Copywriting Secrets of the Masters: What the Heck is RSS? Brian Clark
This special report is brought to you free courtesy of www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com
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What the Heck is RSS? And why should I care? Good questions. First, here's why you should care. Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation. You don't have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don't have to request to be "taken off the list." One click, and poof... the subscription is gone. Plus, since there's no email address involved, there's no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you. That's right... no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher's intentions. You won't need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts "just in case." Again, if you don't like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click. Pretty cool, huh? That is cool! Umm... What the heck is RSS? Alright! Now we're ready to get to that part. RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.
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You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that's the essence of an RSS feed - you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader. What the heck is a feed reader? You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you've got RSS capabilities built in. That's how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates. Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it's also free and easy to get started with. If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well. Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon. If it sounds complicated, it's really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you'll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters. Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed? First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets). If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like many popular sites do), you'll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of
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the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you'll go from there. Just look around for an orange button and click on it. Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see buttons for My Yahoo, Google, Feedburner and Bloglines (among others). Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription box. Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again. In summary: RSS solves BIG problems. So there you have it... RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it's a good thing for everyone. The benefit to readers is obvious. And it's good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter. Spend just a little bit of time getting familiar with feeds, and your online experience will get a lot better.
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Brian Clark is the founder of the popular and highly respected blog www.copyblogger.com Over the years, we’ve been fortunate that people say a lot of nice things about Copyblogger and Brian:
Advertising Age ranks Copyblogger as a top marketing blog in its Power150 list. The Guardian named Copyblogger one of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs. Brian Clark was ranked #3 of the 100 Most Influential Online Marketers of 2009. Technorati says Copyblogger is one of the most popular blogs in the world. The editors of Performancing named Brian Clark the most influential blogger of 2007. BusinessWeek says entrepreneurs should follow Copyblogger on Twitter. Dunn and Bradstreet says Brian Clark is one of the most influential people in small business on Twitter
Brian has been featured in the following books:
Linchpin by Seth Godin Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith Internet Marketing From the Real Experts (Contributor) The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink Problogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett e-Riches 2.0 by Scott Fox Gravitational Marketing by Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields The Referral Engine by John Jantsch
Brian will be sharing his expertise with participants at the AWAI Fast Track to Success Bootcamp and Job Fair which will be taking place on October 26 – 29th 2011 in Delray Beach. At Bootcamp Brian will teach you proven content marketing strategies before showing you how to use them with your clients to further increase your value — and your fees! Click here to find out more.
www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com
This special report is brought to you free courtesy of www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com
www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com