Gain Subscribers to your Blog with These Five Simple Steps

When promoting any blog, whether it is business related or personal, you may have heard of a key goal of gaining subscribers to that blog. Subscribers are those users that have added your blog to a list of blogs they regularly read, and regular readership is key to a successful blog - especially when it comes to repeat business. However, gaining subscribers can often be difficult in the early stages of your blog, so here are some ways in which you can quickly increase your RSS subscriber list.

1. Give them a good reason to subscribe

The most important factor if you are looking for subscribers is to give them a reason to subscribe. This reason will ultimately come down to what your blog has to offer - is it informative, interesting, and frequently updated? If you have these points down you can begin to work on gaining more subscribers.

2. Give them an incentive to subscribe

You may have great content on your blog but still be lacking the subscribers you had hoped for. At first, it may be a good idea to offer an incentive to subscribe to your blog. This could mean entry into a prize draw, though most blogs in the early stages do not want to risk losing money by offering expensive prizes. Instead, you could give away a free article or eBook every time a user subscribes. Not only will this give the user an incentive to subscribe, but it is a perfect opportunity to advertise some of your products and services within an eBook that is also interesting for users to read.

3. Explain why to subscribe and what it will mean

Many users may not be familiar with ‘RSS feeds’ or ‘subscribing’. This will all depend on your specific niche, but if people just land on your site to read an interesting article they may not even realise they can subscribe to receive instant updates from your blog. You could publish an article which explains the benefits and convenience of subscribing to blogs, as well as what RSS is and the many different ways in which users can subscribe, being sure to include the benefits of subscribing to your blog. Spell each and every reason out, even if you think they may already be obvious.

4. Advertise the ways in which users can subscribe

Sometimes users may like reading your blog and thing about subscribing, but you just don’t make it easy enough for them. In this case it is important to put an obvious link on every page of your blog which users can click to subscribe. You can also provide other methods of subscription, such as email subscription or links to subscribe in an RSS reader.

5. Keep track of all the different methods you use

The tips above are only a few ways in which you can try to gain subscribers to your blog. No matter what you do, keep track of it and the results it achieved. Use certain services such as Feedburner to keep track of how many subscribers you gain on any day, and keep a note of why they might have subscribed. For example, you may have gained subscribers after a great post, or after a special discount offer on a product at your business site. Whatever it is, keep track of it so that you have the ability to improve and gain more subscribers in the future.

By following these steps you can help increase the readership of your blog. Often this will be hardest when your blog is starting out, as gaining more subscribers often has a knock-on effect which slowly sees your subscriber count continuing to grow as your blog becomes more established.