How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

RSS has become an increasingly important way of engaging with blog readers over the last couple of years – but in more recent times with its integration into web browsers and operating systems it’s potential power for bloggers to engage readers has increased.

However – if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably not put a lot of thought into thinking strategically about how to engage with readers through feeds. Most of us simply know we have a feed, ensure we have a link or button to let readers know we’ve got one and hope that people subscribe.

But is there a way to engage readers more effectively through RSS?

While many tips have been written on how to write blog posts, I’ve not seen any that focus upon feed readers.

The Problem of Clutter

I have around 700 feeds that I attempt to follow each week. Some of them only post once or twice a week but some can have up to 100 posts. You can imagine the massive quantities of information that many heavy RSS readers are confronted with in their news aggregators.

How can bloggers break through this clutter and make their RSS feeds get noticed? How do you make your feed ‘Pop’?

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

This week I’ll be presenting a series of short posts on writing for RSS readers. As always – my invitation to you is to join in with the tips. Like everyone – I’m still making sense of new technologies and how to use them most effectively – I’m looking forward to learning from you also.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series.

PS: it should be said up front that some of the tips for improving RSS feeds that I’ll share in the coming days also have the potential to improve the blog posts that actually appear on your blog. Consider that a double bonus for the series!

The Series so Far

* Using Images and Video
* Scannable Content
* Titles with Bling
* Opening Lines
* Avoid Clutter
* How to Get More Subscribers to Your RSS Feed
* 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog

Bonus Post: 34 Reasons why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog