Is RSS really that simple?

Social Media Bible, Chapter 18–RSS:  Really Simple Syndication Made Simple

There is no way I’ll get to the required number of words for the blog for this chapter, because yes, RSS really IS that simple.

You don’t have to understand all the history of this tactic or the technology behind it to know how to use it. If you find something on the web that interests you, and you’d like to see more of that same thing from the same author, look for the little orange RSS icon and you’ll be set to automatically get updates to that website, blog, whatever. Similar “follow” icons are often placed on sites for many of the social networking sites. In fact, sometimes under a “share” button, there are so many choices, it’s mind-boggling. Here’s an example of a small popup I saw (some are much bigger, with more icons)…how many of these icons do you even recognize?–

But the bottom line of this chapter IS simple…if you are doing a website or blog and you want other people to see it, be sure to make it easy for them to continually follow you by including an RSS feed icon on your page. And, if you want to be slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of doing this, check out the huge list of providers in this chapter (p. 345-347).

The “ROI” section of this chapter (p. 347) has an interesting study of an experiment by a company to evaluate how well Twitter could be used in a traditional promotional plan. And the “Expert Insight” section (p. 349) is a good introduction to LinkedIn. However, I’m not sure what either of those have to do with the topic of RSS feeds.