The jump-break feed is best for engagement

You've got five feed options in Settings:

• Full • 
• Until Jump Break • 
• Short • 
• Custom • 
• None ¶ 

Your feed lets people read your blog in a feed reader, and is required for some things. It's enabled by default.

I have already made the case for using jumps on your blog. So how about in feeds? ¶ 

Below are your feed options. I think you'll agree that Jump Break is best for engagement.

(However, there is an exception.)

Private blogs don't have feeds.

Feed options

Full means that someone reading your blog in a feed reader, or an email subscription that uses the feed, will see your entire post.

If the reader software supports it (most do), the post there will be fully formatted and will include images. (The formatting probably won't match that of your blog perfectly, but you'll get bold and italics and other attributes.)

Jump Break will truncate posts at the jump, with a link to the blog post. The segment shown will also be fully formatted. You decide where the break is by placing the jump.

Short will auto truncate the post in the feed at around 200 unformatted characters. It's just text.

Custom allows you to set the feed options (Full, Jump, Short, None) separately for blog posts, comments, and for comments-per-post.

If you select Custom, you will be able to set your posts feed to Jump and your comments feed to Full, for example. (There's no jump break for comments, so that option is only present for posts.)

None just turns off all the feeds.

What's it good for?

Your posts feed is just another way to reach people with your blog. Many newsletter services require it. The Blogger Reading List, and the peer-sharing known as "following," relies on it. The old dynamic themes won't work without it.

You can use it to generate a dynamic list of blog posts for any category, or for your whole blog. There are some cool scripts around that use feeds, too.

The comments feeds are more specialized and less interesting, but I use mine to show the most recent comments in my sidebar (see Nos. 2 and 3 here).

Feeds are so useful that they are turned on by default for new blogs.

Jump to engagement

The jump-break feed adds work. You must think about where to break, and also how to write the pre-jump lead paragraphs of your blog. So, what's so great about it?

Answer: A feed can drive people to your blog and promote engagement.

If I follow your blog in a feed reader or email, and I can read the whole post there, I have no reason to go to your blog. Why bother? 

But if I do go there, if you've done your job, I'll find other ways to explore your blog.

There might be older posts I've missed, links in the sidebar, even intersting things happening in comments. Hey, maybe I'll join in and leave a comment.

Don't you want that kind of engagement? That's not going to happen if I stay on my private feed reader.

Write a good substantive lead (not vapid clickbate, thank you), jump, and tell me to read more.

Also, a collection of leads in a feed reader or elsewhere is more navigable than a series of longer posts. It respects your readers, and you will gain more high-quality interactions.

Exception

There's at least one exception. Third-party services that offer to print your blog as a book will need the Full feed enabled while they do that.

You can revert back to Jump once they are done.

Are there other exceptions? Let us know in comments.

Links

• Your blog in a feed reader
• The jump-break in a post
• Following via feed
• Automated lists by topic
• Recent comments widget (scroll down)
• Write a good lead