Wordpress Lets You Do That?

Really Simple Syndication. Doesn’t sound really simple to me but it is. RSS is a technology that has been around since about 2000, and what it does is publish blog entries, videos, podcasts and news headlines frequently in a standard format to users who subscribed to the blog’s RSS feeds.

Using RSS allows us (subscribers) to receive updates and content to those sites that we subscribe to instead of going to your bookmarks and constantly checking for updates manually.Now if you’re like me, and have a dozen great sites/blogs that you really like, it can be very time demanding to visit them every day and check for updates.

In order to subscribe to an RSS feed, we have to have an RSS Reader. These readers come in both local (desktop) or web based readers, and you can access your feeds no matter what computer you are using, and no matter where you are in the world. If you are a FireFox user, then you can automatically add Feeds to your browser simply by clicking on a Blog’s subscribe button. A great web based RSS Reader is through Google Reader, and you can set it up even better so you can view it through iGoogle.

Once you have subscribed to a RSS Feed, your reader will automatically update once a new feed has appeared and you will be able to click on a link to view the new post.

So this leaves the question, ‘How do I subscribe to a RSS feed?’. The easiest way, is when you are at a blog you want to subscribe to (like this one:) look at the browsers address bar and you will see an image similar to the one in this post. Click on that image and you will be presented with the opportunity to subscribe via your bookmarks, or other RSS readers that may be there. Many blogs have a very prominent RSS image and encourage readers to subscribe.

Being the hard working Internet Marketers that we are, sometimes it just isn’t time friendly to punch out a blog post every two or three days. If you have a good following of readers who love your content, they may get a little disgruntled and begin to look for their content elsewhere. We don’t want to lose our readers, as they are our biggest asset. So what can you do?

The easiest thing to do is schedule your posts to come out at a time and date that you can pre select. What many bloggers choose to do is to set aside a few hours once a week or so, and just blog away for that entire time. Just make sure you close your email down and turn your phone off, so that you actually finish what you started (This is a great way to get anything done by the way).

So now you have written your fantastic post filled with awesome content, it’s time to schedule when you want it to be published. When you are actually writing your post, there is a section on the right that says “Preview This Post” in a little box in the sidebar. In this same box you will also see, “Publish Immediately Edit”. You want to click on that hyperlink that says edit.

All you have to do now is put in the date and time you want you post published and it is all done. Don’t forget to save your post before closing the page.

So if you could write ten or twelve posts in a couple of hours, you can set your blog up on auto pilot for the next few weeks, giving you more time to focus on other things.

Did I write this post now or did I write it a few weeks ago and set it to be published now? Well, I published it as soon as I wrote it actually:)

There are a number of ways to insert a Youtube video into your Wordpress post, and this is just the method that I use as I find it easiest.

Pretty simple really. Go to the YouTube website and find the page where the video you want to you use sits. To the right of this there is a section that says “Embed”. If you click on the customise link then it will open up some more options for you.

What we have here is HTML code that you will have copy and paste into your post into your post under the HTML section. To customise it, select if you want a border and what colour you want it too.

You have the option of including or not including the video to show related videos when it has finished. If you do not want readers to move away from your post, or even to expose your reader to a possible competitor of yours, then it might be a good idea to choose the ‘Don’t include related videos’ option.

Video blogs are getting quite popular and as faster broadband is reaching out across the world, this is a great medium for getting your message out there. I’ll be sure to insert a Youtube video insert of what I have just described above soon, to clear things up for you.