Google FeedBurner - Performance metrics for your feed

Google FeedBurner is a web application which allows you to Analyse, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshootize your feeds. To start with, Burn your feed on Google FeedBurner.

• Stay signed in your google account and launch http://feedburner.google.com in your browser.
  
  
  
   

•  Type your feed address in the given Box with max-results to be minimum and click Next.

Exemplar: http://www.blogger.com/feeds/219616526091656459/posts/default?max-results=3

•   Follow couple of Onscreen steps and your feed will be live to the world and the Analyse tab of your feedburner dashboard provides the feed statistics.

How to  promote your FeedBurner feed on your website?

•   Click on your Feed Title (For instance "Techzio") in the Google feedburner dashboard.
•   Click "Publicize" tab -> "Chicklet Chooser" link.

•    Choose the feed icon of your choice and your blog publishing service (Eg: Blogger) at the bottom of the page and click on Go! link to reach the next page.

•     Click on Add Widget button to add the Subscribe Feed icon link to your blog.

Google Alerts - Perceive latest info on your desired search to your Inbox

Google alert is a facility to preset your Google search and get the latest information regarding the search to your inbox directly. One should be aware of Creating and Managing Alerts in order to make use of this feature.

• Stay signed in your Google account and launch http://www.google.com/alerts in your browser.
• In the Search query field, enter your desired search term. Preview of your search is shown at the right side of the Google alerts home page. By having a look at the Preview, you can make sure if the search term chosen is appropriate.

• Select the Result Type (Everything/News/Blogs/Video/Discussions/Books), How often - frequency of alerts (As-it-happens/Once a day/Once a week), How many (Only the best results/All results), Deliver to (Your email id) and Click on Create Alert button. You are taken to the Google Alerts page with the alert set up.

•  Click the Edit button to change the Search term, Volume and How often and Save after editing. 
•  To delete an alert, tick the Check Box ahead of the alert and Click the Delete button.

Google Reader for your favorite blogs

Everyone of us have our own favorite blogs, where they add regular content. But the site won't be notifying us when they post any new article. Its tedious for us to go and check the site often to know about the latest updates. We are going to make use of a cloud based application called The Google Reader to read all our favorite blog updates aggregated at a single place.

Feature behind the Google Reader

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the feature of the websites which allows us to subscribe to the feed sent by the website.

Feed is nothing but a date file sent by the website, to display the latest updates on the site.

In order to subscribe to and display the Feed, we need a Feed Reader (like Google Reader) so that we can read the contents.

How to use Google Reader?

• Go to this link http://www.google.com/reader/view/ to launch the Google Reader. Currently the reader is empty without any feeds.

• Click on the Subscribe button on the left navigation pane of the Google Reader and enter the address of your favorite blog (I have entered techzio.blogspot.com).

•  Now click the Add Button. You have subscribed to "TECHZIO". Similarly you can subscribe to all your favorite websites.

 

• The list of the sites subscribed will be at the bottom pane under the Subscription list. You can click on the specific blog to read or click on All items at the top of the navigation pane to read all the blogs subscribed. The Google Reader displays the contents at the right side of the page. By default the contents  are shown in Expanded view. you can also jump to Quick view by clicking the list view icon at the right side top corner.

 

Enjoy reading all your favorite blogs at one place.