Give readers choice, and let FeedBurner deal with the headaches.

[A Clear Blogging Tip.]

Here's another good tip I got from "Seven Ways to Master FeedBurner": Let your readers subscribe via email, and let FeedBurner deal with the headaches.

By the way, MamaBlogga - Jordan McCollum - is an excellent blogger and blogging consultant whom I would have never found except for Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog - 2007 Group Writing Project. Another good reason to track this project!

Here's the tip: For some readers, email is still the preferred means of getting information. FeedBurner makes it easy not only to provide an attractive daily email of your posts, but will handle all of the admin trivia involved with confirming and managing email subscriptions, for free.

Here's how to implement:

• Warm up by adding your blog logo to your RSS Feed.
• Go to the Publicize tab of your FeedBurner Account and click Email Subscriptions.
• Activate Email Subscriptions.
• If you are a TypePad blogger, you are in luck: FeedBurner takes advantage of TypePad Widgets making it easy to either add a form (see below) or a link to a form to your TypePad blog's sidebar. If not, you'll have some code to add manually to your main template file.
• Don't forget to click on Communication Preferences to check the email FeedBurner will use as the Send From.
• Click on Email Branding and liven up your emails by adding your own logo, changing font and colors to your preferred choices and tweak the confirmation email if needed.
• Click Delivery Options and set your time zone.
• Finally, for extra credit, go back to the Subscription Management page and check the "Send me an email whenever people unsubscribe checkbox" - you can then email the departing reader a quick "sorry to see you go, is it something I said email" to understand why they are unsubscribing.

The more ways you make it easier for people to read your blog, the more readers you will have.

Comments

[Jordan (MamaBlogga)]

This is great! I totally recommend all those things & do them myself. Thanks again for the link and the kind words, Bob!

[Michael from Pro Blog Design]

It amazes me how many people don't offer the email option!

On one site I run, over half of the subscribers are using the email. If I didn't offer it, I'd have half the number of readers! Certainly not a chance I'd like to take...

[Dave]

Nice FeedBurner tips. Much appreciated.