Archive for April, 2007

Setting Your Feed To Work With BlogBurst

Published by Dock on April 3, 2007 in BlogBurst Nuts & Bolts. 2 Comments

The way that BlogBurst sucks your blog into our system and then syndicates it out to the best newspapers and media sites in the land is a technology called “RSS” (see Wikipedia’s RSS entry).

You don’t need to know much about this technology to be a BlogBurst member, you just need to make sure that your feed is set to show “full posts.” We’ll tell you how to do this in the most popular blogging systems.

Full vs. Partial Posts

Most bloggers use a ready-made platform like Wordpress or Blogger, and the good news is that these systems automatically create RSS feeds for you. Those feeds are set to share either full or partial posts. Partial posts will show the first section of each post and then link to the full post back at your blog.

Publishers using the BlogBurst network require all feeds to display the full blog post (but don’t worry, all posts syndicated through us also link back to your blog). Setting your blog’s feed to show partial posts not only prevents your content from being used, but could also result in suspension from the system.

In broad terms, you’ll usually have an “Atom feed” and an “RSS feed” available to choose from, and in some cases even more. When you submit your blog to BlogBurst, you’ll see these choices in the drop-down menu during the sign-up process — either one will work fine.

We recommend that you choose the latest version of your RSS feed, which will usually be RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0.

The Hows

Note that it sometimes takes 24 hours for your feed to update after you change the settings.

There are too many platforms to list all the instructions, but here are a few of the most common examples:

MySpace Blogs

Unfortunately, MySpace does not offer the kind of feed that we need, so we don’t allow MySpace blogs at this time.

Feedburner

Feedburner is a separate free service that allows you to channel an already existing feed, creating a new RSS feed. It’s easy, it’s free, and if you are having trouble with your feed doing odd things, Feedburner is a good choice for you. (Feedburner can turn full feeds into partial feeds, but it cannot turn partial feeds into full feeds.)

Wordpress

Go into your Wordpress dashboard and click the ‘Options’ menu tab. Under that click the ‘Reading’ subtab and you should see a place to change your settings for each article to show “full text” as opposed to “summary.” Click on Update Options to save.

[show screenshot]

For Wordpress users that just can’t get enough of the “read more” link (which turns an entry into a partial post), you can install the CompleteRSS plug-in to fix the problem. Your RSS will display the full feed and you will retain control over the way posts appear on your site.

BlogSpot / Blogger

  1. Go to Blogger.com and sign into your blog to see the dashboard
  2. Click on the Settings tab and then on Site Feed in the sub menu underneath that tab
  3. Make sure to click on the Save Settings button at the bottom of that page to save the changes
  4. Sometimes, a useful next step is to go ahead and republish the blog
  5. ALSO, as a workaround - If you’re using an atom feed as your feed URL (http://blahblah/atom.xml) I’d change it to RSS 2.0 (http://blahblah/rss.xml) as these seem to work a lot better within the framework of Blogger

Changing your BlogBurst feed in our system

If you find that you need to change the feed altogether (for instance, moving to a newer version of your feed) you should be able to do so in BlogBurst by logging in, choosing “Edit Blog Profile” under “My Blogs”, then choose “Update URL” and change the feed URL.

If All Else Fails

If you can’t figure out how to get your feed working correctly, please contact our editors at blogburst-editors@pluck.com and we’ll get you all set!

Writing the Ideal Blog Post

Published by Beth on April 3, 2007 in Blog Writing. 3 Comments

One of the most common questions we get from bloggers is how to increase pick up from publishers. Obviously, each blog is different - these are just some general tips that we’ve learned through our relationships with the publishers.

  • Post length: The preferable post is somewhere between 100 to 500 words. Posts which are too short probably don’t contain enough content to stand alone on a post view. Posts that are way too long could lose the reader, who may be accustomed to reading a few paragraphs. There is flexibility here, as our Gadget blogs tend to post shorter stories, and our Science and Environment blogs tend to post feature-length articles.
  • Personality and Writing Style: Publishers are looking for unique voices that complement their pages. Insightful commentary and original content is key, as is a consistent voice. The vast majority of publishers don’t want the copy/paste approach of news stories with just a few lines of blogger opinion.
  • Timeliness of Content: This varies by topic, as some blog posts are evergreen. But if the blogger is posting about a past event or an old news story, the time for pick-up has probably expired.
  • Posting Frequency: The more you post, the more visible and discoverable your blog is to publishers. Daily posting is preferable, but publishers are interested in quality over quantity.
  • No Profanity: Most publishers won’t pick up posts that contain bad words, even when you use an asterisk, clever as that may be.