I know that there are many publications out there announcing that RSS is dead. The main reason might be that the social networks let us follow the people, companies, and websites we like. If you ask me, I love RSS, and I love websites and blogs that actually care about RSS. Is your website among the ones that care?

First, what is caring?

Have you ever checked how your posts look via RSS readers? I know it sounds very banal, but for instance every WordPress-based blog or website has a built-in feeds support. Many of these blogs don’t have RSS links anywhere in their themes, but users can still subscribe.

Another point is optimizing your content for feeds. I think that RSS is very alive because it is not at all as boring as it sounds. RSS is no longer just feeds in plain text, and standard readers like Google’s, are no longer the only option for experiencing this content. For me, Google Reader is the managing platform, while apps like Flipboard and Pulse are an amazing reading experience.

Also, when you optimize your RSS feeds, you should take the time to think about how ‘sexy’ they look to modern readers.

Do’s and Don’ts

1. Make sure you send well edited teasers to the RSS feeds
You want your followers to be able to read and enjoy your content, but you also want them to visit the web page. The teaser should not be too short, and it’s best to create one, rather than cut and trim the post itself. Visiting the web page should be a read-more experience, and not a read-again experience.

Sending the complete post is never the right decision. Users will have no reason to ever visit your site, and if you don't care about that, long posts are not the optimal experience for RSS feeds either. Users browse through their feeds, and to grab their attention, you have to be concise and interesting.

2. RSS Posts must contain images
If your post contains many images, make sure that the best one will be sent. One of my most favorite websites is Smashing Magazine; their content is well picked, written and edited. Unfortunately, I cannot enjoy their content on RSS readers: they send complete posts, and as much as I like their content, it always feels too long to view via the reader. Also, their posts contain images, but they do not send any image using the RSS image field, so it doesn’t look ‘sexy’.

Make sure you always send an image because the feed does not look good when there are several posts without images. The images will help your feed to stand out from the crowd, and improve visibility.

3. Do not use advertising!
You put so much effort into the content and then you end up creating such a bad experience with the ads. I realize that if there's no way of monetizing the content, there may not be any content at all, but does it actually monetize anything?

I believe that this one is for you to test and to decide. But do test it first!

4. Categorize your feeds
This one is meant for bigger websites, sites with many categories, and targeted audience and content.  I love Wired Magazine, but I'm not interested in all of their content. I’m very happy to be able to choose the categories and blogs from which I want to receive updates. On the other hand, Mashable, an independent online news site, “makes me” read all their posts. In my opinion, users will pay more attention to well-targeted feeds.

Conclusion

Whether RSS will die, stay around, or keep evolving and increase in its importance, remains to be seen, but you should still make the effort to make your feeds look great. There isn’t too much work to put in and the ROI will be high.

To emphasize the importance of RSS, I want to share with you a quote by Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs (Currently owned by AOL): “Visiting a website is like dating, getting a daily e-mail is like going steady - but subscribing to an RSS feed, well, that is like getting married to a news source. It's really the highest commitment you can make.”

Why not subscribe to my blog’s feed now shmilov.com :-).