Adding Readership with Email Subscriptions Using Feedburner

Here's a short tutorial on how to setup a blog subscription by email for (non-AR members) your clients and customers that want to follow your fabulous posts!  It will be 3 parts that will help you to get this all going - Part 1 will be setting up a Feedburner Account through Google to push your content to your new readership.  Part 2 is where you will need some type of graphic telling your new subscribers that this new feature is available.  Part 3 is how to put the graphic into your AR sidebar where people can now find this feature, click, and then subscribe.

Whew ..... hope this is clear for everybody.

PART 1 - Gotta get a Feedburner Account

You need a Google Account & sign in using your Gmail account.  Click 'Account Settings' then under 'My Products' find the 'Feedburner' setup and click to begin setup.

 

Now you must go back to AR and get your 'RSS' feed for your blog.  This is found on the lower right hand sidebar way at the bottom (yellow & blue box).  This is where your blogs feed is located.  When you click on it you should receive your feed link which looks like this - http://activerain.com/blogs/lynsims/rss.  

 

If you want to take a short cut here, just add your blog's name where the /lynsims/ is.  

PLEASE:  Do not copy my feed because your clients will be subscribing to MY blog.  I won't mind but I bet they will.

 

OK you're doing great (hopefully!) so we have to just go back to Google & add your RSS feed to Feedburner.  Add your RSS Feed to the area that says 'Burn a feed right this instant' and click NEXT.  Add a 'Feed Title' is where you might want to change the blog title from your ActiveRain blog (longer? shorter?).  You can title it anyway that you wish.  Click NEXT when you've decided on your feed name.  Click NEXT to add other features like feed statistics.  Click NEXT again & you're finished!  

Now you can see your blog by clicking on the 'Optimize' tab and your posts should be scrolling down the page.

Click on 'Publicize' tab and go down to 'Email Subscriptions'.  Click 'ACTIVATE'.  Feedburner will now give you the HTML code for your blog.  Paste this somewhere safe because you will need this for the next part.

This is where you take a short break, high five your dog & consume quantities of your favorite beverage.  Success ... but moderate your alcohol content because you're not finished!

 

PART 2 - Gotta get a cool Graphic

This section is for using the link in your signature line or at the bottom of a post. Pick a cool graphic (or use an RSS feed icon or the Feedburner icon).  I'm not sure everyone knows what those icons are for so it might be better to just be clear as to what you want your readers to do?  Mine says 'Subscribe by Email' but you can say whatever you choose. You're welcome to use my samples if you'd like.  Just add the Feedburner link to your graphic like you would in a normal post & you're ready to go!  Don't forget to give it a test drive click to be sure the Feedburner subscribe box comes up.  Tweek accordingly.

Pat yourself on the back, high five your dog again.  Call someone at AR & scream 'Guess what I just did!'

 

PART 3 - Put your Graphic and Feedburner Link into your AR sidebar

Congrats on wanting to give this a try!  This will also take a few steps to prepare for inserting the HTML needed.  

You will need a couple of things again for this step.  The link for your graphic or picture and your Feedburner link which you've saved.  We are going to add them together in HTML and paste them into your sidebar. (drum roll & cymbals crash)

 

Go to the 'Settings' of your AR blog and open it.  In the 'Blog Description' section this is where you will paste the HTML.  I've added mine just BEFORE the wording that I wrote for my blog description.

 

 

 

The HTML is highlighted in yellow.  First section of HTML is for the Feedburner link and the 2nd section is for the photo link.  Add your links in the 'blanks' that I've left for you here to make it easy.  It is placed in between the quotation marks.  Be sure that you do not add any spaces, change anything or add extra spaces or it won't work!  (shake your head in agreement here)

YOUR FEEDBURNER LINK">YOUR PHOTO LINK" border="0" alt="Email Subscription" />

Paste into the 'Blog Description' and hit the 'Update'.  

 

 

SUCCESS!  You're awesome and it looks great!  Tweek accordingly if it didn't work, text is showing that shouldn't be, etc.  I've tried to make it as easy as possible.

You're a pro, you're da man!  Hands in da air!  uew, uew ........
Good luck with it.