RSS feeds or site feeds are one of the cool ways to spread your content around the web. It’s an unique way to keep in touch with a blog without even visiting. Now as a publisher, you have the option whether you want to offer Full RSS feeds or only post teasers. Let’s see what’s the best option for bloggers.
Contents
I want to bring visitors to my blog
If you set short RSS feeds, then your readers must visit your blog to read the full post. So if you’re thinking that you want real visitors who will read your blog by visiting your site, then you might want these things,
Increasing the number of site visitors
I want them to comment and participate
I want them to click on ads
I want more readership
I want to give more ease to my readers
If you want to give your readers a unique and comfortable way to read your blog, then you must offer full RSS feeds. You might want these things,
I want them to read my blog posts easily
I want them to get the updates faster
I want them to read my blog for a long time
I want more readership
No matter what you decide, you have one common goal, “More readership.” It’s harder to be ones favorite blog. Every time a new visitor comes to your site and gets interested in it, he looks for a faster way to remember the site. Most people will bookmark it and tech savvy people will add your feed on their feed readers. People who are unaware of rss feeds, they will subscribe via email.
The bad thing about short RSS feeds
When your reader tries to read your blog in RSS, he’ll see only first 250 words in his software; your email reader will receive emails with only 250 words -that means they have to click to the link to read that post. Here they will “Unsubscribe” from your blog because if they’re unable to read in RSS, so what’s the point of subscribing?
They may come to your blog within few days for new updates, but soon they will forget about your blog. And what does that means? -you just lost an interested reader.
Full RSS feed means longer lasting readership
I found that an RSS or email subscriber usually doesn’t unsubscribe from a blog. Your subscribers will still be there even if you stopped writing for a long time. This is the power of offering full RSS feeds.
The conclusion: You should always offer Full RSS feeds!
Your RSS readers are the longer lasting supporter of your blog. They are the ones who are reading from you for a long time. By subscribing, they have decided to read from your blog forever and they will promote your posts. If you want real profit in the long run, then you should always offer full feeds.
How to set up full RSS feeds?
In wordpress: Go to Settings > Reading, select “Full text” for “For each article in a feed, show”
In blogger: Go to Settings > Site feed > select “Full” for “Allow blog feeds”
Have your say
- Do you offer Full RSS feeds? Why or why not?
- Do you read blogs in your RSS readers?
- Do you love to subscribe to short feeds?
Subscribe to BlogKori’s Full RSS feed!
Yes I too offer full RSS feeds in my blog. Subscribe and read it from your reader,
I couldn’t agree more with you. If I find a cool blog, I subscribe. But if it’s offering only partial feeds, I always instantly unsubscribe. Partial feeds are just too inconvenient to read.
Full feeds, definitely. I really hate the feeds where you have to click into the website. I will go the website anyway to comment if it’s a great article, but it kinda sucks if I have to do it for every article.
~ Kristi
Kikolani | Blogging, Poetry, Photography’s latest blog post..Twitter Photo Mosaic
Excellent post and yes Full RSS. As a matter of convenience the full should be used. Users don’t want to have to read the short excerpt then have to visit your blog only to start reading from where they left off.
Geoserv’s latest blog post..Free theme for Social Web CMS – PliggieSWCMS
@Am: Why you leave comments without reading the full post? I said to offer full RSS not short feed!
@Kikolani: I do hate short feeds, it’ll work positively if we provide full RSS.
@Geoserv: When I started to blog, this thing knocked on my head should I provide full or short feeds? As a new blogger then, I thought I should provide short feed to bring them to my site. But now I know that I was wrong. This is why posted this article.
Hmm, you are right. But none subscribes to my RSS feed ’cause less people are interested to read personal blog posts. And not everyone can write posts like this one [talking about blogkori.com].
Anyway, thanks for the advice. If I can ever learn English better to write tech-related reports in English, then I’ll follow your advice by providing full RSS feed to the RSS readers. 🙂
Aminul Islam Sajib’s latest blog post..Wanna write on Foreign News Agency
This post has been very helpful for me. I was double minded over this issue for a long time now.
As a reader, I do like to have full posts in my feed. But as a publisher, I always wondered if I provide full posts in my feed,why would anyone ever visit my blog again after having subscribed to feed once. Kikolani’s comment above has given me the answer and my confusion is clear now. I have changed the settings in my WordPress to allow full articles to be sent through the feeds.
Thank you.
@bigtugboat: Now that you’ve offered full feeds, your readers will increase. Please do create a post informing that you now offer full feeds and can label the RSS feeds into Full RSS feeds.
Is there a way to have full feeds for shorter articles and excerpts for longer ones?
@krjx’s latest blog post..Carrot and Onion Soup
@krjx: It’s not possible, until now but may be it’ll be possible in the future.
Your following statement pretty much sums it all up:
BTW: This blog keeps getting better and better!
Caleb – Market Secrets Blogger’s latest blog post..Enter This Contest And Win A NEW Corvette!
This post got me thinking and I switched to full rss feeds for one of my blogs.
@krjx’s latest blog post..A.R. Rahman’s Best Song
I also offer a full feed. Makes no sense to have a short one from a readers point of view.
Conrad Theart’s latest blog post..Technology and Saving The Planet
God, I came to this post, didn’t even know what RSS is, looked it up, found an old (as in 2007) video about it, looked it up more, and then came back just to find this post is also from 2009!
Thanks to social media we can do more, I think, but still, thanks for the info. I’ll see more of your blog. Thanks.