ROdown Blog
RSS + Share are good for you + for Reach Out.
Have you used them?
Hi everyone,
Many of you have probably already been playing around with all the new bits and pieces on ReachOut.com – but in case you hadn’t already stumbled upon this functionality, we thought we’d point it out to you to help you get the most out of the site – and so you can help us too!
RSS - what is it + how can it be useful to you?
RSS (stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ or sometimes ‘Rich Site Summary’ – see Wikipedia for more info or watch this short Common Craft video to find out more) is a tool you can use to help you keep up to date as we add new blog posts. Basically, it allows you to subscribe to the blog so you won’t miss any current conversations on the ROdown, and you don’t have to check all the time to see what’s there.
Subscribing is simple!
1. Find yourself a reader – this is a site that will get together all your ‘feeds’ in the one place (ie whenever we add a post to the blog your reader is fed it).
There are lots out there, but good places to start are mentioned in the Common Craft video and include www.google.com/reader, www.bloglines.com, www.newsgater.com and My Yahoo!
There are other options out there too – eg email packages like Microsoft Outlook allow you to subscribe to RSS Feeds and then read content or follow links for additional information.
2. Set up the connection between your Reader and the blog – ie subscribe! Notice the little orange RSS icon on the left side of the ROdown page under the Subscribe heading, and labelled ‘blog posts? Click here, and it will take you through to a page that will allow you to add the Reach Out blog feed to the feed reader of your choice.
Or, you could go directly to your reader and manually add this feed http://au.reachout.com/connect/blog/posts-rss.xml to your reader.
Hopefully we’ll be adding RSS to other ReachOut.com features like blog and fact sheet comments soon so that you can be notified when a discussion is taking place that you might want to join in – stay tuned (perhaps through the RSS functionality on the blog?!)
‘Share’ – what is it + how can using it help Reach Out?
The Share button is found at the top right corner of each fact sheet, story, video, blog post etc in between the comment button and the print button.
It’s like it sounds – it allows you to share content you find useful or interesting (or think someone else might find useful or interesting) via email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Delicious.
However, as well as being a handy tool for you and your friends, it’s also really helpful for us here at Reach Out if you use the Share button.
That’s because by sharing Reach Out fact sheets, stories, blog posts etc with your friends, they might find it interesting or useful enough to share it with their network of friends too – so it helps more young people find out about us!
Also, if we have more links out there on other sites (like Facebook and MySpace) it also helps our search engine ranking on Google, meaning more people will find us when they type in phrases like ‘feeling crap’ or ‘moving out of home’ – which helps us in our goal of letting as many young people know about Reach Out as possible.
So - let us know if you’ve been using RSS and/or Share functionality on ReachOut.com and what your experience has been. We want to hear from you!
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2 Comments
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Cassie :)
over 2 years ago
Reply ReportI don't know if it's just me, but it didn't work when I tried :(
mazzman
over 2 years ago
Reply ReportHow uncanny! I was just thinking last night that i have no idea what RSS is or how to use it and then reach out just goes and answers all my questions!
I like it! Will definitely be setting up my RSS feeds soon and keeping up to date with all thins RO-like!