(Updated November 2019) You’ve probably heard of the term RSS feed, but you know it What a podcast feed means and how important can it be to your podcast and its success? Most people don’t. So don’t worry if you fall into the last category. That’s why we’d like to break down exactly what the term means, why it’s so important to have your podcast heard, and how to get the most out of it for your podcast!
Before we explain exactly what an RSS feed is, let’s take a look at what the acronym actually stands for.
RSS literally means ‘Rich Site Summary’ but it is also commonly known as “Really Easy Syndication”.
Why? An RSS feed provides users with a summary of website updates, making their lives easier! By merging content into one feed (think of it like a basic version of your Facebook feed), users don’t have to constantly check their favorite pages to see if new content has landed. The big part is that anyone who creates web content can use it to share their blog posts, articles, or podcasts! An RSS feed is mandatory for manual distribution or syndication of your podcast as it is literally the URL for your podcast! However, if you want to go the automatic route, check out our one-click distribution and we’ll take care of getting your podcast out!
What does a podcast feed mean? Once you’ve set up your feed, your content can be sent to podcast applications or news readers to subscribe to your content. If you are wondering which ones are the The most popular podcast feed readersSome suggestions are: Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, and CastBow. It is important that you only create one RSS feed for podcastsInstead of any other content, the podcatching apps do not recognize the RSS tags correctly and reject the entire RSS feed. Once you have your podcast specific feed, you need to send it to every podcast app and directory! Such great places too Add your podcast feed to Apple Podcasts, Google play and Google Podcasts (If you’re not sure about the difference between the two, we’ve made a handy blog post Here’s how to submit your podcast to Google Podcasts).
Simply put: It contains all the information about your podcast: Title, picture, description, mp3 file url and category. All the information needed for your podcast distributed outside of your hosting platform. RSS allows you to syndicate content across different platforms You can reach different target groups you don’t need to visit your website directly without needing them.
What are the advantages?
For listeners: This means they don’t have to sign up for emails or push notifications for podcasts that interest them. You can stay up to date and find all of your favorite podcasts in a podcasting app.
For podcasters: it does it easy to reach new listeners without investing a lot of time When creating email databases or newsletters, you can also improve your engagement by linking back to your website using the RSS reader. However, the real bonus for you is that You only need to upload your content to one place as your RSS feed will distribute your podcast for you! It also means you can edit from one place too!
There isn’t a hard and fast rule in answering this question – it all depends on what type of podcaster you are! The first thing to ask yourself is whether you want to host yourself or use a hosting platform, and both have advantages and disadvantages.
Self-hosting – When you host everything yourself, you have complete control over your feed, own it, and your workflow is simple. This, in turn, means that if something happens to your website, your podcast will also go down. In addition, shared hosting means that many people use the same resources, which can lead to technical problems. Keep in mind that you will need some technical knowledge to be able to code and create the RSS feed and to always be aware of what’s going on in the industry that may require an update of your feed!
host – Host platforms are designed to meet the specifications and requirements of a podcaster The technology behind the websites can scale with your podcast as it grows! Since they are designed with end users in mind, they also have great support teams available to provide technical support when needed!
When you weigh the positives and negatives of hosting your RSS feed, keep the following in mind: Your feed is the backbone of your podcast. When deciding on a host location, it is important to make sure that your hosting service allows the redirect. The most popular hosting services generally allow this and Spreaker includes this option with them RSS customization option.
For example, you can edit certain tags in your RSS feed without dealing with the XML like this
Spreaker also lets you make very specific changes depending on which devices your listeners are listening to your podcast on, such as: B. iOS11 and the tags Season and Episodes. You can also apply changes from Spreaker CMS These will show up as tags in your RSS feed’s metadata, e.g. E.g .: seasons, episode order and episode names. For more information, see our previous blog post at Adding tags to your podcast.
Nowadays, podcasters or people who use an RSS feed have a great deal of control over it. Users can manage, move, and customize their feed exactly the way they want. Most podcast hosts allow podcasters to customize various fields of their RSS feed with categories, author names, or email addresses. For example Libsyn and Blubrry’s Powerpress Both offer extensive customization of the RSS feed.
The option of having full control over the RSS feed also provides the ability to redirect the RSS feed and add a prefix to the RSS feed. Redirect A feed means owning it completely, and it’s worth noting that you may want to host your podcast in a different location in the future. Passing the old one on to your new host means you won’t lose any listeners who have subscribed to the old feed.
Adding a prefix allows you to take advantage of additional services that your host platform may not provide or not perform at the level you want, and you don’t have to switch host providers! Technically, a prefix is a URL that comes at the beginning of your episode URL and runs every time your episode is played or downloaded. Currently only Spreaker and SoundCloud Users can add a prefix directly to their podcast, but more and more services will be able to run from a prefix in the future.
At the moment you can with a prefix:
1. Get advanced statistics (for example Podtrac). Podtrac provides podcast measurement technology to track your download information for RSS feeds. Here’s how it works: it redirects your podcast traffic through a podtrac server, which gathers and analyzes information about download requests across all sources of the podcast traffic, and then routes it to the location where your media file is hosted.
2. Insert free advertising (e.g. Dynamo). Dynamo offers similar technology, but instead of gathering information for your podcast, you can easily add pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads to your RSS. Just plug in your RSS feed and create an account. Your feed will automatically be updated with a new RSS prefix as soon as you start serving ads! You can choose target segments that are relevant to your topic and generate income from your evergreen content.
Sum up
Whichever route you choose for your RSS feed, self-hosting, or using a provider, always make sure that you are in control as this is key to getting the most out of it! We hope that with our guide now you are sure to have answered some of the most important questions about this topic, such as: B .: What does podcast feed mean? or where to submit your feed as a podcast. Good luck making the most of your podcast RSS feed!
