If you have a blog with an RSS feed don’t limit it to only the few most recent posts. And while you’re at it, include the full post not just a teaser.

I understand why most sites will do this - they want to drive readership onto their actual website where they can be tracked and, oftentimes, bombarded by ads.

Personally I like to consume longform content on the web via my RSS reader (currently Reeder 5) - I like the convenience of being able have all my updates come to one place and appear consistently - and I know I’m not alone.

Whenever I come across a new site or author that I want to explore more, the first thing I do is check to see if there is an active RSS feed. Most times if there isn’t I’ll just move on. If the author is particularly interesting I’ll often want to read all of their previous posts - which is where including your entire back catalogue of posts comes in. I’m much more likely to read your older posts if they are right there in my RSS reader - and I will invariably visit your site or reach out directly if I connect in some way to your content, so you can still track me.

A great example of a site with ‘all the posts’ in its feed is sive.rs - do yourself a favour and grab the feed and read back over the past 10+ years of content.

I’m a fairly prolific user of RSS to consume content from various sources. I will write more about how I use RSS to build habits around media consumption, but not today.