Just before I discovered how easy it was to start a blog, I discovered RSS feeds. In this article I’ll explain what an RSS feed is and how you can use one for your financial planning website, and for keeping up to date with things in your industry.

What is RSS?

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. But that probably doesn’t explain what it is or what it does.

Most blogs ( and many non-blogs) have RSS feeds set up. In fact you may actually be subscribing to some of these feeds without realising it.

An RSS feed is a way of feeding information or content to a subscriber. On this blog I have an RSS feed in place.  Every time I write a new blog article, it gets added to the RSS feed.  If you click here, you’ll view the RSS feed for this website.

Many people elect to subscribe to an RSS feed.  You can use a service like Google Reader, or even Outlook to view the feeds.

Every time I write a new blog post, it updates the feed and you’ll see it appear in your reader as a new article.  So within your reader you could subscribe to a whole range of RSS feeds and at a glance see which ones have new content. So instead of having to visit each website to see if there’s anything new on it to read, you can save yourself time by using an RSS reader.

Uses for RSS feeds

The problem is that currently, not many people know what RSS feeds are, or know how to subscribe to them. Unless you’re a computer geek, it may seem a bit hard.

So that’s why there are easier ways to package up the RSS feed to make it more user friendly.

On this site, I offer the chance to subscribe by email. I use an online service called Aweber to manage the email newsletter. Aweber links to my blog’s RSS feed and downloads any new articles into an automated email. I can then login to Aweber, review the email and send it to my subscribers.

So every time I write a new article, I can easily email it to my subscribers. And the RSS feed makes this process much easier.

Another use for RSS feeds is via social media like Twitter or Facebook. Every time I publish a new post, an automated tweet is posted to Twitter with a link to the new post. How does this happen? Via the RSS feed.  I’ll write an article explaining how I do this later this month.

Another great use for RSS feeds that I hinted at earlier in this article is to aggregate your reading. I use Google Reader to bring together all the feeds I subscribe to. I have my feeds categorised – Financial Planning in one section, Blogging feeds in another etc. So I don’t have to visit multiple websites – all the new articles are there in front of me.  Think of the time you’ll save if all this new content was streamed directly to one place instead of you having to search for it.

It’s also possible to set up RSS feeds based on certain keywords. Say you want to know every time your business is mentioned on the internet.  You can set up an RSS feed to facilitate this.

Wrap Up

So an RSS feed is a great way to get information delivered to your computer. Think of it like an email, but from a blog or a website.

Whilst a lot of your clients may not be confident in subscribing to an RSS feed, the feed itself can be used to deliver content to an email list – most people are happy to subscribe to something like this.

So RSS feeds can greatly simplify your online life – both for your personal reading and research and also to help your business deliver great content to your clients.

Are there things you’d like me to explain further? Something not clear? Leave a comment below.

And don’t forget to subscribe to my email list to see my RSS feed in action!

photo credit: dullhunk