How are blogs different from other websites? To understand how blogs work, we need to describe the features that make them unique. A typical blog will include:

Posts. Posts are content entries presented in chronological order, with the newest ones on top. Each post will also be archived at a permanent URL to encourage other bloggers to link to your posts. Each post will display its author’s name, date, and category it belongs to.

Comments. Each post will have a reader section to allow readers and other bloggers to carry on a conversation. Although there are risks to making comments public, the benefits of creating traffic to your blog typically outweighs the risks.

Categories. Categories are topical archives for organizing posted content. For larger blogs, posts can also be organized by month, year, and keyword. Search features are usually offered to help readers find what they are looking for. Categories and archives are automatically generated by the blog software.

Subscription. This feature is called “RSS” or “Syndication” and it allows readers to subscribe to your blog and be alerted when you have posted new content.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it is one of the more compelling reasons to blog. The latest browsers have newsreader capabilities now which means your subscribers can read your content through them instead of going directly to your blog.

What’s the advantage? Your subscribers most likely keep track of more than just your website. They might keep track of some news sites, sites specific to their industry, personal sites, and other blogs. If all of these sites offer an RSS subscription, the subscriber does not have to visit each site each day. He simply scans a central dashboard to get all of this content… and he only gets new content instead of having to dig through sites to see what’s new and what’s not.

By making sure you provide an RSS feed in your blog, you make it easier and more likely that visitors will keep op top of your content. How do you know which sites offer this? Look for the orange RSS icon.

When you set up your blog to offer RSS, you will need to choose from 3 options:

1. Headline only. Subscribers will see headlines only and will have to click on them to go to your blog ad see the actual content.

2. Headline and partial content. You can choose to display only the first few sentences of your post. This is better than option 1 above. You’ll get more subscribers to click if they have more information about your content.

3. Headline and full content. This is best for subscribers but brings you the least traffic. Subscribers can stay within their newsreader to see your content. Option 2 might be a nice compromise.

If you choose to offer RSS, as we think you should, make sure your headlines and the first few sentences of your content are compelling and to the point.

What is your experience with RSS?

If you want more information about blogging for business, I recommend Publish & Prosper: Blogging for your Business by DL Byron & Steve Broback. This post is a quick summary of some of their content.