cre8d design

So you’ve set up a Feedburner account, slapped a button on your blog which publicises your new feed and have been tracking your feed subscriber stats quite nicely. But are you getting the full story?

Not by default, no.

The problem: Even if you have a nice button linking people to your RSS feed, if they’re using an RSS feed reader which auto-discovers your feed (i.e. they just enter in your blog’s address and the software does the hunting for the RSS feed URL) then they’re not going to be using Feedburner, but your blog’s own feed. They won’t be a part of your Feedburner stats. Or, if people type in your blog’s feed URL or find it via Google, they’ll end up not being a part of your Feedburner stats too.

The solutions:

• WordPress: Install this handy Feedburner plugin (the plugin instructions are really nicely written and easy to follow). It will redirect everyone automatically to your Feedburner feed.
• Other blogging software: There’s tips here for MovableType and other blog systems. Failing that, you could write a few lines for your .htaccess file (or ask someone who can) to redirect all RSS traffic to Feedburner.

Be flexible: If you’re worried about providing different feed formats, turn on SmartFeed in Feedburner. It will translate your feed on-the-fly into a format (RSS or Atom) compatible with your visitors’ feed reader application.

What about people who’ve already subscribed? Good news, new and old subscribers will all be redirected automatically to your Feedburner feed!