Your blog has the potential to be a direct marketing advertisement for your company that people request again and again. RSS is the way it can happen. Feel free to use this article on your own blog to inform your readers on the ease of feed syndication. Of course, link back to me if you use it.
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A blog aggregator is a way for you to manage all your blogs. While you can use most email programs to download your blog posts, like we used to download newsgroup postings, most people say web-based aggregators are easier. Among these, there is Newsgator, Blogrolling, Yahoo, Google, Bloglines, and probably 100 more. Do an online search to find one that suits you.
While there are plenty of feed aggregators choose from, my favorite is Bloglines. I like the interface and the ease of use. It updates me whenever any blog I subcribe to has a new post. Well, it doesn’t ‘update me’ in real time, it downloads the new content into “My Feeds” so that, at my convenience, I can read all my new posts. This way, I don’t spend all that time visiting each blog’s net address individually.
For instance, you can subscribe to both of my blogs and my newest posts will be waiting for you when you have a chance to read them. The service relies on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which is an XML file delivered directly to Bloglines. You really don’t have to know any of this, but if you’re interested, you can learn more about RSS by googling “rss wiki” or “bloglines.”
If you don’t really want to know about all the technical junk, but do want to speed up your blog reading, I’ve condensed the experience for you.
Step 1:
Register at www.bloglines.com
-You’ll create a user name and password. The software you download will put the bloglines reader in your taskbar, and a red dot on it will signify new posts.
Step 2:
Pick your blogs
-Of course, you’ll want to list athomemama.blogspot.com and practicalblogging.blogspot.com, but after that, I could recommend several for you. My blogroll can be found at www.bloglines.com/blog/athomemama and can give you some ideas on what’s out there. Plus on the main home page for bloglines, you will find a whole mess of blogs, arranged by type. By the way, I am allowed to refer to multiple items as ‘a whole mess’ because I am from Georgia and we follow a whole different set of rules than the rest of you people.
Step 3:
Read your blogs
-This part is easy too. The service will notify you when your blogs have new posts. Upon opening the software, you can view all your feeds’ newest posts. In fact, you can choose to clip the posts if they are really good or even post them to your bloglines blog. This blog is not a real blog, as you wouldn’t really use it to add original text, but to post different things you’ve read you really like. Also, as a neat addition, your blogroll (all the feeds you subscribe to) runs down the side of this faux blog. I LOVE this feature. It’s kinda like (more Georgia grammer) the clippings tab holds your private saved posts and the ‘blog’ showcases your public saved posts.
I hope you will take me up on this adventure. This service is free, easy, and will really open your eyes to the great net world out there. The internet is so cool!
If you are interested in learning how to use RSS to capture podcasts automatically, let me know. I use bloglines to capture my podcasts so I can download them to my mp3 player and listen to them wherever I go (car, gym, park, playing video games, walking around my house, etc.). There is some really neat free audio out there. You can find anything from sermons, to free spanish classes, to comedy shows, and political commentary. Our medium-sized town has a weekly podcast, as does Sean Hannity, tons of pastors, and loads of geeks like Kevin Rose, microsoft higher-ups, and gaming gurus. Podcasting is all the rage. That will probably be my next adventure.
Article originally published on one of my other sites, athomemama.blogspot.com It can also be found on AssociatedContent.com