RSS Feeds

What is RSS?

Here is the business information that you really need to know:

RSS is a way of publishing short summaries of what’s new on a website, with a link to the actual page should the reader want to know more. You can use an RSS reader, or ‘aggregator’, to help you with your market research, to keep you quickly up to date with the all latest news content on the web and to find new content for your own website. With an RSS Aggregator, you can quickly scan summaries of the latest content on literally hundreds of your favourite websites in a very short space of time, without waiting for pages to load, annoying adverts and graphics getting in the way and old content that you have seen before.

You can also use RSS publishing, or 'syndication’, to advertise what is new on your own website and attract extra traffic. Links to RSS files are known as RSS ‘feeds’. We’ve all heard of SEO ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and SEM ‘Search Engine Marketing’ – well the next big thing that we are all apparently going to be concentrating on is RSSEM – RSS Search Engine Marketing, which will have a new focus on how to get our RSS ‘feeds’ known about and used, in order to build up our website’s traffic.

Now here is a small 'techie' definition, for those that care:

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It is a slimmed down version of XML. There is also a more advanced version of RSS now used which is called ‘Atom’. An RSS file is a text file that uses ‘tags’ to identify what is the title, the summary text and the hyperlink to the original content, and sometimes some more detailed information, such as the author and copyright information. Within the RSS text file, simple HTML can be used to format the title and summary text that will appear to the user. The file is loaded onto a website, to be accessed via an RSS reader (aggregator), which is rather like a web browser, but which focuses on delivering lots of summaries from lots of sites at any one time, rather than viewing the content of a single web page.

We like Feed Demon due to some of its enhanced functionality, that makes the difference between RSS being a nice thing to playing around with, to it becoming a really useful tool for your business. Imagine a whole team of market researchers constantly scanning the internet for articles that are useful to your business, and then automatically filing them for ease of use – well that’s just about what you can have with Feed Demon.

You set up all your favourite RSS ‘feeds’ (links to RSS files that are published by your favourite websites) and organise them into different categories. You can then set up ‘watches’ which are searches for keywords within those categories. A filing system can be built for organising any useful pages found, where folders are known as ‘bins’. Flags easily identify which RSS feeds you have read and which are new. You can also easily change the time period for which new RSS files should be listed and you can export all your feeds to be imported into a different aggregator, should you decide to change over to a different product or online service.

There’s plenty to play around with and it will probably take some time for you to find out the best way that it could compliment your business. If you run into any problems with the functionality or would like advice on how best you could use Feed Demon for your business, then feel free to log a question in our support forum.

Feed Demon comes with lots of sample RSS feeds already installed, but you can easily add new ones. When you visit your favourite sites, look out for any links or icons that say 'RSS', 'XML' or ' 'Syndicate this Site', which will provide you with a path to that site's RSS file, which you can then add to your RSS Aggregator.

If you use the web browser that sits inside Feed Demon, you will be automatically alerted to any RSS feeds that exist on the sites you visit. Alternatively, you can visit one of the online RSS Directories to find useful feeds for your business.

RSS Syndication (Publishing)

Once you have got familiar with RSS Aggregation, you may find you have some ideas on how you could use RSS to market new content on your own website, or alert your customers to new products or promotions that you are running. RSS can also be used to publish latest content on a 'weblog' or to distribute a newsletter, the advantage being that you don’t have to worry about your emails bouncing due to spam blocking software – an RSS feed will always get through to those who request it.

To make RSS Syndication really easy, and take away the need to learn a new programming language, you can use an RSS Syndicator program, also known as an RSS Writer or an RSS Creator. We recommend NewzAlert Composer, which also costs $29.95 and comes with a 15 day free trial. You can download the free NewsAlert Composer trial from this site here.

NewzAlert Composer comes with a Wizard that helps you easily set up your own RSS feeds and then FTPs the RSS files that you create to your web server. Again, if you have any problems using NewzAlert Composer, you can log a question in our own technical support forum.

We will soon be launching our own RSS feed to alert our visitors to the latest news on the EvaluateIT site – if you want to be notified of its release, then make sure you sign up for our monthly newsletter.

RSS Feeds

What is RSS?

Here is the business information that you really need to know:

Now here is a small 'techie' definition, for those that care:

RSS Aggregators (Readers)

RSS Syndication (Publishing)

Need some help or want to exchange ideas?