BlogWritingCourse

Okay, so people are starting to find your blog.  Hooray!!  You are building up an audience and they seem to like what you have to say.  Woohoo!!  You’ve even gotten a few comments on your last posts.  Alright!!

But maybe you’ve noticed that the visits are a little sporadic.  Or you wish that the comments were coming more consistently.  The question to ask yourself now is….”what do I need to do to make sure my visitors come back again?”  And the best answer to that question is: MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM!

The most important way to make sure that visitors find your blog again is by double-checking that you have a blog feed enabled.   A feed is kind of like what it sounds like – - a way to give your hungry readers exactly what they want…your blog! 

If you create a way for readers to subscribe to your blog feed, then they can be automatically notified anytime you create a new post.  It is their choice of how to receive that feed – - by email or in a feed reader.  But the nice thing is they don’t have to DO anything to find you.  Your blog comes to THEM!!

For more information on how to create feeds in the different blog hosts and how to display your feed in your blog sidebar,  be sure to sign up for our beginning blogging course, Blogging 101.  There, you will find all the information you need about blog feeds and many, many other ways of ensuring your blog visitors come back again and again.

Chances are, you are already benefiting from feeds – - those wonderful time saving devices that go out and get the information YOU want, and bring it right to your doorstep. I have feeds for my favorite blogs, my local newspaper, and updates to my frequented websites. I don’t have to go out to all those different sites to get updated information – - instead, it comes to me.

You might not, however, have been on the actual "feeding" side of a feed until now. But when your blog starts to grow its readership, your followers will want the same convenience you do in having your blog updates sent directly to them. So, you will need to register with a feed service, to make sure this is accomplished easily. Another advantage of having a feed service, is that it tracks your feed subscribers. So you will know exactly how many people are accessing your feeds on a regular basis.

Sometimes, setting up an RSS feed for your blog is as easy as going into your dashboard or layout and tweaking a few settings.  In Blogger, for instance, you go into your “Settings” menu and look for “Site Feed”.  From there, you can choose how much of your site to syndicate.  Once you have enabled these settings, your site feed will automatically be generated.  Some Blogger templates will immediately begin showing a subscription option to your readers.  Others may require you to install a separate gadget for this purpose.

In WordPress, feed subscriptions are enabled with a widget called the “blog subscription widget.”  Your blog stats page will then show you how many people are subscribed to your blog. 

If you prefer more detailed or in-depth information about your feeds and subscribers, you might consider signing up for a separate RSS feed via an external feed site such as Feedburner or Bloglines.

You can write the most exciting, engaging, and even mind-blowing blog in the world, but unless people can subscribe to your content, they will never know when you have something new to say.  So make creating a feed for your blog a priority!!