How To Optimize Your RSS And Email Subscriptions On Your Blog (day 8)

Fotolia 5645143 XS How To Optimize Your RSS And Email Subscriptions On Your Blog (day 8)

This is day 8 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. Yesterday Michael Martine spoke showed you how to optimize your most visited pages, today, Grant Griffiths talks about doing the same with email and RSS.

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The people who subscribe to our blogs are more likely than not, regular readers who visit us whenever we post new content. Our subscribers feel we are trustworthy enough that they feel we have built a relationship with them. And they come to trust us to the point they may actually buy something from us. Either our products or services.

How do we optimize our RSS and/or email subscriptions on our blogs?

A lot of what we are going to talk about here will also apply across different areas we should focus on when we are building our blog. One of the key considerations to think about when you are trying to build up subscribers on your blog is the relationship you should be building. And you need to remember you want your readers to come to trust you as a valuable and reliable source of information. A source of information that is fed to them in a form and fashion they can use and understand. And a source of information that is up-to-date and relevant.

So, here are six actions you can take to optimize your blog’s subscribers

  1. Design – You have seen them, the default template provided by WordPress or Typepad. Or those Blogger blogs that all look alike too. If you are serious about building an audience of regular readers on your blog, you have to have more than a default template. Spend some time looking into some of the great free or premium WordPress frameworks and themes available. Design does matter. People tend to be shallow and want things to look nice. And this same factor even applies to whether they may or may not subscribe to your blog. Think for a moment if you will. When we are standing at the magazine rack at our favorite book store, we always look at the cover design of the magazine don’t we. Admit it, you are just as shallow as I am. If the magazine doesn’t look nice, we tend to not pick it up to read. The same applies to blogs. If the blog is not attractive to look at or easy on the eyes, we tend to not come back. And we darn sure don’t subscribe. I know the argument against this premise. “Don’t most blogs get read in an RSS reader or email?” Not all of them do and even so, our design still needs to be appealing to the eye. Getting people to come back time and time again certainly does depend on how are blog looks and feels to them. And those people who come back will someday become our regular readers and subscribers.
  2. Make it easy – 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. 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.
  3. 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 educate them about RSS. 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. Make sure you give them both options as a means to subscribe to your blog. That way you optimize the chances of them subscribing.
  4. Give them content – But don’t just give them any old content. If you want readers and even better, repeat readers who subscribe, give them regular content. Content that is up-to-date and relevant to your blog’s audience. And just as important, post to your blog on a regular and consistent basis. If you subscribed to a newspaper that promised to publish two times a week and started out that way, but failed to continue this practice, would you maintain your subscription, most likely not. Blog subscribers are the same. People tend to subscribe to blogs that post on a regular, consistent basis. You need to do the same. I am not saying you need to post daily. It would be best if we all could. What you need to do is pick a regular schedule and stick to it. Being consistent in your postings is important to continued success and building your audience.
  5. Go out and bring readers in – You have to be a proactive blogger too. In other words, go out and find readers. Go to where the readers of your blog might be and promote your blog. One of the best places I have found to bring readers into my own blog is social media. While I would be the first one to admit that a blog is social media at its finest. What I am suggesting are tools like twitter, Facebook and even Linkedin. There are tools and ways to send out all your new blog post to each of the social media tools I just mentioned. Every time I write a new blog post, it is sent to twitter and Facebook. In return, I get traffic to my blog who in turn may or may not subscribe to my blog. However, the key to doing this is it gives you a chance of gaining a new reader and maybe new subscribers you may have not had before. You can write all the best content you can, and if you don’t get traffic, who become visitors, who then become regular readers, your blog is going to die an agonizing death. You have to get off your rear and promote, promote and promote some more. Here are 6 additional ways you can promote your blog to bring in readers and hopefully subscriber

    6. 1. Email
    2. Newsletter
    3. Guest postings
    4. Linking to other blogs in your own post
    5. Call in favors
    6. Commenting on other blogs

  6. Offer them something for subscribing – Providing an incentive for our readers to subscribe to our blogs is neither shady nor deceptive at all. If you will consider for a moment how many times we are offered inducements to either sign up for something or buy something, you will see it is not new and it is accepted by the public in general. In fact, it has become so common, I firmly believe people come to expect it and almost demand it before they are willing to sign up for anything. This is where you can use a white paper report you have written or a short ebook as an offer for people to subscribe to your blog. And you can give it to them for either subscribing via RSS feed or email.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, most if not all of the actions we are suggesting will help you with more than just optimizing your RSS and email subscriptions. If you will make the actions above a regular part of your blogging, you will not only increase your subscribers, you will grow a loyal readership.

