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Dear RSS, I’ve Met Someone New

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Dear Google Reader/FeedBurner/RSS aggregator,

I can’t go on living with you this way.  We used to hang out all the time. You’d make my day better and show me new things that I didn’t realize existed.  Anytime I came to see you, you’d give me some great times. You and I would spend so much time together, walking on the beach or even just riding the bus. But things aren’t like they used to be.

Plus, you’d never come see me.  You wouldn’t introduce me to your friends. Honestly, our one-way relationship is strained.

Ok I’m just going to come out and say it – I’ve met someone new.  Someone that gives me just what I need.  She lets me choose the way I feel good, who and what I want to hear and even lets me easily reply quickly.  She introduces me to her friends with similar interests, and gives me more ‘feel good’ connections. She even lets me directly respond with her friends that create interesting items for me to consume. She teases me with quick blog titles and links that expose me to new industry writers and information.

Sure, you do some of that, too.  But the fact is I don’t really see a huge need for you any more.

And yes, I’ve heard the stories about her dating others. But that’s ok, too, because she isn’t afraid to share.  If another one of her friends see something that they like, she’s not afraid to share it with me too.  Yeah, I know that’s a little orgy-ish, but in the end I feel happy knowing that I got to experience something that I may have never done had it not been for her being in the middle.

Even weirder, she encourages me to share her goods with others.  And this sharing actually helps me with other relationships.

Her name is Twitter, and she has replaced your place in my heart.  I’m sorry.

Will

Posted in RSS, feedburner, social media, twitter | 1 Response »

Eating on the Go: Making Your RSS Feed Convenient to Your Readers

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Ok I’ll get straight to the point – I eat in the bathroom.  Sometimes in my car, too.

You see, I’m part of a growing group of folks who carry the Internet everywhere they go. Between the iPhone, PDAs and other Internet-enabled devices, getting online is no longer something you need to visit the library to do.

For instance: Every night my wife asks me to take her up to the tanning salon, and I do.  While she goes in, gets naked and scorches her skin, I sit in the truck and read interesting RSS feeds with my Treo via Google Reader.  It’s a nice 20 or so minutes alone where I can catch up on some of my favorite SEO bloggers.

You’ve Got to Make It Easy to Get to Your Content

My cellphone’s  interface isn’t the best, and those buttons are mighty tiny to push, so I prefer not to push more than I have to.  So I’d prefer to click and get straight to the full text, not read a small portion and then have to click 1 for the original post.  Three clicks just to read what you’re blabbering about?

What’s even worse is feeds like Sphinn’s Top Ten.  At first I thought – wow, cool – all the good stuff on one page.  Then I started to read them on the Treo, and what a headache.  First I get the summary feed, which upon clicking takes me to the sphinn Top-Ten page (full of summaries) where I have to click it again.  Then it takes me to the Sphinn page where (once again) there’s the description, some comments, and oh – a link to the actual post.

Your feed should not be this difficult to get to.  People subscribed to read your content, get it to them immediately.

Offer Multiple Feeds

Since you already know how important a blog is to your business, you must also understand that providing a convenient way for people to read your blog is just as important.  What’s the point of posting if no one can read it?

I suggest to my clients that they offer multiple feeds on their website – a summary feed, and a full text feed.

A summary feed is a RSS feed that contains the first 30 or so words of your blog post.  It’s quick to download, and people can decide quickly whether or not they want to read the rest of your post.  The biggest con is that it requires the person to click and download the full post.  When you’ve got limited time, a slow connection, or a small phone, this may not be the best choice.

A full text feed contains the entire text of every post.  This is a great option for those (like me) who prefer to download once and not have to click (and wait) to read the rest.

SEO Impact on Multiple Feeds

There are no real SEO impacts by offering more than one feed.  The entire point is to make it convenient to all of your readers.

Setting Up Multiple Feeds

There are numerous ways to do this, I’m not going into all of them.  Personally, I use FeedBurner’s services.  I set up multiple accounts for each blog, one with full feeds and one with summaries.  Then I link to both of those feeds in my blog, therefore offering my first time readers the option of how they’d like to consume my content.

