Make The Most Out Of Your RSS Feeds Using FeedBurner
Posted by Spyros Panagiotopoulos in RSS, tags: feedburner, feedburner RSS, google feedburner, manage RSS with feedburner, rss feeds, use feedburner for your RSS feed
What will your first reaction possibly be if you notice a fire starting up near you ? 9 out of 10 people would immediately try to put it out before it spreads even more. In order to do so, people could use branches of trees, dirt, water of even fire extinguishers. Whatever they do decide to use, one thing is certain. Using two, three or more of these methods simultaneously will more easily and much faster wipe out the fire.
Since nature really imitates our everyday lives, you can spot such cases on your website as well. Using just one means of letting people know of your website is just not enough for your promotion. You have to utilise every little weapon that you have in your arsenal in order to reach success as fast as possible. One great tool that you really have to know about is RSS Feeds and Google’s FeedBurner. If you are not aware of what RSS is, you may want to read about it here.
In short, it is a great system allowing for people to get your website updates without visiting your website. You may be asking yourself why this is good for you. After all, you need people to come back to your website in order to click your ads as well some time. Do not be mislead though. Not only you can use ads on RSS feeds as well, but what’s even more important is that RSS really helps on building you loyal visitors that want to read about what you write and this is definately the first thing you need to do in order to get the most out of your website.
Why Should You Use FeedBurner ?
FeedBurner is a great free webmaster tool created by Google. That information alone is enough for you to start thinking more about using the service. Always remember that if you tend to use Google Adsense, using Google’s tools makes you somewhat of a loyal partner and you certainly want that. As in life where people tend to help those who relate to them better, the same happens with your relationship with google.
However, this is definately not the only reason why you should do so. In fact, FeedBurner is a very valuable service. The best thing about it is that is like a central depot for all your RSS related needs. It contains lots of statistical information about your subscribers, visits and many more. Moreover, you can utilize other tools like email subscriptions where you can inform your visitors about your website updates not only using RSS but using emails as well.
Moreover, Pingshot is another fine utility that takes up the task of informing RSS related services about your updates. It also allows you to monetize your feeds the best way through using google adsense. It generally contains very important tools that can really give a boost on your feeds but one of the most important ones that you really have to pay close attention to is the RSS Feed Subsribers count.
The RSS Feed Subscribers Count
This one is actually a counter of the number of people that follow your feed updates. While you may not feel that this is important for you, it is really quite the opposite. One of the best ways to become more credible to your visitors eyes is letting them know that many people follow you. That is, be socially proven. Everybody likes to follow people that are already being followed by others because this is our nature. We love to trust whoever others have trusted before.
However, you need to be a bit careful on that. It would not be a good idea to do so if you do not already possess a good number of subscribers first. The best thing to do is try to get as many subscribers as you can first and then, after you reach a good number of subscribers (probably more than 100), add your subscriber count to your index page.
But, How do You Create a FeedBurner Feed ?
Luckily, this is very easy to do and only needs a couple of minutes. You should just need to go to feedburner.com and create a new feedburner account. Then the only other thing that you need to do is just find out the RSS Feed URL of your feed. If you are using a known platform like Wordpress or Blogger, you can do this pretty fast. Just take a look at your index page and search for a link like “Atom” or “RSS Feed” and the likes. You will definately notice one. Then, just right click on the link and “Copy Link Location”. This will copy your RSS Feed URL that you would now need to insert to your newly created feed at feedburner.
Also give a name for your feed, finish the procedure and you are good to go ! Your feed is now ready to use. Your first step is to let people know that they can subscribe to your website to get your RSS feed. Feedburner provides you with a very nice such graphic element that is called Chicklet Chooser and that you can find under “Publicize -> Chicklet Chooser”. Select what you feel is better for you, scroll down and find the html code and paste it to your website at a spot where people will notice easily. In order to present your visitors with your feed circulation too, you would just need to click on “Publicize -> FeedCount” and then copy the html code and place it on your website. Just remember to do it only when you get enough visitors, else it would not seem that nice for your visitor’s eyes.
If you do not already use RSS to let people know of your updates, you really need to do so as soon as possible. Getting people to subscribe is so important that companies some times even pay for it. Utilize your weapons the best way you can in order to get the best possible results.
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