RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS feeds are an easy way of keeping track of new content and headlines in your favourite websites and blogs. RSS means your audience can be automatically updated whenever you make a new post on your website and they will be able to find this new post easily, even if it is not on the front page. It will also enable people to visit your website at critical times; for example, before an action or event; this will help them participate more in your work. Make sure your site is putting out RSS feeds. Most Content Management Systems will do this as a standard feature, and all major blog services now support RSS feeds.

If you are not using a blog service or CMS for for your website, you may need some technical help to add RSS feeds by hand. You can also use RSS to syndicate your content to other sites, allowing them to pull in your headlines, which is a good way to promote your content automatically and have it appear on other sites. Many websites use RSS to aggregate news (for example, Human Rights Tools), making it easy for people to keep up with the issues that interest them.

RSS also makes it easier for others to use your data for mash-ups, where data from two or more sources is combined in a way that creates something new, as in these examples from Kenya and Zimbabwe.