In my previous blog “Atom Feeds and RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Explained“, I describe what RSS and Atom feeds are.
This blog talks about managing your feed using Feedburner.com (a free online tool from Google). With this tool, you can grow your subscriber base and capture valuable statistical data. Here’s how:
First – Feedburner’s “SmartFeed” makes your feed compatible with any feed reader application. This is important because some aggregators only work with one type of feed – ie. RSS or Atom. Using SmartFeed ensures that your feed is available to the widest possible audience.
Second – Feedburner provides many tools that allow you to manage and market your feed. Some of their best tools include:
- Feedflare - Allow your readers to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish by including social networking and bookmarking sites to your blog post . FeedFlare places a footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute your content.
- Chicklet – Place a FeedBurner feed directly on your blog. Chicklet Chooser generates a blogger gadget for you so users can easily subscribe to your feed.
- Ping Shot – Most web-based feed reading services will check for updates on their own time. Give ‘em a push with PingShot. You choose who you want to ping and Feedburner will notify them when you publish new content.
- E-mail Subscriptions – places an e-mail subscription form on your site by creating a Blogger gadget for you.
- Monetize – because Feedburner is owned by Google, you can add Adsense to your feeds. Subscribers can then see your Adsense ads when they view your feed in their aggregator.
Third – Feedburner provides you with detailed statistics on your subscriber base such as:
- The number of subscribers for your feed
- How many clickthroughs your feed has generated
- How many e-mail subscribers you have and an exportable CSV list of their addresses
- What types of feed readers they are using
This tool is free and easy to use, so sign up for Feedburner and add it to your blog. You’ll be glad you did.
