Posted on June 4th, 2010RSS subscribers been low lately? Here are some simple tips to perk up the number of subscribers and make your RSS feed POP (stand out from the crowd)!
1. Publish content that’s worth reading/visiting
Yep, this is the first most point to be kept in mind. The rules are simple, put up dynamic and interesting contents, the more happy people will be to visit your website. When people subscribe to your website, they expect something darn good and unique in return. Give your readers a good reason to come back and visit your website!
2. Promote prominently
Place your RSS feed buttons on a prominent and easy-to-find spot on your website. If you place it in the footer of the design you stand the risk of people forgetting to subscribe. Just like with ads, contact forms, etc. the higher on the page you place that button, the more likely users will be attracted to click and subscribe.
3. Update website contents frequently
When people subscribe to a website or a blog, they expect fresh, new contents to be there frequently. Make your subscribers feel as if they don’t check your website every day they might miss out on something good. Keep updating the contents as frequently as possible (at least once a day!) and watch the number of subscribers rise up!
4. Use an image for your feed button
Using little fancy images rather just plain HTML text links tends to catch the eye of the people. Use either those large orange RSS buttons (these have become the universal RSS feeds symbol), or a feedburner counter/button. One can also find websites that help to create RSS feed buttons or ‘chicklets’ like this one here http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/rss-buttons/
5. Provide full RSS feeds
Many RSS users won’t be interested in subscribing to a blog with partial RSS feed. If you have more than say 100 blogs that you are subscribing to, then definitely you can’t read all of the articles, but you would like to scan for those articles that you’re interested in. Thus, you’d want to scan an entire post, not just a snippet!
6. Provide RSS feed in Email
A very few percentage of the Internet users actually use the RSS feature, while there are the conventional folks out there who are more comfortable with the technology called Email. But don’t leave them out, what you got to do is convert your RSS feeds into an Email form and there are many services which provide with this feature like Feedburner and Feedblitz. This way you get your subscription rate up and the conventional folks get to read it in their familiar form.
7. Educate your readers about RSS!
As we’ve mentioned in the previous point, the number of people who actually use RSS are very less because not many people are familiar with it and its working or they just simply refuse to use something that they’re intimidated by. Write an article on how to use RSS, and how it can help people improve their lives. Write about the different RSS Feed reader options in layman’s terms and it should make them feel to come out of their shell and experiment with RSS.
8. Place welcome mats at key points
If you own a blog, there may be some pages or posts that are visited the most than others. Placing the RSS feed buttons/links at these crucial pages makes it easier, for you to get more subscriptions and for the readers to subscribe.
9. Make the subscription process brief
People usually love to have follow few steps in order to subscribe for something. Feedburner is a great way to optimize the efficiency of subscription process.
10. Promote your feeds in other online communications
You could add the blog’s as well as the feed button/link in forum or email signatures. When giving out the link to your blog, make sure you give out the link to your feeds as well, and get those subscription rates up!
11. Offer bonuses!
Yes, bribe your readers into subscribing to your website. Offer bonuses like free e-book and the sort, provide incentives to them to subscribe to your feeds. Use plugins like Feedvertising, which displays only certain text to people subscribing to your RSS feed. Let people know they can access valuable content but only if they subscribe to your feeds.
12. Submit RSS feed to RSS directories
By doing this, your website and feeds will have more chance of getting noticed by people. This site gives a whole list of RSS directories you can submit your RSS feed to –> http://www.dotsauce.com/
13. Publicize subscriber numbers
Once your sites subscriber numbers have hit say 100, publicize the number. When people see a growing number of people subscribing to a site, they naturally get more curious and will definitely stop by to check it out and subscribe as well.
14. Participate in blog carnivals
Just like in case of putting out your feed in directories and getting mass subscribers, participate in these carnivals and let other people know about your blog. The more reader’s attention you can get, the more the number of subscribers.
Well, what are you waiting for?? Get those subscription rates up already 