Supercharge Your RSS with FeedBurner

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There are very few blogging services that I universally recommend to all my clients and FeedBurner is one of them.

(If you aren’t sure what RSS means or what feeds even are, feel free to check out a post I wrote a while back on RSS and Feeds to get the basics.)

What is FeedBurner? FeedBurner is quite simply a free service that greatly enhances the RSS feed experience for both publishers and subscribers.

Here are some benefits.

1. It’s Free – I’m a big fan of free, especially when it comes to top-notch services. And since FeedBurner was acquired by Google last year even their “pro” features are free. Very nice.
2. Feed Stats – We bloggers tend to be a bit obsessed with numbers like visitors, page views, inbound links, and comments. The best way I know to track RSS stats is with FeedBurner. You want to know how many feed subscribers you have? How about how many views and clicks your feed is getting? FeedBurner can tell you all that and much more.
3. Easy to Subscribe – There is a dizzying array of feed readers out there. With FeedBurner you can give your readers the flexibility to easily subscribe to your feed in whatever reader they prefer without having to clutter your blog with a ton of subscribe buttons.
4. Email Subscriptions – There is a small percentage of folks out there who will prefer to read your blog content via email. FeedBurner can give them that option so you don’t have to pay for another email publishing option.
5. Customization – With FeedBurner you can customize your feed by integrating a podcast, adding links, advertizing in your feed, connecting your feed to your Flickr account, Geotagging it, and so much more.
6. Bandwidth -  Using FeedBurner means they provide the bandwidth for your feed. Granted it isn’t an issue if your blog is just getting started and only has a few subscribers. However bandwidth is part of what you are buying from your web host so it’s nice to have someone else take care of that for you.

I’ve been using FeedBurner for years and have been very happy with their service. If you are at all interested in a more enhanced RSS experience for both yourself and your readers consider using their service.

FeedBurner Stats PRO and MyBrand Now for Free!

If you are using FeedBurner to manage the RSS feed for your web site/blog (and there aren’t many reasons not to be) there’s a new treat in store for you.

You can now upgrade your FeedBurner account and get Stats PRO and MyBrand - For FREE!

Check out their FreeBurner for Everyone post on their official company blog.

Beginning today, two of FeedBurner’s previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free. Not in the sense of soaring high above the clouds or recently sprung from the hoosegow, but free like you’ll no longer gladly be billed on Tuesday for a burned feed today.

Go log into your FeedBurner account and you’ll find the options are now simply available. Check it out and get yourself enough statistical data about your subscribers to make your head spin!

Enjoy!

Promote Your Business Blog with Pings

When I hear someone talking about pings for some reason I think about those World War II submarine movies where the sweaty greasy sailors are as quiet as they can be staring at the bulkheads around them listening to the sound of the enemy hunting them. Ping… Ping… Ping…

But there is another kind of ping that you should be aware of when it comes to your business blog.

Blog software does a great job of automating many of the tasks associated with web publishing. With RSS feeds, people can be automatically be updated anytime you post a new article to your blog.

But there is one part of the process that is not automatic, and that’s the act of someone actually subscribing to your feed. We make subscribing as simple as we possibly can by offering the feed subscription options prominently on our blog. But ultimately nothing will get to a person’s feed reader unless they actually take that manual step of subscribing. Read more