The FeedBurner Subscriber Count Drop Issue

Over the past few days many of us have seen a significant drop in our RSS subscriber count in our FeedBurner account.

The FeedBurner help group – if we can call it that way, as no one ever seems to answer – is filled with messages from users who have “lost” even thousands of subscribers overnight. What’s the answer these users get? The silent treatment. And it’s not the first time users report these drops and get no answer.

OK, we’ve seen a pattern in these drops and it involves the Google Reader subscribers. With Google Reader being probably the most popular feed subscription tool worldwide, there’s no wonder that the drop percentage ranges from 30% to 70% in some cases.

So, just for the sake of remaining optimistic about this situation, let’s presume that Google is working on a way to better integrate these two services (FeedBurner and Reader) to provide better statistics to us users.

Even so, this does not explain the lack of updates on the FeedReader Status blog or the lack on a 2 line message on the help board that would definitely calm down the spirits. And as the case is not singular, and the lack of communication seems to turn into a habit, I cannot help but thinking that ever since Google took over FeedBurner, the relationship between the project team and the users has gone from good, to bad, to worse.

A change of attitude is required in this age of instant communication, otherwise even if Google is running the service, competition will eat it up. “All this has happened before, and will happen again” as they used to say on my favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica.

Update: After 3 or 4 days of madness on the boards, a Google team member addressed a short message confirming that the issue is related to Google’s Feedfetcher and has been reported to the responsible department. It took a while…

Update 2: An acknowledgement of the issue is finally made official on the FeedBurner blog. 3 to 4 days after users started to ask questions about it.

The 3 C’s of Blogging

How to blog? How to promote content? How to attract readers? How to keep them coming back? The are hundreds of blog offering blogging tips, and Blogsessive is only one of them. But, while running back and forth through the abundance of information, most times we forget about the basic principles of blogging.

Most times, we focus so much and invest too much of our time doing only one thing (ie: writing, promotion etc.) and we forget that blogging is actually a 3 step process, and all 3 steps should get the same level of attention.

These 3 primary steps of blogging are what I call the 3 C’s of blogging, or the 3C process:

1. Create
2. Communicate
3. Collect

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The Better Blogger, The Good Listener

When it comes to speaking, there are three types of people:

• those who speak so that other people can listen;
• those who speak only to hear their own voice;
• those who speak because they just can’t shut up.

If you want to be a better blogger, you’d definitely want to be in the first group.

But what does it take to be a good orator? You’d probably say it takes good communication skills, ability to adapt from audience to audience and a spontaneous character.

Some people have these skills written in their DNA, others train them. If you’re looking to speak or write better you should first consider listening and reading more and better.

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak”
Epictetus, Greek philosopher

Advantages of being a good listener

Why and how should listening improve our communication skills? First of all, by paying attention to our audience we can observe and analyze the level of interest, which would make it a lot easier to adapt from a situation to another. Therefore, a better blogger is a blogger who listens to his community is more likely to provide real answers and help to real questions. Solutions make people happy.
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Effective Communication: Know Your Audience

Sometimes, having a great idea to write about can give your blog posts a boots, but most time it’s not enough. In order to establish a good, effective level of communication with your readers you should consider a few essential factors that could improve your writings and clear their path to your readers’ minds.

When blogging on a certain topic, you’ll be automatically considered either a specialist, or an enthusiast. While enthusiasts have more premises to write using a natural tone, specialists tend to overuse industry specific language which could make it hard to spread ideas through a general audience.

In terms of communication, William Butler Yeats – Irish poet and dramatist – said it best:

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

We’re talking about your blog, which means it’s about your thoughts, your advice, your skills, but if you don’t manage to get your ideas past the screen, they can be totally brilliant and still won’t get you anywhere.
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