Don’t Assume; You Know the Old Saying…

That’s right; It’ll make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.  I recently bought the get reviewed package that John Chow was offering in conjunction with the Blog Mastermid program by Yaro Starak.  One great point that Yaro brought up in one of his lessons what the importance of RSS feed.  The main point was that a person should never assume that the visitors to the site know what RSS feed is.

Another tip that I’ve picked up was that when adding RSS to a site, do not use the word “subscribe”.  Now, I know that you’ll hear a variety of opinions on this.  To me, it makes sense.  When I hear the word subscribe,  I think of paying money for a service or product.  When I have visitors to my site, I definitely don’t want them to have a negative connotation of the RSS feed before they even know what it’s about.  However, when further thinking about how to get my readers to sign up for my feed, I knew that I had to have an explanation as to what RSS actually is.  Especially for all those internet & blogging novices (aka me!) out there.  As you’ll notice, I did use the word “subscribe” when referencing my RSS feed.  I felt that since I coupled this with a detailed explanation of RSS that it was less intimidating to new users. What are your thoughts on using the word “subscribe”?

Below is my explanation as to what RSS is:

If you’re new to blogging, or still don’t have a complete grasp on what RSS is or means, read on to learn more!

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.  It’s used by bloggers to frequently publish a variety of items, such as blog postings, news, audit and/or video in a format that can be easily and widely recognized. RSS is sometimes referred to as a feed; this feed includes either the full article or summary of the text, date published and author. Publishers (i.e. me) can benefit from RSS by enabling their readers (those signed up for RSS) to get the information posted to their blog or site almost instantaneously.  It’s beneficial for you, the reader, because if there’s multiple blogs that you’re interested in, but don’t have time to regularly check what’s being posted, you can quickly scan the postings that you’ve subscribed to via your feed.

RSS allows for a quick dissemination of information; I post the information and RSS feed sends you the alert, allowing you to monitor the articles and information that you’d like to further explore.

Sign up Today!