11 Ways to Maximize Your Blog’s Subscriber Count

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The number of RSS subscribers is the best performance metric to use when determining the effectiveness of a blog. More and more people are learning how to use feed readers and how to receive updates through email. Readers are instantly notified of new content on your site and are more likely to remain engaged. If you’re not actively promoting your RSS feed, you are at risk of being left behind. Don’t let that happen to you.

A subscription based blog also helps to manage risk as traffic and loyalty is not completely dependent on outside factors such as search engine rankings. If for some reason your traffic plummets, your blog readership could go down with it. By utilizing subscriptions, you lessen the chance of this happening as you have more control over your marketing and audience.

Below are the top strategies, both on-page and off, that I use to actively promote RSS subscriptions to the blog. Once implementing these changes, you’ll see your subscriber count skyrocket soon enough.

On-Page Optimization for Subscriptions

• Use the feed button
  This nifty orange button has become the standard for feed subscriptions. Visitors may look for it if they want to subscribe to a blog. Make sure you have one clearly visible at the top of your pages. You can even make it bigger if you’d like as I’ve seen this being done on some blogs.
• Give your readers various options
  When subscribing to the feed, your readers have different preferences in terms of how they’d like to subscribe. Some people like using feed readers like Google Reader, others prefer using the feed reader built into the browser, and still others would rather receive updates via email. Provide options for all of these different people either in the site navigation or on a separate “subscribe” page. Feedburner offers a nice way to incorporate all of the popular options.
• Get Feedburner
  Speaking of which, be sure to sign up for Feedburner if you haven’t already done so. Feedburner offers a variety of great tools including statistics and tracking, subscribe by email, and links for social media submissions. Be sure to utilize MyBrand which will enable you to tie the feed to your own site’s domain. This will prevent hassles in the future if you wanted to move the location of your feed later on.
• Show your subscriber count, but only when you’ve reached a certain level
  A high subscriber count can help to establish your authority and be a selling point to get you even more subscribers on board. However, if the only subscribers to your blog are you and your dog, this can actually hurt you. Display the count only when you’ve reached a certain level. This varies in different industries so do your research and see where the top blogs are at. For example, I started displaying the count for Winning the Web only after I gained about 250 subscribers. I think that’s a good threshold for an Internet marketing blog.
• Promote your feed after every post
  A nice tactic that has worked well for me is to include a sentence after every post to promote the feed. In my case I chose to edit my Wordpress theme to display “If you like this post and want to become an Internet marketing guru, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can stay up to date on all of Winning the Web’s latest articles.“ This is an easy way to remind interested readers to subscribe to the blog.

RSS Feed Marketing

• Use the feed URL in the footer of your emails, forum signatures, and blog comments
  Basically you want to promote your feed just as you would promote your homepage. This is an effective method in attaining more subscriptions but might turn away people who would rather access your homepage.
• Use contests
  My personal favorite method of promoting subscriptions is to use a contest. In my last contest giving away a John Chow review, I managed to gain 250+ subscribers in just 2 weeks.
• Provide incentives
  If you want to reach people who don’t normally use feed readers, you might want to provide incentives which are only available through the feed. This could mean providing additional tips and content only to subscribers or offering prizes to select subscribers.
• Build a community of loyalty
  Make contacts in your industry, reply to the comments on your blog, help out others in need, and develop a vibrant community on your blog. This will make your blog “sticky” with readers always coming back for more on a daily basis.

Posting to Increase Subscriptions

• Follow a set posting schedule
  Following a set schedule will help your readers connect to your blog and learn when to expect new posts. This usually means more subscribers to your blog.
• Provide great content
  In the end, it’s all about great content. Without it, all of your marketing efforts will fall short of meeting your goals for feed subscribers. Make this a priority and the subscriptions will come.

The strategies laid out in this article are a means to maximize subscriber potential for your blog. The ceiling of your subscriber count ultimately depends on how much value you are providing for your readers. Provide great content, optimize your site, and market like a madman. You’ll see huge increases in your stats as a result.

Can you think of any other ways to increase subscriptions to your blog? Be sure to leave your thoughts by commenting to this post.