Feedburner (www.feedburner.com ) is a great tool for optimizing and publicizing your blog. FeedBurner is free. The first step is simply to register for an account. The second step can be taken when you have an active blog.
Once you have a blog and FeedBurner account then you can activate Feedburner for your blog. You will activate FeedBurner by simply using the box on the front page of FeedBurner that is available after you log into your account and enter the URL of your blog.
This next sentence could save you allot of time and aggravation. Sometimes just entering the URL of your blog does not always result in FeedBurner recognizing your blog. To help with this issue simply enter in /feed after your URL and that should solve the problem. For example this blog has the URL http://www.stevereports.com When “burning my feed” with FeedBurner I enter http://www.stevereports.com/feed/
When FeedBurner recognizes your blog you are ready to take advantage of a number of their services. Each feature offered by FeedBurner must be activated before it will work. For now here are the first two features I recommend you activate as soon as you activate your account and you have a blog in place:
1. Click on The Publicize tab and activate “Pingshot”. This will notify a number of services every time you have an update to your blog. I know you are already including active links in you blog posts so when you add a new post to your blog, Pingshot reminds a number of RSS readers to pick up that new content.
2. Under the same tab select Chicklet Chooser and there you will find a selection of icons that can be used for visitors to click on so they can add your blog to their RSS Feed Reader. If you look close to the top right hand side of this blog’s main page you will see my orange icon. This is the icon I picked from FeedBurner. Once selected, FeedBurner gives you the html code to use on your blog. Simply copy this code then go to your blog admin area and click on presentation. Then choose template editor select sidebar and paste the code into the side bar where you want the icon. Note about the only mistake you can make here is entering the code in the wrong place. If that happens, go back and cut and paste the code into a different location. Remember to click save after making any edits to your sidebar and you are done — for now.
More features by FeedBurner will be discussed in a later issue. Now take a few minutes and register your blog with FeedBurner and get started.
Be well and prosper,
Steve Pohlit
Business Development Consulting
Steve Pohlit has more than 20 years experience running very large and medium sized companies. Steve now consults personally with clients to design and implement processes that will deliver improved business performance for the long term. The latest successful on line and off line marketing techniques are part of the processes that are implemented. Most projects are self-funding within 90 days. The client then experiences a very high return on investment. Learn more about the process of Increasing Profits by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less by visiting http://www.stevepohlit.com or you can call 727-587-7871 and speak with Steve directly. Have a question? Click Here To Visit Ask The Consultant Did you read this at one of my blogs like Steve Reports? If you want to learn how to use a blog to build your business then register for the the free mini-course “Blogging for Profits” at Steve Reports.
P.S. If you have read and kept the entire series of Blogging For Profits then you know why I strongly advise everyone to use a distinct domain or subdomain for your blog. I also recommend developing your blog with WordPress. I only use subdomains for my blogs when they are links to a specific theme, which is usually a niche theme. You can see an example of this at www.getoiled.com
I also recommend using a hosting where you have website manager, Fantastico for setting up blogs and a distinct C-Panel for each of your domains. Having been in the Internet service provider business, I can tell you I am hosting 36 domains, have room for many more and I pay $24.95 per month. I am very pleased with my hosing company Host Gator. You can pay less but I don’t recommend it. Now back to Feedburner.
Hey Steve,
Thanks so much for writing about our service. Just wanted to touch on one thing. You mention that we don’t always pick up your feed when you enter your blog address into our system. That actually links back to something called autodiscovery. If autodiscovery of your feed is not enabled we can’t “find it” from your blog address. This may not seem like a big deal but with the growth in adoption of browsers like Internet Explorer 7 it is.
IE 7 actually autodiscovers your feed if you have autodiscovery set-up right. This will cause more people to to find and subscribe to your feed right in IE 7.
Setting up autodiscovery is a snap. Just add the following code to your site template between the head tags:
If you, or any of your readers, want to chat more about our services just send along a note. Take care!
Cheers,
Eric
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Eric Olson
Publisher Services – FeedBurner
E-mail: erico@feedburner.com
Office: 312.756.0022 x2034
Mobile: 508.335.9221
Skype/AIM: EricJohnOlson