Learn about RSS Feeds

Learn about RSS Feeds One of the greatest challenges for any organization with an online presents like a website, a Podcast or a Blog is getting people to visit those web pages. Even harder still, is getting people to re-visit. Many organizations with an online presents have learned that the best way to keep visitors coming back to a website is to offer updates and new information all the time. Unfortunately, most people simply don’t remember to re-visit sites periodically to see if updates have been made. There are literally millions of web pages to choose from and the people who represent your future supporters, volunteers and donors often can't keep track for where they’ve been and don’t remember how to find your web content later. The good news is that you have easy access to a great tool that can allow you to give site and blog visitiors easy, future access to your content by letting them know every time you make an update. It’s called RSS. Now, well, it might seem like a scary acronym that only computer scientist will understand. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it’s an easy way to let your site or blog visitors subscribe to your web content and receive updates whenever you make changes. Here’s how it works, a visitor comes to your website, looks around and really likes what she sees. Unfortunately, she fails to bookmark or write down the organization site domain name and later is unable to remember how to reach your site and the good work that you do. As a result, she leaves and never re-visits the site. But let’s say that your site offers a visitor an opportunity to subscribe to any updates on the site or blog. By simply clicking an RSS feed icon on your web pages, the visitor can add your organization site to reminder list that will be updated whenever your site is. Unlike a bookmark which creates a link that the visitor can use at anytime the way she re-visit your web pages, an RSS feed acts more like a customized news gatherer. Using special software called Aggregators or Readers, the visitor will receive content updates as they happen and she can keep tabs and a number of different websites by receiving update when content is added. In this way, news aggregators have almost become personalized online newspapers which allow visitors to stay in touch with organizations they support, news topic of personal interest and timely updates of relevant content. Today, many blogs and micro blogs sites offer icons and links on the pages to give visitors easy access to RSS feed. The Firefox web browser automatically displays in RSS icon whenever visiting a site with an available RSS feed by simply clicking that icon the visitors will be able to select what type of feed they wish to receive. This accessible actually also open up the content aggregator application the user has installed and allow them to set some preferences for how that content is provided and displayed. Once the choices were made, the visitors can click on the subscribe button and the process is complete. In this example, we’re using Bloglines, a free content aggregator which allows users to see a list of all the feeds they have subscribed too along with the number of new updates available on each site. By clicking on each side link the user can see the entire list of the new contents update made there since there last visit. Clicking on anyone of these links will take the visitor back to the blog or website they originally subscribed too. The result is an increase in site traffic from repeat visitors, an opportunity for any organizations to get their message in front of people who most want to hear it and an opportunity to turn what may have been a random one time visit into a long term relationship between site visitors and your organization. There are wide selections of freely available content aggregators and readers available today. Some focus on specific topic areas while others are providing feeds about using computers and those using handheld and PDA devices. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS from a user’s stand point I encourage you to take a few minutes to explore the different features available on a host of free news and content aggregators. While adding RSS feeds from your website or blog, it is generally the responsibility of their web master. Understanding the simplicity with which the feed can be created is helpful to any member of the organization. Without jumping into the technical requirements of how sites create RSS feeds, it’s basically a matter of copying a small piece of code into existing web pages and allowing RSS feeders to connect to those pages and that content. There are a number of free tools and services you can use to quickly generate the code. You need to add to existing web pages so that visitors can subscribe to that content whenever it’s updated. It’s worth noting that if your organization has setup a blog or is using blogging software, RSS links are often generated automatically. If your organization does currently have a blog, I encourage you to check out Charityhowto.com’s video tutorial on using the free software WordPress to set up a blog of your own. Don’t have the time to update your website or blogs on a regular basis? The good news is that you can use RSS feeds from other sources to continuously place new content on your web pages. Well, there are a number of new sites offering free feeds. You can create customized feed lists based on keywords relevant to your site’s visitors. Again, this process is a task for your web master and requires a more in deep understanding of web development and working with servers. These links will provide you with the greater understanding of the process. Well, RSS is a fairly simple concept. The power behind is use to make a huge difference on the future of any organization who relies upon getting its message to people who care. Not only can using RSS dramatically increase the number of visits and re-visits to a website, but RSS feeds from your organization web pages may also end up this content on other web pages which will link directly back to your website. The result is much greater exposure of your message, an increase in traffic and an increase in the likelihood that search engines will find your organization’s web pages and get them in front of a larger number of searchers. We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief program and encourage you to let us know if there’s any future online marketing and promotion topics that you feel your organization could benefit from. Please feel free to contact us at info@charityhowto.com. Thanks for your time and we hope to see you again real soon.