About Grant: Grant Griffiths publishes Blog For Profit and is co-founder of Headway, a premium WordPress Theme/Framework. You can follow Grant on twitter at @grantgriffiths

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  • phollows

    Hi John:

    Interesting prespective. More insight on email and RSS subscriptions over here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/544…

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Exactly what I tell those I work with. Most non-bloggers and business people are more comfortable subscribing and getting information via email. And as I say in the post, I actually prefer email subscribers to RSS subscribers. It is easier to carry on and continue the conversation with email subscribers than those who read your post in an RSS reader.

      I also strongly believe twitter has made a major shift in how many people still use RSS versus getting their “feeds” by twitter. They key for the blogger to remember is to not have blinders on to any one way people read your blog.

  • frankdickinson

    Excellent read Grant! I think in addition to a post about RSS and how it works, I'd like to see a good tutorial on how email subscriptions work as well. The process from clicking email subscribe through auto-responder etc. has always been a bit confusing for some.

    Target here is obviously not so much your readers, but those setting up their blogs, or enhancing them.

    Thanks for all you do!

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Frank – Excellent post idea. Thanks. I am certainly going to add that to my list of post ideas to get done in the very near future.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Grant – Thanks again for posting. Great comments here (sorry I'm showing up a bit late to the party).

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      Frank – In terms of tutorials, you mean a “howto” from a subscribers perspective?

      • frankdickinson

        From the other angle actually – froma bloggers perspective – one who is setting up their blog or enhancing one with email subscription.

        I know when I first started (an even now sometimes), email subscriptions, auto-responders etc. confused the heck out of me.

      • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

        Frank – Don't feel alone. I still get confused by my auto-responder sometimes. The great thing about using Feedburner and Aweber for email subscriptions and building a list is how they work together. If you want to know how someone uses email, watch John. He does a great job. Just dig through his archives or do a search on this blog and you will find a ton of tutorials he has done on how he does things.

        The key is to build the trust with your audience and be up front with them from the very beginning. Tell them you will from time to time either tell them about someone's product you feel would help them or your own new product. Don't hide the fact you might, god for forbid, try to sell them something.

        At the same time, don't be spammy with your emails and send them something daily. I actually subscribe to some of the guys on the internet just to see what they do with their email marketing. Do that too.

      • frankdickinson

        Thanks Grant – perfect advice!

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Got it. Do you use Aweber?

      • frankdickinson

        Just starting again with Aweber – lots of new goodies since I last had it!

    • http://www.doitmyselfblog.com GlendaWH

      Thanks for asking this question, Frank! At this very moment, I have Aweber and my feed open, trying to figure out how to add “Join the conversation at <link to post>” to my blog broadcast to entice email readers to leave blog comments. But, figuring out what code is needed to make this happen is proving more challenging than I thought it'd be.

  • http://www.diary4life.com Paul

    Great post Grant, I agree with Frank, things can get a little confusing. For instance, RSS, how on earth does that equate to a post update to the layman.

    Subscribing by email; people may well shy away from this because of all the 'email spam stories and expereinces'. Simplifying the process is certainly a great idea.
    Regards
    Paul

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Paul – Thanks for jumping in here. It is actually my position that RSS is a complete failure. Not because RSS is a bad thing or not a valuable tool. There is no doubt that it is a great tool. The failure of RSS can be blamed on only one group and that is bloggers. We bloggers have failed to educate and convince our readers how important RSS is and what it can do for them.

      As to your concern about email subscriptions, again we can only look to ourselves to solve this concern too. If we want our readers to take advantage of subscribing by email, we have to make it a point to not “spam” them. However, keep in mind, one person's spam is another persons evergreen content. Everyone has a different idea what spam is.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        My two cents: Give people a reason why they should subscribe by email. Their reasons, not yours. Take Grant's blog, for example. “Must have” content for business bloggers. I subscribe by email so I don't miss anything.

      • http://www.diary4life.com Paul

        Grant, thanks for your response. A honest assessment of RSS, I agree it's a great tool. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't it originate in the newspaper/press industry and has since been adopted in others.

        I think you're probably being a little unfair on yourself and other bloggers, in blaming them for their poor educating skills. Probably from your own learning style you'll appreciate you learn somethings easier than others. Some will 'pick up' the concept of RSS more easily than others. I, for one have wrestled with the concept of RSS since I started blogging, it is only more recently that I have begun to grasp how it works due to bloggers such as yourself, John H and others.

