Feedburner - why should we care?

[Neil Morgan]

Hey Guys

If you publish an RSS feed, do you use Feedburner?

Which elements of Feedburner make it a worthwhile addition to your marketing arsenal?

Cheers,

Neil

[roosevelt]

It really helps you track how many people are actually interested in your blog real time. Then you can see which posts in your blog are actually being read the most. So, you can always publish more articles related to that, to keep your readers more active and interested.

Another great feature they have is, it can also track how many content thief are there. For example, if some other domain is reading your feed, it shows up under the Uncommon Uses page, so you can confirm if someone is not misusing your content.

[David]

Originally Posted by Neil Morgan

Hey Guys

If you publish an RSS feed, do you use Feedburner?

Which elements of Feedburner make it a worthwhile addition to your marketing arsenal?

Cheers,

Neil

think about what you just said...

you DO WANT SOMETHING from Google, right?

it behooves you to use every single Google tool ever created.

What would you think if YOU were a google engineer?

I once posted to a Google forum about the Chrome browser, and I did so FROM firefox.

a google employee caught that and called me out in front of God and everybody!

Google employees have feelings, they have egos, Google is a jealous God (IMHO)

one of the most poigiant forum threads I ever saw was hilarious:

Guy posts a complaint that Google never seems to respond to people's questions re: something is broken

someone else replies with this:

"with the advent of Global Positioning Satellites, when Google's travels over head (and you want a question answered) lie prostrate, throw salt over one shoulder and repeat a mantra- then Google will bless you with an answer


I'm paraphrasing but it was so damn funny my coffee went up my nose...
a Google engineer replied back and I forever thought of Google employees in a new light.

What would I DO if I was Google?

[Neil Morgan]

Thanks for that.

I guess the thing that confuses me is this. Can't people just subscribe to your feed using its standard (non Feedburner) URL?

Because if that's the case, doesn't all the stats stuff provided by Feedburner become meaningless because it's only supplying you with data from a subset of your subscriber base?

Cheers,

Neil

[AfteraDream]

I use Feedburner and it is very bad at tracking subscribers... not what I expected... It fluctuates a lot and only updated once a day...

[Quentin]

The main thing with Feedburner is that it will convert to different formats for you making it more compliant.

Quite often your normal feed will not work so well on mobiles etc and feedburner will make it look good.

Add to that the fact that it also tracks and lets you monetize it.

Q

[Neil Morgan]

a google employee caught that and called me out in front of God and everybody!

In a past life, I once visited a vehicle (beginning with F) manufacturing site in my BMW. Only visitors driving vehicles by that maker were allowed into the "inner" car park. The rest of us had to park outside and walk for miles to get in.

Sad but true.

Cheers,

Neil

[Neil Morgan]

I guess the thing that confuses me is this. Can't people just subscribe to your feed using its standard (non Feedburner) URL?

Is this true or not? Anyone know?

Cheers,

Neil

[eshannon]

Originally Posted by Neil Morgan

Is this true or not? Anyone know?

Cheers,

Neil

When you use feedburner, you're supposed to switch the links to your feed in the template. So not sure how someone would even get your "normal" feed link.

[Neil Morgan]

Hey Eric

Thanks!

When you use feedburner, you're supposed to switch the links to your feed in the template.

Are you referring to your blog template?

Cheers,

Neil

[ecoverartist]

I used to use Feedburner and it does a pretty good job starting out (as do all free google tools), but I also wanted the email marketing possibility built in which is why I switched to FeedBlitz.

[Modoc Warrior]

It is also not a bad idea to educate your readers about RSS feeds. Most don't really know.

Allen

[Quentin]

Well I guess the best way to explain it is show you.

This is my standard feed that most people would use

The Internet Marketers Club

It gets a lot of visits so this is all people would see.

This is my feedburner feed.

The Internet Marketers Club

I actually get a lot of hits on this url so better to have it look nice and be compliant than the standard feed which would only be useful to people who know what a feed is.

So how many look at this feed url?

Almost 50 people a day.

Which one should they look at?

Quentin