A quick and easy way to publicize your blog…
Does your blog really exist if no one reads it? No matter how great your blog is until you reach an audience its value will not be realized or its potential achieved. Just as the greatest novel ever written has no value until it’s published until your blog is read it doesn’t exist.
This is where FeedBurner can came to the rescue. FeedBurner will publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe. This allows you to deliver your posts to your audience instead of them having to come to you. A much simpler, faster and efficient method of getting the word out!
Your readers can keep up-to-date via an RSS feed using their favorite reader or having new posts emailed to them. So when you have something to say you’ll be certain it’s read by everyone in a timely manner. Not merely posted at your blog waiting around for your readers to remember to visit and see if anything is new.
The first step is opening a free account with FeedBurner which you can accomplish quickly by following this link. During the sign-up process you will be assigned a feed address which will be used to enable the following scripts to work with your blog. Simply replace http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Blogging-sites with your feed address when adding the script to your blog.
Posted below is the code required to place a subscribe via a reader and a subscribe via email links on your blog. You can insert these scripts right into your blog pages, posts or create Widgets with them. Just remember to replace our feed address with your own!
Subscribe via a reader
<p><a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Blogging-sites” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”><img src=”http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png” alt=”" style=”vertical-align:middle;border:0″/></a> <a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Blogging-sites” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”>Subscribe via a Reader</a></p>
Subscribe via email
<form style=”border:1px solid #ccc;padding:3px;text-align:center;” action=”http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify” method=”post” target=”popupwindow” onsubmit=”window.open(‘http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=Blogging-sites‘, ‘popupwindow’, ‘scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520′);return true”><p>Subscribe via Email<br>Enter your email address:</p><p><input type=”text” style=”width:140px” name=”email”/></p><input type=”hidden” value=”Blogging-sites” name=”uri”/><input type=”hidden” name=”loc” value=”en_US”/><input type=”submit” value=”Subscribe” /><p>Delivered by <a href=”http://feedburner.google.com” target=”_blank”>FeedBurner</a></p></form>
You can see each of these examples in action in our keep updated Widget. Both of these scripts can be modified on many levels and covering all of the possibilities is far beyond the scope of this post. As an example if you prefer not to place the sign-up box on your blog but rather have it pop-up when they request to sign-up simply select this option under Publicize when FeedBurner creates the script.
Also note FeedBurner offers additional free services under four main categories named Publicize, Optimize, Analyze, and Monetize. Many of these we will be covering in future posts however until then you can spent a little time exploding how they can benefit your blog be visiting here.