A Beginner's Guide to RSS

Written by Eileen Parzek, © 2004

A few months ago, I quietly launched an RSS feed for my business newsletter, Increase Your Reach: Infuse Your Marketing with Technology. RSS is a relatively new, alternative format for publishing information online. With RSS, the reader has all of the control over when, how and where they read your content. The language of RSS, called XML, creates a "feed" which someone with an RSS reader can tune in to by subscribing from an RSS reader. You may have seen a little orange XML icon on Web sites - that is the standard link to a RSS feed. Click this one and you'll see what the guts of a feed looks like: This kind of link is what you would subscribe to, as I will explain in a moment.

It is really quite simple - think of the feed as a like a Web page, and the reader as like a browser. What makes it different is that whenever the RSS subscriber wants to read they can go into their reader and quickly see what is new, scan headlines, and read only what interests them. So, unlike the Web, where you have to go looking for a site, and can never be sure what is updated and when; or email newsletters, which are hindered by spam, RSS provides information that is targeted, filtered, and by completely by choice.

There are a number of different reader options - some integrate with the mail software like Outlook, some stand alone, and others are Web based. Likewise, there are a number of formats and paths to creating a feed. One Web site which compiles all of these options is 2RSS.com.

Basically, RSS format is similar to HTML in that it can actually be edited in a simple text editor like Notepad, but as with Web page design, there are many tools cropping up to make it easier for someone to create and publish a feed. In your RSS file, you simply would add a title or headline, a short description, and a link to the item on your site, and publish the feed (upload it). This can be either a manual or automated process, depending on how you go about it.

I use an RSS reader based on the Web called Bloglines.com. Within my account, I can search for and subscribe to feeds from sources which I value. Likewise, if I see a site with an RSS feed, I can copy the address and paste it into Bloglines, and instantly be subscribed. I have set up a folder system to organize the feeds and could set up alerts if I wanted to.

By having my feed subscriptions based out on the Web, I can access them either on my desktop, laptop, or on my smart phone. By scanning headlines, I can very quickly plow through more incoming information than ever. I catch up on reading while waiting for appointments or standing in line, during TV commercials and riding in the car - which allows me to absorb even more information each day (in my mind, this is a good thing).

Many RSS feeds are generated from blogs, where business owners, publishers and industry experts share their thoughts, articles, and observations and then automatically publish to a RSS feed, alerting the audience to a new entry. I probably will not ever go see what is new on a particular blog each week, but if my RSS reader flags me that something interesting has appeared, I would, so by offering this service, they have gained another reader.

From the business owner's side, there are a number of ways RSS can be used to publish information and reach customers. You could use an RSS feed to announce "what's new" on your Web site, highlight new products, or stir up hot topics in a discussion forums you moderate. If you keep a blog, you can use RSS to push your new entries to interested parties, instead of waiting for them to come. Subscribers to your feed will see in their reader that you have done something new, read the summary and come check it out if it matters to them.

My opinion of this latest publishing format is mixed, maybe because it parallels the 1994-1996 period of the Web, when people first started publishing online. Even text based Web sites were cool then, and rare enough that there were only limited of sources of information to choose from. But the industry grew and became commercialized, the Internet changed. Legitimate email is now buried in spam, and without a good search engine (and sometimes even with!), you can't find things easily or quickly. So I do like how RSS pushes the information to me based on my desire to see it, and organizes it so I can quickly scan it and pick out the chunks that matter. But eventually, if RSS becomes popular, this could change. For example, a popular RSS publisher could certainly decide to allow paid sponsorship of his or her feed, opening the door similarly to the first banner ads and spam. Likewise, there could ultimately be so many RSS feeds that it becomes hard to choose and find what matters. But again, the beauty of it is that you can fine tune and filter what you want to be fed, as you go. This is why some people believe RSS might be a major component of the Web experience of the future.

RSS is not yet widely adopted - it is popular with geeks, bloggers, and more recently, media and businesses, but many excellent information sources do not provide an RSS feed yet. I get a number of email newsletters (when they are not caught in the spam filter) which never are read because I file them for "later." If they published headlines in RSS, I would be likely to return to their site more often. I'd like to see more news outlets publish in RSS. In these situations, they would increase readership by being more accessible and providing this alternative delivery format.

From a publisher's perspective, there are other considerations. You never know who is subscribed to your feed, the way you do an email newsletter, because it is done outside of email, which identifies the reader to some extent. However, if your goal is to reach as many people as possible, without caring about statistics like "click through rates," you can potentially reach many more interested people through a feed than a newsletter. An unknown reader can turn into an interested prospect just as easily as one whose name you have in a database.

Anonymity is part of the allure to the consumer - the readers subscribe when they want, leave when they want, and contact you when they want, without leaving tracks. From a marketer's perspective, this might appear to be a bad thing but for a business whose goal it is to reach a broad, willing audience, it could be a solution. Other positive marketing scenarios to consider would be using RSS as a way to attract more people back to your site regularly (where you sell to them), create a broader recognition of your brand, products and services, and develop yet another communication channel with your customers.

As with the Web, RSS still has a lot of evolving and growing to do, and standards to shake out in how to implement and receive feeds. But I believe it is definitely something to be aware of, and explore depending on the type of business or organization you have. If nothing else, as a busy business owner, it might be a way to filter the information you receive online so you can keep up on things more efficiently!

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Eileen Parzek is an award winning graphic designer and writer providing digital and print graphic design and web design services. Always found at the intersection of information, creativity and technology, her business, SOHO It Goes! Business Design Studio (www.sohoitgoes.com) helps small businesses make a big impression.