How to Keep Your Subscribers
Earlier this week I wrote an article about how to get more subscribers, and today I thought it would be a good idea to follow it up with how to keep them.
Readers will unsubscribe from a feed for many reasons. It's not always the blogger at fault (the decision is based on the subscriber's preferences), but there are some things a blogger can do to meet the needs of his or her readers.
Provide the best content possible.
As long as your subscribers read and enjoy what you write, they will not unsubscribe. Be helpful. Be informative. Be whatever it is that made your readers subscribe in the first place.. and be consistent.
Write eye-catching headlines.
Many subscribers decide which articles they want to read by choosing the headlines that appeal to them and skipping over the others. Write something that will grab their attention (but also tell them what the article is about).
Also, don't begin your headlines with the same word(s) all the time because the reader will begin to scan over similar titles that are next to each other in a list. It's human nature to group like objects (i.e. similar post titles) and wind up skipping some headlines altogether. Two similar headlines make a statement; any more than two or three, they will begin to blend with each other in the reader's mind.
Make your posts scannable.
No matter how great your article is, large paragraphs of plain text are discouraging to those using a feed reader. Break it up so your content is easily digestible- use subheadings, bold font, lists, small paragraphs, etc.
Post regularly.
Sometimes it's difficult to determine how often you should be posting. If you publish new content too often, it will become difficult to keep up with the updates and some readers will unsubscribe. The same will happen if you don't post often enough- you'll lose their attention and they will unsubscribe. The key is to find a happy medium, set a posting schedule, and try to stick to it.
Publish full feeds.
Some bloggers will disagree with me on this one, but I've found that many readers will unsubscribe from partial feeds or headlines. This isn't always the case, but a lot of subscribers will find it inconvenient to finish reading an article on a separate webpage.
Before wrapping up this post, I'd also like to mention that it's impossible to keep every single subscriber, and losing a few now and then is not something to worry about. Just keep providing your subscribers (as a whole) with great content and you will have your loyal following.
These tips come from personal experience. You may have a different view on some of these, and I welcome new ideas and further discussion.
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very nice post; no only win more suscribers... most important keep!!!!! Today i'm a new suscriber of you blog. How time? you decide!!
Posted by: Víctor Esparza | February 02, 2008 at 09:40 PM
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Posted by: Abhinav Sood | February 05, 2008 at 01:31 PM