by Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com
In a previous newsletter article I wrote about “What is an RSS Feed and why you want One.” That article showed how to make your blog accessible to your readers thru their Feed Readers. But this is only good for those people who use and understand a Feed Reader. How many people who read your blog fall in that category? Just as I thought 🙂
It might be second nature to kids these days, but for us Boomer-and-Beyond generation, many are just getting the hang of email. With just a little bit of set up work, you can use Feedburner to automatically send an email of your blog post to anyone who asks for it.
Feedburner.com is part of the Google family. So, if you have a Google account, you have a Feedburner account. To create an Email Subscription Form for your blog, follow these steps:
- Log in to Feedburner.com with your google account.
- You should see a section that reads, “Burn a feed right this instant.” Enter your blog feed address here. You get your blog feed address by clicking the orange feed button on your blog’s page, then copy the URL. (for more info see the prior article on RSS Feeds) If you use Blogger, it will look something like this:
Click ‘Next’ - This page has automatically assigned a Feedburner address to your blog’s feed. Just click ‘Next.’
- On this step I want you to ‘Skip directly to feed management.’
- Now click on the ‘Publicize’ tab, and then Email Subscriptions (at the left) Then Activate the service.
- You’re done setting it up in Feedburner! Now you need to copy the code provided and paste it into your website or blog. In Blogger, you would paste it into a Gadget. Use the ‘HTML Javascript’ gadget type. Here’s a ‘Show-Me-How video on using that gadget.
To see the end result, check out our Geeks on Tour Blog and notice the top right section labeled, “Geeks on Tour Blog Posts Delivered to your Inbox.”
If you try it, please leave a comment to tell me if these instructions worked for you. If I get enough comments with questions, I’ll do a Show-Me-How Video.