As you probably know by now, your blog has an RSS feed. Blogs are often set up by default to list your 10 most recent posts in your RSS feed. Feeds can be read in your browser, sent to site visitors by email via services like Feedburner, or read using a feed reader.

I’ll discuss a few on the most popular feed readers in a future post, but I’ll just tell you that if you have a number of sites that you enjoy reading it’s sometimes easier to keep track of them by listing their site feeds in your feed reader and quickly reading their posts or post summaries in the reader. You can visit the site to read the full post or to comment on their post – and you should do that every now and then anyway so that the blogger knows that you are a regular reader.

You’ll notice that I have my sites feeds listed in the top right sidebar. Those are the default feeds that my WordPress blogging software creates for this blog. However, I’ve also created Feedburner feeds for my site too. You’ll can subscribe to my Feedburner feeds by clicking on the second subscribe listing a little further down in my right sidebar.

I have created Feedburner feeds for my site because it allows me to optimize my feeds, and add a little flare or personal touch to the feeds. Feedburner feeds can easily be read by browsers or feed readers, but they can also be sent by email if a subscriber wishes to receive them that way.

Feedburner is actually the worlds largest feed management provider. Bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers use Feedburner to promote their sites and provide content to their subscribers.

One great thing about using Feedburner for your site feeds is that Feedburner keeps track of how many people subscribe to your site feed. It’s nice to know if you have one person subscribing to your feed or fifty.

There are far too many Feedburner features to discuss in just one post, but one recent change at Feedburner is well worth mentioning. When you create a feed for one of your sites at Feedburner you can add some extra code to your site that allows Feedburner to track your site traffic for you. In other words Feedburner not only helps you manage your site feeds but it also provides valid site statistics. I think this was a great addition to the many valuable features of Feedburner and I use it for all of my sites.