I recommend every blogger to set up Feedburner after creating a WordPress or BlogSpot blog . It is a must-have service for bloggers to set up RSS feeds and track performance.
FeedBurner Features
- It’s free and simple to use.
- It offers some great email newsletter features like free email subscriptions, email sending schedules, and email subject headings.
- There is no limit to the number of subscribers you can have using Feedburner.
- You can also monetize FeedBurner feeds using Adsense for feeds.
- More options for branding, controlling, and tracking your feeds and email subscribers.
A few points to note:
- When you start a new blog, make sure you provide information from day one.
- From an SEO perspective, it is a good idea to use keywords or brand names in your feed. This makes it easier to identify among various feeds.
This guide is for Blogspot or WordPress bloggers who are still using the default feeds provided by the blogging platform. Learn how to set up an RSS feed using FeedBurner.
FeedBurner RSS feed setup guide:
- Open the Google FeedBurner page and log in with your Gmail or Google Apps account. On the first page, you will see an option to add your blog URL. If it is a new WordPress blog, create a dummy post (test post) to set up feedBurner.
- Copy your blog feed URL and paste it as shown, then click Next.
For any WordPress blog, your default feed will look something like http://domain.com/feed . Replace domain.com with your actual domain name.
- Specify the feed name on the next page. Keep the name the same as your domain name. If your domain name is long, you can use a short name for your feed. For example, SML (Shoutmeloud). If you are creating a micro-niche website, you should choose to use keywords in your feed title. This helps your feed reach a larger audience.
- In the next screen, you will receive a confirmation message that your feed is ready.
Now you have successfully created a Feedburner feed for your blog. All you need to do is install the FD Feedburner plugin and redirect all your WordPress default feeds to the Feedburner feed.
These plugins are simple to configure and once configured, it will automatically handle the redirects. You can now make a number of changes to your Feedburner account as suggested below, which will ensure you get the most out of your email delivery and feeds.
How to Configure FeedBurner Free Email Subscription Feature
Feedburner provides your readers with an email subscription option which can be used to receive notifications via email. You can access this feature under Feed settings at Feed burner > Promotion > Email subscription.
Activate this option and get the HTML code provided.
Get the above code and embed it in a text widget on your WordPress blog.
Also, if you want to give a direct link, like I do in the author info on my blog
Use this link and replace SidelinePlay with your feed name
01.http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=SidelinePlay
The above link will direct readers to the email subscription box.
How to change Feedburner email sending time:
Here are some things you should know about Feedburner, it allows you to send one email per day and you can only set it up once.
Even if you publish 4-5 or 10 posts, it doesn’t matter because Feedburner will send emails only once a day. So, you need to understand the demographics and location of your audience and send emails accordingly.
One thing I have learned from my experience is that emails sent on weekends don’t work very well, while emails sent on weekdays work best, preferably Tuesday to Thursday.
So, I assume that you have already determined the best time to send your email newsletter. The next step is to configure the best time for email sending.
To change the scheduled time for email delivery, log in to your Feedburner account.
- Click your activity > click Public
- Under Promotions > Click Email Delivery and then under the submenu click the Delivery option
Set your time zone and preferred delivery time. Click Save. When choosing the time, keep in mind your target users and their usage.
How to change Feedburner email subject lines to make them more effective
Recently (a few months ago) Feedburner added a new option in the email subscription options where the newsletter no longer displays the same title but instead displays the latest post title in the email sent to the email subscribers.
This works really well; when you send multiple posts via Feedburner email, you can display the latest post title instead of showing any crappy multi-post theme. The single post title will be really effective and your readers are more likely to click on it.
To access this option, log into your feed burner account and navigate to > Promotions > Email Subscriptions > Email Branding. Change your feed title to
${latestItemTitle} : SidelinePlay
I added ShoutMeLoud for branding purposes. You should change this to suit your brand. This is a quick Feedburner trick that works really well.
Once burned with Feedburner, there are a number of other settings we need to set to optimize your feeds, which we will cover in subsequent articles.
As a free option, Feedburner is the best, but I missed out on a lot of features compared to other paid and cheap options on the market.
Why is Feedburner so popular?
Here are a few new features I'd like to suggest that would greatly improve Feedburner:
Reminder emails for unconfirmed subscriptions:
The biggest problem with Feedburner email subscription is that you can't officially send reminder emails from the feed burner interface. And when any user tries to subscribe to your email newsletter but forgets to click on the confirmation email, he will never receive any email and your statistics will show another unconfirmed email subscriber.
This is annoying as it is not easy to manage them manually. It will be a huge plus point if Feedburner introduces this feature to send confirmation reminders again after a specific date, just like Aweber does.
User Management:
User control and management is the first thing I would look into in an email marketing tool.
That's why I paid for Aweber and use it as my email marketing software. Can you provide an option to search for users, delete users, and temporarily block users?
How to select multiple users at the same time and perform actions?
Provide readers with convenient subscription/unsubscription services:
Provide a common interface for readers to see which email newsletters they are subscribed to. They can choose to activate or cancel their subscription. And based on past subscriptions, suggest email newsletters for users to subscribe to. This will ultimately benefit all three of us. Admins, readers, and Feedburner.
Email Communications:
In WordPress, we can use some tricks to send emails only to feed subscribers, but if Feedburner wants to expand its boundaries, they need to start offering broadcasting capabilities.
We could send email newsletters only to feed subscribers, which would reduce our need for paid email marketing tools. Maybe as a free service they could limit it to a certain number, or offer a pro service like Feedburner for unlimited broadcasts. Imagine being a webmaster; this would help you grow your email list tremendously.
Email List Options:
For any blog that might be divided into different sections. (There are a lot of different categories). I would be happy to create an email list based on interest.
It could be an email list for people who like contests and free giveaways, or it could be an email list for WordPress enthusiasts. By using WordPress conditional tags, I can achieve this, but then I have to burn different feeds.
Custom Design Templates:
All newbies use Feedburner email subscription service from day one. Even though many of them are not good at coding and designing. What if feed burner starts providing custom templates for email subscription, which will enhance the look and feel of subscription box? Giving you more calls to action and more email subscribers.
I hope we'll see an updated version of Feedburner soon and that Feed burner users will take note of this guide.
If you have any problems setting up your RSS feeds, please let us know. We'll be happy to help.
Until next time.
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