Blogger weekend project: Pimp your RSS feed
May 3, 2008
It’s Saturday! Take a break from posting and complete a hands-on project that will improve your blog. This week’s project is pimp your RSS feed.
RSS stands for “really simple syndication” (or “real simple syndication,” depending on who you ask). Think of it like your newspaper subscription. Every day, the paper boy brings the newspaper, with all of its articles, to your door. You needn’t request the paper, it shows up because you have a subscription.
Similarly, your blog’s RSS feed (the paper boy) delivers your posts (the newspaper articles) to the readers who have subscribed to your feed.
When I was a paper boy, I loved Tuesdays because the papers were thin and light. However, Sundays were a different story, as the papers were crammed with all sorts of extras. More work for me, sure, but added value to the readers who enjoyed the coupons, flyers, weekend magazines, etc.
A plain vanilla RSS feed is fine, but with a minimum of effort you can add value that your readers will appreciate and encourage them to click through to your site. Best of all , the “paper boy” doesn’t care how “heavy” your feed is, he won’t toss it onto the roof and the rain won’t render it useless pulp.
Put on your tool belt, get out the slide rule and roll up your sleeves. It’s time to pimp your feed.
Feedburner
Feedburner is a free and effective way to maximize your RSS feed. Let’s get signed up.
Visit http://feedburner.com and type your blog’s address into the field on the front page and click “Next.”
Give your feed a name, note the address and click “Activate feed.”
On the next screen, click “Clickthroughs.” This will keep track of the number of people who click a link in your feed to visit your blog. You’re all set! Wasn’t that easy?
Now, let’s integrate your new Feedburner-powered feed and your blog.
Tell the world
There are several ways to integrate your Feedburner feed and your blog, depending on which blogging platform you use. If you’re using Blogger, Typepad, MySpace, or WordPress.com, the process is very simple. You’ll find the instructions for each listed after you complete the steps above.
For this project, I’m going to focus on a self-hosted WordPress blog. We’ll use the FeedSmith plugin, which redirects subscribers to your FeedBurner feed automatically.
First, get the plugin here. Upzip it, and upload it to your WordPress plugin directory. Next, login to your WordPress control panel, and navigate to Plugins. Find the FeedSmith plugin and select “Activate.” Done!
You’re doing extremely well. Go and get a soda. Stand up and walk around a bit. I’ll wait.
Are you back? Great, let’s continue.
Give your feed some flare
Feedburner’s FeedFlare makes it easy for your readers to share your content with others. Features you typically see on a blog, like links to social services like Digg, StumbleUpon and Newsvine, can appear right in your feed. Adding each is very simple.
First, click the “Optimize” tab, then click “FeedFlare.” You’ll see a list of available options. Just select the ones you want to appear in your feed, click “Activate” and you’re done! You can even re-arrange the listing of these items to your liking.
Email subscriptions
We’ll conclude this weekend’s project by giving your readers an option to sign up for email notifications of updates to your blog.
While logged into Feedburner, click the “Publicize” tab, then click “Email Subscriptions.” The good news here is that you can keep the default settings as they are!
Once you click “Activate,” you’ll get a bit of HTML code that you can paste where ever you’d like the subscription box to appear on your blog.
Of course, there’s much more exploration you can do on Feedburner, but we covered enough for this project. However, I will leave you with three aditional ways to make your RSS feed even better.
- Give blog posts clear, concise headlines. It’s fun to give your posts witty titles, but much more beneficial to write a headline that clearly identifies what your post is about. Many readers only scan the titles of posts in their feed readers, and “Deer, meet headlights” will get less attention than “How to excel at public speaking.” The former is an unknown quantity, the latter is clearly useful.
- Make subscribing easy. Not only do you want a conspicuous feed icon on your blog, but a “Subscribe” link should follow each post on your blog and in your feed itself (you can add this via FeedFlare).
- Show off your collection of subscribers. Everyone wants to be “in the club.” Feedburner will let you add a tiny graphic to your site which lists the number of subscribers you’ve got. If you’re not afraid of a little code, you can install the Feed Count plugin for WordPress and tweak the CSS to your liking.
If you liked this article and really want to get the most out of your business blog, hire me as your one-on-one blog coach. There are several packages to choose from. I look forward to working with you!
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[…] Today I started a new feature at davecaolo.com — blogger weekend projects. A new project each Saturday designed to improve your blog. This week, it’s Pimp Your RSS Feed. […]
[…] Today I started a new feature at davecaolo.com — blogger weekend projects. A new project each Saturday designed to improve your blog. This week, it’s Pimp Your RSS Feed. […]