Tag Archives: Feedburner Email

Setting up Feedburner RSS and Email subscription for your blog

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Lots of people have been asking me about RSS feeds and Feedburner over the past few weeks.

So I’ve decided it’s time to update my ‘how to’ Feedburner info so that:

  1. All the required instructions are in one post
  2. It is current for the latest version of Edublogs and Feedburner

What is RSS?

The easiest way to receive latest posts from your favorite blogs is to subscribe to RSS using feed readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines, NetVibes.

RSS (means Really Simple Syndication) retrieves the latest content from the sites you are interested and pulls them into your feed reader where you can read them all in one location rather than visiting each site separately.

Watch RSS in Plain English to learn more!

The presence of the orange RSS icon indicates a site has an RSS feed and means you can subscribe to it using a feed reader.

What is FeedBurner?

Most blogs have RSS feed which is detected automatically by commonly used feed readers when the blog URL is added to the reader.

However, if you want to make it more obvious and easier for readers to subscribe using RSS, or want to know exactly how many people subscribe to your blog  then the best option is to add a Feedburner RSS feed and email subscription to your blog.

Feedburner is a free web service which enhances bloggers and podcasters ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers. Subscriber overview inside a Feedburner account

Setting Up Your Feedburner Feed

1.  Go to Feedburner and sign in to Feedburner with your Google Account (create a Google Account first if you don’t have one!).

2.  Add your Blog URL to the Burn a Feed Right This Instant and click Next.

Burning a Feedburner Feed

3.  Leave RSS 2.0 source selected and click Next.

Selecting the RSS feed source

4.  On “Welcome” page, make sure you are happy with the title and FeedBurner address (URI) of your new feed and then click Next. Feedburner title and URL

5.  On the Congrats! page click Next

6.  On the stats configuration page select Clickthroughs and I want more! and then click Next.

Selecting your Feedburner Stats options

Adding Your Feedburner Feed To Your Blog

This is used to add the RSS icon and easy subscribe options to your blog side bar using a text widget as explained below:

Example of Feedburner RSS feed in a blog sidebar

1.  Click on the Publicize Tab > Chicklet Chooser in your Feedburner account and copy the HTML code.

Copying the HTML code for your Feedburner Feed

2.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

3.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets) Please note: In new blogs sidebars in your dashboard are empty and adding widgets automatically removes the default Edublogs widgets

4.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

5.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code from FeedBurner, click Save and then Close.

Adding Feedburner HTML to Text widget

Adding a FeedBurner Email Subscription

It’s important to add an email subscription option to your blog sidebar as some readers prefer to receive latest posts from blogs using email subscription.

1.  Click on the Publicize Tab > Email Subscription in your Feedburner account and click on Activate.

Activating FeedBurner Email subscription

2.   Copy the HTML code.

Copy Feedburner email HTML code

3.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

4.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

5.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

6.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code for Feedburner email subscription, click Save and then Close.

7.  Now readers simply enter their email address and then click on “Subscribe” and Feedburner emails your entire post to them on the day after it has been published on your blog.

Redirecting All Your Blog Feed To Feedburner

Unless you redirect all your blog feed to Feedburner you won’t get accurate subscriber numbers because some of your readers subscribe using your original blog feed.

If you’re an Edublogs supporter you can redirect your blog feed  as follows:

1.  Go to Settings > Feedburner in your blog dashboard

2.  Add your Feedburner address and click Save Changes.

Redirecting feed to FeedBurner

3.  Now all your feeds is automatically redirected through FeedBurner and you’ll be able to track subscriber numbers accurately.

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Adding Email Subscription to your blog

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Email subscription is a ‘must have’ widget on blogs.

Why?  Because visiting blog to check for new content is time consuming.

Most people read the latest posts from their favorite blogs by subscribing using RSS or email subscription.

Email is extremely important for:

  1. Readers who prefer to receive latest posts using email subscription
  2. Private blogs — these don’t have RSS feed because only logged in users or logged in registered users are allowed to view the content

Email options

There are three main options for adding email subscription to your blog:

  1. Feedburner email subscription – all blog users except private blogs
  2. Email Subscription Widget – Edublogs supporters only
  3. Subscribe2 email subscription- Edublogs Campus only

Feedburner email subscriptionImage of Feedburner email

Feedburner is one of the most common free services used by both bloggers and podcasters to manage their RSS feeds.

It’s popular because it provides bloggers with the ability to easily analyze their subscribers in terms of:

  1. how many subscribe by RSS
  2. which feed readers they use
  3. how many subscribe by email.

Your email subscribers are sent an email of your full post that day after it is posted.

Setting up a Feedburner email subscription is as simple as:

Email Subscription Widget

The email subscription widget is the fastest and easiest way of adding email subscription to your blog.  It sends an email immediately when the post is published.

Readers click on the link in the email which takes them to the post on your blog.

Just go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the email subscription widget into the desired sidebar.

Subscribe2 Email Subscription

Subscribe2 is the most sophisticated email option with lots of management choices for both readers and the blog owner.

Email notifications can be either:

  1. Latest posts
  2. Daily or weekly digest of posts
  3. Plain Text – Excerpt; Plain Text – Full Post or HTML – Full Post

Bloggers can monitor their email subscriber; easily adding and removing subscribers inside their blog dashboard.

Subscribe 2 also provides the ability to send out emails to all confirmed subscribers; for those occasions when you want to send an email but not write a post.

Setting up a Subscribe email subscription is as simple as:

Image of managing subscribers

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Making It Easier For Your Intended Audience To Read Posts!

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Encouraging parents or other teachers to read your blog(s) can be hard work! Not surprising when you consider reading blogs and writing comments is a totally foreign concept to most of them.

What’s needed is to look at the problem from another angle. Instead of focusing on how Internet savvy people read a blog think about tools these types of people are more likely to use.

Feedburner Email Subscription

First choice has to be email.

A Feedburner email subscription to your blog sidebar means each time you write a new post almost the entire contents of your post are automatically sent to their email account. Both time saving while providing means of reading your posts that they feel more comfortable with.

You can always get them to subscribe by email when they visit on parent-teacher night!

Here’s how to:

  1. Set up and add Feedburner RSS to your blog sidebar
  2. Set up and add email subscription using Feedburner
  3. Redirects your feed through Feedburner to get accurate subscriber statistics

It’s important to realise that all images and embed such as video are removed in the Feedburner email; so make sure you tell them if you’ve embedded something you want them to check out.

Facebook

Sure this will cause considerable debate 8-) as there are as many reasons for using Facebook as against.  Ultimately it will depend on your situation, who are your intended audience, how you/they use Facebook and how comfortable you/they feel about engaging using Facebook.

One way to add feed from one blog into Facebook is by clicking on Notes and adding your blog feed URL.  This displays your latest posts in your updates.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Please feel free to leave your comments to debate the for/against using Facebook as a means of making it easier for people to read your posts.  Also would love to hear other tips you have for encouraging parents and other teachers to read blogs?

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