Fixing my Feed problem with Feedburner’s Feedsmith: Increase of 66% measurable readership

Thanks to you all I was alerted that my feed was acting screwy, (thanks Matt Dunlap for the extra help) I was able to identify the problem in my recent post. I believe that when there’s a problem with something, you should quickly identify it and let your community know, and keep them updated.

The Problems?
1) A special character had gotten into one of my blog posts, resulting in one post to result in summarized versions in RSS, it caused some havoc with other ones. As a result, I switched the RSS feed in Feedburner and it sent everyone my latest 20 posts.

2) As a default, WordPress offers three feeds, RSS full, RSS partial, and an atom feed. Different people were subscribing to different versions

Solution:
Thanks to Rick Klau of the Feedburner team (Constantin pointed me to him, thanks), now part of Google was quick to help me fix the problem. His title is Strategic Partner Development in the Content Acquisition group, so I’m under the assumption his job is to be a community facing role and help people use the tools, as you know this is Google’s core strategy, organizing the world’s information. I installed a Feedburner for WordPress called Feedburner Feedsmith. It consolidated ALL my feeds into one.

Previous Setup (notes from Rick)

feed A –> feed A (partial)
feed B –> feed B (full)
feed C –> feed C (partial)
FeedBurner feed –> FeedBurner feed (full)

Now it does this this:

feed A –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed B –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed C –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed D –> FeedBurner feed (full)

Results:
All of my RSS feeds are being measured in one location, my reader subscription went from 4500 to 7500 in 24 hours as the native wordpress feeds are now being routed into Feedburner. Secondly, all my feeds should all be full feeds now, making everyone happy.

Recommendations for you:
Start with QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting. If you’re using wordpress (I assume there’s a plugin for typepad to) and haven’t used Feedsmith, I recommend you do this if you care about accurate stats. In my line of work, accuracy is important. Caveat: Of course, realize that Feedburner is owned by Google, and how data could be used for monetization. Most of us use Google products hundreds of times a day, so that’s non-issue.

Other Concerns: China blocks Feedburner?
I heard from one of the Chinese readers that Feedburner is blocked in China, but apparently, as of last weekend, there may be reports that China is no longer blocking Feedburner. If your country is blocking feedburner, sadly, you’ll have to visit my site directly.