RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is used to keep people up to date on the latest news headlines, blog posts, podcasts and other information on the web. RSS can be used as a tool to share your blog entries as well as to gain easy access to blog entries (and all the other info I just laid out) in one action.

Using RSS to your blogging benefit is simple. All you have to do is find a reader—a program developed for the purpose of displaying, organizing and reading all of your RSS feeds—and start subscribing to the RSS feeds of news and business websites that coordinate with your business and/or blogging needs. It’s almost like you are building a network of blogging advisors! The best part: it’s free information.

Personally, I use Google Reader to keep up to date on all the RSS feeds I have subscribed to. I’m already set up using Google Mail (Gmail), Google Calendar and other Google products and if I can login to my account and access all of that information in one place it makes my life all the more uncomplicated! Your choice of reader is totally about personal preference so use whatever you feel most comfortable with.

A major plus to subscribing to RSS feeds is that it can be used to help you brainstorm topics and ideas for up-to-date information to use in your blog marketing. Blogging involves a lot of writing and you may sometimes feel that your brain is becoming a creativity drained abyss! When this happens, turn to your RSS feeds and let the ideas of others get those creative juices flowing again.

Word to the wise: never copy and paste information directly from one source onto your blog without giving proper citation. Even if you do cite the source properly, it is always safer and better to paraphrase the information and use short quotes directly from the source. Always avoid the possibility of copyright infringement as it could turn out to be the worst simple mistake you could make for your business.

Get friendly with RSS today and let it make your blogging life easier.

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Tags: blog_marketing, creativity, google_reader, really_simple_syndication

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.