Mastering RSS Feeds: A Detailed Guide for Authors

Here's the time savings I promised.

In parts one and two, we tackled the why and how an author should create engaging blog content. And yes, I heard the collective groans — it’s more work.

But I promised you some time savings to offset that work and this week I deliver.

I asked for a generated image of magical time savings and this is what I got. I was thinking more “time turner” from Harry Potter, but I’m not mad about it.

All Hail the RSS Feed

I touched on RSS feeds a bit, but this week I want to dive deeper, because understanding and leveraging RSS feeds can streamline your content distribution. What specifically does that mean?

• Blog once, and your newsletter is automatically sent.

• Create a post with an audio file, and it notifies subscribers that have paid for access - like an audio subscription.

• Create a zap to read the RSS feed, and let ChatGPT (or the app of your choice with API Access) create your social media and post it automatically

These are three of the most-used time saving hacks. Next time I’ll walk you through exactly how to set them up.

By the end of this week though, you'll know how to configure RSS feeds in WordPress, customize them to include featured images, and set up specific feeds for newsletters, events, and audio posts.

What are RSS Feeds? A Primer for Authors

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are a way to automatically distribute your content to various platforms. Think of RSS feeds as the conveyor belt in a sushi restaurant, delivering your carefully prepared dishes directly to your hungry customers. They pull the latest content from your website and deliver it to subscribers, email service providers (ESPs), or other applications.

Here’s the thing. Almost all website builders, including WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Medium and even Substack have an automatic RSS Feed. Try adding /feed to the end off any URL and see what you come up with. If that doesn’t work, a quick Google search is your friend.

Configuring RSS Feeds in WordPress

Since I’m a WordPress fangirl, let me share a few tricks with those that also worship at the altar of Automattic. WordPress makes it relatively straightforward to set up and customize RSS feeds, especially if you map out a strategy using categories and tags.

First I’ll share the “how” and then I’ll share the “why”.

Category Feeds:

• Navigate to your WordPress dashboard.

• Go to Posts > Categories.

• Click on the desired category. Let’s say you choose "Events."

• The URL for the category archive will look something like this: https://yourwebsite.com/category/events/.

• Add feed at the end of this URL to get the RSS feed for that category: https://yourwebsite.com/category/events/feed/.

Tag Feeds:

• Go to Posts > Tags.

• Click on the desired tag, e.g., "newsletter."

• The URL for the tag archive will be https://yourwebsite.com/tag/newsletter/.

• Add feed at the end to get the RSS feed for that tag: https://yourwebsite.com/tag/newsletter/feed/.

Why would you do this? The main reason is to automate sending information, of course. Again, I’ll share a step by step next time, but for now, let’s walk through a couple of real-world examples.

Example 1: Send a regular newsletter: Eliana Tangleberry is an author who snaps and shares photos during the week on social media. She uses Mailerlite and she has WordPress. She has the WordPress app on her phone and she uses it to post the photos and captions to her site.

She tags all of these short posts “newsletter” and then she configures Mailerlite to pull the RSS feed of the latest 5 of them every Friday and send to her newsletter list. (Pro tip: You can ALSO take these microblogs and automatically share them to your social media channels without any added work!)

Example 2: Creating an RSS Snippet for Events: Eliana is about to do a series of in-person events. She creates posts with the dates and times and other pertinent information, using a category called “events” on her site. This gives her an evergreen list of events, and an RSS feed she can use to send to her newsletter subscribers instantly, or as an addendum to her regular newsletter.

In other words, you can string together multiple RSS feeds in emails so the content is dynamically updated.

One Helpful Tweak: Customizing your Feed

There’s one last tip I’d like to share, and that’s customizing the feed beyond what comes out of the WordPress box. This is helpful if you want to adjust the length of the content, or format the featured image. Grab a plugin. Don’t Google this one. There’s some super tech experts that have opinions on how to do this. Ignore them. Grab the plugin called "Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & More". Even if you’re not using Mailchimp. It’s super fine.

You’re an RSS Genius Now

This was a lot. I know. I try to keep it just the things you need to worry about, but if you have questions or get stuck - let me know. I’m here.

Next week, we'll delve into setting up your ESP to work seamlessly with your customized RSS feeds, ensuring that your content reaches your readers effortlessly.

Until next time,

Chelle