One tool that I think is invaluable to a blog is FeedBurner. I am only using the free and basic version of this tool and it is tremendously helpful. There is a little FeedBurner tag on the bottom of this page. It tells me how many people are subscribed to this blog. I get really excited when the number is higher than 9. Double digits are wonderful to see. I’d love to someday see some triple digits but lets not get too crazy here.

I love the ease of use of the FeedBurner site. I can quickly burn a feed and make that something that is compatible with dozens of feed readers that are available. And I need no extra knowledge of how to program RSS. FeedBurner does everything I need it to do and much more. ere are some of the highlights.

Once you burn a feed you have access to the set of features that FeedBurner offers. You can Analyze the feed, see where your audience is coming from, what browsers they are using, what readers they are using and where they clicked on your blog. You can use the Optimize tools to make your feed even better. For instance you can splice in photos from Flickr, Buzznet and Web Shots. I have not only my Photo-A-Day images going out on my feed but also the bonus photos that I post to Buzznet.

The tool I like the most is the Publicize one. This lets you create a headline animator that you can add to your forum signature. Here is what an animated headline looks like>

It also lets you generate a SpringWidget skin that you can post on your blog. In my case I generated a SpringWidget skin and added it to my old blogspot site called The BenSpark. I have since purchased a domain a began to build and all new The BenSpark. But I know many people are still bookmarked to the old site so I used FeedBurner to generate a feed for the New BenSpark blog. Then I added a SpringWidget to the old The BenSpark so that when visitors came to the blog they would see the feed from the current The BenSpark blog. I have noticed that many readers are clicking through to the New The BenSpark using that SpringWidget skin. I’ve added the SpringWidget skin to the bottom o the blog page so you can see what one looks like.

Take a look at FeedBurner, it can certainly enhance your blog and is an invaluable tool that is available for free.

FeedBurner – http://www.feedburner.com

Here is something interesting. I found it today as I was searching through the blogs of people who came to visit me through MyBlogLog.com. It is a little project called “100 First Websites with Mybloglog-News widget”. I guess I haven’t been spending enough time at MyBlogLog because I was too late to sign up to participate in this. I probably should sign up for some communities there so I can be in the know about things like this. To me the project is a small scale version of FuelMyBlog, which B.T.W. is Re-launching soon, I can’t tell enough people about this.

Anyway back to the MyBlogLog thing, here is one version of the widget. Seems pretty interesting concept. I don’t completely understand it but that is pretty much how these things online work, you have to be on top of them to be in the know.

If you mouse over the picture the title of the blog post will appear. Click the random button and you will see 4 new faces. If anyone who is part of this comes by could you please drop me a comment to let me know more about the “100 First Websites with Mybloglog-News widget”.