Feedburner for Blogger

Posted by Kate Phizackerley on 18:49

One of the first things you should consider with any new blog is 'burning' the newsfeed in Feedburner. This isn't complicated but it's worthwhile as it will help you to answer that all important question, how many people are reading my blog? Part of the answer will come from those who visit the site, I'll cover that in another article, but a proportion will read your blog in a newsreader without visiting your site, so you need to count those readers as well. Feedburner allows you to do that and these days it's easy as it's just a another. On your Google front page once logged in select My Account, just look for Feedburner. If it isn't there already, then look under More until you see Feedburner, or search for Feedburner if you prefer. The first time you use it, you will have to complete the formalities for a new Google service, but it will use your usual Google/Blogger logon. Somewhere towards the bottom you will see this box:





Type the address of you blog into the box, for instance http://how2zilla.blogspot.com for this blog, Obviously use the URL of your own blog. When you click on Next, you'll probably then get a screen like this:





Just click Next which will take you to this screen.



This is the important one so make sure it's exactly what you want. I prefer my Feed Title to be the same as the Title of my blog so I made sure Blogger had a capital letter. I also shortened the name of the feed (so it will be http://feeds2.feedburner.com/How2zilla). It doesn't really matter as most people will subscribe by clicking on a link to the feed rather than typing in the address, but a sharp address will help people to see what they are subscribing too and make it easier for you when you do need to type it in to various configuration options.

Click on Next and you are done - so long as the address you have chosen doesn't already exist: if it us already in use you'll be asked to try again. Click Next a second time to a screen headed "Get More Gusto From Your Feed Traffic Statistics." Personally I prefer to leave these options unselected. Firstly I want to leave links pointing directly to my blog for SEO purposes, but also unless you have a high volume of readers the more detailed statistics are neither very relevant nor useful.

Click Next one final time.

The feed is now set up and ready. In the next article I'll look at how to get people to use it rather than the default Blogger feed.


© Kate Phizackerley 2009

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