Don’t have an RSS reader, yet?
Allow us to change your mind and convert you to a faithful user. RSS has much to offer to every person on the Internet. Busy professionals, students, hobbyists, marketers, journalists – with little tweaks here and there, RSS can greatly improve your lives.
What does RSS mean?
Not everyone knows about RSS as it’s a little bit of a relic. RSS is abbreviated from “Real Simple Syndication” – a simple protocol meant to direct content from news services and blogs to an RSS reader. Rather than having to go to each site individually, you’d have content from multiple sites come to you and you’d be able to read headlines in chronological order.
Every site used to have an RSS feed in their source code, which users could subscribe to by clicking a button, though now it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
Why is it still relevant for both businesses and individuals?
RSS is due for a comeback and there are vocal proponents of this idea. We’re bombarded by more content than we’ve ever imagined across multiple platforms. If you’ve ever felt owned by your phone and digital presence, then RSS returns ownership of your attention and time. Reconfigure how you spend your time online.
Business owners have much use for RSS as a way to monitor their brand and their competitor as well as supplement their marketing research through social media listening and data collection.
5 main benefits of RSS feeds:
So… RSS syndicates content from blogs, webpages and news sites. What’s more to talk about?
The answer – plenty more!
RSS feed readers have come a long way since the early days of Google Reader. Even back then you had some inkling as to what you could expect in the future, because at one point, Twitter had native RSS feeds for public accounts and you could subscribe to comment sections as easily as a website.
Users can expect quite a bit more today from their readers.
You have everything in one place
Let’s cover the basics first.
You have all your subscriptions in a single dashboard, so no longer do you have to overload your browser with multiple open tabs (though old habits die hard). That much should be self-explanatory.
Everything – this is the word we should emphasize. RSS readers can syndicate content from more than just blogs and news sites. Users can effectively turn just about every website into an RSS feed from active searches on job boards to Twitter lists and threads. Depending on the reader, you get even more options.
Inoreader supports YouTube and has a built-in search specifically made for Reddit, which makes it a preferred option since Reddit’s own search function is notoriously bad.
It saves you time
Think about your daily routine as soon as you start your work day. You open your mail and see a long list of newsletters piled in your inbox, which you have to clear to get to your important work emails. You then spend valuable seconds visiting each work-related site manually to peruse article headlines.
Sure, these are merely seconds, but they add up to minutes. How often have you said to yourself I’ll just check a few things really quick only to discover half an hour has flown by? RSS eliminates repetitive, menial tasks and drastically reduces distractions at the same time. A sharp mind gets so much more done in less time.
It helps you be more productive
Everything we’ve described above contributes to your overall productivity by virtue of reducing effort and time. That’s only scratching the surface. Advanced RSS readers have numerous features designed to automate your workflow surrounding research and data gathering:
- Built-in social media sharing buttons – connect your social media accounts to your reader to directly publish an article you’ve found interesting without having to leave the reader in the first place;
- Filters – users can label and organize their subscriptions any way they see fit. Another layer comes from automated filters. Not every RSS reader offers these. Inoreader presents users with opportunities to exclude or emphasize on content based on keywords and other criteria such as authorship;
- Integration with other applications – Zapierand IFTTTsupport RSS automation and users can string together a long sequence of actions based on specific triggers whether they’re readily available in the platforms’ databases or created by you. Inoreader takes this a step further with its support for regular expression, which opens the scope of actions wider.
You get the exact information you need easier than ever
As we’ve touched above, RSS curates your subscriptions in one dashboard – a terrific advantage when it comes to searching for information. Whether you’re trying to find an article you read some time ago or are searching for similar content, RSS readers give you excellent tools to find what you need in a matter of seconds.
It all depends on how you decide to structure your subscriptions. Modern RSS readers – Inoreader included – have a strong search that can be pointed inwards to your subscriptions or outwards to sites you haven’t subscribed, yet. The best example of this is Inoreader, which boasts not only a global search that scours every indexed site in its database, but also an active search that collects articles against a set of criteria over a period of time.
You can discover the best and most trusted content
RSS initially declined in popularity, because social media presented a dynamic alternative to content discovery. You could trust your friends to share relevant articles and information and give you context as well. Users could also directly follow publications and receive their latest articles – filling in the role RSS plays.
However, as we’ve seen social media has become very susceptible to misinformation. Couple this with ineffective feed algorithms and you lose most of social media’s value right then and there. A call to embrace RSS gives you the chance to subscribe and discover trusted content as it appears. Advanced RSS feed readers boast powerful discovery tools to enrich your subscriptions.
