If you were a blogger, you would very well know how important RSS feeds are for the success of your blogs. It is through these RSS feeds you can use mobiles, feed readers, and emails to stay connected will all your contents and know what is happening on that front. It is also one of those features that allow you to manage huge followings and distribute contents that get updated quite regularly. No wonder then that success of your blogs are based on RSS subscriptions you have. You would surely love to increase your RSS subscriber list to an extent where you will have a huge set of readers and get good exposures to all your blogs.
There are couples of features you need to sign up as a blogger. Firstly, you need to have an account in Feedburner; owned by Google, that will enable you to effectively manage all RSS feeds and keep a track on them. Secondly, you have to ensure that your feeds are hosted on your domain rather than Feedburner. For this, you need to sign up with MyBrand. Importance of RSS feeds cannot be undermined. They will help you get as many subscribers as you want. There are few important locations in your blog, which can be used for RSS feeds. In case you have not come across these spots, make sure to try them out to see how they can create an impact. You can virtually see your subscribers list increasing in no time!
Among locations used to promote RSS feeds are RSS autodiscovery, Call to action, Subscriber count, Email form, big orange feed button, and Welcome message before posts, Call to action after posts and in content links.
1. RSS autodiscovery: - It is one of the useful features to have in your kitty to promote your RSS feeds. This feature allows aggregators and web browsers to detect the RSS feed for a given website. This feature is well supported in most internet browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. If you are using any of these browsers, it would be easier for you to subscribe to RSS feeds. To take advantage of this feature and to have it set-up on your blog, you need to copy and paste a given code in your blog template. But do not forget to replace the URL with your blog feed. This feature can certainly help you to build on a healthy subscriber base in no time.
2. Call to action: - It is hard to believe; but it’s true that call to action can indeed be powerful and help you direct all your website visitors to take actions you wanted them to. On most occasions, visitors need to be told what to do and what not to do in using a website effectively. To improve your conversion rate significantly, you can ask the visitors to sign up for all the latest updates across all blogs rather than directly saying “this is my RSS feed”. These features are generally seen at the top of a sidebar. It is worthwhile to try out different versions available and see which one will give you better responses.
3. Subscriber count: - Google’s Feedburner is very popular among many blog owners across the world because it give them an option to see their subscriber’s list and get it compared with the lists of other blogs. If you have an impressive list, it is always better to show it in your blog corner to indicate people how popular your blogs are. It acts as a social proof and would tempt many newcomers to join the list as well.
4. Email form: - Feedburner also allows you to get RSS feeds through emails. This feature is particularly useful for those niches that are less technical in scope. As emails are known widely across different people, they can get RSS feeds in a format they would be glad to receive.
5. Big orange feed button: - These buttons are probably very well recognized on the web these days. They are generally visible on blogs and over the fold. If you are making use of it, make sure to link it so that visitors wouldn’t have any problems subscribing to feeds.
6. Welcome message before posts: - It is always a great idea to welcome your visitors irrespective of where they come from. You can then request them to subscribe to your RSS feeds. These days, you can find Wordpress plugin that can help you greet visitors depending upon the referrer’s URL.
7. Call to action after posts: - It is important to add welcome messages not just before posts, but also after it. You can also highlight to the visitors that all updates are free of cost.
8. In content links: - Last but not the least; you need to add in-content links to your feeds and at appropriate places. This feature can be effective if you are intending to provide incentive to subscribe and providing people with extra contexts.
Other ways to promote your RSS feeds
9. You can use guest posts to add your RSS links.
10. Your signatures in newsletters, emails, forums etc can be used to include a link to your RSS feed.
11. Your RSS updates can also be sent to your email list provided you an email newsletter.
