What Is An RSS Feed? (Using RSS To Boost Traffic)

As a marketing trainer I get asked a lot of questions: “who are you”, “which way is the bathroom” and “why didn’t you tip the waiter”?

Simply saying “I am your father”, “just follow the smell” and “Because he has three legs” just doesn’t cut it anymore (get it? “tip” the waiter?.. that’s friggin’ hilarious)

Aaah, you can always count on me to laugh at my own jokes

Recently I got a few WordPress RSS questions that involved a tad more tactful answers (after all they came from paying clients), so I decided to blast this out to the ether and play nice today.

So here they are:

What Is RSS Feed?  Isn’t It When Anytime I Write A Blog Post, The Person Who Subscribed Will Receive A Link To It In Their Email?

It is and a bit more – it’s basically a way for web-savvy people to get your blog content delivered to a central location.

And for those of you with a dirty mind – I’m talking about an email, or an RSS reader (it’ll be a cold day in hell before you get me to say navel on my blog)

Navel Base?

The simple way of looking at it is this -if you pretend for a second your blog is like The New York Times, RSS would encompass all of the different methods your paper gets delivered to places where it can be read.

So RSS are like fleets of trucks that distribute the paper.

And following the same analogy, email accounts and RSS Readers would be like newsstands, libraries, hotels, barber shops and navel bases

No worries folks – there are unlimited opportunities for bad jokes like this (after all, this blog has its own RSS feed)

What The Heck Is “Submitting A Feed”, Do I Need To Do It, And Why?

OK, let’s use the same analogy

No Mojo

By default, WordPress has a widget that adds a feed button allowing your visitors to go to your feed so they can subscribe to it themselves. That’s like having a little outlet right in New York Times lobby where people can come and ask to get the paper delivered to their house from now on.

Now, if you wanted to make a life easier for your readers, you’d contact all the different distribution fleets and ask them to distribute your paper to the newsstands – that’s what submitting the RSS feed is like.

Do you need it? No, but without it your blog won’t have the mojo.

More mojo = more fun, and ultimately this is all about getting traffic, so do it!

How Do I Submit My Feed For Free?

Rather than give you links to software that may not be around tomorrow, I recommend Googling ‘free RSS submit’ (sans quotes). You’ll inevitably find a number of programs and/or websites (some free, some paid) that will notify the appropriate “fleets” automatically

Whichever one you choose, all you have to do is paste the URL of your feed (that’s the URL of the page that your feed button takes you to)

Choose as many sites as the program/website allows and hit submit.

That’s simply going to let those “fleets” know your feed is alive and should be included in their hit list

You only have to do this once, it’s well worth doing it, it only takes a few minutes and will bring additional traffic

Plus – Google likes feeds, which equals even more mojo, man!

What Is A FeedBurner, What Does “Burning A Feed” Mean, And Where The Heck Is The Bathroom?

A FeedBurner is a free feed service that is part of Google universe. It’s just like a feed thingamajigy on your WordPress site, only it’s not on your site, and it’s nothing like your feed

Simply put FeedBurner = more mojo

In a few more words, FeedBurner can bring more folks to your site

Say you decide you wish to track the number of subscribers to your feed,  the easiest thing would be to move your feed away from your site and to Google’s FeedBurner (“burning” a feed).

That allows Google to better estimate the readership of your site, and if your content is good, there is a greater likelihood of getting more subscribers and therefore better ranking with Google.

To do this, go to http://feedburner.google.com and “Burn” a feed (you’ll get instructions plus a plugin for your WordPress that will take care of the transfer for you)

Bathroom is down the stairs… just tip the waiter before you leave…

Any topic ideas or questions for the next post, folks?