Sale Fish Marketing

What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a great way to easily collect
and distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a
wide range of topics. 

What problem does RSS solve?
Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes frequently or on
an unpredictable schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community
and religious organization information pages, product information pages,
medical websites, and weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there
is any new content can be very tedious.
Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem.
Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they
are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for
spam.
RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of
changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented
to you well organized and distinct from email.

How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their
website in a standard way. Not every webpage may have an RSS feed. This list of
notifications is called an “RSS Feed”. You can tell if a page provides a RSS feed by the following RSS Icon on the page (or sometimes the page may say RSS FEED.

People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can subscribe to the feed or list. Virtually all RSS feeds are FREE. In order to subscribe to RSS feed you must first select a RSS Aggregator or RSS Reader. These specialized computer programs have been developed to automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you have subscribed to and organize the results on the RSS reader page.  (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called “RSS Channels” and “RSS Readers”.)

Producing an RSS feed is very simple and hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs.

How to get Started?
Start by first selecting an RSS reader.  In this example I am using Google’s, http://www.Google.com  ,RSS reader (IE7 or later).  There are
many other readers to choose from and most are free.

1:
Go to GOOGLE and click on the “Star” icon in upper right corner outlined in the
red box.

2: The “Star” icon is where you will find your list of Website Favorites.  Click on the “Feeds” tab outlined in the red box.  It is probably blank if you have not used RSS feeds before.  If there are RSS feeds present you can keep them or delete them by Right Clicking and Deleting them.  Now you know where to find the RSS feeds you subscribe to.

3: Go to one of your favorite web pages where you would like to subscribe to a RSS feed.  In many cases you may have to hunt around the webpage to find the RSS icon or reference
to a RSS feed, if one exists.  In the example the RSS icon is at the bottom of the page outlined in the red box.

4: Click on the RSS icon, it will take you to that pages RSS subscription links.  Some pages may have just one RSS link for the whole web site.  Others, like in this example have multiple RSS feeds to help people target just the topics of interest.  In
this example click on the “Audio” link outlined in the red box.

5: After clicking on the link for the Audio RSS subscription feed a new window will appear.  This is the actual RSS Feed page and subscription link.
First click on the “Subscribe to this feed” in the upper left side outlined in the red box. Then the “Subscribe to this feed” window will pop up, click “Subscribe”.  You have just subscribed to this RSS Feed.  However, where can I go to see the RSS feed and updates?  Good question, back to Google’s RSS Reader.

6: Go back to Google, click on the Star, then the Feed tab.  There is the RSS feed link you have just subscribed to outlined in the red box.  If you now click on the link, it will take you to the feed for that link and all the postings.  However, if you collect 10 or 20 or 50 RSS links managing them in this window can be confusing.  Good news is you can create
folders.

7: To organize your RSS feeds, simple right click and then
select “Create new folder” outlined in the red box.

8: Since my example was Texas Instruments (TI) and I want to follow semiconductor companies.  I may wish to create a folder called “Semiconductor”.  You can have as many RSS feeds as you want and as many folders as you need.  Folders are just a great way to organize RSS feeds by topic.

9: Now you can “drag and drop” your feed in to the new folder.  You can have as many RSS feeds as you want and as many folders as you need.  Folders are just a great way to organize RSS feeds by topic.

RSS feeds are a great way  to stay current on any topic of interest.  You now have a tool that gets you the most recent information with the click of the mouse without having to read the entire webpage.

“Stay current my friends”

Part 2 (series)

This is part two of my ‘How to Fish’ series – aka Company Market Research.  Now that you have access to Reference USAlets get started.  There are two ways to use Reference USA.  The first approach is more specific and will give you a better idea of how the data is organized with in the data base.

Start with a company that you know is in a particular industry of interest to you.  This company, say Texas Instruments, has been assigned a specific industry
classification.  Both a SIC (Standard Industry Code – old) and NAICS (North America Industry Classification System – new).

From the main page click on ‘search’, then enter Texas Instruments.  Then click on ‘View Results’

The search returns several options that match the use of the terms Texas and Instruments in Dallas Texas.  Also, several Texas Instruments do show up.  I will select the first one.

This search result will provide a complete snapshot of the company, including it’s SIC and NAICS codes.

Next week we will take a look at searching all other companies with the same SIC and/or NAICS designation(s).

Ever read a great article from a news reader and want to tweet it?  Ever decide not to do it because of all the right-click and pasting involved?  Good news for Feed Demon new reader users.  Feed Demon has a built Send To feature (older versions do not, so upgrade).

In the Feed Demon viewing window, right below the article title you will see a number of small icons.  The ‘arrow’ icon, seventh from the right is the Send To icon.

Click on that icon and a drop down menu appears.  On the list is Twitter.  Click on Twitter and you are done.
 

Tweeting from Feed Demon is not only, easy, fast and timely it helps you share your ideas with your network.

One of the best ways to grow and maintain a following is to communicate.  While you may only Blog once a week or so.  Many of us are tweeting daily.  So why not let your Blog readers see what you are Tweeting without the hassle of digging your Tweets out.  Well, Twitter has an app for that of better known as a Badge for that.

Go to the URL below and follow the on screen directions.
https://twitter.com/badges

What is great about the Twitter Badge is that is more than a ‘click on it icon’.  You can actually have your Tweets imbedded on any number of popular Blog sites.

So just remember….you do need a stinking badge.