Amy Gahran, self described writer, editor & trainer has an excellent tutorial on RSS syndication on her blog. The tutorial is presented in 12-parts:
- Introduction: What’s New Online?
- How Most Webfeeds Work
- Main Advantage: Webfeeds Save You Time
- Getting Started: You Need a Feed Reader
- Subscribing to Webfeeds
- Finding Good Webfeeds
- For Publishers: Why Webfeeds Beat E-mail Newsletters
- Publishing Your Own Webfeed
- Content: What to Put on Your Webfeed
- Webfeed Disadvantages
- Why Do I Say “Webfeed” Rather than “RSS?”
- The Big Picture for Webfeeds
Dennis Kennedy, from whose blog I found Amy Gahran’s tutorial, pulled out what may be the most relevant excerpt for you as a lawyer. RSS/Synidication/Webfeed plays two key roles:
- First, it’s a publishing channel for delivering announcements of what’s new on a site, or other kinds of messages or content, to an online audience.
- Second, it’s a syndication channel that makes it easy for other sites to find or even republish a site’s content.
Played well, these roles can vastly extend the audience for a site’s content.
Take a look at Amy Gahran’s tutorial. It may be the best piece out there on syndication.