One of the things I love about FeedBurner is their efforts to make it easier for people to subscribe to your feed. The combination of their Browser Friendly page and Smart Feed allows for easier subscription whether your reader has experience with feeds or not.

Which of the following screens is more inviting (click to enlarge):

I’ve watched people open items like the one on the right. Scares the feed out of them. They think they broke the computer.

My suggestion: Use FeedBurner to publish your feed and activate Smart Feed.

If you’re on the audience side of this, use the Feed Subscription Mantra I shared earlier.

When it comes to reading RSS feeds, maybe both – probably neither.

A successful restaurateur was recently asked if he greeted every customer every time they came in the door. The answer was no. He’d like to, and he greets every one he sees, but sometimes his his work keeps him in the kitchen. But he still loves each of his customers.

A friend who is an avid reader and collector of books, and a fan of Barnes and Noble, confessed recently she didn’t go to the bookstore everyday. Sometimes, she visits without making a purchase. But she’s still a loyal customer.

So here we have both sides of the business relationship coin. A business leader who cannot possibly greet every customer. A customer who doesn’t buy from one of her favorite companies daily.

Marshall Kirkpatrick recently shared a bit his feed reading habits with us (emphasis mine):

"I am subscribed to thousands of RSS feeds and currently have thousands of unread items in my feed reader – that suits me just fine. The secret is to organize those feeds so that the most important information is easy to access."

The Signal: You don’t have to read every item that comes into your feed aggregation. Recognize the important items. Delete duplicative or unwanted items. Save others for later.

Don’t ignore the tool and practice of Search Once and Subscribe because of imagined overload or time issues. Just think about it differently.

Wouldn’t it be great if your favorite restaurant/deli/caterer would announce specials via RSS?

A menu:

An image:

Links back to their site for each item (maybe with an order form). Use of Technorati Tags or Del.icio.us Bookmarks.

All delivered via RSS. That would be nice.

Photos from Panera (where else?)

As soon as I read Renee’s A Little Love and A Whole Lot of Tips, I called Lucy up on my lap.

Lucy loved it. Her first blog. We continued surfing and I taught her about RSS feeds – she learns quick, but she’s a Sansone.

She asked if we could subscribe to a few blogs, so we found some she liked:

• Of course, Renee’s Small Dogs Paradise was Lucy’s first choice (Do you remember the first blog you subscribed to? Mine was Tom Peters)
• Dogster — We almost got lost (in a good way) with all the stuff this site brings to the table.
• The Poodle (and Dog) Blog, though this post almost scared her off my lap.
• The Dog Whisperer, but Lucy asked why there weren’t more pictures of dogs here.

We found the Embrace Pet Insurance corporate blog. Lucy asked if she had coverage (she’s had a few ear problems recently and she’s 11). I assured her she was well-covered.

We tried to find if there were any Pet Hospitals or Veterinarians blogging…hey Lucy…where ya’ goin’?  I guess we’ll do that search another time.