RSS And Blog Marketing Tools

By Lee Odden
Expert Author
Article Date: 2006-01-27

A few recent blogging tools I've been testing that are worth sharing include Feed Digest and blogbeat. A little info on each and how they can help with marketing your blog:

Feed Digest grew out of the RSS Digest project from Developer/Entreprenuer, Peter Cooper. RSS Digest makes it easy to syndicate RSS feeds from other blogs to your site or blog using JavaScript.

Feed Digest on the other hand, offers many more features including the ability to mix multiple feeds (up to 5 for free). Another plus over it's predessor are the output options which include HTML, JavaScript, WAP or PHP, or an altogether new feed. Upcoming features include RSS to Email (ala FeedBlitz) and feed stats (think Feedburner).

Here's an example of a SEO News feed using 5 SEO Blogs I read daily.

blogbeat is a blog site statistics tool that presents information about visitors to your blog in a creative way. It does support Feedburner stats, you just have to go into Feedburner and activate the awareness option.

What's different about blogbeat from services like Google Analytics is that it presents information about visitors and referral sources front and center. Google Analytics is more about conversions and more useful for ecommerce web sites where a specific outcome or trackable action is possible. That is not usually the format for a blog, until ecommerce blogs gain popularity at least, so services like blogbeat give you a quick glimpse at who's reading your blog, what they're looking at and where they came from.

I would be remiss not to mention Thomas' RSS Feed Button Creator tool, which will allow you to create 20 plus RSS feed subscription buttons embedded with your blog's feed and information. It also creates a number of social bookmark links so visitors to your blog can bookmark you to del.icio.us, digg, furl and others. Pretty handy and popular too.

Know of any blog marketing or RSS tools I should review here?