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| | The Social Networking Sites for Business Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | RSS and Syndication | Views: 195 | | Jul 26, 2008 8:40 am | | RSS and Syndication | # | 
John Dilbeck | | So what is RSS and how can it be syndicated?
First off, RSS is a simple file structure co-created by Dave Winer and Netscape. Dave calls it Really Simple Syndication and others call it by other names. As a co-creator, I think Dave should have a say in what it means, so I'll refer to it as Really Simple Syndication, too.
Dave was working to build a system to make it easy for multiple authors to build a website. He started with a program called Clay Basket and it later evolved into Frontier, Manilla, and Radio Userland.
For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rssVersionHistory.html
I've been using these systems since he started developing them.
Currently, I use a Manilla host to power my primary blog at http://johndilbeck.editthispage.com .
EditThisPage predates blogging and was working well before we heard of the terms web log and blog.
I use Radio Userland to build all my large websites, such as GeorgiaDragRacing.com and JohnDilbeck.com. It also powers my blog at http://ISucceedByHelpingYouSucceed.com .
(I guess I should mention that Radio Userland has a very powerful database and is fully scriptable using a language that is similar to AppleScript, but is more powerful in a number of ways.)
I'm in the process of changing how I build AYearFromNow.com. It is powered by Site Build It! and I've been building it using the block builder that is included with SBI. Now, I'm working to adapt Radio Userland to my needs for that site and I'm making substantial progress. The changeover should be completed in a few more weeks, and then it will be much easier and faster to build that site.
So, much of what I do online is a result of the tools that Dave Winer and his team developed before he left Userland Software. You can learn more at RadioUserland.com.
Now, we're seeing huge improvements in WordPress and other blogging platforms, and I'm starting to re-evaluate whether http://johndilbeck.editthispage.com will remain my primary blog, or whether I'll switch to http://21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com . If I make the switch, I'll redirect my JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com to point to the new blog.
OK, that said, why is RSS important and what can you do with it?
Let's approach that subject in the next message in this thread...
Act on your dream!
JD
John L. Dilbeck, Dilbeck Marketing, Murphy, NC 28906 USA
http://SquidooMarketing.ning.com
http://JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com
http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.comPrivate Reply to John Dilbeck | | Jul 26, 2008 9:30 am | | re: RSS and Syndication - why is RSS important and what can you do with it? | # |
John Dilbeck | | Now that there is a protocol called RSS, we have a way to easily produce content on one site and republish it on another site.
This is called syndication.
(In addition to RSS, there are also competing XML formats and the Atom file format that Pyra created for Blogger.com, before Google bought it.)
Since there are multiple varieties of RSS, XML and Atom, an aggregator or feed reader needs to be able to read multiple versions.
Another way to solve this problem, and one that I prefer, is to run your news feed (RSS, XML, or Atom) through Feedburner.com (recently purchased by Google) and use their optional service that makes the new feed compatible with almost all browsers, aggregators, and feed readers.
For more information on aggregators and syndication, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Syndication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_feed_aggregators
Now, we're starting to make all of this useful.
I can write to a blog that automatically creates a news feed and anyone can subscribe to that feed using a desktop news reader or an online aggregator such as Yahoo, Google, Bloglines, or many others.
If you've been to a blog, you've probably seen the subscribe invitation. Most blog authors provide ways for you to easily subscribe to the blog postings via RSS, Atom, or email.
As time goes by, more and more people are more reticent to give their email and/or other contact information to subscribe to newsletters, so - for that population - making your writing easily available without requiring an email subscription makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand, many more people understand email and prefer to subscribe via email and it is a good thing for most blog authors to offer this, too.
You can provide your feed via email by using FeedBurner.com or mailing list providers such as Aweber or GetResponse.
On most of my blogs, I provide email subscriptions via FeedBurner, but in the future, I'll be using the blog broadcast feature of Aweber. That's what I'm using for http://21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com .
Another thing a blog author may want to do is to add an easy way for a reader to add the feed to their customized Yahoo or Google page. Feedburner makes this easy.
So, now we can write to our website (if using SBI) or blog and it will automatically generate an updated RSS or Atom file. The next time your feed reader or aggregator updates its display, it will grab a copy of this new file and show you any updates.
One of the easiest ways to see this in action is to build a new page at Squidoo.com or HubPages.com. Each site offers a module or hub for syndicating an RSS feed.
You can see this in action on these lenses:
http://www.squidoo.com/should-you-tweet-your-blog
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-marketing-community
Each of these lenses syndicates (re-publishes) the news feed from one of my blogs or a Ning.com community.
That means I can write on my blog or participate on http://SquidooMarketing.ning.com and these lenses will automatically update to display the current information on the other sites.
Ning.com also allows syndication of RSS feeds, so I can show a feed of my top-performing Squidoo lenses or one of my blogs on my page.
