RSS (Really Simple Syndication) remains a mystery to most bloggers – how does it work and what’s the point of it? I kind of covered that in a RSS Tutorial post here. In this tutorial we’re looking to really grab RSS by the horns to promote our sites.

When you propagate your RSS feed via Google’s Feedburner ( which is what I recommend) you can have a maximum of just 2 feeds – 1 for your posts and another (if you choose) for the blog ‘comments’ visitors leave on your site – that’s it!

When you post something new on your blog the various RSS aggregator sites get ‘pinged’ by your WordPress blog and they update the feed of your site that they index to include that new post. All good stuff!

In my tutorial about tweaking your blog I explained how to get your RSS feed submitted to multiple RSS sites by adding lots of them to the relevant section in your WordPress Dashboard – I also included a list of RSS sites you can cut and paste to your blog.

But the fact remains, no matter how many RSS sites are indexing and updating your feed(s) – it’s all backlinks folks! – you still have just the one or two feeds. OK, maybe three if your WordPress theme creates a feed for your Categories too ( more about that in the video).

You can now change that state of affairs!

Find out how in these video tutorials – you can do it yourself or automate most of it with a funky plugin…

Links mentioned in the tutorials:

• Feedburner
• Dapper
• RSS Bomber

You want your visitors to ‘follow’ you and one of the many beautiful things about blogs  is that they have ‘Follow Me’ stuff built in.

RSS Stands for Really Simple Syndication and by ‘subscribing’ to your RSS feed visitors can get informed whenever you post new content automatically!

Hurrah! Looks like this RSS malarkey might be a good thing!

So they can click on that orange and white icon and add your ‘RSS feed’ to whatever program they use to store feeds from your sites and others.

That way they can mosey over to their Feed Reader of choice, every morning say, and see what you and their other favourite bloggers have written about since they last checked. There’s a short list of popular Feed Readers/News Aggregators below this post and if you haven’t signed up to one already you need to do so fast so that you too can ‘follow’ sites that you are interested in, or that are relevant to your ‘niche’.

Imagine having, say, your top 10/20/30/50 sites all distilled into one link clickable web page, keeping you organised. Make sense? So you need to offer your visitor the choice of adding your site to their Reader when they say…

“I like what you are doing on this site and want to be informed whenever you post new content.”

How cool that you give your sites visitors not just one but loads of opportunities to tell you this very thing!

Now not everybody understands how RSS feeds work or what a Feed Reader is and that is why all good blogs offer another option: a subscriber box where visitors are asked to enter their email address to be informed via email whenever you add new content. Easier to understand right? In fact even YOU don’t have to know how or why it works as long as you initialise it on your blogs.

We’ll talk about you making sure your blog is RSS compatible in the video tutorial further down the page but in the meantime here’s a YouTube video that explains RSS from a visitor’s perspective:

It’s all about collecting, saving and referring information and making the WWW a bit more manageable.

Send to Facebook, Twitter – and on and on. Everyone has their own favorite way of saving stuff so you need to offer them choices on how they can do that.

In later tutorials we’ll talk about email subscriptions in more detail and how you can use them to monetize your site(s). But here, in these two videos, we’ll just discuss how having a Feedburner account lets you add both of those options to your site easily and fast.

In another tutorial we’ll discuss how to use RSS feeds to promote your sites by ‘Pinging’ – “Pinging?”, all will be explained!
.

Glossary of terms used in these tutorials:

• RSS – Really Simple Syndication. A way for readers of sites to ‘subscribe’ to a blog or site by saving the RSS feed link to a Feed Reader – also known as a News Aggregator
• Subscriber – somebody who has asked to be informed (via RSS or email) when new info appears on your site. They have also, perhaps, ‘opted-in’ to a e-mailed Newsletter or announcements from an Auto-responder such as Aweber ( more on that in another video).

Relevant Links:

• Feedburner (you’ll need to have a Google Mail account to access Feedburner, as Google owns it, so go get one if you haven’t already – you’ll need it for other free tools in other tutorials
• Feedburner plugin for WordPress
• Here’s a link to a method I discovered after creating this video on using Feedburner to send, say, a weekly/monthly Newsletter to your subscribers. It does involve fiddling with code which is a little challenging for beginners.
• Here’s another version of the method but using a WordPress plugin

Some Feed Readers ( you only need one!):

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• My Yahoo

What’s your feed reader of choice?  Let me know in the Comments below…

You’ve got visitors to your blog and want them to keep coming back AND to email them cool stuff (and maybe, sometimes, an affiliate link)!

Damn it drives me mad! Knowing that if I’d started building lists of people following my various web sites from the outset I’d have made a heck of a lot more friends, followers and yes, money. Yet I fought against it for so long.

Why? Just plain dumb & ill informed I guess…

Hey! Who just said, ” So what’s new?” No need for that attitude, thank you very much!

