Your Blog RSS Feed

Blog RSS Feeds 101 and the Basics of FeedBurner

43 Comments / Blogging Tutorials / By /

Every blog owner needs to know about RSS feeds, where to find them and how to use FeedBurner to enhance their potential. The reason it's referred to as a “feed” is because, each time you publish a brand new article, your feed is also updated. FeedBurner is a free service provided by Google that provides an easy way for people to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed using their favorite feed reader. They can also get your RSS feed delivered by email through FeedBurner's email subscription options.

Do I Have An RSS Feed?

Yes! Basics of RSS Feeds for Your BlogThe content in every blog has a feed. Basically a feed or RSS is an easy way for your audience to access your content and get notified when you publish a new post. By subscribing to your feed, your readers don't have to keep coming back to your blog only to discover you haven't published any new posts yet!

I know what you're thinking “but I want them to keep coming to my blog, that will give me more traffic“. Trust me, in the long run you'll be happy you have a feed, it adds functionality to your blog and helps you stay connected with your readers. You'll use the feed to promote your blog on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed and with blog promotion tools like CommentLuv.

But Where is My Feed?

The raw (or default) for your self-hosted WordPress blog and for WordPress.com blogs use this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title):

  • Atom: http://blogname.worpress.com/feed/atom/
  • RSS:  http://blogname.wordpress.com/feed

The raw (or default) feed for every Blogger blog uses this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title) :

  • Atom: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
  • RSS: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
The default feed for Typepad blogs use this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title):
  • Atom: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/atom.xml
  • RSS: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/rss.xml
Feeds come in two flavors, Atom and RSS, to accommodate the multitude of readers that are available. FeedBurner is going to help you sort through all of this.
Warning: New podcasters are often tempted to use the RSS 2.0 feeds from FeedBurner for iTunes. However I recommend using the podcast feed from your media host like Libsyn! See this article for details: What is RSS? – The Audacity to Podcast

How to “Burn” Blog RSS Feeds to FeedBurner

You need a Google account to sign up for FeedBurner. This video gives step-by-step instructions to Make a FeedBurner RSS for Your Blog or Podcast.

You can dress up your FeedBurner feed in many ways including:

  • Add your logo or Gravatar
  • Customize the timing and message that goes out to people who subscribe by email
  • Add FeedFlare for easy social sharing on Facebook, StumbleUpon, by email and more
  • Tweet each new blog post to Twitter using Twitterfeed or HootSuite
  • Promote the subscriber counts of your RSS Feeds (get the HTML code from the FeedCount option in FeedBurner) in a widget

This list isn't complete, and I'm sure you have some tips to share about how you take advantage of FeedBurner feed.

Getting FeedBurner Subscribers is not the same as “building an email list”

You might want to encourage your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed via email, but just to be clear about this, that is NOT the same as building a list for the purpose of email marketing. You need an outside service in order to do this and I highly recommend using AWeber. When you use an email marketing service you can send your subscribers additional messages or newsletters that will help you connect with your audience of readers on a completely different level. I go into great detail about the difference between RSS subscribers and building a list of email subscribers in this video: Subscribers: A Content Marketers Greatest Asset

Where To Submit Your FeedBurner RSS Feed

You can submit your RSS feed to some popular blogging communities to help get your content noticed. Here are a few sites that I recommend:

Use your FeedBurner RSS feeds to auto-post content to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, here are just a few services you can submit RSS feeds for auto-posting:
  • HootSuite – post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Page, LinkedIn
  • Twitterfeed – post to Twitter
  • Dlvr.it – post to Twitter and Facebook
  • PostPlanner – post to Facebook

I'm sure you can find hundreds of other services that will post to social networks when you submit your FeedBurner RSS. However, I caution you to use this feature in moderation. In order for your social media strategy to be effective you must visit each of these networks to engage and interact with your fans and followers.