For example, see my profile page at:
http://squidoomarketing.ning.com/profile/JohnDilbeck
In the left column, about where the Giant Squid image appears in the center column, you'll see a list of my top Squidoo lenses (which is a feed provided via SquidUtils.com).
I use the RSS module provided by Ning.com to syndicate this feed.
In the center column, a bit farther down, you'll see a syndicated version of my MyBlogLog.com feed.
It combines news feeds from various sources and links to my activities on several sites.
I used javascript to include that on the page.
I've not had any luck in syndicating my MyBlogLog feed on any site where I'm not the community creator. Apparently, Ning.com allows community creators a bit more access to javascript than they do to members. I don't know if this is a feature or an oversight. It may disappear at any time.
So now, we're able to write one place and show that new material on other sites or desktop applications - all automatically.
It takes some time to set it up, but then it (should) work automatically with little to no attention on your part.
To be continued...
Act on your dream!
JD
John L. Dilbeck, Dilbeck Marketing, Murphy, NC 28906 USA
http://SquidooMarketing.ning.com
http://JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com
http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.comPrivate Reply to John Dilbeck | | Jul 26, 2008 9:55 am | | re: re: RSS and Syndication - should you tweet your blog? | # |
John Dilbeck | | New sites are coming online every day that offer a variety of tools to help you aggregate, combine, and syndicate your writing.
For example, Twitter.com allows you to send short messages (up to 140 characters) to your followers. Whether you have one person or several thousand who choose to follow your Twitter feed, all you have to do is enter the comment and off it goes.
I use a program called Twitteriffic on my Mac OS X system. It's an application that I keep running in the corner of my screen when I'm online.
Every 15 minutes, it polls my Twitter account to see if I have any new messages (called variously tweets or twitters) from the people I'm following. I can read them at that point or save them to read later, if I'm busy.
It's easy to reply to someone or you can send a direct message if you don't want your other followers to see it.
There are many ways to access and use Twitter. You can go to their website or use one of the applications for your computer system. Other options include browser add-ons or your cell phone.
Since we're talking about syndicating your content via RSS, let's ask the question:
Should you tweet your blog?
http://www.squidoo.com/should-you-tweet-your-blog
Currently, I'm using Twitter Tools to syndicate to Twitter.com whenever I post a new blog entry to 21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com.
But, I'm not really comfortable with this.
I don't want to be seen as one of those people who is always promoting, but not participating.
Since Squidoo.com offered an easy way to tweet about updates to our lenses, I'm promoting new lenses over my Twitter feed. I rarely tweet about a lens update.
If you send a Squidcast about a lens, it will be broadcast over Twitter to whomever follows @squidcasts.
See http://twitter.com/squidcasts .
Now, this provides at least three ways to announce updates to existing lenses or the creation of a new lens.
You can send a squidcast, use the tweet link in the green area after publishing, or blog about it.
The Squidcast will be readable by anyone who is your fan when they look on their Favorites page in the Squidoo dashboard. Or, they can get all the Squidcasts - whether they are a fan or not - by following @squidcasts on Twitter.com.
By the way, while I'm thinking about it, I can be found on Twitter.com at:
http://twitter.com/johndilbeck
OK, back to the topic at hand.
I don't want to come across as a spammer on Twitter, but if I overdo the posting to Twitter from my lens, it can appear as if I'm doing nothing but promoting.
Now, this can be compounded with a program or plug-in that automatically tweets when you publish a new entry on your blog.
The more you use these automatic tools, the more likely you'll have people choose to stop following you on Twitter.
As Roger Carr suggests, one way around this is to post other things to Twitter - to participate more without promoting.
Lately, I've been exhausted and sleep-deprived and have a hard time thinking about anything that isn't related to caring for Mom or promoting my business.
That makes it more difficult to participate without promoting on Twitter. I just can't think of much to say.
So, the automatic syndication features we love can become detrimental when over-used, or used inappropriately.
All of this is relatively new and we're all trying to decide the proper etiquette.
Of course, some people don't like any commercial promotion, so there will always be people who choose to un-follow you or unsubscribe. That's to be expected.
The goal, as I see it, is to find some middle ground where you are free to promote, but don't make that all you do. I'm still working on finding that middle ground.
So, that's all I have to say about RSS and syndication.
Do you have any questions or comments?
Act on your dream!
JD
John L. Dilbeck, Dilbeck Marketing, Murphy, NC 28906 USA
http://SquidooMarketing.ning.com
http://JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com
http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.comPrivate Reply to John Dilbeck | | Jul 26, 2008 11:37 am | | re: re: re: RSS and Syndication - should you tweet your blog? | # | 
Mitch Mitchell | | Nice series on RSS feeds, John. My blogs both have RSS feeds, but I have yet to put them on any of my other sites. The main reason is because I had to create one for my first blog, which I did, but for the life of me I can't remember how I did it; it was almost 4 years ago. The second blog software came with it already set up, so I didn't have to do a thing.
