Email blog posts to your fans, without lifting a finger! I’m talking about FeedBurner. You can use FeedBurner as a subscription reader if you’re not already using one, but you can also add a super simple form to your website that will allow your fans to receive your new blog posts in their email inbox. Check out mine in the upper left of the page…and don’t forget to sign up!
FeedBurner has apparently been around awhile but is now operated by Google. You’ll need a Google account to set up your feed on FeedBurner, but the process is very simple. You’ll need the RSS feed URL for your blog and it takes Google about a day to set the feed up once you add it, but you can go ahead and configure your settings (stats, email settings, stuff like that, most of it was Greek to me) while you wait.
Email subscriptions are sent out once per day if there are posts to send out and you decide who the emails appears to come from, so it looks like it came from your own email, when it fact it was initiated and sent out by FeedBurner without you ever knowing it. Pretty cool, right?
The email subscription experience is not going to be the same as you would get by reading it on site, but it should have all the photos and links from the post. In fact I’m going to put some links and images here just to verify (I did a test post already but it was quick and I didn’t think to add much), then I’ll edit this post with my findings =) but the whole point is in keeping contact with people who visit your blog as easy as possible for you and as easy as possible for them. And it couldn’t be easier, to sign up they simply have to enter their email address and click OK, they will receive a confirmation email that will require them to click a confirmation link and that’s it. Your blog posts will go to their inbox without so much as a blink from you.
What a huge opportunity to reach out to those that found you once but may not necessarily come back.
Now for my shameless plug of images!
Edited to add this note on February 2 ,2012:
And it’s official, the email comes, it’s got all images and links associated with the blog post….this is very cool, I think I love it!
Thanks so much for letting me know you are moving your site. I signed up to follow, love your work!! Happy New Year and New Website! a
Yay! Thank you so much for saying so Heather, I appreciate it so much =) And I’m so glad you let me drag you over ;P Happy New Year to you and yours as well, I hope it brings wonderful things.
Thanks, very helpful info to know. How does one find the RSS feed URL for their blog?Love your dragonfly in the test feed.
Thanks Anita! Your rss feed url can be found by clicking the RSS icon or the ‘entries rss’ link on your webpage. Copy the url for the page that pops up =)