If your an artist with a blog I hope your using Feedburner, a free service from Google. Because if you have a blog you have a feed. Could be an RSS, an XML, or maybe in Atom (maybe all three), but either way your blog has a feed. Which is a great tool for your readers to use to stay up to date with your blog. Each time you post on your blog those who are subscribed to your blog’s feed get that new post delivered directly to them in their feed reader of choice. This means that people do not have to go directly to your blog to know what your up to. (Browser bookmarks are so 1990’s.)
But if your readers are not plugging in your URL and visiting your blog directly how do you know you have readers? Tracking subscribers is just one great use for Feedburner. After you “burn your feed” Feedburner keep track of how many people are subscribed to your blog and also how they are subscribed. This information is very useful in helping you build your fan base. But subscriber stats is just one tiny reason you should be using Feedburner.
Email subscription is another reason. Many of your fans are not using RSS readers so that little orange square means nothing to them. But I would bet all the cash in my wallet that they do use email. Feedburner has an option that allows you to plug in an email subscription form into your blog. Your fans simply enter their email and each time you blog your post is delivered right to their inbox. Using this one simple tool will increase your readership.
Feedburner has a ton more tools for the artist blogger to take advantage of. It allows you to add custom options to your feeds such as links to social bookmarking sites or Facebook. You can limit the amount of text that is delivered to a feed, forcing readers to click a link to your site to read the whole post. The “SmartFeed” option makes sure your feed is able to be read by everyone’s reader, no matter the format they prefer. You can create animated widgets that show show your blog’s headlines in your website or places like MySpace. PingShot is a Feedburner service that notifies many other sites whenever you post. You can also add Google AdSense to your blog via Feedburner. I could keep listing all the options that are waiting for you at Feedburner, these are just some of the highlights.
If your an artist blogger you should head over to www.feedburner.com right now and burn your feed.
Want to learn a bit more about feeds? Click here. (Contains a good list of feed readers.)
Still trying to wrap your head around Feedburner? Click here.
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