But when I saw that the Best of the Web blog directory had listed my RSS feed as being http://www.johnlamansky.com/?feed=rss2, I knew I had to implement more extensive redirection.

I had heard of this “WordPress Feedburner Plugin” before, and decided to give it a try. After a little bit of trouble at first, I got it to work and – lo and behold! – the next day my Feedburner subscriber count had almost – not quite, but almost – doubled.

It just goes to show how important it is to make sure all of your feed traffic is directed to the right place.

I would highly recommend the aforementioned plugin to WordPress bloggers who are using Feedburner; and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out Feedburner’s feed redirection tips.

It seems that it’s becoming more and more common for company representatives to post comments on blog posts related to that company or its products. For example, so far on this blog I’ve had comments from FeedBurner, Dell, and Microsoft employees, plus a comment from the CEO of FeedBlitz; the comments were in reply to various blog posts I wrote that were related to those companies.

What I find interesting is that even big companies like Dell are getting on the bandwagon. I think it’s a great idea: don’t make the customers come to you, making them wait on hold or for an email response; instead, go directly to the customers and help them solve their problems with friendly, personalized service. That’s the way to do it.

For bloggers and podcasters, a feed-to-email subscription service means you can expand your “push-delivery audience” to readers and listeners who aren’t familiar with RSS feeds.

For readers and listeners, an email subscription service such as FeedBurner Email means that you can sign up to receive emails every day that let you know about new blog posts or podcast episodes. (Of course, if there’s nothing new for a given day, you won’t get an email.) For many people, email subscription services remove the need to remember to visit a blog or podcast site for updates.

My take on FeedBurner Email? In short: it’s awesome.

I had tried three email subscription services before FeedBurner Email. All of them had something that I didn’t like.

First I had tried FeedBlitz. I didn’t like it because it required subscribers to create a FeedBlitz account (and think up of a username and password) before they started receiving update notifications. [I have been corrected! See comments below]

Next I tried a WordPress plugin called, appropriately, “WordPress Email Notification Plugin.” I eventually stopped using it because whenever I set a post to auto-publish at a future date, the plugin would go ahead and send out notification emails. When people would click through to read the post before the date when it was supposed to publish, they would get a “post not found” error.

After the WordPress plugin, I tried Squeet. Unlike FeedBlitz, account creation for email subscribers was not required. However, the Squeet emails weren’t exactly nice-looking, and the fine-print on the Squeet site noted that Squeet reserves the right to insert ads into notification emails in the future.

But now, I’m using FeedBurner Email. And it is the first email subscription service that I am really excited about. Setup on the part of the publisher is a snap, and subscription on the part of the reader is very easy. The email address entry form fit perfectly into my WordPress theme. The notification emails look great and include a link to the RSS feed, in case any email subscribers decide they want to use a feedreader instead.

If you are a publisher who uses FeedBurner, I would highly recommend that you check this out.

You can see FeedBurner Email in action (and can use it to subscribe to this blog) on the sidebar on the blog homepage.