So you want repeat business? Feed 'em!

When someone stumbles upon, or is directed to, your blog, you want them to read and then return later and devour more. Syndication – also known as a subscription; an RSS, Atom, or XML feed; or simply "a feed" – is an effective way to bring users back.

As the name implies, web syndication supplies content to multiple subscribers. Many readers want all their favorite sites' content in one place. They subscribe to aggregator services like Google Reader, FeedReader, Outlook and others). Others prefer to have information delivered to their email.

The streamed data can be just about anything these days: text, images, video, or podcasts: all are common. I've just added a Road Remedies widget that summarizes my Twitter updates, for example (Twitter supplies the code, just paste it into a java/html gadget on Layout>Page Elements. Items like this help share your original content between platforms, which keeps your pages fresh and thus more attractive to the search bots).

Subscriptions are called "feeds". By default, Blogger offers these for your posts and comments on your entries. It also publishes some lesser-known feeds based on entry labels, but don't worry about those now, perhaps. You can turn feeds on or off by setting the appropriate value Dashboard -> Settings -> Site Feed -> Allow Blog Feeds dropdown menu. Unless you write very long entries, you'll want to set this to "Full."

Expose these streams further by adding a “Subscription Links” widget to your blog. Because feeds are lightweight (just an entry's text without any of the blog's formatting) and published in a standard format, it is easy for services to digest and display your content in new and useful ways.  FeedBurner is a classic option: since its purchase by Google, it has been offering many "premium" features for free. By publishing your blogs through a single service, such as FeedBurner, you gain the ability to track how many people read your blog and what aspect of your writing they are most interested in. It also offers services not found on the Blogger platform, such as allowing readers to sign up for email notification of new posts, attaching a Creative Commons license to your work or comments or "chiclets" for quickly subscribing to your blog. To burn your blog's feed using FeedBurner, look here.