How To Get Blog Updates Delivered To You

A colleague asked me why she should subscribe to blogs when she can visit the sites for free. Subscribe meant $$ to her. Let's talk about subscriptions

I started reading blogs in October 2006. Each morning, I'd bounce between the six (yes, six) blogs I was reading to check for updates. A little tedious but not so bad if you only are reading six blogs - but who reads only six blogs? Well, in January 2007, I discovered Google Reader, set-up a free account, and the way the I read on line changed. I now have over 120 blogs in the reader. 

What is a reader? A reader automatically collects and organizes new posts from your favorite bloggers in one easy place. Yes, one easy place. No more moving site to site and worrying you'll miss something.

Readers read feeds and blogs have feeds. Locate the orange symbol you see to the left on your favorite blogs and click on it to add the blog's feed to your reader. Some blogs also offer updates via email and it may be incorporated with this icon or listed separately.  

THIS IS FREE. There is no cost to subscribe to your favorite blogs. Pick a reader, set up a free account and begin subscribing today. 

Looking for blogs to subscribe to? Check out Fistful of Talent/HR Capitalist 7.0 Talent Management Power Blog Rankings, Evan Carmicheal's Top 50 Blogs to Watch in 2010, Carnival of HR and Leadership Development Carnival. 

Please subscribe to my new feed to continue receiving new posts after May 31. It's freaking me out that less than half of my subscribers are using the new feed as of today . . . but that could be a post of its own.

Now for the question of the day - what were the six blogs I was reading in October 2006?

Comments

[Benjamin McCall]

So tell me, how can you tell how many people are using the old vs the new feed?

[Lisa Rosendahl]

@benjamin I'm using feedburner and it gives me a number count of subscribers by RSS feed and email subscriptions. This is just one way people receive content and I should really take some time to understand the analytics of it all.

[Paul DeBettignies | MN Headhunter]

Hey Friend,

I might be wrong (but never in doubt, right?) but in Feedburner you should be able to "forward" the old feed into the new.

Here is the example: go to http://www.mnheadhunter.com In the upper right hand corner (if using IE) you will see the orange Feedburner logo.

Put your cursor over it but do not click. You will see it is a an atom feed. Now click it, Feedburner.

I just did this with another site and it too worked.

Try this, when in Feedburner click "Edit Feed Details" under your account name. You should see "Feed Title", "Original Feed" and "Feed Address". You should be able to enter your old feed (think of it as a forward).

I might not be explaining this well enough so call me.

Regarding your email feed I suggest you add a widget separately for it. This way you pick up those who do not get RSS versus asking them to click and then find it.

There is some simple code to copy and past into your site.

Of the 900 or so receiving my feed around 120 are getting it by email and the % of those by email went up after having a separate widget.

One last tip, reword from “Subscribe” to “Receive”. That made a bit of a difference too for me.

I am around today/tomorrow to talk you through this.

P.

[Kimberly Roden]

Great suggestion, Lisa. What I like about Google reader is being able to categorize the posts I read... I have 102 subscriptions and instead of them dumping into one column, I sort through what I want to read first: "news", etc.