What Google Reader and RSS is?

Today I’m going to cover a topic, a very important topic, in blogging. It is called RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is your blog, well.. it actually only is your blog posts. Normally it is only the 10 recent blog posts.

So it is quick access to all your blog posts. You visitors can use it. When I read a blog, I do not read from the homepage. I read from Google Reader, it really makes it much easier to read for me. Face it, you don’t have to open 10-30 websites every day, just to check if they have updated. You really should use Google Reader.

What is RSS?

For the blog user RSS is your recent blog posts, automatically updated when you have posted some stuff. It doesn’t have to be text, it can also contain audio. Your blog’s RSS page, is called a feed. Sometimes RSS feed.

The user’s of your feed can use your feed to read your blog updates. Users is called subscribers – Because they subscribe to you feed for free. They can subscribe using Google Reader or any other RSS Reader as the RSS readers are called (logically).

For the geek: An RSS webpage is created of XML and the post managing is done by some PHP with database work (just if you worry about the coding) RSS was created in 1999, but it really grabbed the Internet with storm in 2005/2006.

If you not much of a coder, you should be happy now because WordPress, Blogger, almost every blog platform does have an RSS feed included.

How and Why You Should Use Google Reader

I really recommend Google Reader, first of all it is Google, so how bad can it be? (I love Google) Well, that isn’t the reason.. You really should use Google Reader because it is simple and a great way to keep track of every single subscription. It even works on an iPhone / any other mobile device.

It is not only simple, it improves your time to blog yourself. You don’t go the every blog you reads website, so you will not get distracted by any ads or so. You have the chance to be very productive here. The more productive you are the better.

You can organize your feeds in folders. I have a folder called “Personal Sites”, “Internet Marketing”, “E-mail Marketing” and so on. In this way I can separate every single topic. I only have the “personal sites” to check up on my blog. See if it is working etc.

I think you should give Google Reader a try, go to http://google.com/reader/ and login with your GoogleID after that you should click on Add a Subscription and then insert http://feeds.feedburner.com/DaneBlogger that is my RSS Feed page (otherwise you can just click here to see my feed in Google Reader and then click subscribe)

After that, use it for a couple of days and then you really would love it. No doubt. (Almost) everyone  is using Google Reader to read RSS feeds.

Give it a try at Google Reader!