How Do RSS Feeds Work With Social Media?
How RSS Feeds Your Social Media
Here at 5 Star Social Media , we just released our newest feature and that is the ability to add RSS feeds to your Content Schedule. That’s all great if you know what an RSS feed is and the hows and whys of using it. If not, this blog post is going to break it down for you. Let’s start with the obvious. What is an RSS feed and what does that stand for.
What is an RSS Feed?
An RSS document which can be called a feed, web feed or a channel can include full or summarized text and metadata (publishing date and author’s name). Basically what that means is that an RSS feed gives you a way to keep up with your favorite new site, blogs, podcast, or website. An RSS feed is a way to choose what content comes to you.
What does RSS Stand For?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
How do RSS Feeds Work?
An RSS feed will give you basic information like titles, descriptions, and links back to the original content. But how does it work? The author of the content maintains a list of notifications on the site in a standard way. People who want to find out the latest from the author can subscribe to their RSS feed.
Now on to a more important topic, why you should be using RSS feeds.
Why You Should Be Using RSS Feeds.
You may be thinking about RSS feeds the way most people do and that is to gather information for yourself, like news articles, sports highlights, and more. But what about using RSS feeds to share content to your social media platforms?
Posting content to all of the social media platforms on a consistent basis is always something that most people struggle with. Why not use the power of RSS feed to get relevant content out on your platforms? Here are two ways you can use RSS feeds to add content.
Share Trusted Sources
I promise you, that no matter what industry you are in, there is relevant content that you can be sharing from trusted sources on your social platforms.
If you are a Chiropractor you could be sharing content Chiropractic News and Research from News-medical.net or from American Chiropractic Association. In 2019 they released a website called Hands Down Better that is geared towards educating the public about non-drug pain relief by using Chiropractic.
Both of these examples are great ways that Chiropractors could educate their patients about Chiropractic care by sharing content created by someone else.
Share Your Own Content
The other option would be to share your own content. If you are a podcaster, for example, you can easily share your Content to all of your social media platforms by simply using your RSS feed. Most places that host podcasts, like Anchor FM, have a built-in RSS feed making it easier than ever to share your own content.
How to Find RSS Feeds.
Now that we know what an RSS feed is and why we need to be using them, it’s time to tackle how to find RSS Feeds that you can share. As stated before you can easily share blog posts, podcasts, youtube channels, and more via an RSS feed and there are a few different ways to find the RSS feed.
Look for the RSS Icon
If you see the standard orange icon like above you will know for a fact that you found the RSS feed. If you see this on any website, simply click on it and it will take you to the site’s RSS feed. From there you will copy the URL.
Check the URL
Next, if the blog, website, podcast, etc is a WordPress site all you need to do is add /feed/ to the end of the website’s URL. You may not know if a site is a WordPress site or not, but simply adding the /feed/ to the end will tell you for sure if it works or not.
For example, if ScienceDaily uses WordPress for their website. If I were to google it’s name, I would find this site and it would look like this:
Now if I take that same URL and add /feed/ to the end of it, it will then get me their RSS feed, which just looks like a bunch of codes. But this URL is exactly what you need and I’ll show you how to use it in just a moment.
YouTube channel pages double as RSS feeds. Simply copy and paste the URL for the channel into your RSS reader.
Use an RSS Feed Finder
An RSS Feed finder is a tool you can install on your web browser to help you locate RSS feeds. There are several options to choose from no matter if you use Chrome or Firefox or whatever browser you prefer.
How to Create Your Own RSS Feed.
WordPress Site
If you are using WordPress simply add /feed/ to the end of your website’s domain name. Example: https://rss.com/blog/feed/
Create Your Own Feed using Zapier
Some sites offer RSS feeds, but you can use RSS by Zapier to create RSS feeds with data from thousands of apps.
You can create the RSS by first choosing an app event, then setting up the Zap, then turning on the zap. Zapier makes it very easy by showing you the 3 easy steps you need to follow.
RSS.app
There is also a website called RSS.app that allows you to create your own RSS feed from websites, Instagram Feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google News and so much more. Using RSS.app to create a feed takes 3 quick steps. They have a free version that allows you to create 2 RSS Feeds that has up to 5 posts per feed, or you can upgrade to a paid account and create more.
- Enter a webpage URL and then click the Parse Website
- Use their visual selector to create the feed
- Click on generate feed, preview it, and save it.
How to use 5 Star Social Media to Automate your RSS feeds to your Social Media Accounts.
Now that you know what an RSS Feed is, why you need to be using it, and how to find or create one, let’s get to the real magic and that is using 5 Star Social Media to disperse your RSS feeds to all of your social accounts. We Set this up one time and you can continually have content posting to your accounts without lifting another finger.
It’s never been easier to add content to your social accounts as it is with 5 Star Social Media.
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