Make it Easy

As I said before, the point is to make it easy for people to read the content of your website/blog.  Sites or links that require several clicks will send your visitors away to other, more convenient sites (your competitors).  Don’t let that happen.

Posted in RSS, customer service, small business | No Responses »

Use FeedBurner’s FeedFlare to Get Your Visitors to Promote Your Content

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

This is a guest post by Jason Bartholme

FeedBurner is vastly popular with bloggers and content providers. Sure it tracks subscribers to feeds. But, are you using it make it easy for your visitors to promote and share your site’s content?

What is FeedFlare?

FeedFlare is an often overlooked feature that is included with all FeedBurner accounts. It is a service which gives additional functionality to your existing feed. Choose from basic features like emailing your item. showing the number of comments, as well as the number of saves or links on a number of social bookmarking sites. FeedBurner allows you to create your own “flare” if you would like. FeedFlare is also a good alternative to having graphical widgets in your content area taking up real estate. Also, if you are using a blogging platform, your flare will show up on the psot summaries on the home page, in the full post, and the feed.

Configuring FeedFlare

FeedFlare is fairly easy to implement. Once you log into your FeedBurner account, click on “Optimize” then you will see it listed under “Services”.

You have the option to inlclude features in either/or your site or your feed. I prefer to include more of the features on my site than the feed. My reasoning is that more people are going to see the site than the feed. Once you have choosen the flare for your site and feed, you can use a click-and-drag function to rearrange the flare so they will appear in the presidence that you prefer.

Click to continue »

Posted in Marketing, RSS, content, feedburner | 1 Response »

Google Reader Can Be Your Best Friend

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

For most new people to SEM (whom we refer to as n00bs), the concept of RSS is difficult to grasp. Even for a techie, the concept can be a bit overwhelming. Funny thing is, it’s so simple once you understand it that you have a hard time realizing that you once struggled with the concept.

I really don’t want to go into what RSS is, there are plenty of websites out there that will do that for you. What I did want to mention is related to one of Google’s newer products, Google Reader.

Google Reader (GR) is an RSS aggregator. Basically, it takes ‘feeds’ from different sites and puts them all on one page for you. Why is this cool? Well, assuming you’ve been around for even just a short time, you’ve discovered some great blogs targeted to the SEO/SEM industry. You probably have these blogs in your favorites, or maybe in links across the top of your browser. You visit them every day or every few days to see what’s new, to soak up some good tips, and just to keep a Pulse on the industry.

Problem is, you keep discovering new blogs, adding more links, and pretty soon you’re visiting so many sites that you can’t remember if you’ve read this one or not. In steps GR.

Your first (and hopefully most obvious) step is to sign up for GR. Easy enough, I hope.

Next, let’s get some feeds loaded. You’re gonna need a few browser windows going, probably.

So let’s use this website as an example. Poor SEM has a ‘feed’, which you can subscribe to. On the home page, look for this icon:

You’ll notice that you can click on the icon, and you’ll end up here – a page with a bunch of crazy looking code. What good is that? (Not much to you – at least in that format!)

Back to the home page. This time, right click on the icon, and copy the shortcut (in IE it’s Copy Shortcut. In Firefox it’s Copy Link Location).

Back to GR. On the left you’ll see a green bar that says Add Subscription. Click that, and paste in the “feed link” that you copied earlier, then click Add. You should see the page refresh, and Poor SEM will show up in the bottom left area as one of the feeds you read. In parentheses you should have a number, which tells you how many posts you have not yet read. On the right you’ll have the posts, or at least the first few paragraphs of a post, depending on how the site owner set up their outgoing feed.

Now go to another site you like. Chances are, they’ve got a feed button. It may look similar to my icon, or it may actually be an “Add to Google” button. Unfortately there is no set standard for feeds, but the most common is defeinitely the little orange box like mine.

So there you go. Add all your feeds to GR. Delete all those buttons across your link bar and just add the link to GR. As you continue to use the reader, you’ll find out some blogs don’t interest you as much. Delete, add, and tweak to get just the news you want every day. GR does all the work, you just click and read. Google Reader might just become your best friend!

Posted in RSS, beginner sem | 1 Response »