Build A Beautiful Blog Week - How To Get The Most Out Of Feedburner

If you offer Email Subscriptions through Feedburner, there's a number of ways to tweak this service and add more value to your blog. Here are just a couple of ways to personalize your service:

Do you want to add the option for readers to easily share your blog posts?

Want to make it easy for readers to share posts they enjoy with their friends? You can easily set it up through your Feedburner account and decide which ways you want them to be able to share your posts.

• Go to the Optimize tab.
• Go to Feed Flare. You can decide whether to add it to your site (blog) or feed (email newsletter).
• Choose which options you are interested in. Some examples are Email This, Digg This, Share on Facebook, Stumble It, etc.

Do you want to offer a full feed or partial feed in your email newsletters?

I know there is a big debate and strong opinions on both sides. A Partial feed is where the readers will only get a short teaser and will have to click to your blog to read the rest of your posts. Personally, I like the full feeds and have it set up this way on my blog. I get annoyed with partial feeds. However, if you DO want partial feeds, here's how to do it:

• Go to the Optimize tab
• Click on Summary Burner
• Activate this service.

Do you want to customize the message that people receive when they subscribe to your feed and are then emailed to verify their subscription?

You can leave it as the standard blurb that is already set up by Feedburner or make it personal to suit your blog. Here's how to make it personalized:

• Go to the Publicize tab.
• Click on Email Subscriptions
• Click on Communication Preferences
• Here you can customize the subject line of the email that will sent to people when they are sent an email to confirm their email address.

What time do you want your email newsletter to be delivered?

To set up a time that works for you and your readers, you need to:

• Go to the Publicize tab.
• Click on Email Subscriptions
• Click on Delivery Options.
• Select your timezone and what time you want your email newsletter to be delivered. Remember to Activate.

Do you want to show how many readers subscribe by email on your blog?

I think this a cool little feature and love that it updates daily so you can keep track of how many readers you have. To add this to your blog:

• Go to the Publicize tab.
• Click on FeedCount.
• You can customize the colours and the style of graphic you like and install easily on your blog.

Do you want your blog posts to automatically post on Twitter?

I love this feature! This way you never forget! To use this feature:

• Go to the Publicize tab.
• Click on Socialize.
• Click on Add a Twitter account.
• Customize how you want it to show up on Twitter. For example you can add text to the beginning of your link ie. Blog Update: or New Blog Post:.

So as you can see there are lots of little ways to make your Feedburner work for you! Take advantage of it.