n this episode, we dive into the world of RSS feeds and explore why they’re a cornerstone for podcasting. From how RSS works to its role in getting your episodes out to listeners, we break down the technicalities and importance of this often-overlooked tool. Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned podcaster, understanding RSS is key to ensuring your show reaches a global audience with ease. Tune in to learn how this essential technology can help your podcast grow and stay accessible!

Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your podcast, answering

any podcasting questions along the way. That's right, guys. I'm here. I'm still here. It's

wow. Wow, wow, wow. Life is just crazy now. I've got four kids and they are all over the

place. Not that you want to hear excuses though, but they are super, super busy. And so for

me, it takes me a little bit sometimes to do a podcast answers episode. But this episode

is one that I thought was going to be is super, super, super important for us because essentially

what is RSS? You may have heard it. All of the old school guys know what RSS is. Everybody

knows what RSS is if you're an old school guy, but what about those who are new school?

Yes. Randy black. Let's go. Let's go. Randy black is live with us in the comments and

says let's go. So we're talking today about, about RSS, what it is, because it's super

important because a lot of times the new school people, new school podcasters, those who have

come along since 2020 may not actually know what RSS is because they just think, Hey,

I'm going to upload a podcast to YouTube and that's it. No podcasting is so much more than

just a pod video on, on YouTube. Now I do podcast on YouTube, but that's not the only

thing that I do. So RSS stands for really simple syndication. And essentially what that

is as it's like, I'm going to compare it to a radio tower. So if we're going back traditional

radio broadcasting, we are going to, you're going to think of the person behind the mic

and then there's the radio tower and the radio transmitter. RSS is essentially like your

radio transmitter. And because essentially on a traditional radio, you speak into the

radio, the mic, and then it goes up to the tower and gets transmitted out into the universe.

And then those with the radio, the radio sets can tune into your broadcast. So the RSS is

really just the radio tower and podcast apps are like the radio receiver. They get the

signal and allow you to tune in to your show. So at its base, what is RSS? RSS is a text

file that, that has all of the information about your, about your, your podcast episode.

So when a podcaster publishes a new episode, they upload it to their hosting platform,

which generates this RSS feed. It's just a text file, but it has information about details

about the episode, like the title, the description, the duration, where the audio file is hosted

and such as well as the overall show itself. So title and description of the show. And

then what happens is that that automatically updates at any subscribers. So if the, if

you have a Apple podcast app or any other podcast app in general, it's gonna, it's gonna

look, it looks every so often. So it checks either 30 minutes or an hour or whatever.

It just checks that file and says, Hey, is there any new content here? Is there any new

episodes for let's say podcast answers? And if there is, then it knows what the episode

is, what the title is, and then tells you to, to download, tells it to download that

file. And so essentially again, RSS is like just being able to go out and it's, it's like

the transmitter for your podcast. Now, what it allows you to do and why it's so, so important,

because a lot of new year companies are saying, Hey, upload your file here, upload your file

here, upload your file here. So for instance, podcasting on YouTube, and I'm putting that

in quotes, they want you to upload your, your podcasts video to them. Spotify, if you're

doing video with them, once you do upload to their host, what this allows you to do

RSS as you upload it once. And then it goes everywhere because you don't have to because

all of your applications and directories check that file and say, Oh, there's a new episode

available. So it's really it allows subscription based delivery. So it allows you to say, subscribe

to your favorite podcasts. And then it ensures that anytime that a new episode is delivered,

or published, it gets directly delivered to your podcast app, users don't have to go manually

check back for new content. This is automatic delivery makes following podcasts convenient.

It's so easy, because you don't have to go to the website and say, Hey, is there is there

a new episode? Now I do publish my episodes on my website. I do have a listing of all

of my episodes and you can play them right from my website. But the beauty of podcasting

is you don't have to do that. You can do that right in the app. Because the app just checks

it and it delivers it when there's a new one there. The RSS again, is your radio tower

to your broadcast. The great thing about this too, is it is, is it's so cross platform compatible

to all of the apps and all of the all of the the directories know how to ingest take in

that file. And they can, they can be can be hosted on one platform. But as long as your

podcast has an RSS feed, it can be picked up by any of the apps anywhere. So again,

you want it doesn't matter if we're going back to the we're gonna go back to the the

the radio days here. You're not saying only people who have a Pioneer receiver are going

to be able to receive my podcast. You don't want that you want anybody who can speak radio,

right? Anybody who can is producing a radio feed a radio, a radio transmission to be able

to be to be able to be have their transmission heard by anyone who has a radio. And so our

RSS is critical to that because it allows you to tell and have any user anywhere listen

to anything. And the nice thing about that is because it does get a lot of apps don't

necessarily use their own directories. They either use pod podcast index or they use Apple

podcast. And so as long as you are submitting your show to one of those two directories,

you can submit them other places too. But one of those two, a lot of people are going

to be able to hear it because they will be able to find your podcast. The nice thing

about this too is you have control. With an RSS feed, you have control over your content

that you publish. Because you can manage all of your metadata, all of your your feed, all

of your episodes, ensuring that your updates are distributed exactly like you want. Now,

again, podcast apps may display it differently. And some may display links in your description,

some may not. But you have control over that and you have it in one place. You can go back

to your your RSS, whoever's creating your RSS feed. Most of the time that's going to

be your podcast host. It's going to be a person that's going to be listed, you know, the place

that you're uploading your videos to. But you can go back and change that stuff. Or

pull the episode. I've had an episode that I've had to pull before, if we're for content

reasons that yeah, I was a guest, besides the point, but I've had to pull it. And so

it was really easy for me to pull. And actually, that goes back to this where you if you distribute

multiple locations with multiple hosts, you have to remember where did I put that at?

