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One of the best features of WordPress which comes from it’s origins as blogging software is the ease of RSS feed creation and management. The real advantage to these feeds is that it unlocks your content from a static webpage into a content stream to be distributed in any number of ways. Below, you will find 7 tips to get more from your WordPress feeds.
For an introduction to the wordpress feed features, visit the Codex.
There are many ‘updating services’ out there which can serve as opportunities for new site traffic if your blog posts are found to be interesting. By setting update services under Settings/Writing, WordPress will automatically ping these services every time you write a new post.
Not a prolific tweeter? Any WordPress website can populate a Twitter account by choosing the right tools. You can use a plugin like Twitter Tools to update your twitter status or utilize one of the many RSS to Twitter utilities out there like Twitterfeed.com.
Have a blog category that you don’t want in your site feed? You can use edit the feed details and use WordPress’s controls for exlcuding categories (http://yourdomain.com/feed?cat=-2) by identifying category id’s to leave out. You can choose to declare this customized feed in your header or move to our next step and burn this customized feed. (Or, remember, you can grab a feed for any single category by calling up http://yourdomain.com/categoryname/feed.)
Many options become available to you by using Feedburner from Google. This feature-rich service makes it easier to all of the following and let someone else worry about the software. This is preferable because it doesn’t require your to run plugins on WordPress for advanced feed functionality.
Why not keep up to date on who is reading your blog without actually visiting it? Feedburner makes it easy to track subscribers to your feed. You can log into Feedburner to see your stats or I use a plugin to add it to my dashboard.
Enable email subscriptions through Feedburner and then use the link provided to allow your site visitors to receive email updates when you post a new blog article. This is a great alternative for those who haven’t quite grasped RSS and feed-readers. And what’s best about this is that you can track email addresses and even export a csv of subscribers from Feedburner to harvest those contacts.
If you’re able to build a loyal readership and strong feed subscriptions, it makes sense to monetize the feed in the same way you would monetize your blog, with Google AdSense. Feedburner also makes it easy to integrate AdSense into your burned feeds. You can also utilize a premium plugin like WishListMember or WP-Member to manage your feeds and site on a membership level (pay for content).
Need help getting a handle on your content distribution? Get in touch!
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