In a previous post, “Automatically Send Your WordPress Posts As An Email Newsletter,” we talked about how you can manually create newsletters and email blasts using RSS.
Here we’ll talk about why would you customize an RSS feed. There are many things that you can do with this technology! In the early days of blogging, RSS was a way to “subscribe” to content you wanted to read. You could subscribe using an email address to read lists of posts on a RSS compiler, called a reader, or get them automatically delivered to your inbox whenever there was new content.
Podcast players use RSS. When you subscribe to a podcast, you automatically get an update when a new podcast is posted. It’s easy stuff that’s all over the web. But many smaller websites don’t realize that they can use this technology too.
Now, RSS can be used all over your website. Anything that can be published in headline or title format is a prime candidate for an RSS feed. Depending on the type of site you have, you could create and publish feeds for any number of things, such as a feed of job openings, new real estate listings, or new forum discussion threads.
Calendar events can be published as RSS feeds. You can create a feed of forum posts and discussions. You can even create feeds of photographs, from Flickr or your own site. Think of anything that can be broken down into individual items and you’ve got the raw material for a feed.Let’s look at some of the ways that a developer can implement an RSS feed for use your website.
1. Post content that you bookmark onto your website – With RSS you can combine feeds on a particular topic and insert that mix of stories into your web site. Once it is set up, your site will be continually updated with content from the feeds you’ve chosen. Or, you can manually customize the content. Whenever you’re surfing, tag the content using del.icio.us, create a feed, and then take that feed to FeedBurner to publish the content to your site.
Why would you customize this RSS?
- You want to be the site where people come for up-to-the-minute industry news.
- You want to compile and publish publicly available information on a particular topic, like recipes.
- You want to show what products or news is available from various other sites.
2. Update event calendars – You can use RSS to create a detailed event in a calendar, which you in turn can share publicly on your site or to your subscribers. Using RSS your public calendar can be quickly and easily updated for everyone to see.
Why would you customize this RSS?
- You have a busy speaking schedule.
- You’re a food truck that changes location.
- You’re monitoring events of other organizations or individuals.
3. Publish blogs to email subscribers – Check out the Limelight Department post we linked to earlier for a thorough explanation of how you can easily publish using RSS.
Why would you customize this RSS?
- Any time you update your blog, it automatically sends the new content as an email newsletter.
- You want to keep in touch with your subscribers but don’t have time to create an individual newsletter or email blast every time.
- You have a product list that changes on a regular basis.
4. Update product pages – In the early days of Google Shopping, they used RSS feeds to continually update data with price, color, location, size, material, inventory availability and any other descriptor of an item that might have multiple options or change frequently. The owner of the RSS feed had only to input the data into the feed and any site that used that feed would automatically be updated.
RSS works similarly today, except there’s even more it can do. You can include an RSS feed on your site that can be very specific, such as items under $10, or the most recent 10 items that you’ve added to your inventory.
Why would you customize this RSS?
- You have a large product inventory that you want to highlight in different ways (newest, featured, sales, most popular, etc.)
- You want to promote new listings on eBay or other auction sites.
- You want to highlight availability, for instance, in stock, out of stock, preorder, on re-order, discontinued, available now.
5. Monitor news from websites you choose – These could be blogs or newspapers that you follow because they have useful news or information for you or your site visitors.
Why would you customize this RSS?
- Your local newspaper doesn’t provide a feed of their own stories, you can set one up so you get new articles that are posted.
- You want to keep up with a lot of websites or blogs without having to manually visit each one.
What else can you think of for reasons why you would customize an RSS feed?Does your website have a unique need that you can see this being a benefit for? Let us know! This type of customization is what we love to do.
