How To Set Up FeedBurner on Your WordPress Blog

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What’s good party people? Not partying? Doesn’t matter. I hope you are having a blessed day! Let’s dig right in, shall we?

Not too long ago I talked about why RSS matters for driving traffic to your website or blog. (and it really does yo) Today lets dig a little bit deeper and get into a pretty cool tool called FeedBurner that can help you manage your RSS Feed. FeedBurner beats most other RSS feed options because it has a ton of useful features which will help you to better manage your blog.

Although FeedBurner can be used on blogs as well as websites, I am going to only talk about its use with blogs today. To get even more specific we are only going to deal with WordPress blogs because, well, I use WordPress for my blog. (so there) We will talk more about why you should use it then I’ll take you step by step into how you can set up FeedBurner on your blog. As always, I encourage you to not only read but also to APPLY this information. Don’t procrastinate because you think it’s too time consuming. I promise you, it’s probably harder for me to write this post than it’ll be for you to set up FeedBurner on your blog. Let’s get it!

What is FeedBurner?

FeedBurner is an RSS syndication tool. Here’s the real deal about why most everyone swears by it: It offers some pretty powerful subscriber analytics that allow you to track the growth of your blog. It displays this information with a series of nice charts and stat data.

Getting Started

First thing you wanna do is go to the FeedBurner log-in page:

 

 

 

 

Google purchased FeedBurner some years back and now you are required to have a Google account to even use the service. (Darn Google and their smart ways and excellent business savvy) I’m sure a good number of you probably already have a Google gmail account anyway. If not, you are going to have to sign up for an account.

Now you need your blog’s RSS feed URL. If you use WordPress then your current RSS Feed looks something like this: http://yoblog.com/rss. It may be different so double check. Log in to your FeedBurner account and enter this RSS Feed URL here:

Hit the next button and then name your feed:

You can name your feed whatever you want to but something that is easy to remember will probably serve you best. You also have the option of changing the actual address of your feed. Again, something simple and easy to recall is your best bet.

After this hit the “Next” button and you will see:

Your feed has now been burned! (that’s a good thing)

Publicizing Your RSS Feed to Subscribers

The first thing you are going to want to do is to install a WordPress plug-in that will allow you to use FeedBurner with your blog. I recommend using the FD FeedBurner plug-in which works great.

Now that your feed has been burned you need to start letting peeps see how they can subscribe to your blog. You will do this by placing a “subscribe” link or an email sign-in form (or both) on your blog like so:

(you may want to subscribe to my RSS Feed now, by the way <==shameless plug. Sue me.)

Ahem! Back to biznass.

To get a “subscribe” link:

Go to your FeedBurner account, log in and click on your feed’s link. It will take you to your feed stats dashboard. Here is what you will see:

Click on the “Publicize” Tab. Locate and click on the “Chicklet Chooser” link:

Now you are able to pick the type of link you want to appear on your blog. There are many options to choose from but you should use one of these (you don’t have to but they generally give the best results in terms of click throughs):

After you make your selection scroll to the bottom of the page. There you will see some HTML code. This code will be what you use in your blog to make this cool link appear. (I don’t know how it works either…a gift from the tech masters perhaps?) Code looks like this:

I know, I know. I have been using a lot of graphics and there is a reason. I REALLY want you to get this. Some people are better with written directions than others so I’m trying to hook my visual learners up today cause they need love too.

Now, copy this code then head into your WordPress admin page. Click on the “widgets” link in the “Appearance” section:

Use the “Text” widget and drag it to the default sidebar or wherever you want the button to appear on your blog. Place the HTML code into the widget and save. Chiggy check it:

Your FeedBurner RSS subscription link is now active!

Another cool function is the email subscriber function. This allows you to syndicate your RSS feeds directly to peeps who sign up to your subscriber list via email. You don’t HAVE to use this function. You can just have a link for people to click on and be done with it. But, hey, some people would rather get your updates via email. (and why not give the people what they want?)

To set up the email subscriber form on your blog go back to your FeedBurner dashboard and click on the “Email Subscriptions” link:

To complete the setup you will need to copy the HTML code and paste it in a text widget in much the same way as you did for the “chicklet chooser” above.  Just paste the code into the text widget and you are all the way hooked up.

Additional Options

After you set up the “subscribe” links or email form on your blog you have completed the hardest part of the process. Here are some other adjustments that I suggest you make to get the most out of FeedBurner:

BrowserFriendly – Make it easy for potential subscribers to preview and subscribe to your text or podcast feed. Applies clean visual formatting to the eyesore of raw feed XML for much improved readability in all modern web browsers. Click the “Optimize” tab inside your FeedBurner dashboard and hit the “BrowserFriendly” link.  Click “activate” to turn it on.

SmartFeed – Translates your feed on-the-fly into a format (RSS or Atom) compatible with your visitors’ feed reader application. Click the “Optimize” tab inside your FeedBurner dashboard and hit the “SmartFeed” link.  Click “activate” to turn it on.

FeedFlare – Give your subscribers easy ways to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish by including as many or few of the services listed below. FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content. Click the “Optimize” tab inside your FeedBurner dashboard and hit the “FeedFlare” link.  Pick and choose from the options on what links you want to appear in your reader’s RSS reader. This is a cool way to help your readers re-distribute your content if it really moves them. Click “activate” to turn it on.

Conclusion

Again, I encourage you to set up FeedBurner today. Its a tool that you should really take advantage of. And did I mention before that its free (Ha! The price is right!)

Do you have any other FeedBurner suggestions, tips, or tricks? Are you using it in another way that has not been mentioned in this post? If so, feel free to share in the comments.