The use of RSS feeds has been a staple of the adult webmastering arena for several years now, being commonly incorporated into a variety of applications including daily updated affiliate content that is readily integrated into popular blogging software (that in some cases also automatically creates feeds), and/or traditional HTML-based websites.
One veteran tool for quickly and easily working with custom feeds was FeedBurner, which “moved the whole neighborhood, down to every last tree, beagle, and mailbox, to Google,” where anyone with a Google Account can access its services for free.
For WordPress users and other website owners with feed generation capabilities, FeedBurner is worth a look.
According to Google, feeds are a way for websites to distribute content beyond those visitors using browsers and permit those visitors to subscribe to your regular updates, which are delivered automatically “via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email.”
Feeds, the company adds, also allow online content to be packaged into “gadgets” or “widgets,” or easily formatted for mobile devices and other technologies that enable the display of blog posts, podcasts and headlines, just about anywhere. This content may be delivered in any format, including audio, text or video, all displayable via a feed reader.
The company notes that subscribing to feeds allows consumers to review a large amount of content in a very short time, while publishers enjoy the instant distribution of subscription-based content to targeted audiences and advertisers benefit because feeds overcome many drawbacks of traditional online marketing channels such as spam filters, delays in distribution, poor search engine rankings, “and general inbox noise.”
Taking feeds a step further is FeedBurner, which among other features offers traffic analytics and advertising options.
“FeedBurner’s services allow publishers who already have a feed to improve their understanding of and relationship with their audience,” says Google.
For WordPress users and other website owners with feed generation capabilities, FeedBurner is worth a look.
Keep in mind, however, that the service (despite its reported $100 million price tag) may face an uncertain future; following Google’s announcement earlier this year that the FeedBurner APIs would be deprecated.
