From FeedFlare to Pingshot, FeedBurner's Free Services Help You Increase Blog TrafficFeedBurner is a free service that allows you to track your feed traffic and all kinds of other fun stuff. It won't create a feed for you from scratch as often believed - rather it wraps itself snugly around a feed you bring in and adds its services therein. It has a few premium options for the serious feed publisher, too.
People ask me all the time if I suggest that they use FeedBurner’s plethora of free feed enhancement tools. I have always answered a resounding “Yes!” – But lately FeedBurner has moved itself to a whole new level.
Did I mention most of these tools are free, and can help increase the traffic you get to your blog, by using your feed? Don’t believe me – go to http://www.feedburner.com and see for yourself. Tell ‘em Tinu sent you.
They have no idea who I am but it’ll be fun, I promise.
So enough with the warm-up already, and let’s start talking about some of these incredible features.
Increasing Your Blog Traffic with FeedBurner
Blog Traffic Increaser # 1- Give others permission - or shake the no-no finger with the Creative Commons option, found under the Publicize tab in your FeedBurner dashboard.
It will pop in the logo if you like, and explain what permissions others have to use your feed. Being clear about what permissions others have to use your feed with encourage them to display your headlines on their site – or let them know that they must link to you to cite your views.
Blog Traffic Increaser # 2- Turn your feed into a newsletter with Feedblitz or Squeet under Publicize/Email Subscriptions.
This turns your feed into a newsletter. It even gives you a subscribe form for your site. Now you now have a(nother) ezine option to go with your blog without any extra work.
Blog Traffic Increaser # 3- Use the Browser-Friendly version, combined with FeedFlare to explain what an RSS Feed is.
Four on the Optimize tab, the Browser-Friendly version turns your RSS feed into a web page, so that when new people click on your feed, without knowing what it is, they’ll know how to use it. All you do is link to the FeedBurner version of your feed, instead of your default feed address. FeedBurner will even help you with this, as we’ll see in Tip #12.
But before we talk about that, here’s an extra tip: under the FeedFlare option on the Optimize tab, you’ll find the Personal Flare section. If you click one of the links given, you will see one called “Get Email Updates”. Once you have the Email Subscription option enabled, you can enable that link in your feed to provide the option to subscribe to your updates via email.
Blog Traffic Increaser # 4- Make your feed compatible with all feed subscription services with SmartFeed.
Maybe you have an Atom feed in a world that uses RSS more often. Perhaps the tool you’re using utilizes an older version of RSS, and you’re just getting around to turning on your feed, but don’t want to switch. If you look on the Optimize tab in FeedBurner, you’ll find a tool that will convert your feed on the fly to any version the end user’s tool is asking for.
Blog Traffic Increaser # 5- Import pictures and links with Photo Splicer and Link Splicer
Under Optimize, look for these two options to help you jazz up your feed with your suggestions from Furl, del.icio.us, Digg, Yahoo’s MyWeb 2.0 or Bloglines. The Photosplicer will also let you drop images into your feed using Flickr, BuzzNet or Webshots.
Increasing Traffic to Your Website
Attracting and Keeping Visitors to Your Site!
It's not enough to build a website, you need to have traffic for get people to see it! Whether you are selling products or just offering information, you need visitors! Adding your site to search engines is one way of generating traffic, but there are many other ways to attract visitors. Here are some possibilities to try.
- Offer a contest or sweepstakes with free entry. The prize that they win should be something that would interest your target market. For example, don't offer a free filet mignon if you are targeting vegetarians! The prize could be a product or service that you offer, or it could be a related item that is not direct competition. You can also boost traffic by using another company's product and asking them to let *their* customers know about your free giveaway!
- Offer free content. This content could be articles, e-books, directories, etc. Don't just add any content, make sure it is related to your visitor demographic. Keep this content up to date and fresh. Not only will lots of fresh, targeted content make your website more relevant in search engines, but will offer your prospective customers extra information. They are likely to visit your site more often. You can also offer the option to let them reprint information (such as articles or reviews), with a link back to your site.
- Create a message forum. Forums allow a free flow of ideas, and your target visitors share at least one common interest - your site! An active message board can bring lots of new visitors. If you have satisfied customers posting on your message board, this is free advertising for your business! You may also choose to offer advertising on your message board. If you are not selling a product, set up an advertising package for banners or other site ads which are related to the interests of your visitors. You can find free message board software at www.vbulletin.com or www.phpbb.com. These sites also offer online help to set up the message boards on your site.
- Offer an E-zine. People love information, especially if it's free! Offer a free subsription to your online newsletter or e-zine. You can either offer a PDF file of your newsletter, or provide an email link to the information online. Either way works well, although you would need to have Adobe Acrobat software to write the PDF files. Keep the content of the e-zine relevant to your target audience. You may also offer advertising in the e-zine itself. A great place to advertise your e-zine is http://www.ezine-dir.com/
- Offer online classes or seminars. If you love to teach, this is a wonderful traffic building tool. Whether or not you choose to charge for these is up to you. You could do a free introductory seminar, and then offer other detailed classes for a fee. You can do this on your own website, or you can set it up through a site such as
- UniversalClass. With UniversalClass, they host your class for you and you are assigned an individual online classroom. You must prepare an online syllabus and your course will be reviewed. UniversalClass will advertise your course for you, and you will get a portion of the course fees.
