Around here, Ben is the king of Digg. Seems like he just has a knack for writing super-diggable posts. This is, of course, very cool. This morning Ben had another winner on his B5 blog Startup Spark. This afternoon the e-mails are going around the group to digg it for him. I did it this morning. I’m not saying this to brag, I just noticed that in Ben’s FeedFlare his Digg link had diggs on it. Click, click, dugg.
FeedBurner has lots of cool things to help you promote and enhance both your blog and its feed. We have FB set up for all of our clients, it’s just part of the blog set up we do.
Another service that FB has had for a while is the Headline Animator, which has just gotten a much-needed facelift.
Headline Animator is a simple concept. A little graphic that updates itself to show the latest headlines from your blog’s feed. This button can go pretty much anywhere you can put HTML code, and part of the revamp was to make that insertion process even easier.
At various times in the past I’ve put the Headline Animator in my e-mail signature. I’ve often wondered if this increased the chance it being tagged as spam, nonetheless I’m trying it again. This is what ours looks like:
Not bad. Long headlines might be an issue, but the idea here is to promote your blog virally. Give people a glimpse of what you’re writing in everyday situations.
Blog promotion isn’t a one-time thing. Like any “brand” or effort you do it needs attention and direction. And for a blog that means posting, posting often, and finding good ways to have others read your posts.
Hey There,
Great writeup on our Headline Animator. The stats that we’ve rolled our are just the beginning and we’re glad that your using this tool. We love feedback, so don’t ever hesitate to give us a shout!
Thanks for being a customer!
Jake Parrillo
Publisher Services Team
FeedBurner
Thanks Jake! I can always count on FB to find and comment on posts quickly. Jake, do you have any thoughts on if Headline Animator in an e-mail being flagged as spam?
Tris, I just stripped the headline animator out of my email signature because it was causing my email to end up in folks spam filters. I’d resend the exact same email without it and it would go through.
I hate that I had to do that. And it is totally not fair to FeedBurner. But I gotta have a level of confidence that my messages will actually get to their intended recipients.
Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering Chris. I’m trying it for a bit, just to see.
FB folks … ideas on this problem?
tris,
email is a mixed bag because spam filters are triggered by many different things. i haven’t had any problems, but you don’t know.
even if you don’t use it for email, you can use it to “cross-post” your blog on multiple sites or social networks like myspace, etc. or give folks a way to grab your content.
also, if you didn’t know you can create a banner of any size (under 500X500) with ANY background image. so, you can be creative (like sony pictures – http://feeds.feedburner.com/spiderman3.gif)
let me know if you have any questions or concerns…
thanks and glad you’re a happy feedburner customer…
don loeb
vp partner services
feedburner
Hey thanks Don. Well now I think Jim will want that! Better break out the image editor!
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Using FeedBurner goodies to promote your blog. Thanks for informative article