In my opinion, this is one of the most important post-setup tools you can use to ensure long term success of your blog. Feebdurner allows you to take your wordpress feed, or content, and filters it through to feed readers, so that it can be read by anyone using any of almost 2000 applications.

For example, I use Bloglines, which is an online, free, feed reader. I subscribe to about 100 different feeds, (blogs), and every time any of these blogs is updated by the author, I see the new post in my feed reader. Bloglines in an online tool, so I can read the feeds, or blogs, wherever I have access to a computer, or mobile phone. I certainly do not have to remember to visit the 100 blogs individually to stay up tp date with their new content.

This is important for you, because if someone like me visits your site, and wants to read your blog regularly, you would hope that my feed reader and your feed are compatible. Feedburner takes care of that. It also monitors your traffic, including how many people are reading your blog not by visiting your domain, but by opening their feed reader.

Signing up is easy and free. You simply enter your domain, and Feedburner will do the rest. You will have to verify that the feed does actually belong to you, and FeedBurner gives you some straightforward methods to do that.

Once that is completed, you will need to use the Feedburner WordPress plugin to get the full effects of the service. Once again, FeedBurner walks you through the process.

About 24-48 hours after you sign up your blog with FeedBurner, you will have access to some telling statistics, not least of which is how many people are signed up to read your blog. Just remember, every blog started with a readership of one (the author him/her self)!

There is far more to FeedBurner though. Once you sign up, you will see that you have many tools that help you

  • Optimize
  • Analyze
  • Publicize

your blog.

Let’s discuss some of the most important:

Feedflare: Allows you to add certain options at the end of each post that allow your post to be shared among readers. You can choose which options to make available. Some popular options are: Email this to a friend, Save this to del.ic.ous, Digg this! Etc.

Email subscriptions: Not everybody uses a feedreader, and not everybody will remember to visit your blog regularly. This options allows readers to sign up for an email subscription of your feed, without you having to do any work. Whenever you update your blog, Feed~Burner will email your new post to those who asked for it. You can see an example of this feature on this site.

Headline animator: Create and customize an animated banner that cycles through your feed’s five most recent items. It’s an easy way to promote your content anywhere you can place a snippet of HTML. Very good to put on another site, or in your email signature.

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