In a world of crazy and unstable web audience metrics (think Alexa) there are not many tools which publicly and honestly reflect the popularity and readership of site (unless one wants to open their web analytics or log files to the public).
Luckily, for those sites and blogs which use RSS as a form of content syndication and communications channel, measurement of the effectiveness of RSS is quite easy.
Feedburner’s FeedCount
The most widespread form of RSS measurement is Feedburner FeedCount. For blogs which use Feedburner to track and distribute their feeds, FeedCount displays the number of subscribers who are reading the blog each day; or your blog’s RSS circulation.
For example, one can have 15,000 people subscribing to their blog feed, but only 50% actually read that feed on an ongoing basis, which would result in a Feedburner FeedCount of 7,500.
This FeedCount metric is similar to the ‘open rate’ of email marketing lists. The list may have 50,000 opt-in readers, but only a small percentage actually read the emails.
FeedCount As Social Proof
By motivating its userbase to publicize their RSS circulation, Feedburner’s FeedCount has become not only a respected measurement tool of blog readership but also a vehicle of proving the worth of one’s blog, via Social Proof.
Social Proof is when you utilize the actions of one group of people to influence other people into taking that specific action.
Using the Feedburner example, when visitors come to a blog and see that the blog has 10,000 or even 100,000 people reading the blog’s RSS feed, they are more likely to subscribe.
Why? Because the number gives readers a sense that if they are not subscribing, they are missing out on the information that 10,000 other users are getting… especially if that blog is a niche business oriented blog. Then, the reader would subscribe with the feeling that 10,000 competitors are exposed to useful information on a daily basis, that the reader is not.
Recently two influential lists of popular bogs were formed using FeedCount as its metric criteria. The first was a list of blogs with the most feed subscribers. The second, a list of search marketing blogs ranked by FeedCount was compiled by Lee Odden
I noticed that we were not on either list, because we did not publish our FeedCount circulation numbers. And yes, we did feel a bit left out, especially as the lists help to position FeedCount as a valued web metric.
Starting today, Search Engine Journal will be publishing our FeedCount here on the blog. According to Feedburner, yesterday 9,792 subscribers read our content via RSS subscription.
Tomorrow this should change substantially, since on Tuesday we only published 3 posts. Today we plan on publishing much more, and expect this number to jump above 10,000.
How do you feel about Feedburner’s FeedCount? Do you use it on your blog? And if so, do you believe it adds value?
It’s a clean measure, for now. But if it gains in popularity as a measure of a sites worth, it will be gamed and as innaccurate as Alexa data.
Another flaw is that sites with less savvy audiences that prefer regular email newsletter subscriptions over RSS are underrepresented. For example, there are some sites with newsletter subscriber counts that are higher than the top 100 feedburner count sites combined!
Another flaw is that many sites choose nt to work with feedburner for one reason or another. And a third flaw is that a blog could create their own static image of their fake reader count.
Despite the current and future flaws, it is nice to have one more measure to look at.
Hey Loren, thanks for drawing attention to this and also for taking the leap and publishing your FeedCount numbers.
Personally, I think publishing such metrics that are arguably less biased than many other such as Technorati Favorites/Popular, Alexa or PageRank, gives readers and potential advertisers more trustworthy indication of a blog’s reach.
I think that it only makes sense to publish FeedCount numbers if a blog is actively working to grow it’s subscriber base. Otherwise, seeing declining numbers isn’t going to motivate new subscribers or advertisers.
There is also a great amount of strength in terms of a circulation metric, especially with more and more blogs publishing full feeds.
For example, Search Engine Journal experienced 200K + unique visitors in March.
With 9K readers a day however, that brings the total circulation, in terms of stories read, to 470K unique blog posts read.
I think you have to be really comfortable in your readership to publish the counter on your site. I’ve seen people who display their Feedburner counters with
Repost: My “less than” sign didn’t come out. ;)
I think you have to be really comfortable in your readership to publish the counter on your site. I’ve seen people who display their Feedburner counters with less than 10 visitors and I’m not sure it does much for them. Truthfully, the thought that goes through my head is “uh, yeah, you have 3 readers and have been online for 3 years… and I should continue reading because?”
As far as declining numbers, this is probably the most interesting part about Feedburner’s statistics. I don’t unsubscribe from blogs at all that often, but my personal blog’s subscriber number varies daily (not by much, but the numbers have me curious). When the number drops somewhat significantly the next day, I can’t help but wonder if people really unsubscribe from blogs at all that often.
I did an survey on my website about Feed Count a while back and invited several bloggers to participate.. so far the results are pretty interesting.
If you have an impressive feed count, many seem to think that displaying it is more beneficial than not.
Displaying a chicklet with a weak Feed Count doesn’t always mean a blog is lousy, but there will be inevitable correlations.
If anyone is interested in reading more about the survey…
The Feed Count Meme: Studying the Impact of Feed Count on Blog Feed Subscriptions
Dustin any site with a large email subscriber list has a very easy solution to have a massive subscriber list with Feedburner or similar service.
All they have to do is find a service that reports subscriber numbers for email subscriptions to Feedburner.
The link is to my response to Maki’s meme on Feedbrner feed counts. Some have suggested that Feedburner no longer allow imports, at least openly in comments on my blog, but there is not harm encouraging your existing email service provider to start reporting data if they offer some kind of RSS to Email option.
Why don’t email services provide a similar social proof chicklet?