For example, I set up Dlvr.it so that it will auto-post to Twitter any new posts from my trusted friend and mentor Lisa Irby's blog. I know that I would end up sharing their posts anyway and most of them are auto-posting my new content as well. However, I still take the time to visit their blogs, share their content on other networks and I also make it a point to thank them publicly on Twitter.  So please use this strategy in moderation and don't get tempted to auto-post more than you are interacting or eventually your shares will be ignored.

43 thoughts on “Blog RSS Feeds 101 and the Basics of FeedBurner”

  1. Evgeny Goldin

    Hi Ileane and thanks for the post.

    The problem I’m trying to solve now is to make my WP blog use another address for its feed, the one at FeedBurner. I have two feeds addresses in my blog: the one big RSS icon links to and I have this one set up correctly to point to FeedBurner. But there’s another address specified as

    <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/”/>

    in the source and I couldn’t find how it can be changed yet. “Feed Locations” plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-feedlocations/) couldn’t be installed for some reason. Meanwhile, I used the following rewrite rule in my “.htaccess”

    “RewriteRule feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior [QSA]”

    This way if anyone accesses “http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/” he gets redirected to “http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior” which is half-solution I would say.

    The problem with rewrite rule is that old address (“/blog/feed”) is still used if people use browser’s built-in feed subscription or, say, Google reader RSS Subscriber (http://goo.gl/0GFv) – I’m not sure rewrite really works for those cases.

    So if anyone could tip me about how can I make

    <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/”/>

    become

    <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior”/>

    when page is sent to a browser I would be really glad.
    Thanks everybody.

      1. Evgeny Goldin

        I have it installed but it does nothing, I still see “blog/feed” link generated, deleted the cache to make sure it’s a new version.

        I guess my next step will be looking in PHP code where this link is generated and changing it, that’s what I did with theme’s RSS icon. In fact, I already tried it but found no place where “blog/feed” string appears in the code, guess it’s generated dynamically. This only makes this problem more interesting, I’ll have something to blog about when it’s settled one day 🙂

        And yes, if nothing else help, the rewrite should to the job.

        Many thanks for your help, Ileane!

          1. Evgeny Goldin

            Ileane, thanks a lot. I saw some solutions sent along my way and will try them this weekend. I apologize for not responding earlier, I had a crazy week in the office and could hardly deal with anything else. I’m touched with your willingness to help and I’m sorry again for not replying earlier.

          2. Evgeny Goldin

            Default feed link can be changed by modifying “wp-includes/general-template.php”, line 1601.

            I changed it now so I have a proper FeedBurner link generated instead. I’ll post an entry about it next week.

          3. Ileane

            Yeah! I’m really glad you got that resolved. I don’t know much about PHP, but I think I understand that you had to manipulate a WordPress file some how. Good for you.

          4. Evgeny Goldin

            Yeap, being a software developer I tend to seek for solutions in changing mine or someone’s else code. All PHP applications, like WordPress, contain their logic in PHP files which can be edited and changes take effect immediately, there’s no need to recompile and rebuild the application. Which makes it possible to tweak some portions of a WP markup.

            Btw, from what I know PHP is a language that can be learned by non-programmers. So may be you would choose to learn it one day and then develop some powerful WP plugins 🙂

          6. Ileane

            Lisa, please email me with more details about the problem you are having with your feed. I’ll try to give you a hand. 🙂

  2. Donnie

    RSS feeds are a great way to move information around the Internet. Another cool thing that Feedburner does, it allows users to subscribe to your feed via email. I use this one a lot because I forget to use my RSS reader.

    Another way I use feeds is to share information between my blogs. For example, listing recent posts from Blog B on the sidebar of Blog A. Great for sharing traffic and for SEO (if you use the 301 redirect option if Feedburner).

    1. Ileane

      Hi Donnie, Excellent tip! I have a few blogs and I’m going to add the RSS feed from this blog to the sidebars asap! Thanks for sharing such a helpful comment.

