Yes, you can use an RSS feed in your Rocketspark blog, read on to find out more information on how to do this and why it may be useful for your blog.
What are RSS feeds?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to structure blog content into a format called XML, this can then be used by yourself or others to help share your blog content with a wider audience, boost your SEO and gain subscribers. RSS feeds are found at a URL (website address), which displays the information in a formatted XML form, this is useful when trying to use your blog information in more than one place without typing it out multiple times.
Here is a quick example of what the XML content would look like.
<title>My latest blog post about Rocketspark</title>
<link>http://a-link-back-to-the-website.com</link>
<description>...</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2015 08:27:45 +0100</pubDate>
(repeat above for all blog posts)
Note: These are the only fields that are sent through the feed. We do not pass the blog images.
The RSS address would contain all the details about the blog posts. This can then be passed on to other applications that support RSS for an easy way to share your blog posts around.
The last 10 published live blogs are sent.
How do I get my Rocketspark Blog RSS feed?
Our blog automatically generates an RSS feed. You can find this link on your blog page right below the Full post archive link, the icon is the little round symbol with radio beacon waves on it. Clicking this will open your RSS feed URL in your browser (if it supports RSS).
Otherwise, you can right-click on this link and Copy the Link Address/URL to use elsewhere.
The RSS feed is automatically updated each time you post a new blog post, so no need to worry about a thing!
What are some ways I can use RSS?
An RSS feed is not for everyone, they are only useful if you have another website or application that needs content from your blog. Some people will not need to use one, listed below are some of the more common uses:
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Allow your visitors to subscribe. Automatically having an RSS icon on your website this allows your visitors to Subscribe to your feed. If your website visitors use RSS they most likely have an RSS reader program on their computer and subscribe to feeds they find interesting. This way they are automatically updated with the latest info from your website (and others) without having to actually visit your website.
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Email Marketing, some of the better email marketing tools allow a bit of automation of email newsletters by tapping into a designated RSS feed. The idea here is that you do your monthly blog post and then you can quickly get this information into your marketing emails, or automatically detect a new blog post and email this directly to your subscribers. Here are a couple of links to investigate here:
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/rss-to-email/
http://mailchimp.com/features/rss-to-email/
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Automatic Email Digest, a great not well-known tool that Google offers is Feedburner. It allows you to tap into your RSS feed and send out monthly digests of your blog posts to subscribers. A digest means that there is just one email with multiple blog posts of your newest content in the email. At our latest check, Feedburner is free to use and allows you to have free subscribers as well. This makes Feedburner a great option.
http://feedburner.google.com/