Daily Blogging Tips has proclaimed May 1 RSS Awareness Day. Their goal is to get as bloggers as possible talking up the benefits of RSS so that more readers will use it. I thought I was a late adopter of RSS, but it turns out that the vast majority of internet users still have not caught on to how easy it is.
I signed up for Google Reader back in December, so here are my five reasons why you should use it, too:
- See all of your blog reading aggregated in one place. This saves me a TON of time, because I just scroll through all the new posts and decide what's worth reading.
- Don't waste time visiting blogs that haven't been updated. Before I signed up for RSS, I spent quite a bit of time each morning checking blogs that didn't have any new content, hoping maybe this would be the day for a new post.
- Get recommendations on related blogs. When you sign into Google Reader, it suggests other blogs that you might like based on the content that is currently in your feeds (similar to Amazon.com recommendations). This is a good way to discover new blogs.
- Find out what your contacts are reading. If your Gmail contacts choose to share their feeds, then you can see what they're reading and discover new blogs that way, too.
- Show your favorite bloggers some love by subscribing to their feeds. Yes, you should still comment regularly, but subscribing to their feed is another way to voice your support. Bloggers love big numbers (at least this blogger does, so sign up for my RSS feed here).