Where did I? Where did I put that episode at? Because for me, when I had to take that

episode down, I definitely easily quickly pulled it right from my RSS feed. And then

that made it go away from a good majority of the podcast applications. However, I forgot

that I had it on YouTube still. So I went out and I had to remove it from YouTube, because

they came back to me and said, Hey, you the episode is still available here. And and and

so that was one of the things that I really enjoyed having an RSS feed because it was

really easy for me to pull it from the places that ingest an RSS just by removing the audio

file and removing the episode. So that's why it made it super simple and super easy to

to go out and remove that episode. So again, guys, RSS is critical. A lot of the newer

podcast apps and our podcast apps, podcast players, I'm gonna say that in quotes, YouTube,

Spotify, whatever, is allowing it to, to, they're trying to force you into having a,

a, having your episode uploaded on their site. And, and this is RSS, we need to keep RSS

alive, I'm gonna bang on that drum forever, because it is, it is so easy to, and efficient

to deliver it to all of the podcast apps. Now, Randy Black has reminded me in the comments,

pod ping has revolutionized RSS distribution for podcasting, we need Apple to implement

it and save themselves server load on the back end. So I will briefly touch into that.

So we what what pod ping is, is essentially a notification system, a notification bus,

because the way traditionally RSS works is my podcast app goes out and says, hey, RSS

feed, is there a new is there a new episode? And it does that every hour. So that way,

when I open my app, I know that there's a new episode, or I can get notified of it.

And then there are certain things like Apple podcasts and other directories, where listing

directories, those go out every how often 30 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, or whatever

it is, and says, Hey, is there a new episode? And so essentially, what that does is that

puts a whole lot of strain on on the episodes, because our Yes, as Randy has reminded me,

it makes it it's the person push versus pull. So pull is normally what your normal RSS is,

where you're saying, Okay, is there a new episode? Is there a new episode? Is there

a new episode? And that's really wasteful, because it has to take server time and server

space and server cycles to come back and say, Yes, there's a new episode or no, there's

not a new episode. And so and so what pod ping essentially does is it allows directories

and apps and everything to listen to this huge giant message feed, right? Essentially

saying, it's on the blockchain, it's on the the hive blockchain, but essentially, it's

just a listing of podcasts that are updating podcasts that are updating podcasts that are

updating. And you can go to podping dot watch and see this happen live. It's kind of cool.

I sometimes have that just a web page up in my podcast or in my, in my browser. So that

way I can see what's happening. But essentially, you as a as a host or a a directory, you can

have that set to you can just be watching that. And so every time you see a new, a new

episode come up on pod paying, then you go out and pull the RSS feed for it. And what

Randy is saying here is essentially, Apple, I mean, Apple is a huge player in the podcast

in the podcast, complex comp ecosystem. And so they pull a lot of feeds a lot. And so

their servers are constantly checking, constantly asking for new episodes. And so if if they

were to implement this, they would not have to do that nearly as often because there's

a lot of podcasts and hosts that are using this pod ping technology. In fact, if you're

listening to me live right now in a podcast app, new podcast app, you you that new podcast

app got notified that I want live because I sent a pod ping out right before I went

live. And so pod ping is a great is a great technology. And it's super easy to implement

as far as the the notification goes. And so yeah, Randy, I totally agree with you. We

need to see hopefully Apple, you know, and Apple has been listening to podcasts, podcasting

2.0, they know they've implemented a lot of the new podcasting tags, not a lot, they've

implemented a podcast tag, and they're starting to implement another one here, or they have

implemented another one here. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with

Apple over the next the next couple years or months and stuff and see if they implement

some more of the new, the new tags that we've got over here in podcasting. So that's a brief

rundown of it in why it's super important. Because again, you're not your RSS feed is

is your lifeblood to your podcast? Yes, you can have video and I'm streaming to YouTube

right now. And yes, you can do that. But you need to have a broadcast tower. Otherwise,

your podcast is not a podcast. I'm just gonna go out and say it. It's not a podcast if you

don't have a RSS feed or a broadcast. So if you need help, I would love to help you out.

If you've got questions, what podcasting questions do you have? Go to podcastanswers.com/ask

and that will allow you to ask your questions for me that I can go ahead and put on an upcoming

podcast episode for this show. Again, if you want to ask podcasting questions, I love helping

people podcast. And so get out there, ask me some questions for future episodes. If

you need help one on one, I would love to help you one on one set up your podcast or

do something with podcasting for you. You can go to podcastanswers.com/contact and

we can do a one on one consultant. Thanks, guys. Have a great week and keep podcasting!

Bye!

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