FeedBurner: Take Another Look for RSS Feed Service

FeedBurner (Google’s RSS feed service) provides RSS and email subscriptions with additional features making it simple for the DIY crowd to leverage the power of RSS. Many small businesses, non-profits, and other bloggers are likely using FeedBurner, its free and super easy to set-up. Most, however, are not leveraging its features to take their RSS marketing into overdrive. Let’s dive into why we heart FeedBurner.

We Heart FeedBurner

Big Heart of Art - 1000 Visual Mashups There are many other RSS feed services available on the Net, a popular one being FeedBlitz. We still love FeedBurner because it does what its supposed to do reliably with super easy set-up. It’s also part of Google accounts, saving us one more login

FeedBurner’s Smart Features:

SmartCast: Super easy RSS syndication of your podcast to iTunes. This makes podcasting easy in feeds that normally cannot support it. Link to MP3s, videos, images, and other digital media in your site content and SmartCast creates enclosures for them automatically. SmartCast will also add elements required for a richer, more detailed listing in iTunes Podcast Directory and sites using Yahoo Media RSS.

FeedFlare: Give your subscribers easy ways to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish by including as many or few of the services listed below. FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content.

Headline Animator: Create and customize an animated banner that cycles through your feed’s five most recent items. It’s an easy way to promote your content anywhere you can place a snippet of HTML.

Email Subscriptions: Give your biggest fans another way to keep up with your blog or podcast feed by placing an email subscription form on your site.

Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright. With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here. This service attaches the appropriate Creative Commons license in your feed’s XML.

GeoTag: Let everyone know your publication location by adding your latitude and longitude (or ZIP code, if you live in the U.S.) to your feed. This service inserts the geo:lat and geo:long tags per the world geodesic survey RDF specification.

Monetize: Activate Google AdSense for feeds and choose options that control how these ads display in your feed.

And, there’s much more. If you haven’t taken a look at FeedBurner lately, check it out and maximize your efforts.

FeedBurner Recommended Settings Video

Let’s walk through our recommended settings and details on how we use the various features of FeedBurner:

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Image: QThomasBower on Flickr

About the Author...

Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!