished site and no full articles are used. I would suggest permission is sought from the original author if you wish to keep an archive on your site. You can follow this discussion further at PR meets the WWW and Micro persuasion. How To Build Traffic To Your Blog RSS Responder is a new script that allows you to keep in touch and follow-up with your subscribers without the hassle of email. Find Out How Microsofts Plans Could Make Your Subscribers Beg You for RSS Content! Microsoft recently announced that they will be releasing a new browser version sometime this summer. The new browser version was to be released with Longhorn, the code name for their next operating system to replace Windows XP, but they decided that they needed to release it sooner than that. 6 Reasons Why RSS Beats Email Marketing A brand new marketing tool predicted to replace email is currently sweeping the World Wide Web like a storm. Blogging Tutorial Let's start at the beginning. What is a 'Blog' and why would you care? RSS - How to Promote and Profit From Your Feed Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors? Five Ways A Blog Helps You To Market Your Business Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog. For Wordpress users version 1.5 new feature ?Pages? After many requests from wordpress users, the latest version of wordpress has a build in option to create static pages. You can use static pages for an about page, contact page, a links page, etc. This dreamhost review page is an example of a stand alone static page. The advantages are that you can add stand alone content to its own page, outside the normal weblog hierarchy. Pages have the same editing options, plug-in functionality and themes as posts. Or you can customize the stand alone page as much as you want. Static pages also help search engine indexing, as opposed to dynamic urls.
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