What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndicate” and the best way to understand it is to think of it as very simple and portable version of a blog’s content. While their blog’s website has a design and can only be seen at theirwebsite.com, the blog’s RSS feed is portable and can be read (in it’s text form) from anywhere. When a blogger releases a new post, the RSS version is created automatically and can be viewed from a variety of places (like Google Reader).

Finding RSS Feeds

Virtually every blog has an RSS feed built in, even all ActiveRain blogs have RSS feeds. To find the feed, look for the icon (like the ones below, but usually orange) or the words RSS and click the link. The url in the address bar is that feed’s address. For example:

How Do I Use Google Reader

Visit http://google.com/reader. If you currently have a Google/Gmail account you can login with those details, otherwise create a Google account. From there, you can begin to add RSS feeds (see above) that Google Reader will track for you. To add a feed, simply click the “Add Subscription” link on the left side inside of Google Reader and paste the feed url (i.e. feed://blog.realspacetours.com/feed/).

Great, But How Does This Help My Real Estate Business?

The benefits of using something like Google Reader are three-fold:

First, it saves enormous amounts of time. Instead of bookmarking and visiting 50, 100, 500 blogs, all the entries show up on one page where you can skim through to find the articles that are of interest to you.

Second, following many blogs ensures that you will never miss anything. If it happened, you can be sure someone has blogged about it. Forget the newspaper, 100 quality blogs will give you a perfect snapshot of the world, local and real estate news you’re looking for.

Lastly, I want to share one of my techniques that can have a substantial impact on your online marketing efforts. If you’ve been following my blog you know how big I am on interacting with your community, blogs are the number one way to do this. Here’s how: most blogs will allow comments on the posts, on which you can leave your name (branding) and website (web traffic). By using Google Reader to skim for relevant posts, leaving a valuable comment with your name (i.e. “John, I completely agree that……and I think that……”) you are exponentially increasing the reach of your brand. Just think: if you’re leaving 10 comments per day on blog posts that are related to your market, and each post receives 500 visits on average, that’s an extra 5,000 targeted people every day that will be seeing you and your brand. Needless to say, blog comments are powerful.

If you’d like a feed to get started you can add the Blog.RealSpaceTours feed at: feed://blog.realspacetours.com/feed/

Still have questions on RSS? Feel free to ask in the comments below: