Easy as Pie
IceRocket (rss.icerocket.com) is a good one, offering an easy-to-use RSS-builder that auto-generates the tiny strip of code you need to make a Web page RSS-readable. (IceRocket offers the free service as a way to encourage use of its Web search engine.)
Once you’ve completed the process, your Web page automatically will generate an RSS feed that visitors can add to their RSS readers to automatically track changes and updates you make to that page.
Have breaking news about your mission? Want to quickly distribute the latest version of your newsletter, or alert donors and supporters to disasters or important legislative actions? Just post the announcements on your RSS-enabled pages, and everyone subscribed to your RSS feed there will receive the update.
More to know
Even though IceRocket and most other RSS builders are virtually goof-proof, you’ll also want to spend some extra time making
sure your RSS feed is picked up by all the major RSS news aggregators and that all the major RSS readers are picking up on the feed as well.
For monitoring coverage by aggregators, check out Syndic8, Feedster and News Is Free — some of the most widely used aggregators on the Web.
You’ll also want to check your RSS message’s exposure on another group of sites — RSS search engines. These sites specialize in searching out RSS content on the Web and summarizing what’s in the feeds. They differ from other RSS-monitoring sites in that they go beyond simply citing RSS feed names and descriptions, and bring back summaries of the actual text being offered by the RSS feeds. These include Technorati, Feedster, PubSub and Rocket News.
Once you have the hang of RSS and the enormous potential it offers, you’ll probably want an in-depth look into the medium. Great sites to check out for such study include “RSS: What It Is, Where to Get It, How to Make It, How to Use It” and “RSS: Your Gateway to News & Blog Content” by Danny Sullivan.