However, I will also say that I believe it's more important for my blog than for my websites, since I update the blog way more than the websites, and, at least in my mind, that information is more entertaining, if not more important at times, than my other websites.
Mitch Mitchell
T. T. Mitchell Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ttmitchellconsulting.com
http://www.seoxcellence.com
http://www.reviewsofeverything.info
http://www.imjustsharing.com
http://www.medicalbillinganswers.com
http://www.ttmitchellconsulting.com/Mitchblog
Changing Attitudes and Perceptions for Unlimited Growth
Private Reply to Mitch Mitchell | | Jul 27, 2008 4:38 am | | re: RSS and Syndication - should you tweet your blog? | # |
John Dilbeck | | Hi Mitch,
Yes, most blogging software now automatically includes one or more RSS feeds. I think WordPress 2.6 includes several feeds. Hang on a sec and let me load my blog in another tab...
Nope, I'm wrong about that. I just looked at the page source for the home page of the blog and found this line of code:
(link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="21st Century Affiliate Marketing RSS Feed" href="21stcenturyaffiliatemarketing.com/feed/" /)
I changed the angle brackets to parentheses so I could show it here, and I removed the http protocol prefix so the link wouldn't be active.
That code shows that there is an RSS/XML file to be found in the /feed/ directory. When I loaded that page and looked at the source, it shows as an RSS version 2.0 file.
I know there are plug-ins that create multiple versions including Atom feeds, and I'm almost positive that earlier versions of WordPress created more than one feed as a matter of course.
Hang on another sec...
I just looked at the source code for my blog at MurphyNCCoupons.com, which is powered by WordPress 2.1.3 and it has RSS 2.0, RSS 0.92, and Atom feeds. I'm pretty sure that was standard in earlier versions of WordPress.
I haven't updated that blog because I intend to mothball it as soon as I get the time. A failed experiment, as it were.
Oops, Mitch, it looks like I got a bit sidetracked. That's what happens when I forget to take off this propeller beanie cap.
So, let's just assume that all current and new blogging platforms offer one or more RSS feeds.
Ryze.com is one of the glaring exceptions to that, by the way.
I believe that cross-promoting between blogs and sites is a great way to build readership in ways we may not be able to predict.
I know for a fact that people find one of my sites and then become regular readers of another site that suits them better. So, syndication has been good for what I do.
Now, to your point about your blog being more entertaining and updated more frequently than your sites...
That's a great reason to syndicate at least your blog headlines on your static sites.
For example, I manage GeorgiaDragRacing.com for my brother. It's a static HTML site, but I syndicate his blog's headlines on almost all the pages on the site, and the full feed on at least one page.
To a casual visitor, it looks like we're updating GDR whenever he posts an entry to his blog at http://gdrn.blogspot.com, but we're not. I just set it up as automatic syndication.
I rarely visit GDR, unless I become aware of a problem.
David updates his blog whenever he can, and it is then rebroadcast on over 1,000 pages. I get regular notifications that people are subscribing to his blog via email and I can watch the stats at Feedburner.com and see that more people are subscribing to the RSS feed, too.
That's just one example of how readers of the blog are exposed to the website and vice versa.
Now, all of your sites may not be a good match for your blog(s), and that's when you have to make a choice of syndicating or not.
I'm not telling you that you should syndicate, just pointing out an example of where it has worked well for me.
One of the problems with static websites is that they start to lose their rankings in the search engines when they are not updated periodically. At least that's the common belief, whether it is true or not.
On most of my static sites, I syndicate my blog headlines using PHP, and search engines read that as if it were text on the page, as opposed to syndication using javascript - which the search engine spiders don't see.
So, even if I don't update one of my static sites very often, the spiders are still seeing new content when I blog on a completely different site.
For example, my main site used to be:
http://www.johndilbeck.com/
but I have been sadly neglecting it for months.
Still, it currently has a 3/10 page rank and has an Alexa rank hovering around 650,000. I attribute part of that to syndicating various feeds to the home page, even when I don't update the actual site.
A lot of this is speculation, but it's based on a lot of experimentation over the last three years.
Sorry to be so long winded, but I just don't know how to say this and give examples without typing a bit.
Regarding blogging vs building sites, have you read this page?:
http://rss.sitesell.com/sellmoreonline.html
Now, that's a promotional page for Site Build It! and is an affiliate link. I don't totally agree with all the points made, but it has made me think about the future of my marketing efforts.
Truly, I don't know whether a good blog is better or worse than a good website, but I do know that a blog is far easier to update.
I'm still thinking about it and trying to find a way to test it.
Maybe you'll find something of value in this overly-long reply.
Thanks for jumping in. I look forward to sharing ideas and knowledge with you.
Act on your dream!
JD
John L. Dilbeck, Dilbeck Marketing, Murphy, NC 28906 USA
http://SquidooMarketing.ning.com
http://JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com
http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.comPrivate Reply to John Dilbeck |  | |
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