  3. Mitch

    If you go to my blog and look to the right, you’ll see feeds from my other blogs listed on the side. That’s something that Feedburner allows you to do as well; pretty neat function I have to say.

    1. Ileane

      Mitch, I have a handful of blogs too. 🙂 How many blogs do you have? Please share a few of the url’s with us. Thanks!

  4. Cindy

    hey Ileane, this is cool. I didnt know about Feedflare, gonna add that one, thanks 🙂

    I like to add to in case a feed comes up with some kind of parsing error and no posts show up, it means there are spaces in between the php code in any of the plugins. They can be fixed by manually editing the code in the plugin editor or just changing to a different theme.

  5. Mitchell Allen

    Ileane, I’ve had Feedburner since the day it came out, LOL. I didn’t have a clue, I just loved the animated Headline Rotator.
    I still think it’s a pretty widget.

    The main thing I like is the concept behind Smartfeed. I activated it – though I have not subscribed to my own feed to verify it.

    Cheers,

    Mitch

    1. Ileane

      Hey Mitch, I like the animated headline too, but I don’t think I set it up for this blog’s feed yet, thanks for reminding me!

  6. ashok

    Lots of good stuff in this post. I do wonder if a few links that might explore what a feed is and where it is showing up for those oblivious to these things might be useful. People are seeing feeds all the time in widgets that show updates from other blogs. Also, I’m curious about readers – it may sound advanced to discuss Google reader, but then again, anyone who customizes their Google homepage gets the option to add a feed or two automatically.

  7. Kathy

    Another tool that your readers might be interested in is learning about RSS aggregators. There are websites out there that just collect a whole bunch of information from other websites and publish snippets of that info along with a link back to the original source. These are called RSS aggregators. You can submit your feed to them and they will republish it. Every time you write a new post on your blog, you get a backlink to that post from the aggregator.

  8. Michael Welch

    Hi Ileane,
    I love your blog a lot of great info here. Thanks for the post about FeedBurner I just went and set up an account with them thanks for your post and help.

    Thanks

    Michael

  9. Dave

    Sending my clients’ WordPress feed over to FeedBurner is one of the very first things I do. All the tailoring, stats and subscription options that FB provides makes it a no-brainer to me

    1. Ileane

      Hi Dave, welcome to Basic Blog Tips. When I first started blogging it took we about 3 months to figure out not to use the default WordPress feed. Hopefully I’ll save someone else the time and trouble that I went through of trying to get my subscribers to migrate to the Feedburner subscription. Thanks for your feedback.

  10. Karl Foxley

    Hi Ileane,

    Feedburner has been a faithful companion of mine ever since I discovered WordPress. Although there are alternatives on the market I prefer the features and functions of Feedburner simply because I know them like I know my way around WP.

    Always a pleaure reading your posts Ileane.

    Karl

    1. Ileane

      Hi Karl, did you ever try FeedBlitz? I’m giving it a try with some of my other blogs but I’m a FeedBurner fan at heart. Thanks for your feedback, it’s always great to have your input.

  12. Emman

    Wow the article is great. Do you also think rss feed submission is a good way to get traffic and backlinks.

  13. Danny

    Ileane, you explain the rss feed for blogspot and wordpress.com, but how does it work for wordpress.org? Can I just download a feedburner plugin?
    Great tip on changing the feedburner settings so it doesn’t take the commentluv links.
    That would get some people to disable either feedburner or commentluv, if they don’t know how to stop it from taking the links.

  15. Barry Wells

    Hi Ileane,

    I love having the RSS functions on blogs. It makes it so easy to subscribe and stay up to date. The only trouble I have is remembering to open FeedDemon so as to read them. I know silly thing but I get half way through the day and think, opps I’ve done it again. Just as i did when I started reading this post 🙁

    Thanks for the nudge 😉

    Barry

  19. Mario M.

    Hey Ileane! Thanks for explaining feedburner so well! You know, it has become like a necessity now! Having a feedburner account really helps to get more and more subscribers!

Comments are closed.