For quite a while I have been circling a conundrum regarding one of my team's blogs.  The RSS XML file exceeds FeedBurners limit of 512k.  Unfortunately, I do not have access to modify the blogging tools RSS creation utility.

The quick and dirty solution:

1. Create a new RSS XML file hosted elsewhere in which the content is a summary with a "read more" link.  The easiest way to do this is to copy the existing XML and edit it appropriately.
   
2. Now edit your RSS link and redirect your feedreaders to this new file.  In my case, I only have access to change the RSS link, but I can't implement redirects  :(
   

The unfortunate reality is that, unless you have access to modify your blogging tool, you will have to manually update this every time you create a new entry.  This isn't a big deal if you don't blog frequently (as was the case with the blog in question, and, as a matter of fact, my blog too!).

Another solution I toyed with was creating a new blog in which the entries were summaries with links to the original entries on the original blog.  This would take just about as much work, but being the cautious one, I was unsure of the effect on search indexing.  I figured it might not be a big deal since the main content wouldn't be duplicated and it would provide another internal link to the content which might actually benefit search indexing.  Definitely not a stunt I need to attempt.

The other day, Laureen Hudson, a colleague made an interesting comparison that reminded me of Eric Peterson's discussion about the modes of a website in his book, Web Analytics Demystified.  We had been discussing Avinash Kaushik's blog post, Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success

Laureen compared the number of site visitors to the number of RSS subscribers.  These could be called the potential subscriber & true subscriber segments.  Adding up the monthly unique visitors for the month and the subscribers for the month, gives the gross number of readers.  Then you can look at how much of the pie each segment comprises.  If your potential subscribers are over 50% of the pie, then you are in acquisition mode.   The higher the number, the stronger the acquisition mode.  The perfect mode is, of course, 50/50.  If subscriber numbers are increasing and the ratio remains the same, then you are growing at a great rate.  If the ratio is unbalanced, then you need to either publicize (<50 / >50) or work on subscription conversion (>50 / <50).

Laureen, you nailed a perfect marketing metric for blogs!

Last week I spent a couple of days defending our inadequacy to track RSS feeds.  Our web analytics vendor's tool just doesn't cut it.  I kept pointing to the web analytics community and saying, "Even they're struggling with this!"

And then someone said, "What about FeedBurner?  If they can do it, why can't we?"  And then I had that stupid egg-on-the-face look, that look you get when you've heard of a technology or company and haven't researched it.  So I spent the weekend testing it out on my personal blog and lo and behold - I love FeedBurner.  And now my response - "Why do we need to do it if they'll do it for us for free?"

I feel like a total lop for not knowing about this, so I started investigating other options.  From what I can tell, there aren't any and even more disturbing is that the discussions I found weren't by major web analytics players.  Not to mention the fact that the discussion I found were prehistoric.  I'm not sure why the web analytics community has downplayed FeedBurner.  One possibility is that we want everything in one tool and until Google Analytics, Omniture, or WebTrends can do it, we'll ignore anyone else that can, even if they're free and get the job done.

Maybe I'm wrong and there are other options and the key players have discussed them.  If so, please steer me in the right direction.  It just seems like I stongly remember the harsh reality that RSS tracking was extremely difficult, but yet a solution presented itself and I never remember that distinctive moment that assuaded our concerns - Eureka!  All I ever heard was, "It can't be done."  Not, "It can't be done by our vendor, but have you tried FeedBurner?"

If I'm right, then I'd like to see the web analytics community start discussing all the tools that are out there, even if they do one little thing like RSS tracking.

One important thing that I have learned is this - You can't learn everything from a community!