Don't forget the Feeds!

i haven't talked spoken much about feeds in my e-book for two reasons: (1) most beginners don't know what feeds are and; (2) it can be a little tricky to explain and understand. So, i'll take it from the top.

A feed or web feed is 'a data format for providing users with frequently updated content', says Wikipedia. Put more simply, a feed is a tool for publishers to distribute or syndicate content to other people (users) on the internet, efficiently. This means that subscribers do not have to continuously log onto their favorite websites to check for updates. Instead, they can subscribe to feeds and receive updates in their email inbox, or aggregator. Aggregators can be internet based or software based.

In the blogging context, the person running the blog is the publisher and anybody who visits the blog is a potential subscriber for the blog's feeds. Blog feeds are usually complete posts or extracts from new posts which are sent out to subscribers every time there is an update.

Feeds are important because they are a great way of gaining and gauging visitor loyalty. This is partly why search engines love blogs with a high number of feed subscribers. Usually the better the blog the more subscribers it will have. Also, many people like to monetize their feeds. This is something I'm personally not in favor of. But i'll talk about that later.

Once, you have created your blog, added all the widgets, ad-zones, content etc. you should be reasonably comfortable and should definitely add the option for users to subscribe to your feeds. The best way to do this is to sign up on www.feedburner.com. Feedburner will burn your feeds for you. All you have to do is add 'chicklets' (buttons that allow members of specific aggregators to subscribe to your feed).

In some of my future posts i'll talk about how you use feedburner to your advantage and other important things for consideration as far as feeds are concerned. Also, don't get confused by atom and rss. These are two data formats for feeds. later!