        That's a bit of a long reply but I think I'm try to say 'horses for course'

        Regards

        Paul

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Actually the whole reason why RSS has failed is because of Grant. Trust me, it's all Grant's fault.

      • http://www.netwitsthinktank.com frank barry

        Agreed. It's all Grants fault :)

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      Paul – In my subscribe page, I include an explanation of how RSS works. Check it out: http://www.johnhaydon.com/subscribe-to-corporatedol…

      • http://www.diary4life.com Paul

        John thanks for your response. I like the RSS page, I've also got one at http://www.diary4life.com/subscribe-to-diary-4-…. I got the idea from another blogger.
        Regards
        Paul

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        I love how you explained RSS on your post. Very accessible!

  • http://accessibleweb.eu/ Richard

    Grant,

    I agree with most of what you say here but I don't agree with your point about designs needing to be nice because people are shallow. Yes, designs do need to be nice (visually appealing sounds better though) but it is to do with an emotional response. Part of this response is a learned response in that we tend to associate visually appealing design with other positive aspects like professionalism and authority.

    • http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

      But isn't emotional response shallow by nature anyway? I'm not saying that we shouldn't let emotion be involved, but if we're letting emotions dictate what's nice as opposed to our head dictating what's useful behind the niceness, that's shallow in itself, no?

      Just a thought. :)

      • http://accessibleweb.eu/ Richard

        Danny,

        I know what you are seeing, but that would negate the whole idea of brands, or the Obama factor, or our response to Live-Aid, or most of the functioning of our daily lives.

        Yes, we shouldn't let emotions get in the way of what is useful or dictate to us, but we also can't and shouldn't ignore them. Yesterday I needed a video codec and the first website that I came across that had text in comic sans. For that reason I mistrusted the site and went on to another one (there were other factors involved in my final choice but it basically came down to what I felt was the most trustworthy site). Obviously that was an emotional response, and it could well have been the wrong one.

      • http://accessibleweb.eu/ Richard

        Of course I meant “I know what you are saying”

  • http://www.southwestwashingtonzest.com/ Katlin

    Great discussion. My blog (http://www.southwestwashingtonzest.com) is visual with a good design, photos, Pictobrower slideshows, etc. When a post has only one photo, the email subscriber sees that photo. When there is a Pictobrowser slideshow, the subscriber gets this message “Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer“ and sees no photos. Any suggestions on how to get readers to the actual blog after receiving the email post? Also, the subject line arrives with only has the name of the blog, not the latest post title, which I would like subscribers to read. The email subscription is via FeedBurner. Thanks for any advice on how to make improvements for email subscribers!

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Kathlin – Thanks for your questions. I have added them to my list of follow up post to this post. I would suggest one thing however. Double check your settings in Feedburner. I am just certain you can set that so the post title shows up and not just the name of the blog.

  • http://twitter.com/TanveerNaseer Tanveer Naseer

    Thanks Grant for the great advice you offer here. I think you're right that it's a good idea to offer both email subscriptions and RSS. And as Frank and Paul mentioned, I too would enjoy hearing more about the email subscription process in terms of managing/nurturing it. Had one question though, I caught your remark about putting the email subscribe call to action in the top right of the site. But I've noticed on many sites that this can appear just about anywhere. For example here on John's site it's on the sidebar, on mine, the form appears just at the end of the blog piece (before the comment form section).

    I put mine there because I felt that if after reading my piece people enjoyed it, that would be the ideal spot to grab their attention and invite them to subscribe to my blog via email, as opposed to scrolling back to the top to fill out the form. Given the diversity in approaches to where this form is placed, does it really have that big an impact? Would appreciate hearing your insights. :)

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Tanveer – When I say top right, I mainly like to see them above the fold on the right side. And I would also suggest, don't stop there. Put it at the end of the single post page and anywhere else you can without hurting your design.

      Would it impact your results not being towards the top, common belief is it would. But, as I say, put it else where too.

      • http://twitter.com/TanveerNaseer Tanveer Naseer

        Thanks Grant. Guess I have some tinkering on my blog to do. :)

  • http://www.ManifestPositivity.org/ Dave Berman

    I post a lot of videos on my blog but the RSS feed strips the embed. For this reason I always include the link to the YouTube page of the video in the text I blog around the video so if I've described something readers want to see they can at least click the link and watch the video on YouTube. But this really defeats the purpose of the feed. Any suggestions for how to configure things differently so readers will be able to watch the video within the feed? The same thing happens with the RSS feed pulled into my Facebook page.

