FeedBurner is the only service (that I know of) that will re-publish a blogs feed in order to get feed stats. Being such a great service, many users use it only to figure out how many readers their blogs have. However, FeedFlare is a great addition to any FeedBurner feed as it builds interaction and social media links into each post.

FeedFlare allows publishers to easily build “interactivity” into the content they create, making it simple for subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others. Publishers can include a variety of services including a live display of the number of comments to each post, the ability to email the author directly and show the number of blogs that link to their item.

To enable FeedFlare, login to your FeedBurner account, go to the Optimize tab then choose FeedFlare from the left column. You can then check items that you want to display in your feed.

I suggest adding at least the following:

• Email This - Send the post via email to a friend or a co-worker.
• Comments Count - You may be able to increase click thoughs if people know there are comments on your post.

“Why should I use del.icio.us?” is a question I got the other day. It seems that del.icio.us provides no search engine love as it blocks the bookmarks with nofollow tags, yet it is very valuable.

What del.icio.us is good for is exposure. Lots of people use del.icio.us to not only store their own bookmarks but find new and interesting websites. I know that sites like LifeHacker sometimes posts on what is popular in del.icio.us too. This then turns in to a very valuable link back to your site.

What you are really doing is trying to create buzz and visibility for an article or a site that you think is interesting. It’s not about spamming link building for search engines.

Lets not forget that del.icio.us is owned by Yahoo and who knows what Yahoo might do with del.icio.us. They could do away with the nofollow tags or possibly use it to influence their own rankings. Only time will tell.

I would continue to use del.icio.us as an avenue for social bookmarking and exposure because it’s the most popular and most used social bookmarking site out there. However, also look into other services too. Sites like Spurl.net are more search engine friendly and can actually dual post to del.icio.us also. Now you are hitting two good sites with one bookmark.