15 Feedburner Feedflares You Can Easily Use to Promote Your Content and Website

If you’re using Feedburner to manage the site feeds for your blog, you might have noticed the Feedflares option, which allows you to include a simple footer at the bottom of each blog post in your feed.

According to Feedburner, this allows your feed subscribers to easily email, tag, share or act upon the content that you’ve published.

These feedflares can promote your blog posts outside the boundaries of feed readers: Utilizing them effectively can considerably impact how your subscribers interact with your blog.

FeedFlare changes the dynamic of how users interact with an RSS feed. Rather than just read content from a feed, subscribers can now take direct actions, such as being able to forward or save an item.

In addition, publishers have long needed a way to tie their feed content back to their Web site, creating more of a community while maintaining a constant thread and connection to their content throughout syndication.

This article includes a collection of readily available feedflares, which enable you to market and monetize your blog through your Feedburner RSS feed.


How do I set up Feedflares for my website?

If you haven’t already done so, sign up with Feedburner and create a Feedburner feed for your site. This process is fairly simply and will take only a few minutes of your time.

After which, click on the ‘Optimize‘ tab near the top of the dashboard and then look for the ‘Feedflare‘ link on the left sidebar. Click on it and you’ll see a list of the official feedflares available. You can then pick the ones you fancy and scroll down to the bottom of the page to arrange and activate them.

This might seem like a really easy process but I’ve actually come across many blogs who don’t use any feedflares at all. I would say a portion of them didn’t do so because they weren’t actually aware of this feature.

Dosh Dosh’s List of Feedburner Feedflares

This collection includes both official feedflares as well as the ones authored by the FeedBurner developer community, using the open Feedflare API.

These third party flares were taken from the Feedflare Catalog and I’ve provided direct links to the Feedflares. You’ll only need to copy the URL and paste it in the ‘Personal Feedflare’ box in the Feedflare section for them to work.

The official feedflares are indicated as such and they are already available through your Feedburner dashboard. All of the feedflares below are also categorized according to what they can do for your content.

I’ve limited this list to the number of feedflares which I think are the most essential. My criteria for determining their value depends on the popularity of the third-party website and the general impact they have on your blog, among other factors.

Pick the feedflares that you feel will provide the greatest benefit for your content and convenience for your subscribers. You’ll also need to be careful not to stuff your footer with too many feedflares because it will lead to visual clutter.


Social Bookmarking/Voting/Sharing Feedflares

These feedflares encourage your subscribers to share your content on social voting/bookmarking websites. You should probably pick the ones that are more commonly used while ensuring that fit well with the type of content you have.

Users might not actually bookmark your blog posts through these feedflares because most of these websites already offer one-click site submission or bookmarking tools.

I primarily see these social flares as reminders which encourage people to share your content or participate in the social process by adding a vote to articles already shared on specific social websites.

• Save to del.icio.us - This shows the number of saves and the top tags for the item at del.icio.us. Definitely a feed flare worth having, especially if your readers are web savvy and heavy del.icio.us users. This might just help in some way if you want to get on the Del.icio.us frontpage. (Official Feedflare)




• Digg This! - Displays the number of Diggs and comments for the item at digg.com and lets readers Digg the story. Quite useful because Digg is the largest social voting website around with the greatest number of users. This may be a good way to pick up some diggs for already submitted content. (Official Feedflare)




• Email This - Allows you to email the current item using a web-based email form. I’ve written about the importance of email options for websites and this is a very easy way for the feed subscriber to send your post to just about anyone. Great way to reach another demographic without trying. (Official Feedflare)




• Stumble it! - Submit to StumbleUpon, with dynamic count of number of reviews. Some stumblers do like to read reviews of your post and will click through to your blog. (Official Feedflare)




• Scape This - A FeedFlare for Netscape.com. I don’t think many people do submit websites using this Feedflare but this is one you should have if your blog deals with topics such as politics quite often. (Official Feedflare)




• Twit This! - Submits your post to Twitter. Might be useful as more people start using Twitter on a daily basis.




• Reddit This - Submits your post to Reddit.com. This should really be part of the official feedflare collection as Reddit has a rather large userbase, perhaps more so than Newsvine.

Social Proof Feedflares

These feedflares provide social proof, which comes in the form of how many people who read or link to your content. This roughly demonstrates the popularity of your site.

For more reading on the concept of social proof, check out my article on how social proof can be used to optimize your website.

• Technorati Cosmos Links - Displays the number of links to your item from blogs, as measured by Technorati. If there are no links, this Flare will not appear. This demonstrates how well linked your content is and perhaps, suggests that others should link to it as well. (Official Feedflare)




• Comments Count - Lists the number of comments posted to an item. This is quite an important feedflare as it encourages people to click through to your blog to read the comments. This should definitely activated as soon as possible. (Official Feedflare)




• Alexa Rank - Shows the current Alexa ranking for the site. Not really an essential tool but might be useful if you combine it with an advertising or site promotion feedflare.

Interaction/Communication Boosting Feedflares

These feedflares can help to improve the way your subscriber interacts with your site content. They generally encourage greater reader participation through on-site comments as well as direct communication between you and the reader.

• Subscribe to Comments (WordPress only) - Links to the comments-specific RSS feed for this post. This is generally more useful for blogs which receive a large amount of comments.




• Track with co.mments - Track all comments on this post. Adds the post to your co.mments tracking list. Co.mments may not have a large audience but this offers an alternative method which helps your audience to keep track of the comments on your blog.




• IM me - Displays a link similar to the “Email the Author” Flare, but in this case it’s for IM (AOL, Google, Yahoo, MSN) instead. Great feedflare if you are very open with communicating with your readers. I do suppose it can be used by bloggers who practice personal branding or offer specific online services (consultation, web design etc.)

Monetization FeedFlares

These are feedflares which allow you to generate income of some sort from your website. Some of them are connected to third party websites

• View My Jobs - Promotes your Job-a-matic job board in your RSS Feed. Use only if you are running Job-a-matic on your site. (Official Feedflare)




• Advertise in this Feed - A static FeedFlare unit that links to the FeedBurner advertiser page. You can use this if you are already running Feedburner’s feed advertising program.




• Donate via Paypal - Allows you to accept donations securely and conveniently using PayPal.com. This is a simple feedflare which allows you to choose the display message for the donation form, paypal address and donation currency. Non-profit organizations, self-help bloggers or anyone with an established audience might do well with this.

More on Feedburner Feedflares

I’m planning to do another piece about how you can create your own feedflares to promote your site or improve your monetization potential. I initially wanted to include this information within this article but it would make it far too long.

Feedflares are rather fascinating. I’ve been reading feeds for over a year and I’ve haven’t seemed to develop any flare-blindness yet. The social bookmark, Technorati and comment flares still grab my attention everytime.

Which feedflares do you notice the most? Do you use Feedflares to share content you’ve come across with other people?

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