If you run a blog or other type of website using content management software like I do, chances are you are using RSS to syndicate your updated data for your site visitors.

In the past, you’ve probably had a hard time tracking how many people have subscribed to your RSS feed, simply because there is no way you can do this easily. Visitors who have interest in your site can use the URL of your RSS feed and subscribe directly using their favorite feed management software. And you don’t have the slightest idea when they do this. Without them actively notifying you, there is no way you can collect subscription information to analyze the popularity of your feed.

If you have this headache, try the service offered by Feedburner here:

http://www.feedburner.com

Feedburner, which was acquired by Google last year, offers many enhancements to the original RSS Feed technology. My favorite feature is that it offers a way for RSS subscribers to receive your updated web content using email instead of the RSS feed. In this way, you can now allow site visitors to get updates of your website automatically via email when your website software registers a new piece of information on your website.

Take my blog as an example. At the right-hand side of this webpage, find the subscription box with heading “Get This Blog via Email.” This is the subscription box powered by Feedburner. If you enter your email address in the textbox there and press the subscribe button, your email address will be registered in the Feedburner for my website. You will immediately be sent a confirmation email to your email inbox. Upon clicking the confirmation link in that email, you are in!

From now on, whenever there is new update about this website, you will get a notification email. Of course, as in other common email subscription services, you can unsubscribe from this blog any time you want by clicking the subscription management link at the end of the notification emails. (By the way, if you haven’t already, why not take this chance to subscribe to this blog now? )

If you’re keen on managing the subscription status like me, you can replace your RSS Feed URL with the one offered by Feedburner. (For example, for this blog, my Feedburner RSS is http://feeds.feedburner.com/InternetMarketingJournal). When visitors subscribe to your RSS Feed using your particular Feedburner feed URL, this allows Feebburner to track your subscription status. It also helps to optimize your feed output to suit various RSS aggregators such as MY Yahoo!, MY AOL, Newsgator, Google Homepage, Google Reader, and others.

If you run your blog using WordPress or another popular content management software or service such as Blogger, Typepad, or MySpace, there is a quicker way to replace your original RSS Feed with Feedburner’s using various tailor-made plugins. You can find more information here:

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/topic.py?topic=13055

Tags: RSS Feed Management, RSS Subscription by email

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General Internet Marketing