How To RSS

Have you ever pointed something out to a friend and been unsuccessful in getting them to give your recommendation a try? And then months later they come to you and say “I just started using that thing you suggested and I love it! I can’t believe I didn’t start using it earlier!”

This is my friend Megan, and recently she said those very words to me concerning Google Reader.

But this post isn’t about Megan, it’s RSS feeds, and how to utilize them like my friend Megan did. It’s written for those of you who are the Megans of my life, thinking it’s best not to take my brilliant advice. I’m hoping I can help you understand why you might want to change your mind.

First, let’s talk about what an RSS Feed is.

Actually, let’s not talk about it because it’s all very confusing. If you try to understand how to use RSS feeds that way you will hear words like “metadata” and “XML” and that is more than we need to know.

So instead we’ll focus on who has an RSS Feed, because I think if you understand who/what type of blogs have them, you will better understand how you use them. RSS Feeds are utilized by website with revolving content. Blogs, news sites, YouTube, etc. Basically any site that is consistently updating with new information or content.You know a site has an RSS feed when it has an orange square in the righthand corner of the address bar (Firefox), or when you see the little button that looks like this turn orange (Internet Explorer).

Does that make sense?

Some of you are already utilizing RSS Feeds on your Blogspot blogs (probably without even knowing it). This is my friend Jill’s blog, and on the righthand side you can see the words “My Blog List”. Underneath that she has a list of her friends’ blogs (including me cuz Jill and I are like BFF). Under each blog titles sits the title of their last post, and the names are arranged in order of the last time a person posted. This is all done through the magic of RSS feeds.

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