8 Things You Need To Know About Your Blog Feed

"Mug: RSS" by rfelix

Earlier this week, I showed you how to use a full-text feed on your WordPress blog. Today, I’d like to share some more tips relating to blog feeds.

1. Not Everyone Knows What a Feed Is.

If you’re targeting people who are already tech-savvy, that’s one thing, but otherwise – don’t assume that your potential subscribers will know what a feed is.

Here’s my basic definition:

A feed contains recently updated content from a website.

When you visit a blog for the first time, if you like it, you might bookmark it. Great if you want to find it in future, but how do you know when it’s been updated? You could visit the blog again. This quickly becomes unrealistic if you bookmark a lot of blogs.

That’s where a feed comes in. I view a feed as a combination of a What’s New page and a bookmark. You can still bookmark the site if you wish, but if you subscribe to the feed, you’ll get a lot more out of it.

If you inform and educate your readers, instead of assuming they will already know what you’re talking about, they might subscribe to your site. Somehow, I think it’s worth the effort.

2. You Can’t Go Back On a Post Once it’s Out.

If you’re someone who likes to publish a post just to get it online, but then go back and edit it as you find errors, you’re going to be in trouble. Once the post appears in someone’s feed reader, you won’t be able to delete that post. It’s better to proof-read and get the post right first time.

3. Editing a Post Title Can Duplicate the Post in Your Feed.

Let’s say you’ve published a post and it’s already showing in the feed readers of all your subscribers. Now, you decide to edit the post and change the title – maybe you made a mistake, or maybe you think there’s a better title you could use.

The result is that some feed readers (such as Google Reader) look at the title of a post to determine if it’s new. Change the title of a post, and there’s a good chance the post will show up twice. Don’t do this!

4. Some People Will Want to Subscribe by Email.

I used to subscribe by email, and it flooded my inbox. I couldn’t do it again. However, some people swear by it. Don’t cut them out – let them subscribe by email. It’s an option that can be enabled if you use FeedBurner.

Having said that, it would be nice to get more emails in my inbox that aren’t spam. Maybe subscribing by email isn’t such a bad idea after all.

5. Not Everyone is a Subscriber.

We all work in different ways. I like subscribing to a site using Google Reader. You may prefer to subscribe by email. Others may not be sold on the idea of subscribing – at all.

Don’t get too pushy with getting people to subscribe (more on that in a moment) – and don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of subscribers. There may be many more people reading your site than you realise.

Keep an eye on your comments to see how much discussion your posts generate. If you get a good amount of comments but you don’t have many subscribers – so what? At least you have the comments. Of course, it’s not the same if most of the comments are your own replies. Try not to talk to yourself too much.

6. Nagging for Subscribers is a Major Turn-Off.

Some blogs use a popup to ask for subscribers, and I’ve heard a few of them do well out of it – but isn’t it annoying? Is it worth getting some extra subscribers when you consider how many other people may be turned off by the popup?

Even without popups, some blogs go overboard with linking to their feed far more than is really necessary. As for subscribing just to enter a contest… give me a break. What’s the point in temporarily inflating your subscriber count with people who don’t care about your content and just want to win a prize?

Oh yeah… more subscribers makes it look like your site is worth visiting. Just don’t blame me if you don’t have good content and loads of people subscribe, then they complain you don’t have good posts. I’m just saying.

7. Subscription Links Should be Easy to Find.

At the other end of the spectrum we have blogs where you have to play “hunt the feed”. You can usually click the orange icon at the end of the address bar, but some blogs don’t even have that (and Google Chrome doesn’t have it either, unless you install an extension).

Thinking about it though, hunt the feed could actually be a fun challenge for your readers. If you don’t mind that most of them won’t be able to subscribe. OK, maybe not.

8. Perks Can Work.

Special content for subscribers is a great bonus. But beware of requiring people to subscribe by email to get these perks. What happens if someone has already subscribed in a feed reader? Why should they subscribe by email as well?

I haven’t seen a site get around this problem yet. Some of the biggest blogs continue to offer special benefits for subscribing by email. Surely there has to be a better way. I’m probably being optimistic, because I can’t think of a better way.

Over to You

Can you think of a better way? What else should bloggers know about feeds?