Got RSS?

I admit, I’m pretty late to the Google Reader / RSS feed party. I finally figured out the Google Reader about a year ago and now it occupies a central place in my daily media diet. More recently, I’ve started using an app called “New Rack” on my iPhone and iPad (it’s better at redirecting me to the original posts than gReader, which seems to always want me to stay in the Googleverse).

The acronym “RSS” stands for “Real Simple Syndication,” and while at times it seems not all that simple to implement, it should nevertheless be part of any active communicator’s regimen. Your website needs to have an RSS feed – which is just one reason I am recommending WordPress as the foundation of your web presence these days.

For example: I follow at least two dozen individual musicians; by follow, I mean I subscribe to their individual e-mail newsletters. But that is starting to get tedious and hard to follow. There is no centralized way to keep that input in a single place.

There is another handful of musicians whose RSS feeds I subscribe to. Their stuff is all in one place, and the Reader tells me immediately when there is something new to open and read.

So if you’re not already familiar with RSS, have a look at this video:

Then, if your website is not already configured to provide an RSS feed, make it so.

Oh, and, a generous and grateful nod to Ariel Hyatt for posting this to her CyberPR blog this morning. I, of course, received word of it through her RSS feed….