How to Burn and Promote an RSS Feed of Your Yahoo! Contributor Network Pieces

You work hard publishing at Yahoo! Contributor Network but promoting your stuff is a drag. By creating an RSS feed of your published work you can create animated graphics on your blog or social networking site, send automatic tweets whenever a new article is published or even place a graphic in your email signature promoting your most recent pieces. The benefit of this is the fact that after the initial setup the promotion is automatic, allowing you to concentrate on creating great content.

The RSS feed creator at Yahoo! Contributor Network is an excellent tool but there is an easier method if you want to create a feed for all of your published work. In fact, when I set the parameters to select ALL of my work, it choked and would not give me a feed link!

Step One:
Log into your account at Yahoo! Contributor Network and visit your Dashboard.

Step Two:
Copy the user number in your public profile link. For instance, My public profile link is:
http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/404202/annie_jean_brewer.html so my user number is 404202.

Step Three:
Visit Feedburner and log in. If you have a Gmail account you can use those credentials to access the service.

Step Four:
Insert this address into the "Burn a Feed" field near the middle of the page:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/rss/user_404202.xml. Replace my number (404202) with the user number on your public profile link that you copied in Step Two.

Step Five:
Click "Next."

Step Six:
Name your feed and specify an address (if a specific address is desired) and press the "Next" button.

Step Seven:
Congratulations! Your new Yahoo! Contributor Network Feed is now live and ready for you to use with the promotion of your work! Click "Next" to begin working with your feed.

Working With and Using Your Yahoo! Contributor Network Feed:

Step One:
Place check marks in the boxes next to "Clickthroughs" and "I want more" to enable Feedburner to track your statistics. We are not doing podcasts through Yahoo! Contributor Network so the second box does not need to be checked. Click "Next."

Step Two:
Click the "Publicize" link to begin making an animated graphic to post on your blog or other web page.

Step Three:
Click on "Headline Animator" in the list on the left side of the page.

Step Four:
Choose the desired size for your Yahoo! Contributor Network Feed graphic under the "Theme" heading.

Step Five:
Decide whether you wish to wrap long titles and if you want your publishing dates to show by placing or removing check marks in the appropriate places on this page.

Step Six:
Press the "Activate" button after you are content with the layout of your graphic.

Step Seven:
Select the code format of your choice (Wordpress, MySpace, Blogger, email, etc.) using the drop-down menu provided and click the "Next" button.

Step Eight:
Highlight the code within the popup window and copy the text.

Step Nine:
Visit your blog or webpage and paste this code within the page layout. In blogs, you may be able to create a widget and place the code within the sidebar to have a moving graphic advertising your most recently published articles to all visitors.

Step Ten:
Enjoy having another way to promote your Yahoo! Contributor Network pieces!

Tips:
You can have Feedburner automatically post a link on Twitter whenever you publish a new article on the Yahoo! Contributor Network. This Twitter update can then be synchronized with your other social media accounts like Facebook to increase the visibility of your articles even more.

If your email account allows you to create html signatures you can place one of these animated graphics in your signature, so that every person you email has an eyecatching link to your most recent articles.

Source:
Personal Experience