Most of today’s bloggers are learning or already have RSS feeds integrated into their blogs. The RSS feed is one of the most valuable tools for increasing blog traffic and exposure. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and it’s exactly what the name promises; an easy way to syndicate your blog to thousands of readers.
In short, RSS uses a programming language, XML, to announce each new blog post. The full post or a summary of it is syndicated (or “syndicated”) instantly to let readers know there’s something new on the blog, and with that, new readers can discover the blog.
There are a variety of ways blog posts can be syndicated. The syndication could have been done by other website owners, who found the blog post interesting or relevant to their niche. They, in turn, get the blog post published on their own website. Most blogs would have to wait a long time for this type of syndication to happen. That is why most bloggers use a smarter and more efficient way. They distribute their content through a feed reading program.
Distributing a new post through a feed reader exposes the content to a larger group of people in a very short period of time.
By using a feed reader, bloggers don’t have to wait for other sites to find their content or even find their content relevant. In fact, they can distribute it themselves. People who have read the blogger’s post through the feed reader, enjoy reading, or find the post interesting, will visit the site and become regular readers.
Many good and interesting blogs lose readers due to the fact that the readers themselves simply forget to go back and look for updated information. This is a frustrating fact for bloggers. However, with the use of RSS feeds, the problem is solved. Readers are notified whenever there is something new on a particular blog. You could think of the notification as a reminder to check the blog again.
Readers often become interested in more blogs than they can actually follow. If so, RSS feed readers come as a very useful tool that allows you to crawl through hundreds of blogs, since you don’t have to click on each one to see if there is new content posted. Now they receive notices through the feed and easily get the information they are interested in in a short period of time.
In today’s current context, most bloggers are aligning themselves with RSS feeds. They are making that button available on their websites so interested readers can sign up and be notified of new content on their great blog. These buttons that read XML or RSS are appearing even on the most popular websites on the Internet.