Need some tips on building a permanent following of your law firm’s website or blog content? Creating a creative and consistent RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) could be one important way of doing just that. RSS feeds are an easy way of engaging readers on a regular basis and an important technical tool for delivering information to other authors on the web – authors who just might pick up one of your stories and drive their own readership back to your website.

What is an RSS feed?

We won’t get super technical here – but just tell you what you need to know to get started. RSS is a form of XML markup language that is both readable by humans and machines. Most modern websites have this ability to feed RSS data to outside applications automatically coded into them. And most feeds are accessible through a common URL structure; www.url.com/feed or www.url.com/rss. The icon to left is the universal icon letting you know an RSS feed is available on a site. In most cases, by clicking on this icon, you will be able to load or bookmark this site’s RSS feed into your RSS feed reader.

An RSS feed reader is a website or application that aggregates all of your RSS feeds to one site or application. This site or application lets you see every new post or page added to every website you are tracking at the very moment it is added to the site.  So now rather than checking into every website you are interested in everyday to uncover new content, you can now just check in with your RSS app and see what’s new. This will save you a lot of time, especially if you check in with a lot of sites.

If you add a lot of content to your own website, an RSS feed allows your content to be “subscribed to” by people who are interested in what you share – without those people having to remember your URL or having to actually go to your website everyday. Now this doesn’t mean that you are sacrificing page views in exchange for your content being read only on RSS readers. In most cases the RSS feed only provides the headline and a few lines of content to the subscriber – meaning that if a subscriber wants to read the entire article then they need to click on an automatic link generated in the feed and into your website.

People within the press and industry experts often use RSS feeds to be the first to learn about breaking stories, products, changes in the law or interesting facts. Getting these folks to subscribe to your RSS feed can be an important way of getting more of the content you write included in other web stories and linked back to your website – thus driving more traffic there!

There are a ton of RSS feed readers and applications that you can use to consolidate the information you want from the web. One of my favorite mobile apps is https://feedly.com. Feedly can be installed on your mobile device as well as through browser plugins for desktop viewing as well.

Building a Following with RSS Feeds

Now that you understand the basics of an RSS feed, it’s time to build a following. Don’t just target people in need of an attorney, make your content readable to everyone! This will build a healthy following, and hopefully potential clients who may not have a case now – but might sometime down the road. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1.) Write about national cases that everyone is interested in. Nancy Grace capitalizes on this, so could you!

2.) Create humorous content that appeals to readers. For example, use humor to write about bizarre cases that people just have to click on.

3.) Use headlines to pull in readers. Your content may be about your specific law expertise, but twist the headline to relate to as many people as possible. Tell the reader how someday this issue could happen to them!

4.) Stick to a niche that you specialize in. For example, if you’re a divorce lawyer, write content about relationships, what-if’s, and outlandish cases instead of creating content specifically for people in need of any attorney. The better you represent yourself as an expert in your niche, the more likely the press and other web authors will subscribe to your RSS feed for possible future use.

Using some or all of these ideas, your content will be more likely to catch readers’ eyes without being overly promotional. So what are you waiting for? You’re an interesting person, right? Get started on your RSS feed today. Law Father can assist by creating legal content designed to drive more traffic to your website! Contact Law Father to learn about more RSS feeds and other creative ways we can drive traffic to your law firm’s website.