Lawyer Marketing Definitions: What are RSS Feeds and Why Should I Care?

Published on 19 May 2009 by Jeff Berman in Blog

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or email updates on this topic.

What exactly is an RSS feed and how does it benefit me?

“RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter.”

Why is RSS important to my lawyer marketing efforts and my legal blog?

1. RSS enables you to syndicate the content you produce for your legal blog and website. It gives people a quick and easy way to stay up to date with all your latest postings. Anything you can do to help people receive your content with the least amount of friction possible is advised.

2. Helps you to develop a following. RSS enables people to stay up to date without having to remember to visit your site each day. A user will be much more likely to follow your posts through an RSS Reader (see below) that is checked every day as opposed to visiting your blog on a regular basis.

Most blogging platforms come standard with RSS feeds nowadays, however if yours doesn’t you can sign up for a free RSS feed account at Feedburner.

What do you use to read/view RSS feeds?

RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators. There are many free options to check out. Some are web based and others can run as a program on your desktop (Feedreader) or integrate with desktop software such as Outlook (Newsgator). I personally use Google Reader which is web based. Some other web based options include Bloglines and My Yahoo.