To Full-Text RSS Feed or Excerpt RSS Feed. That is the Question.
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Full text so, the subscriber can read the entire post in their feed reader?
Or do you use post excerpts so the reader is "forced" to visit your site to get the entire story?
If you subscribe to many feeds related to blogging or Internet Marketing you'll quickly discover that the full-text feed philosophy wins hands down.
On the other hand, sites like CNN, AP News, ESPN and many other major sites use the excerpt method. Some of them only display headlines in their RSS feed.
So which method is best for you?
Well, I think to best answer that question we have to look at the business model behind these different types of sites.
The major news and sports sites, for the most part, have the same business model they've always had. And that is the more people they have reading their articles, whether it be in print or online, the more they can charge for advertising. So, their number one objective is to drive people back to their site so they can maintain high numbers and subsequently, high advertising rates.
Offering short excerpts or even just headlines forces the reader to click to read the rest of the story or move on.
Ask yourself this…
1. Is that really how you want to treat your loyal readers?
The number one goal for bloggers and Internet Marketers is to gain the trust of as large an audience as possible. Your readers are your supporters and potential customers. As hard as it can be to get traffic to your site don’t you want to retain as many of them as possible.
Whether you’re blog is for profit or non-profit your readers’ trust and loyalty is your biggest asset. It’s very difficult to sell things to people who don’t trust you.
Plus, many people today like to read all of their website updates in one place. That’s kind of the point of RSS aggregators. They collect all of the content that a reader is interested in keeping up with, in one place so they don’t have to click all around the web looking for it.
The easier you make it for them to read the more they’ll appreciate it.
I know some people that won’t stay subscribed to a feed if it does not include the entire post.
2. Does your monetization strategy depend completely on viewers visiting your site?
If onsite advertising (i.e. AdSense, Banner Ads, etc…) is your main method of monetization then you may want to use the excerpt feed method.
But know this. It takes a lot of traffic to make a living that way. The big bucks in Internet Marketing are in affiliate sales and of course, marketing your own products. And one of the best ways to do that is through blog posts and emails to your list. It's very easy to embed an affiliate link or link to your sales page in a blog post.
Don’t get me wrong. AdSense has its place and it has been very good to me over the years but, I’ll trade an Ad Sense click for a good affiliate commission any day of the week.
3. Does your site have enough “authority” to draw people’s interest on headlines alone?
The other luxury these major players enjoy, that most of us don’t yet, is that they are already authorities in their fields.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, “but I am an authority in my field”. You may very well be. But, it’s unlikely that your blog has the years of experience, exposure and credibility that CNN has and that viewers will click on a headline just because it came from you. (I just heard a groan from the Fox News fans out there. It’s just an example.) 
Don’t hold anything back from your readers. Let them get to know you and read all you have to say right there in your feed. Give them what they subscribed to and chances are you will notice some of the same benefits that others and I are noticing.
- An increase in RSS subscribers.
- More posts being bookmarked on sites like Technorati, Delicious, etc…
- More viewers commenting on posts.
- More viewers blogging about posts.
- Increase in site visitor loyalty.
- Increase in site traffic.
- Increase in affiliate sales.
Have you tested the difference between full-text and excerpt RSS feeds? Has your experience been the same or different?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please share your comments below.
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It's almost like you read my mind Barry… but then again… maybe you did??? I WAS going to write a post of my own using almost the same heading…
I'd like to offer some good reasons in favour of using the summary technique to produce your RSS feed… although I DO recognise there are good very reasons to use the full feed at times.
1. a summary prevents (or at least reduces) the chance that your content gets stolen and used on other sites without permission (e.g. that's why the major article sites only provide summaries)
2. as much as I like reading your blog
I won't find every post interesting, so a summary allows people like me (scanners) to quickly determine which post I should devote more of my precious time to.
3. when a site gets a lot busier, with more than just one or two posts every other day, a summary of the posts allows your readers to keep up to date without being overloaded with information.
if you DO use the full post, make sure all the links and images etc in it use absolute URLs or you'll quickly find things don't work as you intend.
It's a similar argument when deciding whether your blog's home page should contain ALL the text from the last 10 posts (usually the default for most WordPress blogs and themes) or are you only going to show a summary of your posts to help people scan through to see what you offer and what interests them…
I almost detest scrolling through screen after screen of info to see if there's something that interests me… I suppose part of the "problem" is that many themes don't clearly show an obvious visual transition between posts to make it easier for me…
There's a neat trick to use the "Optional Excerpt" field that's at the bottom of your WordPress add new post screen… Use that to write a different intro to your item, and then in your index.php template code, instead of using the_content to show the whole post, use the_excerpt to show the "excerpt" field. It's much better than just letting WordPress decide where to "trim" the intro.
And if you use this field, it is that excerpt that is shown in your summary RSS feed as well.
So it gives you an opportunity to work hard on your writing skills, because if your excerpt doesn't do it's job at attracting attention, you ARE sunk!
If you click through to my site, and then scroll down a little past the first (full) post, you'll see the_excerpt in action.
Cheers
Stephen Spry
It's an interesting debate.
I'm currently using excerpts in my feed but I would like to use full text.
The thing is I can't figure out how to do this!!
I was on Feedburner and I didn't see an option for this.
Maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
Stephen,
As always thanks for the insightful comments. You make some great points. I think the real deciding factor is what works best for your readers and gets you the most desirable results. The only way to know for sure is by doing some testing with your readers.
I can tell you this. My feed changed from full-text to excerpt for about 2 weeks after I installed this new template. During that time I lost quite a few subscribers. Of course, there's no way to know for sure why but, since I've made my RSS feed full-text again I have seen a noticeable increase in activity.
I agree with you about scrolling down a long blog page. That's one of the things I love about some of these new magazine style templates like the one I'm using on 1Cat.biz.
Barry O.
Mark,'
There is a great little plug-in called Full Text Feed.
http://cavemonkey50.com/code/full-feed/
This is what I use on all my blogs to display a full-text feed.
Barry O.
Hi Mark
Yet another plugin isn't necessary unless it offers some additional functionality. Remember each plugin you add can slow down the responsiveness of your server, and can possibly break with new versions of WordPress or even a new theme.
The option is set from within your default WordPress Admin area… under Options / Reading… in the Syndication Feeds section, you can set whether you show the full text or summary of your posts in your feeds. You can also set the number of posts your show in your feeds… and on a busy site, 10 is NOT enough!
Barry… with a one-person site that publishes only one or two posts daily, the full text feed is the way to go. Considering that's what you were doing, would explain the loss in subscribers when you changed to the magazine theme. It wasn't what they were used to, so you ruffled some feathers.
However on a multi-author site which publishes multiple posts every day, the summary feed could make it easier for your readers to scan through all the posts.
While RSS now stands for "Really Simple Syndication"… originally the acronym was for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary" - the emphasis on the word "summary"
Cheers
Stephen Spry
[...] reading my post on using a Full Text RSS Feed in WordPress, a few of you had questions on how to do [...]
I think this post will answer some questions on why and how to use the Full Text Feed Plugin.
While running too many plugins can slow down your blog. I think you'll find this one extremely useful and I doubt that it uses very many resources.
http://1cat.biz/wordpress-full-text-feed-plugin-training-video/
[...] Whether to use a full text or partial RSS feed is debated among many bloggers. I posted about that debate here. [...]