Continuing in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series, I'm starting to get into more intermediate type steps now. (If I skipped a basic one that you want to know about email me.) Today, I'm introducing the subject of blog feeds and feeding your readers through, uh, feeds. Here it is ...

To get more people to read your blog and return again, you need to lower the bar for what it takes for them to keep up with you and your posts -- this is where site feeds come in.

Feeds are fast and easy ways to give your avid readers a way to keep up with your blog.

[I've written about feeds before in my post "How to Read a Blog."]

Just like a network news station provides a "live feed" for its satellite locations and affiliates, blog feeds give readers the latest headlines of your posts.

It has been said that feeds are like "your Internet inbox."

A Web site's feed (also known as RSS, really simple syndication) is a Internet file (usually with an .XML or .RSS extension) that contains all the most recent posts of a particular blog [see what the raw file for mine looks like here].

Each time new posts are added, my blogging platform-editor (Blogger) updates this file and publishes it on the Internet. Then it "pings" feedreader services, like Bloglines or NewsGator, etc.

This is extremely helpful, for instance, to me for one site that I like to read often: LifeHacker. They post probably 5 million times a day! Kidding here ... but they do post a lot! More than I can keep up with.

So just to keep up with all that posting, I subscribe to their feed, scan their headlines in my feedreader (Bloglines) and click on those headlines I'm most interested in to read the full post ...

Feeding your readers can be easily done with FeedBurner, a great free site for everything "feeds." It's very popular with bloggers.

In fact, I use Feedburner on this blog, push this button to see what this looks like. (And why don't you subscribe in the process?)

FeedBurner has a whole host of services for bloggers -- taking a lot of the sweat and time out of feed your site guests.

Here are a few FeedBurner services I love and think can be useful to blogging pastors:

• PingShot -- This sends a "ping" to blog directories and key search engines. It tells them you've got new stuff to check out. They in turn tell others.
  

• Email Subscriptions -- Like FeedBlitz, this service lets your readers sign up for email updates when you post them. It's automatic and requires little action after you set it up.

• BuzzBoost -- Lets you list the headlines of your posts on another site, like your church site or member's personal sites. [See top left column of this blog titled "recent posts."]


• Headline Animator -- A similar service to BuzzBoost, only this provides an animated graphic. [See below for example.]


• SmartCast™ -- Podcasting made easy


• Link and Photos Splicers --Combine your del.icio.us bookmarks and Flickr photos into your feed
  

Here's what the Headline Animators looks like:




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