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I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to RSS technology. I just get really excited about all the things you can do to automate your learning and marketing and gain access to filtered content any place you want it.
I don’t think small business folks can here this enough - don’t get too concerned about what it is or how it works - it’s just plumbing - get excited about what you can do with it.
Even if you have no clue what RSS is, there’s a good chance you’ve consumed an RSS feed one way or another by way of blog content. Every blog comes equipped with the programming to write to RSS feeds. This can be in the form of a main blog feed, category specific feed or even a comment feed.
But RSS technology is everywhere now and is the secret to allowing your to filter through the flood of information you need to be tracking just to stay competitive. And, there’s more.
In the course of a day I use RSS to check out what’s being said about Duct Tape Marketing, post content that I bookmark to web pages, update event calendars, publish blog snippets to three other web sites, monitor several industries, keep tabs on projects, send personalized data to customers, update product pages, track the weather where my kids live, discover new music, update my extended family on happenings and photos, find vegetarian recipes, and keep track of the MLB. That’s just on slow days. Once the routines are put in place much of the blur of info processing and publishing is done automatically.
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Here are two resources for your RSS learning pleasure:
- Everything I’ve written and recorded on the subject
- 100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS
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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at Jul 17, 08 | 9:21 am and is filed under Blogging, Fun with RSS, RSS, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
“I don’t think small business folks can here this enough - don’t get too concerned about what it is or how it works - it’s just plumbing - get excited about what you can do with it.”
This is music to my ears! I have a tendancy to get too caught up in details. Afterall, I don’t want to learn how to build a watch, I just want to know the time! Thanks for the reiteration! Great article.
RSS is great - and I’m still trying to learn what it can do. I use RSS to feed into Bloglines and now I have more content to read than I have time for . . . but when I do find the time, I have a wealth of information in front of me. I use it to read other marketing blogs, to see what my favorite marketing guru is talking about (you’re my favorite of course, but there’s a few others in second place). I also use RSS to have information fed to me that would be of interest to certain clients - information I know little about and wouldn’t know where to look. But now that info comes to me and I can then pass on sites or blogs to my clients for their reading pleasure . . . they are always thrilled to get the info and for the most part they ask “how’d do find this article?” Since I once lived in Africa, I like to read stories about Benin and West Africa, so I have those articles fed to me as well. I love the personalization of RSS. I get what I want to read.
We participated in John’s seminar today. We learned a lot. Thanks for your thoughts on the 4 C’s: Content, Context, Connect, Community. We never understood how important blogging is to increasing the exposure of our website. We really liked your definition of marketing. Go Green!
We’re working on exploring RSS feeds for our site. The technology seems like it could really lend itself to what we’re trying to do. Do you have any other resources for a small business trying to expand its RSS capabilities?
I agree. I am a fan of RSS feeds because it does make it much easier to keep track of what is happening.
As usual there is still a massive education issue because I still believe RSS has not moved into the mainstream.
hi!
I am not that fun on RSS but thanks for the info. I usually do it in delicious. I dont know what is better. Bookmarking or Feeds. But i will try more things for my blog and this blog had offered may new ideas.
Thanks for posting this one.
Charles
Money Making and Blogging Tips
I have to agree that RSS Feeds are a great time saver - they can be used for so many things. I use them for research, sports scores, following friends activities and too many other things to list them all here!
Great advice to the small business owner. There are only 24 hours in a day and you can get 10 time more done using RSS (or more).
Like you say, once things are set up RSS is automated.
Thank you for sharing that “100 cool things… RSS” link.
WOW, you use RSS in a lot of ways I never thought of.
Hey John, Thanks for these great tips about using RSS feeds to increase the efficiency of your day. My network of Six Figure Moms have insane schedules and they need to adopt and take advantage of all the Web 2.0 opportunities. I wrote a blog post, “Do Working Mothers Read Blogs? They Should” last month but will repost with a reference to your tips this week. You provide a comprehensive post that just might convince those who say they don’t have time to learn about RSS to jump over the naysayer fence =-) On a personal note, you and I met in San Diego at the Vision to Venture Conference and I’ve been following your stuff ever since. Thanks for the inspiration!