Internet technologies changed a lot in recent years. RSS feeds are getting more popular and a lot of people are thinking about newsletter as about old fashion technique to promote your blog and keep your blog readers loyal. I would argue with these people because at least of few reasons:

How many people are using RSS feeds?

Accordingly to latest surveys only 11% of internet users subscribe to feeds and regularry use them. The worst part of this survey is that only 17% of the rest 89% are looking to learn a bit more about feeds and to try to use them. These numbers are based on USA survey and can vary in different countries.

Also it's not mean that only 11% of your blog visitors are using RSS feeds readers. It depends of many factors. For example your blog topic can attract people with good technology knowledge's. These visitors can be more familiar with RSS feeds while other blogs visitors can don't know about rss feeds anything.

Does RSS feeds improve loyalty?

RSS feeds is a copy of your blog. In the most cases feeds are not organized so good as your blog and provide a plain text. Off course this don't mean that feed subscribers don't like them. The benefits of feeds is possibility to check new content from many sources in one place.

Newsletters are different. With newsletters you can talk to each person individually. I mean by this that you can write content for your newsletters the way as you would write a letter to one close person and resend it to thousands people without any changes. This can make your newsletter subscribers to feel that they are important part of your blog and this will improve your blog users loyalty.

Does RSS feeds subscribers visit your website?

Yes Yes Yes. Feed subscribers are among the most loyal users and regular visit your website. I am subscribed to many feeds and nearly every day visiting websites to which feeds i subscribed. Why i am visiting these websites if i am getting all information through the feeds? There are few answers. First to leave comments if i would like to do this. Second it depends from blogger. Good blogger will leave links in the content to similar topics wrote in the past. And if i want to read about it i must to click on link and visit their blog. Third some of bloggers use only short description of content in the feeds. To read full post i must to visit their blog. If really i don't like this type of feeds. My opinion it's against feeds it self. What is a point to post few words and publish feed. I have some subscriptions to feeds like these ones and probably visit these blogs only once a week. The reason for this is i don't get enough description what is a post about. And if these few words not making me satisfied i am not visiting their blogs.

Now about newsletters. Newsletters are more powerful than rss feeds and can bring a lot more visitors. There are few reasons why newsletter subscribers are visiting your website and this depends of your newsletter type. If you are posting a lot of content you can write only short briefs in the newsletter and provide a links to a full topic. Or you can put more successful topics in the newsletter and provide links to other posts. Also you can design newsletter the way you want. Picture can mean a lot for people.

And few words about how to get newsletter subscribers. The most easiest way is pop up. There are many softwares what can allow you to configure your pop ups the way you want. You can decide about a size, place where to display, how often to show and on what pages. You are not limited with configurations options. But be aware that not all blogs topics are suitable for it. Another way is to place subscription option in a visible place.

And don't forgot that by providing only RSS feed subscription option you are loosing 89% of your websites visitors.

The purpose of RSS feeds is to syndicate news, blog entries, audio and video updates. You can see feeds icons on nearly every blog and website. On our website you can see original feed icon on the left side panel and under every blog entry but on other websites publishers can use different icons.

So how feeds works? Feeds collect information from latest posts on your website or blog. This information can be provided in full or just summarized entry. Feeds also include metadata such as author information and publishing dates.

To read feeds you must to have feed reader. There are different types of feed readers. Online feed readers such as google feed reader. Desktop feed reader. There are many free softwares available for your computer. Another type of feed reader is a web browser reader. If you are using Firefox browser you can download plugin for it to read feeds.

There are many benefits of feeds. For readers the main benefit is time saving. You don't must to visit many websites to check what is new on them. Feed reader will provide you with all required information. And if you will find something og you interest you can go and check for more information if feed provide only summarized content.

For publishers there are a lot more benefits. Some publishers are thinking that feeds are not good for them because they are loosing visitors of their websites. The truth is that feed subscribers come back more often than regular users. Also feeds improve search engine optimization and ranking of website.