RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a kind of web feed used to deliver content produced on the Internet. Anyone creating web content can use it to distribute their own blog posts, articles or media files such as a podcast.
Syndication feeds are distributed under formats like .rss, .atom, and .xml and can be recognized thanks to this icon:
An RSS feed is an important content-distribution tool. RSS allows you to syndicate content to different platforms – generally called news aggregators or RSS Readers – and reach various audiences without making them visit the producer’s website.
That’s why many news-related sites and blogs offer their content as an RSS feed.
This distribution method offers several advantages to podcasters:
-
Producers can upload audio files to just one hosting service, as the distribution to podcatching platforms is all done with the RSS feed.
-
When it comes to editing a podcast's information, podcasters can just modify it on the hosting platform. RSS feed updates accordingly and consequently, new information shows up on the platforms where the podcast is distributed automatically.
-
Hosting platforms can count HTTP GET requests made to the RSS feed and show this information as complete statistics. This way, podcasters can see all the podcast's insights via the hosting service and avoid getting separate figures from different platforms.
Because your podcast RSS feed is so important, choosing the right hosting platform is crucial when starting a podcast because that's how you’ll submit to Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. When you're thinking of starting a new podcast, be sure that the podcast hosting service you choose:
-
Offers an Apple Podcasts compatible RSS feed
-
Allows customization of the RSS podcast information, so it is possible to edit them anytime so that they’ll look perfect anywhere the podcast is distributed
-
Provides an easy-to-enable RSS redirect option. This is critical in case you decide to move the podcast to another hosting platform, forwarding all the podcatching distribution platforms to a new RSS feed is fundamental.