Promoting Your RSS Feed

RSS feed promotion is one of the most important things you can do if you want to be a successful blogger. Here is a quick list of a few ways of making your feed more visible.

Location, Location, Location

If your blog has a sidebar, put a link to the feed somewhere on there. The best location is definitely the top. The best way to promote it here is by using graphics (like on my sidebar). The feed buttons let someone subscribe to it with a single click of their mouse.

Enable Auto-Discovery

Most browsers these days have built in RSS readers. The best way to get users to subscribe using their browser is with a function called auto-discovery. This can be enabled via a simple HTML tag:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="RSS_URL">

When most browsers auto detect a feed they will display some sort of RSS logo in the address bar.

Put RSS URL Next To Blog URL

Whenever you post a link to your blog, post a link to your RSS feed as well. Heck, you’re promoting one, why not the other?

Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?