Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Why Everyone Should Setup an RSS Reader Today

How would you like to get virtually all of the news and information you consume in one location with no delays, no costs, and no sifting through news you don’t want to read? Sound too good to be true? With RSS, it is now a reality...

Why Everyone Should Setup an RSS Reader

One of the greatest changes with the advent of the internet is the virtual global reach now provided for news and information. Historically, people would wait for daily newspapers and magazines to arrive before they could consume them. This often required people to have to buy everything provided in each publication in order to access and read what they wanted.

With the advent of the internet, readers where now required to visit each website to take in their news and information. Although this new way to consume information was more beneficial, it still did not address the multiple sourcing and sifting through of information needed to effectively get to ALL of your targeted information. But the news world has now dramatically changed once again and this time it is through the simple use of RSS (Real Simple Syndication).

What is RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

RSS is nothing more than a real simple way to receive targeted information in one place from many different sources. These sources can be newspapers, Facebook, blogs, and websites, almost anything you want to track and read on a daily basis. Before RSS, you might need to visit multiple websites, blogs and resources to get your news from all of these places - which can be time consuming and tedious. RSS now allows you to take information from all of these sources and have them provided to you in one place called an RSS reader (or aggregator).

The easiest way to create a new RSS reader is to simply create a Google account that provides you with an easy to use Google “reader” as part of their free suite of account services. To start, go to http://www.google.com/ and click on the “create an account” link on the upper right-hand side of the screen. Once created, click on the Settings > Google Account Settings link in the same area of the screen to access your accounts page where your new “reader” resides.


Now that you have a RSS reader ready to go, simply go to all the sites and blogs you regularly follow and look for the RSS feeds that each provides. Most reputable sites and blogs now provide these feeds and many news papers and news sites will even allow you to subscribe to specific feeds that only relate to certain types / areas / topics of news. For example, say you only go to one site for sports, another for local news, and a third for opinions. Most sites will now allow you to subscribe and receive targeted news from these specific news items while ignoring everything else.


When you find the specific RSS feeds you want, simply click on them to add them to your reader. Most will allow you to subscribe using your Google reader (see picture below) – which in turn will open the feed in your reader and allow you to save the subscription feed in there. Once it is saved, you will be able to quickly see the most recent news for each feed on one page with clickable links to read more.


RSS Feeds Can Come From Anywhere

One of the really neat aspects of RSS feeds are how many difference places these feeds can potentially come from. Beyond a traditional news site, you might also find yourself reading blogs (30% of Americans now do), getting Google news alerts to keep up on your company and/or competition, participating in Linked-In Answers, etc. – all of which can provide a targeted information feed directly to your RSS reader.


RSS Readers Are The New Morning Newspapers

The best way to get the full use of your new RSS reader is to read it first thing in the morning - even before you read your regular newspaper. By having all of your news in one convenient location, you will find it much more effective to quickly locate what information you then want to consume. Over time, your RSS reader will allow you to replace all of your traditional news vehicles and allow you to realize that beyond the morning coffee, nothing starts the day better than you and your RSS morning news.


Visit the SEO Consultant Firm to contact us or learn more

3 comments:

  1. Its great article to see about RSS feed generation and their effect...

    ------
    Thanks
    SEO India

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anyway, once a again a great post and worth a bookmark and from me thank you.

    ReplyDelete