So, you’ve decided to start a blog! Now what? Well, you want people to read your blog, right? The first thing you should do is make sure you are publishing your blog’s feed. Simply put, your feed is the text of your posts, and readers can subscribe to your feed so that they know every time you publish a post. Every blog has a feed, and the URL for it is usually (the address of your blog)/feed. For example, the URL of this blog is http://askelizabeth.wordpress.com, and my feed address is http://askelizabeth.wordpress.com/feed.

To make it easier for your readers to subscribe to your feed, I recommend going to Feedburner and “burning” your feed. These are the steps to take:

1. Go to www.feedburner.com
2. Right in the middle of the page it says “Start Feedburning Now. Type your feed or blog URL below.” Type in your blog’s URL and click the Next>> button.
3. On the next page, give your feed a title, usually the title of your blog, and what you want the feed address to be, again, usually the title of your blog.
4. Excellent! Now you will create your feedburner account by putting in a username, password and email.
5. Almost done! The next two pages are for your info if you checked the “I am a podcaster” box on the first page, and also for selecting whether you want the basic service or Feedburner PRO. Keep clicking Next>>, until you get to Feed Management.
6. There are a row of tabs at the top, click Publicize. Find the link to the Chicklet Chooser. This is that orange button you have probably seen on other sites, it is a link that goes to the Bloglines site to let people subscribe to your blog’s feed!
7. Once you have selected which size button you want, put the cursor in the little circle next to it and click to fill in the circle. Then scroll all way way down to the bottom of the page, and you will see a box of code. Copy the code, then open a new window, sign in to your blog, and go to your Presentation tab.
8. There is a widget marked RSS. This is NOT the widget you use for your own feed. It is for pulling in the feed from another site, say from a different blog. What you want is a text widget. Pull it up to the panel, and click the little lines on the side of the widget to open it up. Paste in your code, close the widget, and click Save Changes. There you go!

Now you are publishing a feed for your blog! Next post-getting familiar with your WordPress Admin Panel and Dashboard. So stop by again soon!