Attract More RSS Users With Post Summaries

A question popped into my inbox recently praising how one of the websites I run offers a summary of each post via RSS. There's a link at the end of each summary asking readers to visit the site to finish reading.

To be honest, I've never liked summaries in my RSS reader, but many people do. And many experts say this is an excellent way to get readers back to your site. This is extra important if you have advertisers or want to encourage comments. First, let us answer some RSS questions. You're just going to love him.

Who is RSS?

Okay, so he's not a handsome hunk. In fact, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. But here's what you need to know about it.

Think of your favorite website. Got it? Yeah, you're thinking about my blog, I knew it! How do you know when I post something new to my blog? You have to come and visit the site to see if something new has been posted, right? Or I might send out an email mentioning new posts. Right?

RSS makes it really easy for you to be notified each time something new is posted to one of your favorite sites or blogs.

How does RSS work?

RSS gives you a central place to look for new blog/website content. First, you have to subscribe to the site/blog's RSS feed. It looks like a web address but with a few key things on the end. Once you've subscribed, you'll go to your feed reader and any time a website/blog has posted a new post that post (or a summary from it) will appear in your RSS reader.

How do you subscribe?

You need a Feed Reader. I personally use Google Reader. It's free and insanely easy to use. But there are LOTS of options. Even my email software allows me to get RSS feeds. If you use Outlook or Firefox, there should be addons that allow you to get RSS feeds there as well.

Once you have an RSS reader that you like, you add RSS feeds to it. The reader then "calls" the websites every so often and asks "hey, got any new content?" If the site says "sure do, here it is!" then the content will pop up in your RSS reader for you to read.

To answer the question of how I do summaries:

I use Feedburner. There's a feature called Summary Burner. You can visit the Feedburner site and register for your own feedburner.

You'll see that I have the maximum length of the summary set to 400 characters. And then the text that I want linked is{Finish reading on our website...} Both options are editable by you. And in case you didn't know, Feedburner is a free service that lets you offer cool options like this, plus it tracks your RSS subscribers.

Feedburner handles things from there. Yes, it's that easy.