Nerd Party // Show full posts in a reader
Nothing bugs me more than finding a new blog I really love, clicking their subscribe button to add it to my Google Reader and finding their blog is only showing excerpts. No photos or links or inspiring content, just a sentence or two and a link for more.
The point of subscribing to blogs in a reader is to have one source for your daily reads. I know many people thrive on the number of click-throughs they get, but I recommend not making your readers work to get to your content. And yes…making them click that little ‘more’ link is work. Especially if they have multiple blogs in their reader set up this way. People are more likely to click through and leave a comment if you give them quality content up front.
So, how do you know if your blog is showing excerpts or full posts? The easiest way is to subscribe to your own blog. Then you will also be able to triple check your post when it goes online and see what your readers are seeing.
How to set-up full posts in Blogger…
Under Blogger settings, click Other and then look for Allow Blog Feed. You’ll want to make sure it’s set to Full.
How to set-up full posts in WordPress…
Under Settings, click into Reading and then look for ‘For each article in a feed, show’ and choose Full Text.
Speaking of reading blogs…your subscribe button is nice and easy to find, right?
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07.12.12 in nerd party
I hate this so much! I’ve unsubscribed from blogs before for this reason, I can’t imagine that it means you get many more click throughs and it just annoys your readers. Glad it’s not just me who’s grumpy about this!
It annoys the hell out of me too when I subscribe to a blog and only see excerpts. I’ve been wondering how and why people do that! I usually unsubscribe or just never read them.
YES. THIS.
If I add something to reader and realize the blog does this, chances are I’ll unsubscribe or “click all as read” after ignoring it every time something pops up. Drives me crazy.
Could not agree more. I even use the ‘next’ button most days to read on the actual site, but for search and quick skims it stinks… I’m much more likely to just mark all as read.
I so agree with this. I know that when I encounter someone’s who has their feed set to summary I have a tendency to not even read the summary to see if I’m interested, much less click through to read the post.
Exactly! Such a bummer when I find a really awesome blog and then end up unsubscribing after a few days because I’m not actually reading their posts.