RSS Syndication Made Simple, Really

Welcome PRSA webinar participants! This post includes an overview of the basics of RSS. It is written with the public relations professional in mind, but might be useful to others as well.

(For more on RSS, blogs and PR visit the handy resources section of my site. Also, I highly recommend Dan Gillmor's terrific new book, We the Media, which you can read free online right here.)

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a new technology standard that enables any online publisher (corporate, blogger, media, etc.) to broadcast information onto the Internet in "feeds." Users can elect to subscribe to as many feeds as they want and view them all at once or individually using one or more different RSS readers, or news aggregators. Such readers include high-end dedicated desktop software applications, mobile devices and increasingly sophisticated Web-based applications. No matter which aggregator you choose, you get the same great benefits: 1) you are alerted to new content from your favorite sites as soon as it hits the web and 2) you can aggregate all your favorite sources of information together and peruse them on one page.

What do I need to read RSS feeds?

To get started reading RSS feeds you need to first choose a news aggregator. The easiest ones to use are web based. They include Bloglines and My Yahoo. However, if you are serious about RSS I suggest taking the time to play with a dedicated news reader software application. The best/most powerful are FeedDemon for the PC and NetNewswire for the Mac.

What are the exact steps I need to take to get started reading RSS feeds?

My Yahoo!’s new powerful capabilities are very intuitive and the easiest way to start reading RSS feeds. As the number one Web site in the world, millions are already familiar with Yahoo!’s services so starting here is intuitive for most folks. Once you have mastered My Yahoo! you may hunger for more powerful features that Bloglines and others provide. The first two steps are housekeeping. Then we’ll move on to actually using RSS.

Step 1: If you already don’t have a free Yahoo account, visit this page to sign up. If you already have a Yahoo! Mail account then you’re all set.

Step 2: Visit this page and click the yellow button to activate the new My Yahoo! RSS features. You may need to log into your Yahoo account if you have not done so in awhile.

Step 3: Now you’re ready to start RSS-ifying your page! Yahoo lets you add any Web site that publishes an RSS feed right on to your My Yahoo page. As soon as these sites update their feeds Yahoo will capture the new content and add it to right onto your personalized page.

The beauty is that you can add any web site you want, as long as that site publishes a feed. Almost all blogs publish RSS feeds as do hundreds of major news sites. Yahoo! makes this a snap for you.

* Visit Yahoo.com and search for some of your favorite news/blog sites. Be specific as possible. For example search for "New York Times sports" or "internetnews.com" or "Reuters business news" or "Micro Persuasion" or "Robert Scoble" (popular Microsoft blog).

* Take a close look at the first few results and look for links that say "Add to My Yahoo!" Click the link and Yahoo will confirm with you that you want to add the selected content to your My Yahoo page.

Step 4: Now you're ready to get more advanced. Simply visit any of your favorite news/blog sites and look for the orange and white icons that say either RSS or XML. They are usually found at the bottom or sides of the news/blog home page. Most sites publish different feeds and list them all on a single page, as the New York Times does here.

Right click on any XML/RSS icons and choose “copy shortcut.” Visit My Yahoo! Click on the link that says "add content" and then the link that says "Add RSS by URL." Paste the link you just copied to the clipboard and it will be added to your page.

In addition, check out sites like PubSub and GNews2RSS. These services let you set up customized "search feeds" that alert you any time your client/product/service is mentioned on a blog or news site.

Step 5: Visit http://my.yahoo.com and read all of your feeds in aggregate on your personalized page.