Promote your Blog using FeedCat.net

Feedcat.net has changed their website which, unfortunately, includes their coding for the Subscriber buttons.

It is not advisable to submit any new Squidoo lenses to Feedcat.net because of this.

I have removed all my Squidoo lens feeds from Feedcat.net and will no longer recommend it for promoting your Squidoo Lens.

Here's what I'm going to help you to do:

- Register an account.
- Submit your RSS feed.
- Insert the code needed for FeedCat to track your traffic, promote your feed and record your stats.
- Enhance your feed description.
- Utilise the service that FeedCat provides to get the best out of it.
- Provide you with links to resources about FeedCat so that you can learn more about it.
- Offer support and help.

What you'll need:

- The URL of your RSS feed E.G. http://inkserotica.crabbysbeach.com/blogs/feed/
- Tags so that readers can browse FeedCat's directory and find your blog.

'FEEDCAT promotes your feed content, measures audiences and saving load of your server resources!'

Visit FeedCat.net.

Click on the Register link at the top of the page.

There are several reasons why you should use Feedcat to boost your feeds:

* Your feeds will be easier to read and will be user friendly
* The contents of your boosted feed will be promoted by their own search engine
* Your feeds can be tagged and and, therefore, found more easily
* You can keep track of the subscriber base and the subsequent interest in the subject of your lens (big subscriber base? Consider expanding your lens out into smaller topics.)
* You can take full control over your feed content e.g change the feeds appearance by using templates and add personal messages to your subscribers.

'Feed track will tell you how much of the readers your feed, blog or podcast have. '

...which is extremely short!

You will need:

a username (the system will check the availability),
a password,
your email address

and

whether you would like to receive the newsletter or not.

Click Sign In

This section will list all the new FeedCat tools that become available that will aid in the promoting of your RSS feed.

Profi FeedBooster - This is a new tool for professional support of your feeds. You would only use this tool if you had a lot of feeds which differ only in the parameter of URL feed. More info here: New Tool Profi FeedBooster.

Top 100 sites for week - This section on FeedCat.net lists the Top 100 feeds. For example: It gives the number the feed is at in the Top 100, the country of origin, the subscriber figures, the title of the Feed, its URL and its description.Top 100 sites

Feed Reader - You can do one of 3 things: you can add a new feed into your reader, check top sites for the most interesting feeds in catalogue or browse catalogue of feeds by keyword.

Coming up!

Top sites/feeds in countries
Feed Search Engine

'Feed: browse currently boosted rss and atom feeds by the tags or search feed by the keywords. '



Insert your RSS feed URL here. I'm running Firefox 3 so I have a subscription button in my address bar which will tell me the RSS feed URL.

Here's the RSS feed URL for my new blog, Talking Squid:

http://inkserotica.crabbysbeach.com/blogs/feed/

Click Submit.

You will then be taken to a page which will display:

Your feed URL at the top, showing whether the feed is checked okay and your item count. Also your Button Preview.

Select your button style (you have a choice of 8 styles.)
Customise Feed Widget:

Disable statistics line (will open pop up on mouseover.)
Disable submission to readers.
Disable bookmarking service.
Switch off widget panel (will open pop up on mouseover if turned on.)

Click Save the feed and get button.

...that you

1 - Activate Click Tracking - Special Features, Item Click Tracking. This way you can keep tabs on what your readers are clicking on and how popular that item is.

Update: I'm not clear if this feature is actually working just yet.

2 - Check your feeds regularly at FeedCat - I went in there (18 Oct) and one of my feeds was invalid and a few others had the title changed. I couldn't see where the invalid feed came from. It looked like a duplicate of this one so I removed it and with a number of possible subscribers. You do have the option of setting it up to redirect if you'd prefer. I would suggest you do this, just in case you lose subscribers and they don't return.

Go into the Details of each feed and check to see whether the allow to update feed title by the feed data box is checked or unchecked.

If it is checked, the title of your feed will change each time you publish an update. As long as your feed address i.e. feed.feedcat.net /YourBlogTitleHere is correct (or how you want it to be) don't change the feed address. Otherwise you will have to inform all of your subscribers the change of feed URL. I'll be checking how you do this.

If you uncheck the box, your feed title will stay the same as when you first set up your feed to be boosted on FeedCat.

Go back to your Blog and click on the FeedCat Icon. Check to see if it takes you to your feed details page (all your posts/updates will be listed here along with options to subscribe etc.)

3 - Set how often you would like FeedCat to update your feeds - In Content, set the Actualization Frequency to how often you feel FeedCat should re-read feed data from your server. Default is set at Weekly.

4 - Subscribe to your own feeds. This way you can check that your feed updates okay. If you've published a post and the feed has not updated within a few days (or however long you've set the frequency), log in to your account and ping the feed.

5 - Update your Blog on a regular basis! By updating your Blog regularly you will prevent the loss of subscriber figures and by subscribing to your own feeds you can check just when the last update was without even logging into FeedCat.net.

Add Tags that describe the content of your blog.

Check or Uncheck the box for Feed info box depending on whether your blog contains Adult content.

Click Tags Saved

1) When you next log into your FeedCat account, you will see your boosted feeds. It will show:

- Readers in the one week and readers in the one after that.

- Items count i.e the amount of posts you have sent out since you boosted your feed.

- The last date the feed had been picked up and a chance to 'ping' your feed to make sure it is all up to date.

Your feed title. It will be clickable where you can then manage that feed. You will also be able to view the tags and subscription URL at FeedCat.

2) Click on one of your feeds. Here you can manage that feed. You will also have access to the left hand menu as well. If you click on Appearance you will then be able to enter a personal message for your readers, choose a feed page template (by default it is set to Classic) and set or change the Language interface (by default it is set to English.)

Click on Item Enhancers on the left navigation menu.

You have a choice to enhance your Feed with links to these bookmarking sites:

Delicious, Share on Facebook, Digg This!, Google Bookmarks, Windows Live, MySpace, Stumble It!, Technorati, Furl, Mister-Wong, Mixx, NewsVine, Reddit and finally, Squidoo!

Neat, huh? ;)