Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Learn How to Navigate Feedburner


A lot of people don’t realize they have a valuable service attached to their blogs. It’s Feedburner and it’s most commonly used feature is as a gadget to let people sign up to follow your blog through email. But there’s so much more to Feedburner and today I want to give you a guided tour.
In Blogger, Feedburner is default service for email subscriptions, since both are owned by Google. But it’s frequently used with other blogging platforms like WordPress and Typepad. 
Normally, when you want information about your blog, you begin by going to your dashboard. 
NOT this time. 
To access your Feedburner account you have to start on the front side of your blog. That’s the side that visitors see. This is also where you can access your Feedburner stats. Go to the Sign Up With Email gadget and click on the words, FEEDBURNER. 

NOTE: if you don't have a clickable FEEDBURNER link on the front side of your blog, type in Feedburner.google.com to your search engine. Don't type www before it. Google owns this service and they're messing around with access to it and it's finicky to get to it. Once there, click on the blog signups you want to access.
This will take you to the Feedburner site. Once there, you’ll see all your blogs listed. Click on the one you want to work with. This will take you to a page with lots of different menus--some at the top and some down the side. 
Across the top is:
ANALYZE
OPTIMIZE
PUBLICIZE
MONETIZE
TROUBLESHOOTIZE (I think they got a little carried away here)
Most of the things you’ll want to do will be accessed from the PUBLICIZE tab. Click on that and you’ll see a new menu appear on the left side of the screen. Click on Email Subscriptions first. 

NOTE: if you want your subscriber details, scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on SUBSCRIBER DETAILS.

Now you’ll see even more options appear. Before you click on one, look at the bottom center of the screen and you’ll see the number of email subscribers you currently have for your blog. This is also where you’ll see the HTML codes to plug into websites and blogs (if you don’t use Blogger). 
A lot of people ask me if it’s possible to set the time when their blog is emailed to people. It definitely is and this is the menu that allows you to do that. Look back on the left side of the screen and click on Delivery Options. 
The first thing you’ll want to do here is select your timezone. After that, you can schedule email delivery of your blog updates. Your options are in two hour increments. This is good to know about if you ever happen to post your blog a couple of hours late. You can come here, change your delivery time and then change it back after your subscribers have been notified. Just be sure to click SAVE after you’ve made any changes. 
I recommend you take some time and get acquainted with all the different things you can do through Feedburner. Also be sre to post any questions or comments you have in the comments section below.
And don’t forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie

16 comments:

  1. So much to learn with Feedburner, and you can do some really cool stuff when you poke around in there. I actually posted about this last week on Blogmama. We must be on the same scary wavelength :)

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  2. Susan that's so funny! I guess I'm busted because I didn't make it by your blog last week. Blessings, E

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  3. I totally figured some of this out a few weeks ago when someone told me my blog wasn't delivered to her email until 9 pm! And I posted at 12:01 am. I guess it had automatically set it to deliver then and I had to figure out how to switch it. Now I think it's working better, but it's interesting how many things were automatically set that I had no idea were happening! Ah!

    Thanks, as always, for your valuable posts. I learn a little something new every time I visit!

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  4. Thanks for this. I learned something new that I needed to learn.

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  5. Thank you SO MUCH Edie. I wondered how to schedule the time my posts. You help me every time I read your posts. Thank you for this.

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  6. Edie, thank you, thank you, thank you :) It was so cool to finally see the names of the subscribers to my blog, Everyone's Story. Thanks for posting this.

    I'm going to Tweet this post!

    Elaine

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  7. I found out who's subscribed to my blog--something I hadn't known how to do before.

    One question: One person on the list is unverified'. The others are all "active." What does this mean and should I contact that person to let them know they need to do something to actually subscribe? (I know her so it wouldn't be awkward.)

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  8. Lindsay, that's the way I found out about it. It helped me realize I needed to spend some time poking around the gadgets I'm using.
    Holly, I'm so glad this was useful!
    Elaine, I love knowing who has subscribed to my blog. It also helps me find people who don't always comment and visit their blogs. I've found several cyber friends that way.
    Ellen, if someone if 'unverified' it means they signed up for email notification and then, for some reason, didn't click the verify link in the email feed burner sent to them. I haven't contacted anyone who's unverified, but there's not really a reason not to.
    Blessings All - E

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  9. Well Edie, I learned one thing from your post. That apparently I didn't use Feedburner. Or if I did, it isn't giving up any info to me! :)

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  10. So, I subscribed to myself to see if it works. It does. And it's FeedBurner. And it's still not giving up the info! ;)

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  11. I'm catching up on my reading, and I'm so thankful you posted this, Edie! I went over to my Feedburner account and found out who's subscribed (I've always wondered how to know...) and to set up my delivery times and such. Thanks for the important info!

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  12. Edie, This was great. Now, could you guide us the tabs after "Publicize" as well? Thanks!

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  13. Well, Edie, you know how long I've had my blog...would you believe that today was the first time I've ever known how many subscribers I had???

    I think I'll keep hanging around you!
    Thanks. :-)

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  14. What an awesome tip! Thank you so much, Edie!!

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  15. These are very helpful tips! I've become so frustrated with Feedburner in not being able to get hold of an actual person. I signed up a few years ago for my Typepad blog and have completely lost my username and password and can't find anyone to help me get into my account. And, unfortunately, my email addresses aren't registering for some reason. Do you possibly know how to get hold of a real live person at Google/Feedburner? All links send me to an unmonitored chat room. Thank you!

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