‘How do I find new subscribers for my blog?’
This question hits my inbox so regularly that I that I’d answer it publicly rather than retyping my answer to each person who asks – it’s a topic that is on the mind of many bloggers these days so lets tackle it head on.
I’ve written an extended entry on this topic with 11 practical suggestions at Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for Your Blog – however there’s one ‘secret’ that I’m increasingly convinced is a key to increasing subscriber numbers on a blog.
I say ‘secret’ because it eluded me for years – although in the end it was staring me in the face.
This ‘secret’ has helped me build both of my blogs into the 40,000 subscriber range (and beyond) and it’s something I see many other bloggers using to build their blogs – sometimes strategically and sometimes intuitively.
Today I want to introduce this secret and then over the next few days I want to follow it up with some practical tips on how to use it in practice.
At the hear of what I want to talk about is a simple question:
Why do People Subscribe to Feeds?
I am sure there are numerous reasons that people subscribe to a blogs feed – however in most cases they simple truth is that they subscribe for one obvious yet powerful reason:
they think that the blog might produce content that they’ll want to know about at some point in the future.
As I say – this is a simple (and very obvious) truth – but it is actually a secret to building RSS subscriber numbers and it’s worth repeating.
People will subscribe to your blog if they think that it will enhance their lives in some way in the foreseeable future.
Ponder that for a few moments before reading on…..
Perhaps instead of asking ‘how can I get people to subscribe to my blog’ a better question to ask is:
‘how can I convince people that I will write something tomorrow, next week or next month that they just can’t miss out on.’
This ‘secret’ of building your subscriber numbers to your blog is to create a sense of anticipation in those who visit your blog. Build this and you’ll find people seek out ways to track with you rather than you having to find ways to shove your means of anticipation down their throats.
How to Create Anticipation on a Blog
My hypothesis is that creating a sense of anticipation among your readers increases the chances that they’ll subscribe to it.
But how do you do it?
This is where I create a little anticipation of my own and let you know that I’m going to unpack this further tomorrow when I’ll give you some practical tips on how to create anticipation on your blog. (update: here’s my next two posts in this series –how to build anticipation on your blog and more on how to build anticipation on your blog).
In the mean time – some questions for discussion:
- How do you build anticipation on your blog?
- How have you seen others do it effectively?
Feel free to share specific examples if you’ve got them.
