8 simple ways to increase RSS subscribers

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The intention of having a RSS icon in your blog is to to encourage your readers or visitors to sign up for your latest updates in your blogs. But the challenge is are you doing enough to promote your readers to subscribe to your feeds? Did you ever explain to your readers what RSS is? Most people will know but there should be some out there who has some doubts about subscribing RSS.

What is RSS

RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop based, or mobile-device-based. (Source from Wikipedia)

To put it simple, it allows you to keep up to date content of your favorite website. The latest content will be sent to the reader of your choice once there is any new articles publish by the blogs you subscribe. The reason why you should subscribe to RSS feeds is the benefits of it.

Benefits of Subscribing RSS

- You don’t have to bookmark every site that you like.

- You will not miss any latest post from your favorite website

- You get to read all updates under one place(example:  Google reader)

- Make sure you are updated if you are forgetful or extremely busy to visit the site

Sometimes people need to be reminded to subscribe as they like to visually visit your website. There is a tendency though to forget some if you have too many sites to read up. To prevent this from happening, you can help them out by reminding them in small areas on your blog or site. There are several ways to do that. You can find below a lists of 8 simple ways to increase your RSS subscribers.

1. Great and updated content

I hate to repeat this as this is mentioned ever since blogging was born. But this is the main attraction to visitors. You need to write great content and most important of all updated regularly. If your visitors are taking an effort to subscribe to your feeds or content, it’s your responsibility to make sure they get fresh and new contents frequently.

2. Explain what is RSS

Explain to your visitors what RSS is and what the benefits are just like what i am doing now. You may think that all your visitors know what is RSS. But you maybe surprise to know that some of them don’t really understand what RSS is all about or the benefits of subscribing to RSS.

3. Educate them and change their mindset

The reason why some people don’t like to subscribe is they are probably thinking “what for”. Since i am visiting your site and getting all the contents that i need, there isn’t a need to subscribe to your feeds. Believe me, i am one of them when i just started blogging. But once i got to know the benefits, i haven’t been looking back since. Let them know subscribing to feeds from blogs is actually like you waiting for your daily newspaper or next edition of magazines. You just don’t have to hold to read it. And i got to tell you, you can read up everything from A-Z if you subscribe. No limitations on the topics or categories , as long as you are interested with the topics inside that blog or site.

4. Have options of RSS or email to choose from

Prepare two options of subscription method for your visitors to choose from. Some people may like to subscribe through RSS feeds while there are others who like to subscribe through email. Whichever they like, you need to prepare the options available for your visitors. You won’t want to lose any of them just because they could not find the way of subscription they like.

5. Don’t hide your RSS button

Make your subscription button as prominent and visible as possible. Ideally the visitors should be able to see it once they landed on your home page.  Use a bigger orange button but not that big enough to become a distraction. Just make sure your visitors know where to find it in your site. That’s the reason why  i took off the ads banner in my blog just to let visitors know where the subscription button is once they landed on my site.

6. Don’t be afraid to ask

It’s common now to find bloggers ending their blog post asking visitors to subscribe. A great article make things easier for people to subscribe and by asking, you are actually remind them to look out for more updates. It’s best that you put a RSS button at the end of the post or if you have problems in coding like me. You can install this plugin What would Seth Godin do. This is a useful plugin if you have problem installing a RSS button at the end of your post.

7. Use Feedburner

Sign up for feedburner and use feedburner to burn your feeds. Some advantages of using feedburner are:

- You can monitor subscribers count. Though the numbers is fluctuating, but it gives you some guide of how many people are reading your feeds now.

- No issue of losing subscribers if you decide to change the location of your feeds. By using feedburner, your url for feedburner remain the same. Example: http://feeds.feedburner.com/your_feed_name.

- Offer RSS as well as email option for your subscribers.

8. Show your subscribers count

If you have few hundred subscribers, don’t keep it under the dust. Show your subscribers count in your site. There is a chance that people decide to subscribe and follow suit since there are so many people subscribing ahead of them. How many subscribers to reach before you start showing all depends on you. Normally if you have 1-200 subscribers, by all means to let people know about that. You won’t find any in this blog yet, that means i am still working towards that target. If you like my post and want to help me by subscribing now, i sincerely thank you for your kind action.

Wrap up

These are 8 simple and efficient ways to increase your subscribers which you can fulfill easily. There is no excuse on why you can’t do it in your blog as each will not take you more than five minutes except from writing great content. It will not bring you hundreds or thousands of subscribers in a short time but at least you are making things easier for your visitors.

Share your thoughts

Is there other ways that i miss out? Let me know your thoughts by leaving your comments below. Before you proceed to the comments box, remember to subscribe for the latest updates here if you haven’t done that.

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