In the past few months of me writting on HubPages, I've learned a few little tricks regarding how to use HubPages RSS feeds that I'd like to share with you. It took me a while to understand what RSS feeds were or how to use them, but then the the light went off and I ended up making a few good mistakes...

What is an RSS Feed?

I am definitely no expert on RSS Feeds and I may still have the idea twisted (or may be missing some important aspects). If so, please leave a comment below and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

The way I understand RSS Feeds is this: Most of us know what Autoresponders are. They're ways for marketers, bloggers, or someone with a voice to allow their readers to stay updated with their newest publications or ideas by subscribing. If I understand RSS Feeds correctly, they're almost exactly the same thing. Except they are just using the newest "Web 2.0/Social Marketing" aspect. They allow readers to subscribe to their favorite authors, and they can also receive all of their favorite authors mailings via one platform.

Ok, so once I discovered what an RSS Feed was, I began playing around with it one day. I visited my feed link - we all have one in our sidebar that says "subscribe to profile name's RSS feed." Here's what it looks like:

http://hubpages.com/author/belief713/latest/?rss

Just like with your URL Trackers,you can replace latest with bestor hot to display your Best or Hot hubs.

You can also allow your RSS subscribers to only subscribe to specific RSS Feeds. For example, I have fans who may be interested in my Work at Home Hubs, but not my Breastfeeding ones.

Here's how you can set up an RSS Feed to allow your readers to subscribe to specific tags:

(Note: your Hub needs to be tagged with the tag you are using, so you may want to go back and edit your tags!)

To subscribe to the Work at Home tag, you would want the url to look like this:

http://hubpages.com/author/belief713/work+at+home/hot/?rss

Notice, after my profile name, I added my tag. If you are using a tag phrase, you need to use + signs inbetween each, and with no spaces. So, instead of putting work at home, I put work+at+home (See the link above). If you want to only use a one word tag, you do it like this:

http://hubpages.com/author/belief713/breastfeeding/hot/?rss

(So you would replace breastfeeding with your tag.)

Also, if you notice, after your tag is one of the three categories offered to you by HubPages: hot, latest, best. You can edit the way your RSS Feed is displayed by replacing the category (best, hot, latest) word. Like this:

http://hubpages.com/author/belief713/breastfeeding/best/?rss

There's one more neat thing I learned about using RSS Feeds in my Hubs. After I figured out that you could edit the url's like I demonstrated above, I realized I could customize the RSS Feeds that were displayed on my Hubs and keep my own RSS Feeds displayed on my Hubs!

It's really quite simple. All you have to do is add an RSS Capsule to your Hub and place it where ever you would like it. Then, figure out which RSS Tags and Category you would like to use and insert your own RSS Feed. Like This:

Here's the link I used in the capsule above in case you need to see it:

http://hubpages.com/author/belief713/hubpages/hot/?rss

Finally, you can customize how many of your Hubs are showing. If you notice, I allowed 4, and this Hub shows up as one of them. You can play around with the order the hubs are displayed by changing your categories (hot, best, latest) in your RSS Feed url.

Oh yeah, and don't think small...you can use these same RSS Feed links on your blogs or other sites.