RSS readers for beginners

There are a large number of perfectly intelligent, well informed web users to whom the term “RSS feed” brings on a frown and a strong desire to head for the nearest exit. It is, to many people, a phrase that either means absolutely nothing or conjures up unflattering images of internet geeks, probably dressed in Star Trek uniforms and drumming their fingers to the theme tune from the X-Files.

However, as Scobleizer reported in October 2007, between 10 and 65 million people already use RSS Feeds in some way – and this figure is only going to increase as more sites offer RSS and more users become aware of its benefits.

But where does a new RSS user get started and what potential does this technology offer to anyone looking to promote an organisation, business, website or blog?

A good starting point for the answers to these questions lies with RSS Feed readers – free to subscribe services that help users organise their RSS Feed subscriptions. There are various competitors to choose from in a very crowded market, including Netvibes, I-Google and Pageflakes.

No one at those companies will thank me for saying that there isn’t a great deal to choose between them, but the beauty of all the main RSS readers comes from their simplicity. Registration, choosing your feeds and customising your homepage can all be done in a handful of clicks. Follow the steps on the Netvibes help page and you can have a fully running RSS Feed page in well under an hour.

However, the real potential in RSS Feed readers is that some of them - Netvibes and Pageflakes particularly - allow the creation of public pages that any web user can access (again, all for free). These can be designed quickly and with limited fuss by anybody who signs up for an account with that reader. Once active and filled with RSS Feeds, a public page can be promoted to web users who can subscribe to them irrespective of whether they hold an account with that reader.

Therefore RSS readers, like Netvibes and Pageflakes, offer you the capability to tailor make a ready made visual base for your chosen RSS Feeds that is instantly accessible to your target audience. Anyone can subscribe and with minimum effort have a page of rolling news from different parts of your preferred site or sites. For your audience it takes away the effort of having to trawl through sites or multiple sites for information – something that users are increasingly reluctant to do - while for you it means that your messages have an increased chance of being read.

Adding your own feeds, from say a blog or a website, is also extremely easy.

You simply copy the URL from your RSS feed (an entry soon will show you how to create RSS Feed from personal websites), place it in the "Add RSS Feed" tab that is prominently displayed on all the RSS readers mentioned above. Your feed should then become instantly active and ready to be put in your public page.

If youre still confused about this process, then this page from the BBC tells you how to do this in a step by step way for the BBC RSS feeds (see the box on the right hand side - "Subscribe to this Feed")

Some organisations have already spotted the potential in these public RSS reader pages. The UK’s National Archive Office and the Washington Post have their own pages while anyone interested in the US elections can stay up to date with several news organisation newsfeeds on Pageflakes.

And we even have our own social media blog public page here at skinflakes.

RSS Feed readers provide an easy, interesting and effective way of marshalling your feeds in a manner that makes them accessiable and visually impressive to your audience. With no cost implications and limited set up time, they are the easy way to get your voice heard.

How to Netvibe …

Personal Page - http://faq.netvibes.com/getting_started

Public Page - http://faq.netvibes.com/public_page#public_page

How to Pageflakes ...

Personal Page

1. Visit http://www.pageflakes.com/
2. Click on the “Sign Up” option at the top right of the screen.
3. Fill in the information table as instructed.
4. Decide whether you want to alert your friends to Pageflakes through Google, MSN (etc)
5. Now you are through to your page. To customise, click on the menu tab (top right) and from the left hand options bar, browse “flakes” (i.e. RSS Feed options) by category or by keyword (clicking on the yellow “Browse Flakes Tab”).
6. If you have found a site that doesn’t have a Pageflakes feed already, then click on Menu and then “Add an RSS Feed”.
7. Copy and paste the RSS Feed link from the site into the “Add Feed” box – and the feed will appear on your page.

Public Page (Pagecast)

1. Log onto your personal page
2. Open up the menu bar and select “Make a Pagecast”
3. Select “Public Page to the World”
4. Fill in the menu tab, including a title for your page, some key words that will help it be picked up by Pageflakes search engines and any email addresses of people you`d like to alert to your public page.
5. And there it is – a public Pagecast page. Edit the page with the feeds you want as per the instructions for the personal page above