I’ve already heard from one person who wanted to start a blog but wasn’t sure how until reading my previous posts on the subject, possibly after finding the link to them at Nashville Is Talking.

I’m bad about re-reading things I’ve written and wanting to tweak them. Because I think these posts may be around a while, I’ve just corrected an error or two and expanded a couple of unclear sentences. This violates what some people consider the ethic of never changing something once you’ve blogged it (or at least clearly flagging each change).

I did want to add a little bit here about how to get the word out about your blog.

Blog aggregators

If you followed the link from Nashville Is Talking, of course, you’ve already got one great idea; submit your blog to blog aggregators. Nashville Is Talking is geographic in nature, focusing on blogs from Middle Tennessee. There are other blog aggregators based on topic. For example, if your blog has religious content, you can submit it to Blogs 4 God. There are also general-interest aggregators. Submitting your blog does not guarantee that it will be listed; the aggregator may have rules and regulations about what can and can’t be added.

RSS, Atom and other feeds

When you submit your site and ask a blog aggregator to list it, you will often have to know the address of your site’s RSS or Atom feed. Check the help files for your blogging service or blogging software to find out what address to use.

An RSS feed is a special sort of file that lists the last five, or 10, or 15 posts from your blog. The RSS feed may include an excerpt from each post, or it may include the full post. It’s not really designed to be looked at, the way a web page is; instead, it’s designed to give information about your blog to a computer program. An Atom file is almost exactly the same as an RSS file, except it’s in a different format. Why there are two different formats is a mystery to me. Most aggregators can read either one, and will let you submit either an RSS address or an Atom address. (There are also different version numbers for RSS, but you’ll almost never need to worry about them.)

Every time you make a post to your blog, your blogging service or software automatically creates a new, up-to-date RSS feed. A blog aggregator automatically checks that RSS feed at a specific interval (lets say, every two hours) to see if there are any new posts.

RSS feeds are not just for blogs. News sites also use them. For example, the CNN site may publish an RSS feed listing the five or 10 top news stories. That’s why RSS feeds are sometimes called “newsfeeds.” Any type of frequently-updated web site can publish an RSS feed.

People like me who read a lot of blogs can use an RSS reader, which may also be called a “newsfeed” reader, to keep track of blogs so that we don’t have to manually look at each one. My RSS reader tells me when one of my favorite blogs has new posts. My RSS reader is built into my web browser, but tools to check RSS files can also be found in e-mail programs, as stand-alone programs, or at web sites like Yahoo!, Google or Bloglines. Here’s the page at Yahoo! explaining RSS feeds and how to use your My Yahoo! page to read them. And here is a page about getting Yahoo! to list your own RSS feed.

(At the bottom of this page, you’ll see buttons that will let you add this blog to your Yahoo! or Google home page. Those buttons work because Yahoo! and Google are set up to read the RSS files which my site publishes.)

I know it sounds complicated, but knowing your RSS address and understanding how to use RSS can give you new ways to publicize your blog.