The Authentic Eccentric

It’s obviously a lazy Saturday night for me, since here I am wandering the web catching up on what I’ve missed while I’ve been focused on projects. It was time well spent, though, since I came across the best post from Stephanie at Back In Skinny Jeans:

How to explain RSS the Oprah way

Today, I’m going to explain how RSS can help you live your best life online.

We all have busy lives with very little time. Web surfing is fun but can take hours going to visit every single website and blog you enjoy. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could just get all the headlines of the most current stories from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place?

I really struggle to explain the benefits of RSS to people I work with, and it’s a shame. Using RSS feeds allows me to monitor over 100 sites for updates, news and information at a glance. More importantly, they are the secret to an endless stream of website visitors if you understand how to leverage it.

I added Stephanie’s feed to my reader a few months ago - I’m such an organizational freak that I categorize my feeds, so while trawling tonight, I immediately glommed onto the headline -

How to explain RSS the Oprah way

I once read there are roughly 52 headline formulas out there, and this is one of the oldest and most effective forms of that headline, the “How to” lead. Toss in the keywords RSS for geek bait, and Oprah for gossip/celebrity fans and voila, you have an article everyone starts talking about and linking to. See? I’m doing it too. Really - stop over and check Stephanie’s blog out - she’s better at demystifying it and you’ll appreciate the new stream of things you can comment on and about, promise.

In a feed reader, you have roughly 35 characters and spaces to hook readers into actually clicking over to read the full post. It’s the ultimate tease - it’s up to the combination you create to reel them in and hope they’ll comment or link back. Everyone who blogs develops their own method of doing this, but the better you craft your post title, the more effectively you’ll attract surfers to you, whether it’s a slow Saturday or a Thursday idle hour.