- Some people are not aware of a blog feed– It is easy to introduce blog feed to those tech-savvy subscribers. However, for readers who are not aware of a blog feed and its uses you have to provide relevant information about it. What is a blog feed? It is a feed that contains all new updates about the blog you are subscribed to.Remember when you found a helpful blog you bookmark it for future reference? Then you stumbled upon a new blog with interesting contents you bookmark it again. Every time you stumble upon a new blog you bookmark it. However, it is such a hassle to find a certain blog on your bookmarks to check its updates. Unlike when you are subscribed to a feed you can easily check your email and find new contents. Therefore it is very important that you encourage your readers to subscribe on your blog so they can easily get updated.
- Published posts cannot be edited for mistakes- Suppose you have written a blog posts and published it online. However, you realized that you made mistakes which should be edited right away. Unfortunately, it is not possible. The moment you publish a post it will appear in your subscriber’s readers. Hence, it is very important that you proof-read your posts first.
- Duplicate blog posts are made when you edit the post title- When you publish a blog post it instantly shows in your subscriber’s feed. Furthermore, when you edit the title for mistakes or improvements it could actually double the blog posts you have written. It is because some feed readers like Google Reader determines the blog post based on it titles. If it is a new title the reader regard it as new posts even if it has the same content. Thus do not change the titles once published, better yet proof read the entire post first.
- Providing email subscriptions helps a lot– Although there are people who do not prefer to subscribe via email because it spam their inbox there are still who prefers it. Thus, provide an email subscription option as well. Besides, some people find it really handy.
- Expect that not everyone will choose to subscribe- We have different preferences when it comes to subscribing feeds. Some of us prefer through email while some would prefer through Google Reader. There are some people that although read your blog do not subscribe at all. Nevertheless, do not push your readers to subscribe to your blog if they do not want to. Besides, the number of your readers is not merely based on your subscribers. You might be surprised when you find that you have a lot of blog readers which are actually not subscribed on your blog. For instance, you can check the number of comments you have in your blog. Even if you don’t have a lot of subscribers you have a lot of good comments then that would still count. Of course, your own comments do not count so avoid making multiple comments on your own posts.
- Subscription pop-ups are totally annoying- There are blogs who were successful in getting subscribers from pop-up suggestions. However, there are a great number of subscribers who are totally annoyed of these pop-ups. Therefore, do not take the risk of losing subscribers just because of these pop-up suggestions. Some bloggers use giveaways and contest as tools to get more subscribers. However, is there any difference if more people would subscribe to your blog while in reality very few people read your posts? Okay, having a lot of subscribers can improve the look of your website. Still, it is a lot better if you will write a good content so people would get interested in subscribing to your posts.
- Blog feed subscriptions buttons should be easy to find- Easter egg hunting is fun but not for blogs that places their subscription buttons in less noticeable places. There are blogs that does not have the orange subscription icon at the top of their address bar, even Google Chrome does not have that icon or unless you install that needed extension. Therefore, place your subscription buttons at the top of your page or where subscribers can easily spot it. That way, they can avoid hunting for your feed for hours.
- It is okay to give bonuses in exchange for subscriptions- You are free to give bonuses or perks to your readers. However, be careful in asking your readers to subscribe by email because some of them might be subscribed through their feed readers too. Now, what is the point for subscribing in email? Nonetheless, there are still a lot of blogs that gives bonuses to their subscribers through emails. Okay, I guess there is no better way to interest your readers by giving those perks.
