What is RSS Feed? Here is How To Use RSS Feed?

RSS feed(s) old concept but still useful for publishers, podcast creators, news websites. If you want to know how you can use RSS feed(s) for your purpose then it’s a must-read article for you.

So, let’s dive into this step-by-step article to find out, how you can use RSS feed for your website.

What is RSS Feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, where syndication means receiving and providing information also for cross platforms. RSS simply helps users and applications to access the updated information of any website in a human-readable format without visiting the website manually.

As a publisher it is important to use RSS because it is an efficient way for providing content to the user’s browser or desktop. And RSS feed(s) help publishers with this.

publishers use RSS feed to keep their users updated with the new content which they publish on their websites, it may be blogs, podcasts, news etc.

How RSS Feed Works?

RSS is XML formatted plain text which is is readable by both humans and machines here is an example of RSS-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
 <title>RSS Title</title>
 <description>Description Goes Here</description>
 <link>https://www.desikapil.com</link>
 <copyright>2021 desikapil.com, All Rights Reserved</copyright>
 <item>
  <title>Blog</title>
  <description>Here Blog Description Goes.</description>
  <link>https://www.desikapil.com/wordpress-vs-bootstrap/</link>
  <pubDate>Publish date Here:</pubDate>
 </item>
</channel>
</rss>

Here is how RSS Feed looks like-

Why to Use RSS Feed?

To provide updates to your users about the new content which you are going to publish on your site shortly. So that your visitors can stay updated with your content and you also can get back your old visitors on your site.

For embedding the content on cross platforms. Here is an example-

Let’s say you have a blog on one website and podcasts on another website (different platforms). So in this situation, you can use RSS to embed your blogging site with podcast site vice versa.

RSS feed is also helpful for embedding your content with other platforms like i-tune, Google Podcasts, sound cloud, wordpress, etc.

Users can subscribe to feeds on your site so that they can get content directly delivered to their browser, desktop, or feed readers. That simply means they don’t need to remember your website URL to visit your site in the future. And it is the efficient way to keep engaging your old visitors with the fresh content on your site.

How to Use Rss Feed?

As a publisher, I can understand how difficult it is to keep everything in a sequence it may be about the content on your site or the visitors on your site. By keeping that problem in mind many platforms like WordPress, started working on the concept of rss feed. Which makes the publisher’s work even easier. Here is how?

RSS Feed For WordPress

You can use RSS for your WordPress site to get more subscribers, for providing regular updates to your subscribers.

WordPress automatically creates a feed page for you, so you don’t need to create rss manually for your WordPress site.

You can access to your feed by entering the “/feed” just after your domain name.

https://www.desikapil.com/feed/

And you will be redirected to the feed page of your site

Now you can embed it wherever you want.

RSS feed For Podcasts-

To start podcasts you will need a podcast hosting from where you can host your podcasts. And you will need a separate website for your podcasts. So your podcast hosting provider must provide you RSS to embed your podcasts on different platforms. Or you have to create RSS manually.

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Note, Podcast hosting is a place or server from where you can store and host all your podcasts. but you you can embed your podcasts on different platforms using RSS, which we will discuss below in this article.

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Now as you will start uploading podcasts your RSS will start generating. Now you can embed your RSS on different platforms-

#1- Google Podcasts-

To embed your podcasts with Google Podcast, you have to visit Google Podcast Manager to create your account for Google Podcast.

After creating your account and verifying all your details you can embed your podcast with google podcasts where users can listen to you.

#2- I-tune Podcasts-

I-tunes is the next most popular platform for podcasts. You can embed your podcasts to I-Tune listeners.

To embed your podcast with I-tune first create your I-tune account

Now submit your podcast to I-Tunes connect and wait for approval.

For detailed Info click here.

#3-Shopify-

Shopify also provides the same way to submit(Embed) your podcasts to Shopify

Just create your account on Shopify for Podcasters. Confirm all your details and wait for their approval.

You can submit your podcast shows to Shopify to gain reach among Shopify users.

To submit your podcasts to any of the platform google, I-tune, Shopify, etc. You need your RSS URL so that, these platforms can access to your podcasts and reflect them on to your account.

Are RSS Feeds Still Used?

The answer is yes..! Because RSS feed is the most usual way to embed content on cross platforms.

You can make people to subscribe your feeds so that they don’t miss any updates from you. And the best thing about feed is that people can read your content even in the offline mode.

If people subscribe to the feeds on your website they don’t need to remember your site URL to visit your site again. Neither they need to visit your site manually to check for updates.

You can create separate RSS feeds for the separate category on your site, so that you can get the most interested subscribers for your feeds.

RSS is an old concept but it’s still alive and used by many of the bloggers, publishers, podcast platforms, etc.

How To Track Who Are subscribing To Your RSS Feed?

To track the stats of your Feed subscribers, I recommend you to use the FeedBurner tool.

FeedBurner is useful in tracking the analytics of feed subscribers. it’s a tool owned by Google.

You can burn your feed using FeedBurner and you can track the complete stats of your feed subscribers.