RSS Feed
Posted by Dunn on January 24, 2008 – 3:10 am -
What is RSS? RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. It allows your readers to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from your site.
That means, if your reader likes your contents, they will likely subscribe to your RSS Feed cause they don’t want to miss any of your articles and they want more from you. So at the point when your readers want to subscribe, make sure they can find your feed button. So you don’t lose the opportunity of recruiting a new reader. That’s why if you starting with the new blog, the first thing you should set up is the RSS Feed.
The orange button has become the most recognized icon for RSS Feed. You also can find it in different colors, but I prefer the orange button cause it’s easier and faster to be recognized by the readers. The great place to put it is above the fold, cause people are more likely to see anything that you put above the fold. And don’t forget to put the option for email subscriptions as well, cause some readers would prefer to subscribe by email.
The service that I used to handle all my feeds is FeedBurner. It’s simple to use and easy to set up. All you have to do is subscribe your site with FeedBurner, put a tracking code in your site, and let Feedburner do the rest for you. Once you are set-up with Feedburner, you can activate all the cool functions, such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email, and also the FeedFlares. FeedFlares allow you to add functionality to your feeds, and there are a couple of good ones that you will definitely need to drive more visitors to your blog such as Stumble Upon, Digg, Delicious, etc. Once you’ve activated the FeedFlares, they will appear in the bottom of your post. And since Google bought over FeedBurner, you can now display Google Adsense in your FeedBurner RSS Feed.
For the best results using FeedBurner with self-hosted WordPress site, I’m using the FeedBurner FeedSmith Plugin by Steve Smith. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well. And for that, all you have to do is download the plugin and then follow the instructions to begin forwarding all Wordpress feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed.
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Posted in Feeds |
[...] Posted by Dunn on March 13, 2008 – 4:57 pm - If you are using FeedBurner to handle all your feeds, this new feature might be useful for you. It’s the new, self-service Feed Transfer [...]