In preparation for an upcoming social media training, I asked the participants what social media tools they would most like to learn more about. I was surprised by how many of them said that they would like to better understand RSS feeds, so I thought I’d share a little overview with you, in case you’d like to learn about them too.

RSS is often described as standing for “really simple syndication.” The Wikipedia definition is a pretty good one. RSS is a, “family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.”

Now, you might be wondering, why should I care about RSS feeds?

Four reasons:

1. RSS feeds help you follow recently updated web content without your having to visit each site individually. By reading feeds in a feed reader you can; for example, read all of your favorite art bloggers’ newest posts in one place.

Some popular feed readers are Google Reader, FriendFeed and Bloglines. Just this week the Google Reader Blog announced that even if a site doesn’t have an RSS feed, you can use Google Reader to follow changes to any website.

2. RSS feeds allow you to keep up to date on news about specific topics. For example, The New York Times has dozens of topical RSS feeds. You can subscribe to a feed of all of their Arts news, or just their Dance stories.

3. RSS feeds can de-clutter your email in-box. For example, did you know that you can subscribe to Google Group updates, Google Alerts, and Google Blog Searches by rss? (You do have a Google Alert set up for your name, you business name, and news about your art form, right?).

4. By providing an RSS feed for your supporters to subscribe to, you make it easy for them to keep up with your latest news. Many social media tools automatically publish an RSS feed. If your site doesn’t come with an RSS feed, the Wild Apricot blog post, No RSS Feed for Your Website? No Problem, has a list of tools that can help you create one.

Also, if you have a blog, or podcast, I recommend you “burn” your feed with a service called Feedburner to help you track your subscribers.

All that said, many people are still not familiar with RSS feeds, and still rely heavily on email. When possible, offer a way for people to follow your news by email too, whether through an e-newsletter, or by allowing them to subscribe to your blog by email, which Feedburner and Feedblitz will allow them to do.

Flickr photo credit: RSS Diagram uploaded by Jason Rhode.