If you haven’t started using RSS for to subscribe to blogs and newsletters, it’s time to start. I know what you are thinking. “I barely have time to read my email so how would I have time to read news feeds?”. I thought the same thing, but now that I have started using RSS, it offers many benefits.

RSS offers a more convenient way for me to get the information I need from news and business sources. By subscribing to this information through an RSS feed, I can have all of my information aggregated into one place where I can easily access it when I have a moment to read it. RSS is an Internet technology for content distribution. Most news media sites will have an RSS feed available as do most blogs. RSS puts the control of the content you subscribe to in your hands. Simply subscribe to a feed using your feed reader of choice.

The simplest feed reader for getting started is to use your Web browser. Both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox enable you to bookmark feeds by clicking on the RSS icon in the toolbar and saving the feed. The top two images to the right shows IE7 and Firefox feed bookmarks. The bolded titles are those that have new content available. When you access the RSS feed of a web site or blog, the RSS feed icon turns orange. Clicking on the RSS icon enables you to subscribe to the feed.

There are other feed readers available such as Bloglines, Newsgator, Yahoo, MSN and others. Blogs may display icons such as those listed in the Add This image to the right so you can easily select your particular reader. Using these feed readers are similar to the browser readers, with the biggest benefit for the feed reader services being you can access your feeds from any computer.

Now that you know how to subscribe, try it now with the Masterful Marketing blog.

Benefits of RSS

• Get notified of new content without having to check all the sites yourself. Most feed readers bold feed titles to indicate new content.
• Read or scan a larger amount of information in a shorter period of time because you have it all at your fingertips.
• Subscribe anonymously to a feed, eliminating the need to provide your email address.
• Stop receiving the feed by simply deleting it from your reader.
• Subscribe to newsletters through RSS, getting them out of your inbox. No need to check your junk mail folders for newsletters that inadvertently get trapped.

Hesitate no longer – open up your web browser, look for the orange RSS icon and start subscribing to all the content you want.