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Dave- Why not embed the video directly on your blog so they have to go to your blog to watch instead of YouTube? This is actually a good way to get them to your blog too. I don't know of anyway to embed the video into the RSS feed nor the email feed. In fact, I would imagine you would have a difficult time getting videos past most peoples spam filters.

  • http://ariwriter.com Ari Herzog

    Quick comment about blog subscribing. While we may agree what the term means, Grant, the new blog reader does not. Some are accustomed to subscriptions costing money, such a newspaper or magazine subscription. This is why I use both the words “subscribe” and “follow” as they mean different things to different people.

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Ari – Was thinking the same thing when I wrote the post. However, I figured the readers of John's blog were bloggers and would get my thinking. (Of course I sometimes don't get my own thinking).

      But, you are right. The wording we use in our sign up forms and post asking for subscribers does have an impact. Take for example a new form we are using on BFP. We are using “Sign Up” instead of subscribe. And we are doing that for the very reasons you mention.

      There is also a suggestion we should only ask for their email address in our Sign Up forms. People are reluctant to leave a name, even if not required when signing up for a subscription or even a newsletter online. (Aren't people the weirdest beast)

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      Good point.

    • http://www.doitmyselfblog.com GlendaWH

      I'm using “Receive blog updates via email”. “follow” sounds like a good choice too.

  • remarkablogger

    Great overview, Grant. You covered the basics beautifully.

    Too bad FeedBurner creates such damn ugly sign-up forms. Makes people have to do too much work to get it to look even halfway decent.

    • TheMogulMom

      Hi Michael,
      I agree – Feedburner's sign up forms are yucky. I had my graphic/web designer create images for me and then I linked them to the Feedburner URL. They look great and coordinate with my blog theme.

      She also did something nifty with 2 Feedburner plugins (Feedburner Circulation and Feedburner Count) so they're written in normal text above my sign-up images instead of the standard little Feedburner Count images (which are almost as yucky as the sign-up forms).

      Heather

      • remarkablogger

        Hmm… I'll have to look into those plugins! Thanks. :-)

  • TheMogulMom

    Hi Grant,

    Great post on optimizing RSS and email subscriptions.

    I found that my email subscriber rates increased significantly when I gave them reasons why they should subscribe – seen on my “Why Subscribe?” tab. Just a little trick I learned from Tim Ferriss's keynote at the San Francisco Wordcamp last summer.

    Thanks for a helpful post!
    Heather

  • http://www.netwitsthinktank.com frank barry

    Nice work Grant. Looks like a lot of folks were able to take something away from this post! Good discussion as well.

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      Thanks, Frank!

  • http://delawaredisability.com Steven Butler

    I agree with the points in this article, but I'm disappointed that this site does not include full text of posts in subscriptions. This makes it more difficult for the subscriber to get value from your post. I personally stop following any blog that forces me to the site to read the posts.

    The website should have enough confidence in the content in order to drive hits. By including only a partial post you are artificially inflating your web hits. Include links to other posts to drive new traffic to your site, but don't waste your readers time by forcing them to your site to view your content.

    I read each of Grant's previous series on his site because he had confidence enough to include the full text in each email. Consequently, I also have since visited Grant's site on multiple ocassions and have strongly considered purchasing his services. I have not read each post in this series because it requires more work in viewing the content.

    I'm disappointed that as an expert you are not including full text and also encouraging readers of this series to do the same.

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      I never said I was an expert, so I'm sorry you got that impression.

      As you may know, Grant only includes links to his posts for regular subscribers (outside his 31 day series). So if you were a regular subscriber, you would have to click through to read the full post.

      That said, I'm confused why you associate this approach with a lack of confidence – in both my content and readers.

      To clarify, the reason why I only include excerpts of posts is to save space in the body of the email. With 3-4 posts in each email, the reader has to wade through a lot of content in order to find what they want. A title and short excerpt solve this issue. But maybe I'm wrong?

      • http://delawaredisability.com Steven Butler

        Sorry if my tone was offensive, but this is a major pet peeve of mine. I associate this approach with lack of confidence, because many bloggers take this approach simply to drive website visits (page views). They assume that if they give away everything in the RSS stream or email, they will not get visitors.

        I personally have never had a problem with space in the body of the email. If you are including long posts, and this is a concern, a system that uses an index at the top of the email would be a better solution. Out of your series so far, I have only read 3 posts. The reason that I have only read 3, is because I was too busy when I originally received the other emails to click through. Rather than having the email clog my inbox, I simply looked at the summary and decided it wasn't worth my time.

