One great mystery of the Internet is whether full feeds are better than partial feeds. Most blogging platforms give an option to decide between the two RSS feed styles, but which one should you choose?

Partial Feeds

I figured I would start with the bad - partial feeds. Personally, I hate them. Have you ever been reading an RSS entry only to have it cut off right at the good part? Happens to me all the time. Really, that reason alone is probably enough to make anyone want to use full feeds.

However, despite the fact that partial feeds can chase away some readers, it can be quite useful as well. I have two words for you - Content Theft. Most people who steal your content will not be able to do so if you use partial feeds, since they get your content via RSS feeds.

Full Feeds

I prefer full feeds over partial feeds for one simple reason - I don’t have to click any links to read the article. Although a single click may not seem that bad, it can be quite annoying. It is also much better because feed advertisements and extra links (like e-mail this, digg this… etc) will not be so intrusive. Instead of appearing every 5 lines they will appear every 20+ lines.

Also, some RSS readers have options that allow the user to choose between full or partial feeds. Why not give your readers the choice?

So, you have your blog all set for RSS. Now what? Well, you may want to look into some cool RSS services which will let you offer e-mail subscriptions, statistics, and much more.

Alright, I’ll admit I’m a bit biased, but I love FeedBurner. It is really hard to explain what FeedBurner does, because it does so much.

For starters, it allows you to provide your readers with a FeedBurner address, which will point to your blog’s feed. This is how you can track your feed’s statistics, such as how many subscribers you have an what feed readers they are using. FeedBurner also lets you change your feed’s format, offer e-mail subscriptions, create a nice feed landing page, ping some RSS aggregators, publish your feed as HTML, etc.

There really isn’t a true competitor that can do what FeedBurner does, which is why it is so darn popular.

Setting It Up

It is pretty easy to get started with FeedBurner. First you have to create an account. Once logged in you should be at your My Feeds page, this is where you can manage everything. To add a feed simply type your blog’s feed URL into the text box and click Next. Your blog’s feed URL will be different depending on what platform your blog uses, but for WordPress it should be something like “http://blogurl/feed/”.

On the next screen should be your blog’s title in the title field. The text field below is where you can set your FeedBurner URL, generally this will be your site’s name. Now click Next. Your FeedBurner feed should now be all set up.

Configure Your Blog

Now you have to change the feed URL in your blog’s template to point to your FeedBurner feed. Remember to change the auto-discovery URL as well.

If you are using WordPress and you know nothing about HTML, why not take a look at the official WordPress “Using FeedBurner” page?

Extra Goodies

To view your feed’s statistics or edit a feed, simply click on its name on the main FeedBurner screen. This page is pretty self explanatory.

In the Optimize page you can add all sorts of things into your feed, like “e-mail this”, “digg this” and “save to del.icio.us” links onto the bottom of each entry. You can also offer your feed in different formats, and even auto-insert your Amazon.com Associates ID when it detects an Amazon link.

In the Publicize section you can set up your feed as an e-mail newsletter, republish it as HTML, automatically ping popular blog aggregation services, and even create a rotating headline widget.

And finally there is the Monetize section, where you can add advertisements into your feed to get an extra bit of money. Although feed monetization isn’t “that good”, it might bring in a few extra bucks.

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?

Back in the mid 1990s website administrators were struck with an interesting problem, how can their users get their content quickly and easily? Because of this issue, Internet syndication formats were born.

Several syndication formats existed before RSS, for example Apple’s Meta Content Framework (MCF), and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). However, RSS was quite different. RSS, which was then known as RDF Site Summary, made its debut in 1999 and was used primarily on My Netscape. This was essentially RSS version .90.

Around the time of the acquisition of Netscape by AOL, the RSS feed on My Netscape was removed, which stirred up a bit of controversy among XML enthusiasts. A mailing list and user group was formed to continue the development of RSS, their name was RSS-DEV. In December, 2000 they released RSS 1.0.

Now, during this time several other RSS versions were released by Dave Winer, who is a really big XML supporter and contributor. After the battle of the RSS versions, Winer released version 2.0 in 2002, which is what is in use today. He was also the person who wanted RSS to mean “Really Simple Syndication.”

During the period from 2002 to 2005 several big name web sites began using RSS feeds, The New York Times, for example. In 2005, feed readers seemed to pop out of nowhere. Apple released Safari 2.0, which included built in RSS support, and soon after many other browsers gained similar functionality.

In 2006 RSS became the format of choice for podcasting, and I suspect photocasting (on Apple’s iPhoto software) uses RSS as well, although I am not 100% sure.

There is no exact figured on the number of RSS users worldwide, but the current estimates are between 200 and 300 million users. So you do have a lot of incentive to make RSS feeds.

Feeds provide a useful way to pick up new readers by letting them view your content without having to visit your site. Recently the number of feed readers, both online and offline, has exploded, thus making blog feeds even more popular.

By default most blogging platforms provide you with simple RSS and Atom feed, but they provide nothing extra. Thankfully, you can get some extra features by adding buttons to your site and signing up with an online service called FeedBurner.

FeedBurner

By now most bloggers have probably seen a FeedBurner feed at least once. FeedBurner is, in a nutshell, a service that lets you analyze your feed’s statistics and provides you with some extra features.

When you first sign up with FeedBurner all you have to do it enter your blog’s feed, the title, and what you want the FeedBurner address to be (feed.feedburner.com/yourfeedaddress). Doing this will let you see some useful statistics about your feed, such as the number of readers, trends, and which feed-reader software people are using.

FeedBurner also lets you republish your feed as HTML, set up a daily e-mail newsletter based on your feed, and even set up a graphic to put on your site that will display the number of feed subscribers you have.

Note: If you want to get statistics for readers they must be viewing your FeedBurner feed, and not your blog’s feed. This may require changing your site’s head tags.

Blog Buttons

Many blog readers use what are called online feed readers, which are basically aggregators for blog content from their favorite feeds. The graphics under the “Syndicate” section of the sidebar of this blog are examples of feed buttons.

The first one points to the FeedBurner address for this blog, the second button lets you add your blog to either Google Reader or your Google homepage, the third is a Technorati button that lets you add this blog to your Technorati favorites, and the last one I use is for Yahoo.

There are literally hundreds of buttons out there that you can choose from, but I would highly recommend not posting more than 5 of them. If you put more than 5 or so it could make your blog look cluttered.

Offer different feed types

There are many versions of the two main formats, RSS and Atom. It is always a good idea to offer some different versions of your feed, as some reader software may not be compatible with one of the formats.

Make a link to your feed(s) easy to find!

One thing that irritates me about many blogs is they don’t give you any clear way to subscribe to their feeds. Many don’t even put a link to the feed in between their page’s head tags. If you truly want blog readers then put the link(s) to your feed(s) in an easy to find place.