Feed me, but don’t forget my email
One thing I think that lots of bloggers may be missing out on is readers who don’t use a feed reader. I think you need to access who your audience is. For example if you have a tech blog you might go with the assumption that most of your readers probably have a feed reader. However, if you do a student blog there are decent chances that your audience might consist of parents, administrators, friends, etc. These people might not all have readers. So they are missing out on the benefits of RSS.
How do we help them?
Here is what I suggest. Use a service that will turn your feed into an email. So they will get the full benefits of RSS without having to have a feed reader(something that I think is definitely not mainstream). Here are a few options
- Feedblitz
Sign up, add your feed to account, then get the code and add to your site. - Feedburner
Burn your feed then on your account page, go to the publicize tab, then to email subscriptions. Then copy the code and add to your blog
There are also wordpress plugins for this. I am having trouble hunting them down in my del.icio.us, if I hunt it down I will add to comments.
So I think the benefit of this is that you can turn a casual non-techie browser into a regular reader like people who use feed readers with very little effort.
So as the title suggests, Feed me, but don’t forget my email.
on January 4, 2007 on 8:04 pm
Your observation is right on the mark, Matt. E-mail is perhaps one of the most important components of a successful website, because it allows you to contact your readers without requiring any effort on their part. Visiting your site or checking their feed reader requires a person to be motivated to check in with you, while a message to your e-mail subscribers can almost magically reel in long-lost visitors who once expressed interest in your site, but then moved on. Anyone who uses a computer regularly is no likely to forget to check their e-mail.