RSS Reader or Website?
November 14, 2008 by BloggerNewbie
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“RSS Reader or Website?”
Where do you read your favorite blog posts? No, I don’t mean on your laptop or your desktop and I’ve even heard posts are available on your phone! Of course you have this blog and all your other favorites listed in your reader. But do you read the entire post in the reader or do you click through to the site? Some bloggers don’t give you that choice. Some bloggers list just the title only while other bloggers list an excerpt of the post in the reader, still some others list the full post.
I would think you would have to have a great deal of confidence in your title to “hope” that people are going to click through to your post based solely on the title. For the blogs that list an excerpt only, you have to click through to the blog to continue reading the post. If, of course, the excerpt captures your interest enough to bother clicking through. Then there are the bloggers that list the whole post in the reader. You can still click through to the site of course. Which do you prefer?
Title Only?
We recently discussed how and why Creative Titles Are Crucial. In the flurry of all your favorite blogs listed in your reader, even one as great as BloggerNewbie, posts can get lost in the shuffle. It happens. If you list the title only in the reader your title darn well better be interesting enough to capture attention. It has been my experience that titles aren’t necessarily the true sense of the post. Readers might feel tricked or be resentful if they use their time to click through to your blog because of the title only to find out the title is not a true caption of the post.
Excerpt?
So after the creative title captures your attention, the excerpt or first paragraph needs to peak your curiosity so that you will want to click through to the website. The excerpt is the “teaser” that makes your reader want to keep reading. In order to keep reading, they need to click through to your site.
Full Post?
If you list your entire post in the reader, your visitors won’t need to click through to your site. Unless of course, they want to leave a comment! Do you want them to click through? Of course you want your readers to comment. The whole point of your blog is for people to read your post right? Well most bloggers want their readers to comment and interact in the conversation. Your content must be so compelling that your reader will have to click through to your blog so they can offer their opinion.
Reasons to click through
What reason would you want them to click through? There are plenty of other reasons you may want people to click through to your site.
- Being on the site creates community. Community creates loyal readers.
- Your readers can easily see other comments from other readers. They can interact with the author (you the blogger) as well as the other readers.
- Often, there are areas of interest in the sidebars – links to contact you at various social networks, ads of course, products that you find helpful and recommend.
How do you list your posts in your reader? Do you list the title only, an excerpt or the whole post? What do you find are the advantages, the disadvantages?
Toodles – Blog Happy!
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“Strategic planning is worthless — unless there is first a strategic vision…”
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I stopped using a reader when I got to 100+ subscriptions. I just couldn’t keep up. google alerts lets me know when certain terms come up. twitter announcements that describe the post with a good title get my attention a lot lately.
Andy Bailey´s last blog post..5 Reasons Blog Readers Love Commentluv
Good Morning Andy:
I’ll have to check out google alerts, my reader is getting overwhelming too, that’s why the title better get me to take a second look! Good to know what you think about twitter, I do the same thing..
I put the entire article in my RSS reader. Excerpts annoy me and I’m less likely to click through to the article.
My feed reader is an unsightly mess and I’m not really using it anymore – I simply visit the sites that I want to check and comment on. I still subscribe to them too.
Kim Woodbridge´s last blog post..Stuff This In Your RSS – 11/11/08 – The Simple Dollar
I confess to using excerpts. I like to think of the reader as an alert that the blogger has updated. Or something.
witchypoo´s last blog post..How to stay busy while chained to the phone lines
@ Kim
If the title is interesting, I start to read the excerpt which hopefully makes me want to click through to the website.
I’m curious, if the full post is in the RSS reader, why do you click through to the site?
@ WitchyPoo
I rarely click through to a site that only lists the title, and I actually just changed my reader to excerpt because I want people to click through to my site. I like the alert
theory, I never thought of it that way, but I like it!
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Until a day ago, I had Wordpress set to show full text for my feed. I thought this was a good option to follow as it meant that the search engines had more content to absorb. However, as you rightly point out, what reason then does anyone have to click through to your site if it is all laid out in full & a feed that is a near facsimile of your blog may well attract a “duplicate content” penalty from the search engines. Therefore, full text feeds may actually do more harm than good.
This leaves 2 options. 1) remove all links to feeds (or set to “no follow”) or 2) go the Summary route. The first option isn’t an option really but even then the second option isn’t a perfect solution, in my opinion. The reason for this is that the term Summary is a misnomer (in Wordpress at least). A better name would be “Take the first paragraph and hack it off after ~250 characters” and that is something I dont think looks very attractive.
So, what is the answer? Well, using the “Excerpt” field seems to do the job. Yes, I know more work but it is a way to craft a proper summary and should make the reader want to see the full story. Plus, it should aid in “decluttering” peoples readers and avoid scrolling down miles to see all the entries.
Now, to answer your question. I am sometimes inclined to visit a website even if the full post is shown (although I may read the full text in the reader first). If it is interesting enough, you never know what might be on the main site. However, I am now all for the Title (catchy, of course!) / Excerpt combo.
Thank you for a great article. It has made me sit up and rethink my own RSS feed and focused my mind on going the extra mile when it comes to writing summaries.
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@ Tsunami
a lot of great points. If the full feed is interesting enough, what else does the author have I might want to look at? good point, I use the excerpt for my front page post so that would be a great idea, I like to have control of what and how much etc is going into the feed, thanks for that tip!
Thanks for stopping and commenting, I hope you come back real soon!
I was a full post kinda guy until I started reading a bunch of things about traffic and such.
Now I’m an excerpt guy. Not to be confused with an expert guy.
Cheers!
George
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George – I, also, was a full post in the reader blogger then I thought – why do my loyal readers want to click thru to my site other than they can’t get enough of me? Yeah, so then I decided excerpts were the way to go..besides that is the comment section!
yw for the tip
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I would be interested to know if anyone has done some long term testing on the different ways of presenting the data. And, if so, what they found to be the most effective way.
I appreciate the way I think looks good may not be the best way, & one shouldn’t try and second guess what makes a reader tick (or click!)
@ George
Welcome to “Excerpt Land”
Tsunami – I would like to see some testing results on the feed options. I’ll look around the blogoshpere and get a feel for what the experts think. You certainly can’t write for everyone as much as you might like to. Wouldn’t it be nice if the reader had control over the option?
Giving people the choice would be a great idea. I am sure it would make some readers feel that the site owner was engaging them more and it certainly wouldn’t do any harm.
From a technical aspect, I am sure it can’t be that difficult as it is already switchable via the blog admin. There would just need to be a way of bringing that option out of the protected area. Variables in the URL, maybe.
Perhaps that is a project for the Christmas holidays
Looking forward to seeing if you discover anything in the great Excerpt Vs. Full Text Feed debate.
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Tsunami – I can handle the research, I’ll leave the technical to you! I am gathering some various opinions on excerpt vs full text. I should have everything together for a post next week!
That sounds like a fair exchange
I will get on it and see what can be done.