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One of the great features of a blog is it's "RSS Feed." That stands for "real simple syndication" - but it can be a little confusing and not feel so simple if you're new to blogging. It allows your fans to get notified when you post a new blog, if they choose to subscribe in an RSS reader. Awesome, right?
But what if your fans don't use an RSS Reader? What if you move your website to a new URL? How can you tell who's following your RSS feed?
No problem if you're using Feedburner. I use Feedburner along with the plugin FD Feedburner Plugin on my WordPress blog.
Five Reasons I'm a Feedburner Fan and You Should Consider it, Too!
1. It simplifies promoting my feed. Through Feedburner I get all sorts of options that are easy to setup and use.
2. It allows me to offer my readers a "subscribe by email" option in addition to the usual option to subscribe with an rss reader. You can see it in action near the top right of this page, under my welcome video.
3. It's easy to embed other places. With a snippet of code from Feedburner, called the Headline Animator, I can take my blog posts and promote them on other sites I run, my social networking profiles, and more. I've even added it to my Facebook Fan Page.
4. It's gives me helpful statistics and subscriber information in an easy to follow and understand format. I can login to my Feedburner account and see how many people have subscribed, what they're reading, and more. With this info you can watch for popular posts or see problems happening and fix them quickly.
5. It gives me control in case I change domain names, blog software, or otherwise need to update my feed URL. I won't lose any subscribers, I just update the address in Feedburner and it will keep all the subscribers up to date. With a regular RSS feed you would lose your subscribers if you switched to a new feed URL. After all your effort to build a fan base you definitely don't want that to happen.
As you can see it has several advantages over the built in RSS feed in WordPress and allows you to leverage your feed to get more traffic from email subscribers, your other websites and social networking pages, and more.
There are also alternatives to FeedBurner you may consider including FeedBlitz, Feedity, and RapidFeeds.
About this Author
And now, let me give you access to some great free resources for small businesses including 101 Free/Cheap Ways to Market Your Business, 119 Things You Can Outsource, and more at http://www.michelleshaeffer.com
Michelle Shaeffer has been a work at home mom for more than 10 years and loves to share the tips and strategies she's learned to help other home based business owners balance, manage, and market their businesses.
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