In the first Member’s Call In Show, above, I chat with Blog Briefing member Brent about Feedburner versus Aweber’s autoresponder service and the good, the bad and the ugly of marketing to your new subscribers Email Inboxes. If Feedburner fulfills your needs that’s great and there is a way to send a timed Newsletter to your subscribers just using Feedburner. See the links below this post.- for more info.

In a previous tutorial we looked at how to set up your RSS feed and set up a Feedburner subscription box in your blog’s sidebar which, as I say is a great free way to start. Even if you go the Aweber route do run your RSS feed through Feedburner too.

Aweber is definitely something to consider investing in, just under $20 a month, if you’re serious about building a list of subscribers to your blog(s) and communicating with them.

Aweber are currently offering a 30 day free trial. Give it a free test run using that sign up box over there in the right hand sidebar.

Here’s a Starter tutorial, courtesy of Aweber, and there are plenty more on their site ( I have to say though that the Voice Over Guy’s delivery drives me ‘nuts’ – a kind of poor man’s Jeff Bridges!) but then no douby MY voice drives many people ‘nuts’ too!

Sites, tools and plugins related to this post:

• Aweber
• Feedburner
• GetResponse
• WordPress Auto Responder Plugin – there is a free and Pro version of this plugin that allows you to control your list and sequential emails from your WordPress dashboard. I have the Pro version as it looks very interesting for those of you wanting to dip your toe in the the world of Auto-responders. I will report back when I have tested it on a new blog and let you know how I got on.
• Here’s the link to that method I referred to of using Feedburner to send, say, a weekly/monthly Newsletter to your subscribers. It does involve fiddling with code which is a little challenging for beginners.
• Here’s another version of the method but using a WordPress plugin

So where do you start when you want to build a list of subscribers to your site? Step #1 , I’d suggest, is to give them a way to subscribe!

Your WordPress blog comes with an RSS feed built in which allows people to save that ‘feed’ to their News Reader so that they get your latest posts.

But not everyone understands how RSS  i.e. ‘Really Simple Syndication’ works so having a Subscription Box on your site is a must.

Telling somebody that they will be informed via e-mail when you post new content is easily understood by everybody so that subscription box is a must but, thanks to all those spammers, people are wary of giving out there e-mail address willy nilly.

That’s why you see all those ‘get your free e-book here’ offers. Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you a cool gift – getting something for apparently  nothing appeals to us and you are more likely to get a sign-up when offering an ‘ethical bribe’. Nothing wrong with that per se!

Makes sense that the free ‘report’ is something that will be of use to your, hopefully, long time subscriber!

Now obviously we are working on the premise that our site is going to be a success. Consequently we will get lots of subscribers and physically noting their names and e-mails, sending them their cool report, and getting back, one by one, to them whenever you’ve got something new to say on your blog is not realistic.

That’s where auto-responders come in as they automate the whole process. You can use them to send your subscribers a regular Newsletter or a weekly roundup of your posts – into which you might choose to place an ad for a product you like ( which will get you a commission should they purchase it). Or just send them an email ‘out of the blue’ every now and then.

But don’t overdo it – once a week is ample!

Don’t you think that if you give your blog subscribers something cool and unique for free that, maybe, they’ll become avid fans of you and your blog/site?

Used well and wisely, sending your ‘list’ cool info for free, on a regular basis converts to ‘brand loyalty’ – never forget that YOU are the brand!

That said, Aweber is definitely something to consider investing in, just under $20 a month, if you’re serious about building a list of subscribers to your blog(s) and communicating with them on a regular basis – even if that only means sending them a weekly roundup of your blog posts.

You can use their Blog Broadcast option so that your sign-ups get, say, a weekly summary of your Blog posts ( with links to said posts) and if you choose to do so you can add other links too – maybe for some products/companies you are affiliated with or just other extra cool info.

The point is that that you want to turn your first time visitor into a recurring visitor and finding a way to get them to ‘opt in’ to your feed is the way to do that.

Simply put: no matter how cool and informative your content is, people will forget about you unless you find a way to ‘remind’ them when you have something new to say!

Aweber are currently offering a 30 day free trial. Give it a free test run using that sign up box over there in the right hand sidebar.

Sites, tools and plugins related to this post:

• Aweber
• Feedburner
• GetResponse
• WordPress Auto Responder Plugin – there is a free and Pro version of this plugin that allows you to control your list and sequential emails from your WordPress dashboard. I have the Pro version as it looks very interesting for those of you wanting to dip your toe in the the world of Auto-responders. I will report back when I have tested it on a new blog and let you know how I got on.
• Here’s the link to that method I referred to of using Feedburner to send, say, a weekly/monthly Newsletter to your subscribers. It does involve fiddling with code which is a little challenging for beginners.
• Here’s another version of the method but using a WordPress plugin