Creating an RSS Feed Swipe File
This past week Nicole Dean was guest blogging on one of my other blogs and her topic for the week was How To Get Ideas For Your Next Blog Post.
I will be going into more detail on occasion here. Today we will look at this tip.
11. RSS Feed Swipe File.
This idea came from my friend, Susanne of HillbillyHousewife.com – Set up a Google reader account which is a RSS feed reader/aggregator. Then, go and sign up for the RSS feeds for several competing sites. (If you don’t know of any competing sites yet, the feed reader will allow you to search for them.) Then, log into your feed reader any time you need ideas for a blog post. Alternatively, you can log into the feed reader once per week or per month and jot those ideas into your idea notebook for later.
Two things to do here to take advantage of this tip.
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Set up a Google Reader account
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Find and add the feed url for a blog to it
Google love them or hate them has some really excellent free tools. One of those that I use regularly is the Reader. Getting it set up is easy.
Open a Gmail account or use your existing account. You may want to have more than one if you are working across various niches so you can keep them separated..
At the top of your Gmail account you can click on Reader.
Once you do that the Reader will open up then you can add the url of the feed by clicking the Add a subscription button.
Then you can either add a search term to find feeds on your topic or add the actual feed url from a blog you wish to follow. This will also work for any rss feed you may wish to add. This can include news feeds, article site feeds or any place else that has an rss feed.
Here is what I got from a search of the term WordPress. You can just click the subscribe button to add each one to your Reader.
You can also add the feed url in direct through the Add subscription box. Most sites that have an rss feed will use the feed button or a hyperlink of RSS.
Clicking either the button or the link will usually open up the feed in a browser and you can just copy and paste the url into the add box. You can also find it by right clicking and selecting properties to get the url.
You now have the details so it is up to you to take action and use this technique for blog post ideas.
Mike Paetzold
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7 comments
Doug Champigny
Twitter: SuperAffil
on August 17, 2009 at 4:34 pm
It’s important to note here that while the RSS feeds are a great source of ideas, keeping someone else’s post open as you rewrite it is still plagiarism. Just get the idea for your post, close the feed and go ahead and say what you want to say…
Doug Champigny´s last blog ..Affiliate Jump CPA Network Has Launched
[Reply]
Andre Arnett on August 17, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Have had my reader set up for a while and you are right it can generate some ideas and possibly articles or blog post. This is a good way for someone having a hard time writing to take a look at.
Andre Arnett´s last blog ..Happy Birthday Mike Paetzold, But You Get The Present
[Reply]
Joel Osborne
Twitter: JoelOsborne
on August 17, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Great ideas once again! There is so much great information online already, that coming up with new ideas should not be hard at all, and using RSS feeds is a fantastic way.
Joel Osborne´s last blog ..True Quality PLR from Jimmy D Brown – Prime PLR
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Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach on August 18, 2009 at 3:30 am
Another useful application for feeds is to use Feedburner – it will pop up a tray notification whenever a new blog post has been released (thus giving you a jump on being the ‘first’ to comment on key trends that appear in favorite blogs).
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s last blog ..BY Invitation ONLY – Income Fitness Launch
[Reply]
Lonnie Minton on August 18, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I have a Google Reader but haven’t used it much lately. I need to revisit this and take a closer look at the suggestions you make in this post. Thanks for the screen shots showing how to set it all up.
Lonnie Minton´s last blog ..Building Your List With Email Swaps
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Luca Di Nicola
Twitter: rsonline
on August 18, 2009 at 9:22 pm
RSS feeds for some reason are intimidating to people. Thanks for the step by step guide to using Google Reader.
Nicole did a fantastic job as always.
Barbara, thanks for the Feedburner tip as well
Luca Di Nicola´s last blog ..Are Your Niche Sites and Mini Sites Optimized For Targeted Keywords?
[Reply]
Brett McEllhiney on August 19, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Love Google Reader!
I have been using it myself for awhile now. Been mostly using it for niche site ideas, but had not really considered using for my Internet Marketing. Guess it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Thanks Mike.
Brett McEllhiney´s last blog ..Affiliate Marketing with Clickbank Pirate – Case Study – Week 2
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