Using XML And RSS Feeds

Using XML and RSS Feeds

As a blogger, you want everyone to have access to your content.  One of the more popular ways to “step out” of the blogosphere is to provide your readers an opportunity to get your headlines without even having to visit your blog.  This is important for one reason: you may not post something that interests them, and after a few days, they may forget you exist.  It can’t be helped: everything you write is going to interest someone, but few will be interested in everything you write.  An RSS feed gives these casual or occasional readers a chance to see your headlines and visit only when they are interested in a particular subject.

If you’ve visited many blogs, you’ve probably seen a small banner like this:   If you click on the banner (and if you have a My Yahoo! page of your own) you’ll find that the blogger’s headlines will appear on your “My Yahoo!” page, allowing you to quickly scan their news without having to go to the blog.  You’ve discovered a blog that provides an RSS feed.  It’s written by a blogger who wants to keep his blog in front of readers.

If you want to really dig into the technology behind RSS/XML, a good place to start is XML.com, but the important information is not how RSS and XML work, but rather the work they do.  An RSS feed allows you to syndicate your content, like a syndicated columnist provides content to many newspapers, allowing other bloggers to provide real-time links to your information.  The ability to syndicate your content, moving it out of your blog and onto the blogs of others, is one of the most important features of whatever blog software you use. 

There are many sites which will publish your RSS feeds.  Here are a few easy ones to get you started:

Blog Digger

Feedster

News is Free

Syndic8