        If it had the full-text, once I open the email I am already invested. It is more likely I would read the whole thing, even if I was short for time. Also, if I had downloaded my email, or RSS feeds, but no longer have an internet connection, I could still read the content. The content becomes more valuable. If I associate value with the content, I associate value with your product (or website).

        I am a long-time TechCrunch, Gizmodo, and Mashable reader because they include full text post in their RSS stream. I believe that they are probably among the best in the tech industry, but if there was another blog that only included partial text in the post, even if it was better, I would not follow that blog regularly. In fact, if I see the same headline on Engadget (which includes only partial-text, but still more than a summary), or one of the others mentioned, I will always read the story in the blog that includes the full-text.

        If a reader does not want to read the full-text, they can still abandon the post after reading the first couple paragraphs, but I personally don't think they will unsubscribe because they could have easily read the entire post. On the other hand, I do believe it is likely that you would lose potential readers by only including a partial stream.

        Just my two cents. I think you are producing valuable materials, but I think it is important to make it easy for readers to follow.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Steven – Thanks for the feedback. I do display the full post via RSS, and am tweaking my email feed for this series.

  • sue_anne

    John, I don't know if you plan to cover this in another post or not, but I'm interested in the strategy between people that either via RSS or email show the whole blog post or only a snippet of the blog post. I know that when I'm reading things in my RSS feed (currently Google reader), posts that only give me part of the content and require me to click are likely to get skipped and often I don't get back to them.

    I agree with the previous commenter about including full text. Why do you choose not to and do you recommend that to other bloggers?

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      The reason why I only include excerpts of posts in my emails is to save space. With 3-4 posts in each email, the reader has to wade through a lot of content in order to find what they want.

    • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

      Sue Anne – I provide a full feed to both my RSS feed and email subscribers. Like you, if I only get a short excerpt in my reader, I tend to not go further and read it. Unless of course it is John's. Seriously, the only partial feeds I do click on are those bloggers I read daily and know personally.

      Usually the biggest excuse I see from bloggers for not giving a full feed is the fact they want to get people to their blog. And this is usually most common with those bloggers who monetize their blogs.

      I for one want readers. And I want to build a relationship with those readers and giving them the content is the best way to do that. You can always use a plugin like Yet Another Related Post and have it also put that list in your RSS feed. You can also put links in your post to other post on your own blog. This will get them to your blog as they will most likely click on the links. They will come to click on these links because you have built their trust and have been providing them with great content all along.

      I can also tell you I have yet had any one complain that I provide a full feed in either RSS or email feeds. And John's reason for not providing a full feed in the email (sorry John) is not a good one. I get a handfull of feeds via email as I don't want to miss certain bloggers when they post. And 95% of them provide the full feed in the email. I don't mind at all when I get 2 or 3 post from them in one email.

      So, a short answer to my long winded details would be to provide full feed. You want your content in the hands of your readers.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Grant and Sue – I'm not sure if you saw the email that went out today, but I've displayed the full post. My weekly blog broadcasts I'm still sending as excerpts. I've had only 2 complaint in 18 months about excerpts.

      • http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

        I did see that. And I also send out the blog broadcast as an excerpt. But not the daily new post.

      • sue_anne

        I noticed that and was very happy about it. :) I subscribe to very, very few blogs via email. I find that they add to the “distraction” of email where my RSS feed I can get to whenever I have time in the day. Also, if I “skip” your email, I'm likely to file and rarely get back to them.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        @Sue_Anne If you use Gmail, you can create a filter so that email subscriptions skip your email and go right into a handy-dandy folder in the sidebar.

      • sue_anne

        Yep. I use filters a lot at work. That would help with the “interuption” issue, but once things are in a folder they are even less likely to get read. I just overall like the RSS option better.

      • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

        Me too. In general, I get most of my blogs by RSS, but the “must read” blogs by email…

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  • http://twitter.com/DaraghBell DaraghBell

    More good tip for blog traffic, been thinking alot about RSS after a disscussion with Dave Weiner. I have to explore it some more as people sometimes do not have the inclination to do RSS.

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  • barbarabellesi

    Definitely getting the point about having an e-book or some other white paper as a way to regularly entice readers while also posting regular, relevant content on the blog.

    Really enjoying the 31 Day Challenge–only sorry that I got so behind on it!

    • http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

      Barbara. No worries. Glad to have you!

  • Car Transport

    This sounds and looks like a great website to look into. But I would like to make sure we are good to go on this transaction. Thank you again for your time.