Top 5 Ways to Use RSS Creatively

We all get our feedreaders stocked with syndication feeds of blogs, news sites, and different Web2.0 projects. But there is more than one way to use syndication… Here are five ways to use RSS creatively.

5. Use syndication to share content on sister projects.

If you have several related or ’sister’ projects, RSS can be a valuable tool to share content. You can display content from one project on all others, or vice versa… possibilities are endless.

Pros: You know have stronger sense of unity between projects.
Cons: You have larger share of duplicate content.

4. Troubleshoot projects.

Several big CMSes allow big variety of different feeds to be produced — one feed for every tag, one feed for every category etc. So, if you have entry tagged with ‘widget eejits’ that occurs in ‘widget’ feed, but not ‘eejit’ feed — you have trouble on hand. Track status of your (or someone else’s) projects by using feeds.

Pros: Giant wealth of information to be gained.
Cons: Unless you have automated tools or really small project, there is no way you can read and analyze so much info.

3. Feedvertize.

Why Google has bought Feedburner? To gather information? Yes. To strengthen its portfolio? Obviously. To explore possibilities of feed advertising? Absolutely. Now, feed advertising launches from its sleeping grounds to the Internet spotlight. Competing vendors, high rates… it’s just about the time you should begin advertising in feeds.

Pros: Extra income. You can now safely publish your full feed without worrying about lost income.
Cons: Feedvertizing is still in its beginning stage. Tools are rudimentary, and income… it’s really not that high.

2. Research your niches.

Did you know that Google has feed-like mechanism, Google Alerts, for every search? Did you know that Google Blog Search has RSS feed for every search? These are very potent tools for niche research and keeping track on your competitors. Now, you may have the information as soon as it’s stored in Google’s index - just using the feedreader.

Pros: Now you can track all new information that is created in your niches.
Cons: With popular terms, it may get very tiresome.

1. Subscribe to your own feeds.

No, I don’t mean childish tricks of inflating feed subscriber counters by registering countless accounts at different subscribers and subscribing them all.

I mean to subscribe to your own feeds to track your information from the side. For example, my feedreader is stocked by hundreds (yes, hundreds) SEO blog feeds, and while reading through them, I’ve spotted my AGLOCO Viewbar entry. Was it out of place there? No, it was beginning of blogs talking about its release.

To be able to read your blog as a third party, you’d better subscribe to your feeds

Pros: You will be able to read your blog as a third party, which is always good.
Cons: What cons?