RSS isn’t Dead – How to Use RSS for Social Media Marketing

Before I explain to you how vital RSS is and how to use RSS for Social Media Marketing Automation, let me start with explaining what an RSS feed is and why is it relevant today.

What is RSS?

With so much new content being added to the web daily, it has become challenging to keep up with what’s happening online. There are many ways in which people access data today, including visiting a website, doing google searches, or relying on social media to keep them informed. One solution that gets overlooked today is RSS.

RSS originally stood for RDF Site Summary, but now it is commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a way of subscribing to the content on a website, a blog, or almost any media content.

It allows you to access the data with real-time updates without actually visiting the blog posts or websites. Instead, you use a feed reading software or link the Feed to a website (where you wish to see your Feed).

It has a standard format, which means that every RSS feed has a design to look the same for consistency. RSS files are simple text files with essential information related to updates including Title, Body, Author, or Media Files

Example: RecurPost’s blog RSS feed link looks like “http://www.recurpost.com/blog/feed” and can also be accessed using the RSS icon on the website.

Is RSS relevant today?

It depends upon the purpose for which you put RSS to use. Many big technology companies have stopped using RSS. They are not wrong in doing so from a business perspective, why would they want to share their resources for free with anyone when they are spending dollars on salaries and operational costs. Most of the online publishers or bloggers earn through advertising or affiliate marketing, RSS simply strips companies of such income.

However, RSS does hold relevance today, as it is an excellent source of information for publishers, and it also helps access information from different websites at one place.

There are add-on benefits as well, including backlinks, social media automation, and improved readership.

Even numbers are totally in favor of RSS. Feedly, one of the most popular RSS reader, has more than 14 million users on its platform. There are other good readers as well, with millions of users on their platform.

With all of this one thing is clear, RSS certainly isn’t dead and buried just yet. There are many daily uses for RSS feeds that you may have forgotten about or weren’t even aware of in the first place due to its falling popularity.

RSS today can be used in multiple ways.

How can you use RSS feed for your business?

• Stay updated with Industry News/Trends
• Track specific Google searches
• Create a Personalized Web Feed
• Publish your company’s feeds on your website so people can easily find and subscribe to your content
• Curate content on your website
• You can use specialized RSS feeds to communicate new products or services with vendors, affiliates, customers or members
• Use RSS to automatically share blog posts and updates on Social Media using RecurPost

How can you automate your Social Media Marketing using RSS?

Identify Website with Relevant and Quality content that you want to share on your Social Media

First, create a list of websites that share content that is well-suited for your target audience. While creating the list, you need to ensure a couple of things, including:

• Does the website publish content regularly?
• Does the website support RSS feed?

Go to RecurPost feed manager

You can get content from your favorite websites with RecurPost Feed Manager. Just add their RSS Feed, and we will automatically grab their latest content as it is published.

Add Feed to your Content Library

To Add Feed to your content library, you need to click on the Add Feed button in the feed manager

Add Feed URL in the given box and select the Content Library you would want to save your Feed in.

Add Google Alerts to your Content Library

Set up Google Alerts to monitor the web for your company’s mention, or perhaps your industry alerts.

Add a Feed using Google Alerts.

Create a content library using the Google Alerts feed.

RecurPost will automatically pull content from your Google Alerts which will then be shared with your audience on Social Media.

Create a Schedule for your Content Library

Once your Feed has been linked to your content library, add a schedule for the content library.

Fresh content will be automatically published to your Social Media Networks.

When a blog is published, it will automatically added to your Content Library. Your content library is connected to your social profiles and will post new content in real time.

RSS Feeds is a great way of curating quality content for sharing on Social Media Channels. You can simply set-up your own Feed in less than 5 minutes.

What are you waiting for? Set up your own Feed using RecurPost.

Are you using RSS feeds to automate your Social Media Marketing? Let us know in the comments below