You might ask why not you just bookmarked the website? Yes, you can do it but bookmark will not show you if the website has any updates. To make it convenient for users, it will be easier to subscribe to RSS which is commonly known as the blog's feed to let the RSS do the updating of websites. I will do another post on what exactly RSS is but this is just a rough introduction only.
Why Do You Want Good RSS Subscription Figures
I find RSS subscriptions a form of social proof to your readers which will tell them that there is actually people reading your content. When there is at least 50 subscribers, people dropping by to your blog might actually stop and read on your content. Human actually act in a very unique way in which they love to follow the crowd. So when this is applied over to RSS subscriptions, high RSS subscriptions will capture the new unique visitors attention and get them to read the content of your blog. Therefore, this gives your blog a chance to showcase the quality content that you have. Read more on how to increase your RSS.
8 Tips To Increase RSS Subscriptions
1) Make your RSS button prominent
I often see blogs with RSS button not placed above the first fold of the website. When I say first fold, I mean the blog area in which readers do not need to scroll down. This actually makes a difference because your readers might be lazy to scroll down all the way to find your RSS button. Therefore placing right on top of your website is the best spot. You can take my website as an example where I placed my RSS on the top right of the site. Get bigger RSS button will also increase the chances that readers will subscribe to your blog.
2) Provide alternative RSS subscription
New readers who just come into contact with blogs might not know what RSS is all about. Therefore, they might not know what the RSS buttons are for. Provide an email RSS subscription option for your readers which is the more traditional way for users. If you are new to blogging, you read on my earlier post on guide to inserting the email RSS subscription here.
3) Educate your readers on RSS
Like what I mention earlier, your readers might just come into contact with blogging and have no idea what RSS is. Therefore, you can write a post on RSS and placed a link right under your RSS button. This will allow your readers to know and understand what RSS is and how it works. At the same time, this increases the chance that they might subscribe to your blog.4) Remind readers to subscribe to feed
You can add a link to your RSS feed at the end of every post to remind readers to subscribe to your RSS feed if they like your post. I started doing this a few days ago and it seems to work for my blog. People need to be reminded to get them to take the action which in this case is subscribing to our RSS feeds.
5) Run a contest
You can run a contest to encourage readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. This is a very effective method to increase RSS subscriptions as I have seen it to work on many blogs. You need to give away rewards when running the contest and it can be in terms of monetary rewards, products that you have, free review of website, free advertising spot on your website, Entrecard credits or any other things you can offer that is of value.
6) Give-away to your readers
You can give away an E-Book that you written to lure your readers to subscribe to your feed. This incentive will bring your readers forward to subscribe to your feed should they be hesitating to do so. But this give-away that you provide your readers will make them subscribe immediately.
7) Post series of content
You can consider to post a series of content for your niche. For example, in my case I can do a series of post on ways to increase traffic and split it into 4 parts. This will encourage readers to subscribe to your feed because they do not want to miss this series of your post
8) Guest post
Go around blogs of your similar niche and ask if they would like you to do a guest post. However, you will need to prove to them that you have quality content and ideas. Show them your blog and let them know the kind of articles that you produced. This not only will increase your RSS subscriptions but also the traffic to your blog.
This is what I will be doing to increase my RSS subscriptions in which some are already in place. I got results from doing some of the tips and have gotten 81 subscribers for a 5 week blog. Not too bad but I know could have been better.
What about you? Do you have any other ways to share to increase RSS subscriptions?
Lastly, do subscribe to my feed should you like my post.
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1 comments:
Another cool way is to send a short message to your first time commentators asking them to subscribe to your feed. there are wordpress plug-ins that automate this feature.check out my post about how to get commentators to subscribe to your blog , Commentators into readers
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