The number of subscribers your blog gets is the measure of your success as a blogger.If you have good no. of subscribers you are successful.This is why every blogger is quite serious of increasing the blog readership.Infact , you are reading this article because you also are quite serious to increase your blog subscribership.OK , I promise I will not let you down.In this post I will talk about some very good tips to increase blog readership/subscribership.I will not present you with a list of tips that other blogging guides do.Instead I will first tell you about the basics about how and why people subscribe and only then I will come up with my tips.
How and why people subscribe to a blog?
Most of the people surf the net because they are in hunt of some information.If your blog provides the information, they subscribe.But from hunting for information to becoming a subscriber, visitors pass through certain steps which you should understand to increase your subscribership.I have depicted these steps in the following picture-
The three steps that people pass before subscribing are-
Tips to increase blog subscribership-
1) Make your blog and feed more visible-
While there are too many blogs including this one which tells you about making your blog more visible but there are very few which will tell you to make your feed more visible.A blog can be made more visible by search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and forums, and networking with other bloggers.
To make your feed more visible-
2) Produce original and quality content-
I am sick of telling this in almost every post I write.The reason I always talk about content is because it is the soul of your blog.Without content your blog is dead.Furthermore, Visitors will subscribe only when you provide a solid reason to subscribe.And the solid reason is the quality content.
3) Make the subscription button more visible to visitors-
Visitors can become subscribers only when they are able to find the subscription button on your blog.If you have placed the button in some corner of your blog which is barely seen then probably you are losing many many visitors per day.To make your subscription button more visible-
4) Facilitate subscribing-
Apart from the tips I have discussed above you have to take care of other factors like, encouraging your visitors to subscribe. Explain RSS feeds to your visitors who don't have an idea what it means.And give some incentives to the visitors who subscribe.I have seen many bloggers giving away ebooks to the subscribers.Some bloggers profess to cut off the steps to subscribe to minimum.All these strategies work quite well.
Increasing blog subscribership is not an overnight process.It is an ongoing process. Focus on producing a quality content and make subscription easy.Encourage your visitors to subscribe and do talk to them every now and then and you will see subscribers rolling in to your blog.
All the best !!!!
How and why people subscribe to a blog?
Most of the people surf the net because they are in hunt of some information.If your blog provides the information, they subscribe.But from hunting for information to becoming a subscriber, visitors pass through certain steps which you should understand to increase your subscribership.I have depicted these steps in the following picture-
The three steps that people pass before subscribing are-- Finding your blog or feed- How can a person subscribe to your feed if he is not able to find your blog or your feed at first place.
- Reading your content- A visitor subscribes only if he/she reads your content and likes it.
- Finding the subscription button- Once a visitor likes your content he will try to find out the subscription button to subscribe to your blog's feed.
Tips to increase blog subscribership-
1) Make your blog and feed more visible-
While there are too many blogs including this one which tells you about making your blog more visible but there are very few which will tell you to make your feed more visible.A blog can be made more visible by search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and forums, and networking with other bloggers.
To make your feed more visible-
- Submit your blog's feed to feed directories- You can find a list of feed directories here. Just submit your feed url to all of these directories.This will make your feed more visible to others on the net.
- Make sure autodiscovery feature is working-Autodiscovery makes it easy for feed aggregators and websurfers to automatically find your feed and subscribe to it.You only need to put a html code to enable this feature.The details for enabling feed autodiscovery can be found here.
- Leave the link of your feeds url in forums and comments-I have seen many bloggers leaving their feed's url in their signature.I am not sure how much does it works because I don't do this but many bloggers tell to leave feed's url in the signature.
2) Produce original and quality content-
I am sick of telling this in almost every post I write.The reason I always talk about content is because it is the soul of your blog.Without content your blog is dead.Furthermore, Visitors will subscribe only when you provide a solid reason to subscribe.And the solid reason is the quality content.
3) Make the subscription button more visible to visitors-
Visitors can become subscribers only when they are able to find the subscription button on your blog.If you have placed the button in some corner of your blog which is barely seen then probably you are losing many many visitors per day.To make your subscription button more visible-
- Use a large sized orange button for subscription. People are accustomed of watching an orange button for rss feeds.So, always use a large orange button and not of other colours. A different coloured button may go unnoticed.
- Place button on the top of the sidebar and below each of your post- Again people are habituated of seeing orange button on the top of sidebar and below posts.If they wish to subscribe they will go on to see these places first.So, place it there.
4) Facilitate subscribing-
Apart from the tips I have discussed above you have to take care of other factors like, encouraging your visitors to subscribe. Explain RSS feeds to your visitors who don't have an idea what it means.And give some incentives to the visitors who subscribe.I have seen many bloggers giving away ebooks to the subscribers.Some bloggers profess to cut off the steps to subscribe to minimum.All these strategies work quite well.
Increasing blog subscribership is not an overnight process.It is an ongoing process. Focus on producing a quality content and make subscription easy.Encourage your visitors to subscribe and do talk to them every now and then and you will see subscribers rolling in to your blog.
All the best !!!!
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