Monday, October 21, 2013

Social Media Monday—Find Your Blog’s Subscriber List and Schedule Email Notifications with Feedburner


This post is a recap on how to find your blog's subscriber list and schedule email notifications. The instructions here ONLY apply if you have a Feedburner account. If you have a Blogger blog (blogspot) you have Feedburner. You may have it if you have a WordPress blog, but probably not.

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 either start on the front side of your blog, or go directly to www.feedburner.google.com. The front side of your blog is what 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. 

Some blogger sites don't have a clickable link here, but that's okay. Just type in www.feedburner.google.com and sign in with your Google account. 

Either way 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.

Don't forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie


12 comments:

  1. Thanks for the info, Edie. I always find your posts very helpful! I do have a question regarding feedburner. Is there a way to see how many people viewed your website / blog each day or week?

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    1. Sheri, I'm glad you've found this helpful! Feedburner does allow you to see some stats. Under the ANALYZE tab. The way I understand it, these stats are for how many of your subscribers viewed your site.

      I recommend you install Google Analytics to keep an accurate eye on you blog's stats. Here's the link to a post I wrote on how to do that: http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com/2012/06/thursday-reviewadding-google-analytics.html (this link probably isn't clickable, so just copy and past it into your browser window.)

      Hope this helps! Blessings, E

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  2. Edie, thank you for this helpful post. And, the timing was perfect as I'm preparing to launch my first blog/website. Setting up Feedburner for my blog was a breeze, thanks! Quick question: under the publicize tab, there's an option to have Feedburner automatically tweet out new posts. Do you use this feature or do you use HootSuite?

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  3. Tarissa, great question! I recommend that bloggers NEVER have their posts sent out automatically on social media. Hootsuite is a scheduling program and is slightly different. In Hootsuite you compose the update and dictate when it's sent out. Other programs automate everything and that's what you want to avoid. Look for an upcoming blog post about this very issue. Blessings, E

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    1. Thanks, Edie! I'll look forward to your post.

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  4. Thanks for this post, Edie. One question: I looked under E-mail subscriptions and found one person on the list that, instead of saying "active" it says "unverified." How can I change this to activate it?

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    1. Ellen, you can't change that. When someone signs up for your blog, they get an email from Feedburner asking them to click a link to VERIFY their email. When someone is listed as unverified it means they haven't done that. They could have changed their minds about subscribing, forgotten to do it, or the email could have gone in their spam file.

      I don't worry about those. And I don't send the reminder emails. If they're interested they'll re-subscribe.

      Hope this helps! Blessings, E

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  5. Hi Edie -

    I like subscribing to blogs and having reminders come in my email. This is a good way for me to provide that service to my readers. I'm going to study this and see if I can get it to work for me.

    Thanks,
    Susan :)

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  6. I can't wait to try this. Thank you.

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  7. Thank you once again, Edie. Apparently I was posting in the wrong time zone! I am curious about something. Is there an optimal time of day/night for scheduling email deliveries?

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    1. Sally, the best time for your notice to hit inboxes is around 7am. That way it's there when someone checks email the first time of the day. If you wait until afternoon, you run the risk of folks sharing your link a day late or missing it altogether. Thanks for stopping by, Blessings - E

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