Who's reading what - understanding FeedBlitz analytics

As a publisher, knowing what works and what doesn't is invaluable - it lets you tune your posts to what reaches your audience the best. FeedBlitz analytics are real-time tools that give you this information.

The following analytics are available to everyone by default:

• Number of posts sent
• Number of subscribers the mail was sent to
• Subscription activity

You can also enable advanced options clicking the relevant checkboxes on your feed's settings page:

• Open tracking (so are people actually reading the emails?)
• Click-through tracking (are they coming back to the blog?)

All the analytics work the same way. You can change parameters using the drop downs, or click on a chart element to drill down to increasing levels of detail. Each chart also has an accompanying report you can copy and paste out of too.

So analyze this! Start with the link on the dashboard, or the pie chart icon for a specific feed at www.feedblitz.com/f?Lists

Are you worth more than 16 cents a day?

You are? Do your email updates show that? No? Then customize the look and feel of your FeedBlitz emails using "Pro" to match your online brand.

Ok, this last one is really self serving, but consider the question anyway. Do you put more than 16c of time and effort into your blog each day? Shouldn't the emails sent by FeedBlitz on your behalf reflect that? If you run ads, shouldn't you be running your ads in your emails too? Just 16c a day; less if you pay for a year at a time.

Would your readers be more comfortable if you called it an email newsletter?

Blogs?! Feeds?! Atom?! RSS?!

Jargon. Unfamiliar to many, off-putting to some.

So get real. Know your audience. What's in a name, after all? What would they call it? A newsletter, perhaps?

Then do it! Change what you call it. Consider these two possible reactions from a non-blog reader (that's 90% of the population, more or less):

• What's a blog? Feed? Isn't that awfully narcissitic? And a little scary? Kids do that, right? No thanks - not for me.
• A regular newsletter? Contact when something I want is updated? Relevant? Timely? Sure! How do I get started?

You get the idea. Word things the way your audience wants to hear them.

If your blog is separate from your main site, put a FeedBlitz signup form there too

Many corporate sites have their blogs in a separate "we're really not quite not sure about this" section of the site. Help them get with the program!

Buddy up with your corporate webmaster and get your subscription form onto the main site. Get the blog's signup link onto everyone's email signatures. Your web site URL is there, your blog's sign up URL should be too. For example, the footer of every page at feedblitz.com has the signup form embedded in it. Result? Over ten thousand email subscribers and counting to FeedBlitz News so far (see the chicklet for the latest stats!).

Oh, and it never hurts to show how well your blog postings are doing in Google. Got a blog posting that's on the first page of search terms relevant to your business? Then make sure everyone knows and can see the value that blogging adds to the enterprise.

Use post truncation to push traffic back to your blog

This one's a little controversial - some people really dislike feeds that truncate posts, some people don't mind. If you want to truncate your posts to force people to your web site FeedBlitz supports that. In fact, you can (with a little work) give people choices about what to subscribe to - Improbulus (you know, I don't think that's her real name) has some great tips.

Get Social - Take advantage of third party services

FeedFlare. FeedBulletin feed alerts by mail. Google AdSense. Podcasts. There's so much more that you can do: Explore. Add. Mashup. Create!

Write about FeedBlitz on your blog and encourage readers to use it

Did you just sneak it in and hope your readers would notice? Many new feeds join FeedBlitz each day but - only a few write about it online. What an opportunity missed to keep your readers in touch! So:

• Talk aboutyour blog's new capabilities.
• Invite readers to sign up.
• Track subscriptions in FeedBlitz with FeedBlitz's real-time analytics.
• Remind people that they need to confirm their subscriptions.

Put the subscription URL on your email signature

You don't need to have a form in your email address. Use the link created by the HTML subscription form page in FeedBlitz and add it to your email signature. And to your contact page. And to your support page. And where else? Your business card perhaps? Think! Get creative! If you prefer, you can use the chicklet here instead.

Put the subscription dialog on your permalink pages

Of course you have the subscription form or link on your main blog page (right? right! Just checking...).

But if a user clicks on a link to your blog in a search engine like Google or Yahoo, they're much more likely to land on your individual post or item page, where your content stands alone.

Go on, try it - visit your own blog and click through to the individual entry. Can you subscribe from there? You should be able to! Update your template to include subscription options in your sidebar for all posts in all pages, not just your blog's main page, or include subscription links in each individual post. Don't forget to republish the entire blog when you're done.

If the form is too much, try the FeedBlitz chicklet - not only does it show your subscriber growth, it is a link to a signup form for visitors.