An RSS Rant or Does Your Feed Work?

By admin

IF you have a blog.

IF you want people to read your blog.

PLEASE make sure that you have an RSS feed and that it’s working (checking and testing it every so often never hurts).

That was going to be the full content of this blog post but I’m feeling somewhat… well… frankly… I’m tired of it.  I know sometimes people don’t know better but… if you start a blog and you’ve researched how to have a blog then you shoud know that most web savvy people read blogs using a feed reader.  Find someone that knows how and pay them to do it – it could take MAYBE 10 minutes of their time!

I’m not usually so blatant/controversial but I’m going to list a few people who’s blogs I’d like to read but won’t because I can’t get them in my Google RSS Feed Reader.  I love you all and I’m not doing this to be mean.  These are JUST the ones I found in my travels on the net very recently so you can imagine how many blogs I don’t read because of this issue. Don’t hate me! It’s the principle of the matter people!

I want to read your blog/site but can’t subscribe:
http://www.theproblemismen.com
http://survivingelementaryschool.com - Christina – I love you!
http://www.hollyconway.blogspot.com – I love our local radio station The Beat 94.5!
Which reminds me http://www.kidcarson.com – Your site isn’t a blog but it should be! 

Oh! and an email notification of an update to the blog isn’t the same thing! I get enough email – I just want to read you in my feed reader please!

SO many GREAT blogs go unread because there’s no way to subscribe! Don’t let that happen to YOU and lose readers (aka potential clients!?) in the process.

Some would argue that internet marketing is all about niche list building and those of us that use a blog as our website have the awesome advantage of using our RSS feed subscriptions as our list.

Somewhat related informational tidbit:

Did you know… that blogspot blogs don’t come with an automatic RSS feed… IF you have a blogspot blog (I won’t even go into why you shouldn’t – I have articles coming up that go into all the reasons to have a self hosted blog) but… IF you do have a blogspot blog, I’ve seen a few with RSS subscription options but it isn’t on there by default – so head on over to Feedburner and get one and stick the code in your column (if they’ll let you) or figure out how to do it.  If you ask nicely I could probably even figure it out for you.

Oh! and a note about Feedburner – they are now owned by Google. SO, if you use Feedburner and haven’t logged in lately – it will tell you to move your feed once you login to your account.  
Old Feedburner – New Feedburner

I may very well be back to add – non-working RSS feed subscriptions or sites that don’t have a feed but should – to this post as as I come across them.  But really if these people I’m listing on here don’t have subscribable feeds (yes subscribable is a word – I looked it up!) are they really going to know who’s linking to them? I doubt it, hence me calling this a rant – I don’t really expect anything to be done about it – it’s just me blowing steam and trying to be somewhat humorous about it.

On the plus side, The Daily Bumble – a canadian webcomic that premiered on Facebook in early 2008 – used to have a non-working RSS feed but has recently fixed it and now I’m getting my daily bit of funny from Clayton Flagg! Big thanks and shout out to Catherine (my best friend) for introducing me to Clayton’s work! HUGE thank you from a new fan to Clayton for fixing his various RSS feed links – keep it up and save me a button!

Enjoy!

Image Credit: Wizard-Creek