Make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog (Day 12-31 Kick Butt)

The other day someone sent me a link to a blog they thought I should take a look at. What I found was not a blog, but a poor excuse at something I am not sure what it was. I tried to give them the benefit of a doubt. There were some “post” on the site that were dated and they were in order by date. However, what was missing was a way to subscribe to this so called “blog”. Ouch!

When I started to sit down and write today’s lesson and task for 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt, I decided to use that as the topic for this post. And it caused me to ask the age old question again, if you are not providing a way for your readers to Listen to your blog, is it truly a blog. Let me stick my neck out here for everyone to take a swipe at. No, it is not a blog.

Today’s Lesson and Task all boils down to this

Make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog. In other words, provide a clear and very visible way for your visitors to subscribe to your blog. You want your visitors to turn into readers so they come back time and time again.

Accomplishing this is quite easy. If your blogging platform does not have this built in, go to Feedburner and burn your feed and get the buttons and email sign ups. Put them in the top right hand corner of your blog, as close to the top as you can. Subscribing is one of those call to actions we want our visitors and readers to do. And it is recommended by almost anyone who knows anything about internet marketing, calls to action should be top right.

Take it one step further

Don’t just throw up the subscription options for your readers. Do a post or two or three explaining what RSS is and why it is important. Give your readers a tutorial on how to use it too. One of the reasons RSS has not caught on in the general public is simply because we as bloggers have failed to convince them or educated them about RSS.

Here is a great video that explains RSS in “plain english” which you could use to educate your readers.

RSS newsreader or Email?

PollDaddy.com_ Poll Results.jpg The other question many have been asking lately is whether those reading our blogs are subscribing with RSS to a reader or via email. If I had my preference, I would want all of my readers to subscribe via email. Why, they are added to our newsletter list and they get our updates that way too. For the most part, people who don’t blog themselves are subscribing via email as they understand what it is and know how to use it.

So make sure you give them both options as a means to subscribe to your blog.

Your Homework

Review your blog to make sure you are not hiding the ball when it comes to providing a way for your readers to subscribe to your content. Your readers will appreciate it and you will too.

The Frugal Hostess

I use Blogger. I know that's not the grown-up way to do it, but that's what I'm using right now. I have places for people to subscribe via RSS, and I ask them after every post. But I don't know how to give the option to subscribe via email. Anyone? (and yes, I'm only on Day 12 on day 27!!!)

Catherine

FrugalHostess, Click your feedburner link in Settings tab and it will take you to the Feedburner site. Click your feed and you'll get a tabbed menu. Click on the Publicize tab, the click on Email subscrptions. Fill in whatever u need to, copy the code given and paste it into a widget in your sidebar, and hey presto! An email subscription box ready and waiting for visitors.

Cheers

Catherine

Okay here's my follow up comment and question. This may seem obvious to some but it's not to me. I've only been blogging for a few months so... where do I find the emails of my subscribers?

Because I went to Feedburner, opened the stats page, saw the pie chart but no list.

Grant Griffiths

Good question as they are buried inside Feedburner. When you get to Feedburner go to the Publicize tab at the top. Then go to Email Subscriptions. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you see a hyperlink titled "View Subscriber Details". Click on this and you will then see a list of all of those who signed up to get an email when you post a new post. Hope this helps.

Catherine

Thanks Grant.

Catherine

This really does work to attract readers. I've been observing bloggers who help bloggers since I started and I noticed their positioning of the big RSS icon and their huge subscribe signs.

So after hunting around for a while, I found the video, wrote a backdated post about it and copied their style. I got new readers that same week which is exciting for a new blogger.

The only thing I hadn't done because I didn't know how, until now, was to include a link to the post next to the RSS button. That's really effective.

Mitchell Goldstein

I never thought about telling people what to do and how. I thought that was obvious. I will be starting up a blog as soon as I find a good webhost and get a domain name. WIsh me luck.

Joel Libava

Grant,
I was actually thinking about making my RSS button a tad larger. What do you think?

It's at http://www.TheFranchiseKingBlog.com

JL

Grant Griffiths

I would agree. As long as the button does not look out of proportion, I would make it larger.

Joel Libava

Hehehehe
JL

LoneWolf

I could probably dig in and figure out how e-mail subscriptions work in WP, but it is easier just to ask. How does an e-mail subscription work in WP? Does it automatically e-mail posts to the subscribers? What about when a post is updated?

I have the subscription form there, but never really looked into how it works or what to do with it.

Grant Griffiths

You need to use a service like Feedburner to get the code and service to send out your new blog post to those who want to subscribe via email.

Mrs Green

Thanks for this - I think its easy for readers to subscribe by either rss or email on my site, but I could post about it, highlighting the benefits of subscribing. I've never done this before because it's not strictly 'on topic; for my site.

I don't, however, often post on Saturdays, so I might pop up a post about how to get gravatars and how to use RSS - great video resource as well, perhaps I'll use that rather than wordy explanations!

Christopher G. Hill

Great thoughts. Feedburner gives an easy way to subscribe by e-mail. With a "wigitized" theme (like <a href="http://headwaythemes.com " rel="nofollow">Headway) this code can be added to the sidebar of any blog. I use it fairly successfully.

Thanks