What is RSS?

Thanks to reading a What is RSS? page at Problogger.net, I’ve been inspired to share this with you.

I have found that many of the Evangelismcoach readers are not familiar with what RSS is for.   I know this from the questions I get via email (Contact Us), the questions I have gotten after webinars, mentoring, and live events and in trading emails with people who don’t quite get it.

The Benefit:

Do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on EvangelismCoach.org without having to remember?

The main one that you can use is our RSS Feed.

But what is RSS? From Problogger:

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

• You as the web surfer had to do all the work
• It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
• You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
• You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS is the technology that allows websites update to come to you.  You don’t have to remember to check the website.  You can read it at your own time.  You don’t have to go looking for it.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

How to find the feed:

Many blogs use the typical orange icon like the one pictured here

Simply click on it and you will either

1. Find the hard code for the feed (Some bloggers make it hard to subscribe) or
2. In my case, you’ll find a new window to give you your options to get the feed via email or in an RSS — I make it easy.

How to get a feed — the easy way

Some bloggers will accidentally make subscribing to RSS very difficult.  Click on their orange button and all you see is the hard code for the feed.  If you encounter that, you’ll have to educate yourself some other way as to how to get it.

I make it easy for you.

I use a service that asks you how you want to receive your feed and all you have to do is click a button or provide your email address — no technical knowledge necessary.

You can get a feed in a few different ways.  The two most common forms are

1. Email
2. RSS Reader

Email Readers:

Some users would like to receive their feed by email.  Instead of using a reader (see below), users may opt for this. 

You can Get Evangelism Coach delivered by email. 

Some users prefer this particularly if they only do one or two feeds. 

I publish content typically 4-5 times a week, so you would get an email frequently from EvangelismCoach.  It may get too be too much.  See Newsletter and Feed for an article I wrote about this.

You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.  It doesn’t subscribe you to any other feature on this website such as the newsletter.

RSS Reader

There are two steps for an RSS Reader:

1.  Get an RSS Reader

Start with one that is free and easy to use such as Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Bloglines — I get feeds from blogs and newspapers — it’s like creating my own custom magazine that I read daily with just the information I’m interested in).

The best way to learn is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

2.  Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to (using mine as an example).

When you grab my feed, you’ll see a new window open up, and a series of buttons like this in box on the right.

Click your preferred reader (Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines and Google are active, the rest are just images) and complete the steps with your preferred reader (assuming you have already opened an account).

Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

So now what?

It’s simple.  Setup your reader account and grab my feed.  You’ll stay informed automatically.

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