Startup BizCast #8 – Small Businesses and RSS Feeds (Steve Mullen)

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I was recently told by an acquaintance that RSS feeds have been explained to him a number of times, but despite that he still doesn’t understand the technology. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a great tool for small business owners to get the word out about their company or their offerings. The problem is that it’s difficult to explain.

On Startup BizCast #8, I work without a net (i.e. without an interviewee) to tackle the subject of RSS fees. RSS is a way of making your web-based content available to be viewed in RSS feed readers, re-used by other websites, and easily indexed by search engines. That’s the simple explanation, but the technology can be used a number of ways to the advantage of small business owners. This episode will be broken into chapters (announced by my lovely and talented wife, Jennifer, in her podcast premier!) in an attempt to keep it as simple as humanly possible. I’ll attempt to give an explanation of the system and how it’s used, talk about how to create your own feed, and give some novel uses that can benefit startups and established businesses alike.

NOTE: After listening to this episode, if you have any further questions about RSS please feel free to post them as comments in this blog post. I’ll answer them to the best of my ability!

Links to sites mentioned in this week’s episode:
NetVibes (www.netvibes.com)
RSSPad (www.rsspad.com)
Rapidfeeds (www.rapidfeeds.com)
EndGame Public Relations, my PR firm (www.endgamepr.com)
Review of Online RSS Feed Generators (via my blog, Media Relations and SEO PR)