20 Secret Uses for your RSS Feed Reader Your Mother Never Told You About

Mar 7, 2008

20 Secret Uses for your RSS Feed Reader Your Mother Never Told You About

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As a blogger, you almost certainly follow other bloggers via a feed reader such as:

And that’s all very well and good - feed readers make it super-easy to see what’s going on out on the big blue marble!

But! Did you know that feed readers can be used for far more than staying abreast of DailyBlogTips, Problogger, and other insightful publications?

Hmmmm?

Here are 20 creative uses to which you can put your RSS Feed Reader and watch your blog productivity (or at least, your own comfort) rise towards the skies.

1.) Track ongoing events. Interested in the race for the White House? Click on the following link "Race for the White House", save the resulting URL in your RSS feed and you’ll be notified whenever new updates occur across thousands of blogs/news outlets/etc. You’ll never be short of commentary about which you can blog.

2.) Track your favorite forums. Many forums now offer RSS feeds for their posts! You can easily add their link to your RSS reader and stay abreast of current discussions. This is a SUPERB way to get blogging ideas - simply uncover a board that caters to your niche, monitor their feed, and write away. Need some good board ideas? Boardreader.com dynamically lists all the new topics for any discussion possible like pushups, knitting, parakeets, unlock iphone and the like. It’s one of my must-have tools.

3.) Flickr feeds. Have a favorite photographer or person whose works you love on Flickr? Want to follow a particular locale? Create an RSS feed to see whenever new items have been added! Here are the feeds for Houston, Basset Hounds, optical illusions and the user Matteo86photonature.

4.) YouTube videos relating to your blog niche. Do you blog about things for which people make clips and videos? Let’s say that your blog is a diet/fitness blog - you can set up an RSS feed that shows you when new aerobics videos are added. The uses of this boggle the mind - you can track "how to" videos, playstation videos and World of Warcraft, to name a few. If you check things daily, make certain to use the "Uploaded Today" option.

For example, 2 weeks ago a homebrew Wii developer was able to run Tetris on his Wii by using the Twighlight Princess exploit. This was big news for the Wii community, and of course, a Youtube video was created.

5.) Consumer product tracking. Do you blog about Wiis or coffee or iPhones ? Visit Google News, search for your product, and then add the RSS feed to your reader. For example, perhaps you worship the BlackBerry/RIM. This news link, Blackberry rim, will alert you to any newsworthy/blogworthy mention of the product.

6.) Job searching in your blog niche. Know someone looking for a job? Many popular job boards like Monster.com will offer RSS feeds for jobs in specific locations, industries and the like. Tell your friends about it and tell then to add the feed (okay, be a good samaritan, first visit How to explain RSS to normal people, educate said friend, and then set up the RSS feed for them yourself. It will take you only 2 minutes while it would probably take then 14 years). They’ll thank you for it.

You can also add a link to jobs in your niche and then blog about them when they appear.

7.) Twitter updates. Don’t want to spend hours going thru hundreds of comments? Twitter.com offers RSS feeds for people/updates/etc.

8.) Facebook updates. Dare I say, Facebook offers the same thing?

9.) LinkedIn Answers. If you blog about an industry covered in the LinkedIn Answers, say, Startups and Small Businesses, you can add a feed of that category to your RSS reader. That way, you’ll be alerted when new questions are posted…and you can then zoom over there to answer them (and get your links/resources known as well). Linkedin is HUGE in the business community.

10.) Track your name. This is kinda sorta obvious, but you can visit Technorati, search on your name, and then add the resulting link to your feeds. Now you’ll always be aware when people are writing about you. Very useful indeed.

11.) Weather reporting. Worried about the weather conditions for during the next 2 critical days? Visit Accuweather, search on your zip code, and then click on the cute little RSS button. Voila - your town’s weather updates in your RSS feeder. NOTE! - I’d recommend creating a sub-folder to hold non-business related goodies, of course. Do you live in San Francisco, CA? If so, here’s the RSS feed for San Francisco’s weather.

12.) Get notified when nostalgia appear in eBay. Are you dying to revisit your childhood and looking for retro black-light posters? Search for your particular item and then add the resulting link to your RSS feed reader. Voila - whenever a new item appears that matches your search, you’ll be immediately notified. Oh, and here’s the RSS link for "black light posters".

eBay also offers a super affiliate program you can integrate right into your blog! Check out my post Screw Adsense, get REAL money FROM eBay for a step-by-step guide on how to do that.

13.) Get traffic updates. Driving to a customer or client? Have to take your kids to the karate competition the next state over? Yahoo Traffic! lets you keep track of driving issues via your feed reader.

14.) Stay abreast of Amazon deals. Amazon.com offers weekly and monthly deals and bargains. Shopping for someone special? You can add a feed to their special price savings. Are you a member of the Amazon affiliate program? Blog about the savings in your site with your own Amazon Affiliate ID!

15.) Track your favorite sports. Yahoo Sports! has a very nice breakdown of all sporting news, complete with RSS feeds!

16.) Classifieds. Did you know that Craigslist offers RSS feeds for its categories? Simply browse to the location and then section in which you are interested, scroll down, and click on the RSS feed text you’ll see.

17.) Package tracking. Sending something via UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL/AirBorne? iSnoop.net will provide you with an RSS feed of that package.

18.) Calendar feeds. Trying to get everyone together across the world (and by chance, that everyone adores RSS feeds as well)? Sign in at RSS Calendar and make it so!

19.) Comic feeds. Want to read Dilbert in your RSS reader? Or maybe Control+Alt+Del? Tapestry Comics shows you over 265 online comic feeds.

20.) Airport flight delays. Traveling to a blogging convention? Accuweather.com offers current flight delay information (who would have thunk that for a weather station?). Browse to your area, copy that URL, and paste it into your feed reader and voila, you’ll see what airports have graced their passengers with an opportunity for extreme frustration.

I certainly hope the above ideas help you spark creativity for your blog! They certainly have been a boon to me in the past.

Do you have favorite RSS ideas not listed above? If so, feel free to share them below. I’d love to read about them.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

(By the way, if you have any questions about the topics in this posting "20 Secret Uses for your RSS Feed Reader Your Mother Never Told You About", do comment below - I'll try to clarify any issues).

Barbara Ling and Owlbert

If you find this blog posting useful, please feel free to share it below. And do feel free to let your friends know about it as well....I very much appreciate your time!