So you have a blog or two. Then you also have a RSS-feed (RSS = Really Simple Syndication) that your readers can subscribe too. A RSS-feed is a great tool and shouldn’t be forgotten. But how do you actually make it more useful for you and your blog?

You can easily and for free check the stats of your RSS-feed using FeedBurner.com. It’s just as easy and important like checking the stats for your blog or website. So go and register your free account at FeedBurner and add your blog feed.

Done that? Okey, now the fun begins! On your FeedBurner account you can now see live stats of your RSS-feed. But you need to spread the new feed url, otherwise no one can subscribe to it. So go to the “Publicize” section in FeedBurner.

At “Publicize” you can publish your feed using several different methods:

BuzzBoost
Republish your feed as HTML

Headline Animator
Display rotating headlines

PingShot
Notify services when you publish

Email Subscriptions
Offer feed updates via email

All of those services are very useful, especially “PingShot” and “BuzzBoost”. But we will in this post concentrate a bit more on the “Chicklet Chooser”.

Chicklet Chooser
Promote your FeedBurner feed directly on your website! Place HTML that Chicklet Chooser automatically generates for you in your site templates to help users easily subscribe to your feed.

On Easy Webbers we only had in the beginning two different custom icons. Those were the Yahoo! and the Google button (or icons). Later on I wanted to add more buttons but I didn’t want to make the feed section any bigger. So I replaced all of our different “Add to” buttons with one button. But when I did that I unfortunately started to notice that we did not gain so many new subscribers as we did before. So I decided to make the feed section a bit bigger and let it take more space on the blog. So I went and added nine new custom feed icons (as you can see on the right side of this page) including the new standard feed icon. The next day when I checked the stats over at FeedBurner I noticed that our subscribers had increased with 50% in just one day! Just thanks to our new custom feed icons.

So the conclusion is that you should let your feed buttons and icons take more space on your blog or site. And you should definitely add more feed buttons. It’s worth it, trust me.
But what are the downsides you might ask? Of course there are some kinds of downside of promoting your feed. You will loose some page views and some hits from your readers, because now they can read your blog posts in their RSS reader instead of visiting your blog. But in the long run it is worth it. You will gain readers that will never forget your blog (as long as they subscribe to your feed that is). And when you get a huge amount of subscribers to your feed you can always join FeedBurners Ad Network.

Now don’t forget to use FeedBurners other services so you can optimize your feed as much as possible.

If you want to subscribe to Easy Webbers RSS-feed please add this url in your feed reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/easywebbers

Thank You!