Improving your RSS feed subscriber experience

Whether you already have a blog or are just getting started, here are a couple of quick tips to help you get more subscribers to your RSS Feed and keep them!

1. Make reading your blog easy for RSS Feed subscribers

I noticed the other day that, despite doing some serious housekeeping of my blog feed reader list recently, I still subscribe to nearly 90 blogs! I tend to save up the posts in my Google Reader and read them just twice a day – as I explained in a recent post. But I don’t read every word of every post and if the topic doesn’t interest me, I click on the ‘next’ button

When I’m pushed for time, or have a long list of posts in my Google Reader, I’ve found I rarely click through to read the rest of a post (unless the opening lines are especially compelling!) and just move on the next post.

When you publish a blog, there’s an option to publish all (the whole post) or just an excerpt. I used to select the ‘excerpt’ option, wanting to encourage people to visit my blog. About 6 months ago I changed my mind and now share the whole post with my feed subscribers because I’d rather they read and enjoy the article than miss it because I’ve added an extra step to their busy day.

2. Subscribe to your own RSS Feed

Do you subscribe to your own blog feed? We recommend you do – not only do you want to see what your readers see, you will also be able to check the feed is working properly & catch any problems early. For example, last month I realised I hadn’t received any posts from one of the bloggers whose posts I look forward to reading each day.

On visiting his site, I found he was still blogging almost every day. It turned out that his feed address had changed when he started using a fancy new widget – after subscribing to the new feed, normal service has been resumed…. I wonder if he’s aware of what’s happened or is just wondering why his subscriber number has dropped?

Do you have any tips about blogs, feeds or readers? We’d love you to share by leaving a comment below!